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Chapter Text

As soon as Voldemort heard the words of a half overheard prophecy, he knew that there was really only one possible answer to this puzzle. There weren’t many people that defied him once, and there definitely weren’t many that managed it three times, and of those that did even fewer were defying him thrice as a couple instead of as individuals. And then add in the odds of that couple expecting a baby at the end of July, and there was only one possibility, even if everyone else in his inner circle worked out that there were two, proposed two, gave him a choice.

If Voldemort was honest, he almost wished it were true that he had another option. 

The Longbottoms were preferable, after all. He would rather believe that they were capable of having a son that could defeat him. They were both purebloods, their son would be a pureblood, their son was a son. It was everything he wanted to tear down most in this world he had found himself in. Everything that had ever mocked him, that had settled under his skin and bothered him since he set foot in Hogwarts. Purebloods thought themselves better than any other class of wizard—including him, Voldemort—and there was no doubt that this pureblood, this unborn babe that almost could have had the power to defeat him, would one day think it too. He wanted nothing more than to see the Longbottoms either on their knees in front of him or long dead behind him, just as he wanted nothing more than to see the purebloods that followed him swallow their pride and their sense of importance as they kissed the hem of his robes and worked alongside the creatures they scorned. 

But the Longbottoms had only defied him twice as a couple. The third time—the one that everyone else counted—it had only been Alice Longbottom that defied him, red robes flaring around her as she dueled desperately against him, two-on-one, bleeding out from several wounds and losing but refusing to give up until the disgraced Black heir, not her husband, eventually swooped in and evened her odds. Her husband only appeared to assist after she had already escaped Voldemort. 

Born to those that thrice defied him. 

No, there was really only one option. The choice was very clear. 

James Potter was the heir to an old pureblood family, if not necessarily a noble one. He would never hold the title of Lord, but he would own multiple estates. He had access to a small fortune, thanks to the hair potion invented by his father. His parents were elderly, so he was sure to inherit sooner rather than later, and if his money and his influence weren’t enough to draw Voldemort’s attention, his other talents certainly were. His followers spoke of James Potter with derision, Severus most of all. The youngest Potter was a Muggle lover, he was a loud mouth, he was cruel, he was best known for pranking unsuspecting Slytherins in the halls, he was courting a filthy mudblood and apparently had been for a great many years. 

He was friends with a werewolf, a disgraced Heir to an Ancient and Noble House, and a Gryffindor with no courage. He was quick with his wand, and devastating. He was willing to do what needed to be done, and despite being only nineteen, he was elbows deep in invaluable magical research.

And then, there was that mudblood he was involved with. 

She was good, obviously so. Better at magic than even her husband, a natural even. She reeked of Olde Magick, held the kind of easy grace and talent that Voldemort had only ever seen in himself before. She was a mudblood, yes, but he could set that aside. There had been a time when everyone had thought him a mudblood, after all, and they had been wrong about that. She was from an old line, she had to be. Maybe even one of the other founders. 

He would have been a fool to not attempt to recruit them, both of them, regardless of blood status. 

And he had nearly succeeded too, which was what made the defiance sting more. He could offer them everything, anything, all that they wanted was there on a silver platter. Equality for their pet werewolf—real equality, instead of the falsehoods Dumbledore promised but hardly ever delivered on—a chance to do as they pleased, unlimited sources for their research, protection for their cowardly little pureblood friend that couldn’t protect himself, reinstatement for the estranged Black that followed them about. They had nearly agreed—he knew they had, he had slipped greedy fingers beneath the surface of their minds and fished passing thoughts from the shallows. It was the werewolf, of all things, that they were most willing to compromise their ideals for. 

They defied him, together. Then they did it again, three months later, and he saw their magical prowess for himself as they viciously fought him off in the middle of a raid. And again, eleven months after that, he pursued them from a fight himself, Lily bleeding heavily from an injury in her leg and James struggling to counter a curse that was trying to kill him even as he ran. Even still— even still— they managed to escape. 

People did not defy him. They did not fight him and win. They did not escape him when he pursued them—for he did not often deem someone worthy enough of his time to pursue them himself in the first place. Yet the Potters had managed it. And Lily Potter was set to give birth to a child at the end of July. 

A half-blood child. One that would grow up in both worlds. One that would know the world of magic before they ever went to Hogwarts. One that would possibly even know a world without magic, too, just as he once had. A girl. A half-blood girl. Everything he was and everything he wasn’t, prophesied to defeat him. 

There was really only one option, and it had never been the Longbottoms. 

As far as Effie was concerned, everything started here. 

It was the early days of summer. She’d been released from her cupboard a few days ago, following her extended stay in there after the snake escaped from the zoo (possibly with her assistance, because even if she was still unable to explain how exactly these strange things happened around her, she did have to agree with Uncle Vernon that it was peculiar she was the one consistent thing about them). It was the morning, which was nothing unusual, she was sneaking bits of food from the breakfast she cooked, which was nothing unusual, and Vernon shouted at her to go and get the mail when it arrived, which was nothing unusual. 

At first, the mail was nothing unusual either. There was a postcard from Marge, from wherever she was vacationing at lately, a bill, and a notice from the library. The last item in the pile, though, was something completely and unequivocally strange —a thick letter, in a yellow envelope sealed with purple wax, addressed to her. 

Ms. E. Potter

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

To make matters stranger, the envelope was addressed in green ink, no return address was given, and there was no stamp on the corner. 

It was the first time Effie had ever received mail, and for good reason. She had no friends, thanks to Dudley’s gang and their constant game of “Effie Hunting”—a game that was constant because Effie, though she didn’t look it, was very good at not getting caught. She didn’t have a library card herself and wasn’t even permitted to check books out on Aunt Petunia’s. She paid no bills, held no news subscriptions, and received no marketing material. She might as well not even exist, which she knew for a fact was exactly how the Dursleys wanted it. 

“Hurry up, girl!” Vernon bellowed, from deeper in the kitchen, but Effie did not. 

The one good thing about the Dursleys was that they hated looking at her. Through ten years of torment and scarcely offered hints, she had gathered that the reason for this was because she looked a great deal like her mother—who was also Petunia’s sister. Her unnamed mother, who the Dursleys claimed was about as good as her alcoholic father (which wasn’t very good at all, if you asked the Dursleys). Effie had never seen a picture of her. She only really knew that she probably looked like her since, after that time Aunt Petunia had tried to dye her dark red hair to a plain dull brown and Effie had woken up the next day with it magically back to normal, she had later overheard Vernon mention “that sister of hers” in a conversation with Petunia. 

Effie liked that she might share this thing with her mother. She liked it a great deal, in fact, and it wasn’t just because despite how venomous the Dursleys were, they hardly ever came looking for her so long as she was already out of their sight. 

So, she stayed in the hall, even as Vernon hollered for her again, and she stared at the letter in her hands. 

Who was it from? Who had any reason to write to her?

“Girl!” Vernon bellowed, sounding on the edge of angry that meant that if Effie wanted to avoid a week in her cupboard the next time she was seen, she might as well get this over with. “Bring the mail, now!” 

“Coming, Uncle Vernon!” Effie called back to appease him for a moment, as she pinched the edge of the envelope between her fingers one last time and willed her feet to walk. 

She thought that maybe it wasn’t the wisest decision to open a letter from someone that she didn’t know, or that maybe she should try to hide the letter from the Dursleys, but both of these thoughts were fleeting, and quickly dismissed in favor of another, much bigger one—she needed to know what was inside of this letter, and she needed to know right now. 

So, she wandered back into the kitchen. Aunt Petunia averted her gaze immediately, as she always did whenever Effie went anywhere near her. Dudley’s attention stayed on his food and the television—Dudley’s two favorite things, after trying to beat defenseless kids that were three times smaller than him to a pulp—and Vernon was quickly distracted as soon as Effie handed him the postcard from his sister. 

She could get away with a peek, she thought, at the very least. See if the letter said who it was from on the inside, and then hide it away before the Dursleys saw. She was an expert at breaking out of her cupboard at night—there was no reason at all that she couldn’t manage a breakout tonight if she needed more light later to read. 

But she hadn’t accounted for the soft noise the seal would make as it was broken, and soon, Dudley’s eyes were on her. 

“Dad!” he shouted, his pudgy face twisting up with glee at catching Effie doing something she shouldn’t be doing. “Dad, Effie’s got something!”

As a point, Dudley was the only one that ever actually called Effie by her name. It was very clear as to why, considering every time he did, Uncle Vernon usually said—

“Don’t call her that freakish name.” Vernon’s gaze snapped up to Effie following the admonishment, though, his eyes widening in horror as his usually red face drained completely of color. “Petunia!” he shouted, in alarm. 

Dudley made a grab for the letter. Effie, who was an expert at avoiding Dudley at all times, stepped neatly backwards. She reached for the warm thing inside her, the friendly, impossible thing that she only felt when she was up to her freakishness, as the Dursleys called it, and thought very hard about how she wanted Dudley to trip. To her delight, the chair nearest him scooted out just a few centimeters of its own accord—enough to trip him, but hardly enough to actually be seen by anyone else—and then barely contained her laughter when he smacked his piglike face right into the kitchen tiles. 

Unfortunately, Effie’s amusement left her open to attack—especially when the attack was coming from someone that was a lot larger than her, a lot heavier than her, and a lot meaner than her. 

Uncle Vernon snatched the letter from her hand in one of his thick, meaty palms. Effie did her best to hang on—which only resulted in her tearing off a bit of the envelope as it was snatched away—but Vernon won out. Soon enough, he was holding the letter himself, staring down at it with his beady eyes and his near permanent frown. He tilted it towards Petunia, who couldn’t have read more than the first line before she was covering her mouth with her hands in horror and shouting, “Vernon! Oh my goodness—Vernon!” 

Effie narrowed her eyes. She also liked to think herself a bit of an expert at noticing, at least when it came to the Dursleys, and at least when it came to what they were feeling. So she knew that this was the face they made when they were thinking of or talking about her parents. As if she hadn’t already wanted to read that letter bad enough, now that she had evidence that it might have something to do with them, she needed it. 

“I want to read that letter,” she said. Her voice wasn’t necessarily loud—especially not in the hush that had fallen over the kitchen, disregarding Dudley’s sniffles from the floor—but it was cutting, and it got the attention of each and every Dursley. 

Petunia, surprisingly, looked particularly furious. “You freak,” she spat, with more venom in her tone than Effie had heard in a while. Effie took an unconscious step backwards at the tone. “You will go nowhere near this letter, do you hear me? Nowhere near this letter at all—” 

“Dad, why did Effie get that letter?” Dudley asked, picking himself up off the floor. “Why does Effie get a letter when I don’t? I want to read it, Dad! Give it to me!”

Petunia turned her shrill face on Dudley, her expression twisting in a furious, horrible way. Effie took another step backwards—suddenly, not knowing what was in the letter didn’t seem so bad, when the longer she stood in this room the more she felt like she might be subjected to a swinging frying pan from her Aunt Petunia again. 

“No!” Petunia shrieked, startling Dudley, who had likely never heard the word directed at him before. “You will not! You are my son! My perfectly normal son!”

“This isn’t fair!” Dudley protested. The Smelting stick was back in his hand, from where he dropped it after he took his tumble, courtesy of Effie. He swung it at Vernon viciously, and connected with his shoulder. “Give me the letter, Dad! Give me Effie’s letter!”

For the first time, Vernon completely ignored his son. More than that, he looked furious at him, snatching the Smelting stick out of his hand and bellowing, “Get out! Both of you, get out!” 

Effie had seen her uncle this angry before, and she knew what it meant. At the same time, however, that letter was connected to her parents somehow. And Effie—and Effie didn’t have anything that connected her to her parents, except a name that wasn’t Dursley and a head of red hair that might have been her mother’s. So, she dragged together what little bits of bravery she could find within her, squared her shoulders, and said, “I’m not leaving until you give me the letter. I want to read it—it’s my letter.”

This was the last straw for Vernon, who turned purple at her proclamation, grabbed her and Dudley both by the scruff of the neck, and promptly tossed them both out of the kitchen with a bellow of outrage. He slammed the door behind them hard enough to rattle the picture frames on the wall. Picture frames that didn’t contain a single image of Effie anywhere, she might add, but picture frames all the same. 

She exchanged a glance with Dudley, and they both immediately came to the same conclusion. 

They tousled briefly but violently—despite Effie being a girl, Dudley had absolutely no qualms about punching her in the side hard enough to bruise her ribs so he could take up his eavesdropping position at the keyhole while she was down. Effie—wheezing slightly from the force of the impact and more than a little blind where her terribly fitting glasses fell off her face in her journey to the floor—decided that a second round wasn’t worth it and pressed her ear to the crack at the bottom of the door while she scrabbled blindly for her glasses with the other hand. 

“Vernon,” Petunia was saying, her voice as thin and fragile as a sheet of paper in a windstorm, “they know where she sleeps. Look at the address—they know where she sleeps! Are they following us? Watching us? Watching the house?” 

“Watching…spying…bet they know where we work, too,” Vernon muttered, a bit distractedly. 

Effie blinked, fitting her glasses back onto her face. Watching them? Who were they talking about? Who would have any reason or desire to watch the Dursleys? Or her?

“But what do we do?” Petunia cried. “Write them back? If we tell them we don’t want—”

“No,” Vernon said. “No, we’ll ignore it. If they don’t get an answer, they’ll give up eventually. They’ll have to.”

“But—”

“I’m not having one in the house, Petunia! We swore we would beat that freakishness out of her when we agreed to take her in, just like your parents should have done to that loose sister of yours!” 

Petunia went very silent at this for a very long time. Effie took a moment to try and parse through all the words Vernon had just said and try to make sense of them—freakishness was something her mum had too, that part was easy. Her grandparents evidently didn’t treat her mum like the Dursleys treated her, which was relieving to hear if only because Effie hoped no one else was treated like her anywhere else. She wasn’t sure what “loose” meant, at least not in this context—but maybe that was something to do with freakishness, too?

“Yes, Vernon,” Petunia said, at the end of this very long pause. “Whatever you say.”

Effie blinked, a little taken aback by the way her aunt sounded. Almost like she was sad, but…

What reason would her aunt have to be sad?

Despite Vernon’s belief that nothing would change so long as they ignored the first letter and removed Effie from her cupboard, the letters kept coming. There was another on the doorstep the next morning, though this one was addressed to Ms. E. Potter in the Smallest Bedroom. Effie had been unable to grab it when she also failed to win the impromptu wrestling match she had with Vernon and Dudley over it. 

She spent her afternoon fixing a broken alarm clock she found in Dudley’s old room, now hers, and fixed it enough that she could use it to wake herself up early the next morning. But she tripped over Vernon’s sleeping form in her attempt to escape and wait outside for the postman so she could ask him to put the letter in her hands before it ever saw the inside of the Dursleys’ home. Uncle Vernon caught her, berated her, then caught the letters that came flying through the flap addressed to her. He spent the day nailing up the mail flap. 

All twelve letters that arrived the next day—shoved into peculiar places as they were—were retrieved and burned by Uncle Vernon before Effie got a chance to grab one herself. On Saturday they arrived wrapped around the eggs delivered to Aunt Petunia, and on Sunday double that at least came flying down the chimney and cluttered up the floor. Now getting desperate, as every attempt at espionage had failed her so far, Effie tried to grab one from the ground. Before she could manage, Uncle Vernon had overcome his fear enough to grab her around the waist and bodily launch her into the hall, slamming the door behind her. Effie could still hear letters flying through the chimney and bouncing off the furniture in the room—she hoped the Dursleys had papercuts in the most unpleasant places possible when all this was done—and she also heard Vernon shouting over the noise to tell them they were “going away.” 

Effie didn’t know what exactly he was hoping for—if whoever was sending the letters knew she had been moved from the cupboard under the stairs to Dudley’s second bedroom, then they would probably be able to find them on vacation too. 

But they went anyway. As Petunia had so eloquently put it in that overheard conversation in the kitchen on that first day—whatever Vernon said, the rest of them did. 

They stayed at a hotel, where a receptionist presented them with a hundred letters addressed to Ms. E. Potter, Room 17, Railview Hotel, Cokeworth. Effie tried to grab one of these too, before Vernon slapped her hand hard enough to leave behind a stinging red mark, and went to grab the letters himself. They left again afterwards, driving this way and that, doubling back to cover their tracks to make sure no one could follow them, until at last he brought them to the seashore, where he presented them with the dinghy they would take too a dilapidated shack in the middle of the rolling waves. 

All the while, Effie thought about her approaching birthday, and she wondered…she wondered. 

It was difficult to wrap her head around everything that was happening. The wry acceptance that radiated from Aunt Petunia, the mad dashing from Uncle Vernon, the fact that for the first time in Effie’s memory Dudley wasn’t the center of his parents’ world. Even her approaching birthday was part of the strangeness. Not that her birthdays were anything special, mind—for her last, she’d only gotten a coat hanger (which was at least preferable to leaving her second hand winter coat with the holes in the armpits balled up in her cupboard with her, she supposed) and an old pair of Petunia’s socks with a hole in the heel. But it was hard to feel like the two things weren’t at least somewhat connected—it wasn’t every day she turned eleven, and it was certainly a little peculiar to think about the fact that the letters had started arriving almost exactly a week before her birthday.

Then, to cement her beliefs on birthdays and a lack of coincidence, a giant man broke down the door to their shack at exactly midnight on her eleventh birthday. 

Petunia and Vernon had emerged from their room at the sound of the first boom of the giant man knocking on the door, and now Vernon brandished a long and suspiciously skinny package at him that Effie remembered him packing but only just now recognized as being the shape of a shotgun. 

“Who’s there?” Vernon demanded. “I’m warning you, I’m armed!” 

The giant, despite only just smashing down the door, stepped inside, turned, and picked the door up to put it back where it was. 

Rather boldly, he then followed this action with the words, “Couldn’t make us a cup o’ tea, could yeh? It’s not been an easy journey.”

Effie found herself more than a little gobsmacked, especially as the stranger—who had now smashed in the door to the Dursleys’ home, haphazardly fixed their door, and requested tea from them—marched up to the couch and said to Dudley, “Budge up, yeh great lump.” When Dudley leapt off the couch like it bit him and ran to hide behind his mother, the man simply sat himself down, paying absolutely no mind to the way the couch creaked ominously beneath him. 

At this point, Effie definitely figured she must have fallen asleep without realizing it, and was now caught up in the best dream she’d probably ever had—and that included the ones she had of the flying motorcycle. 

Well, if she was dreaming…

“Excuse me,” she said, finding some of the politeness that Petunia had drilled into her and she usually ignored from somewhere within her, “but who are you?”

The giant man finally looked at her, and somewhere beneath all of his hair she could see his dark eyes crinkling with a smile. It was a warm smile at that, too, which Effie could easily recall being directed at other people but would be hard pressed to remember a time where one had been pointed at her. 

“An’ here’s Effie!” the man greeted jovially. “Las’ time I saw you, you was only a baby. Yeh look a lot like yer mum now that yer all grown up a bit, but yeh’ve got yer dad’s eyes, haven’t you?”

Effie drew in a sharp breath, reaching up to absently brush her fingers under her eyes. Her dad’s…eyes? No one—no one had ever told her she got her eyes from her dad before. No one had ever told her anything about her dad at all, actually, except for that he was a drunken home body. Though it had been the Dursleys that had told her that, and she’d always suspected they might have been lying. 

Then the stranger laughed, a big, full sound. “Reckon yeh’ve got yer dad’s eyes in more ways ‘an one, what with the glasses, an’ all.” 

Now Effie touched her glasses a little self-consciously. She’d never really cared for her glasses, admittedly, and she was a little appalled to realize that now that she’d been informed her mysterious father also had terrible eyesight, a sprig of fondness for the hideously round and taped together frames was growing in her chest. 

“My dad had—” she started to ask, but Vernon interrupted her with a sudden and loud bellow. 

“I’ll not have it!” he shouted, pointing his shotgun at the stranger with renewed vigor. “I demand that you leave at once, sir! You are breaking and entering, you know!”

“Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune,” the man said, and reached behind the couch—casual as can be—and bent the end of Vernon’s shotgun upwards until the barrel was pointing at the ceiling. 

Vernon spluttered incomprehensibly, staring at the shotgun in his hands in disbelief while beside him, Petunia’s face went very pale. 

“Anyway, Effie,” the giant said, turning his back on the Dursleys like he couldn’t care less about them. Like he hadn’t just bent Vernon’s shotgun in half. “A very happy birthday to yeh. Got you somethin’ right here—mighta sat on it a bit, but I reckon it’ll taste the same…” He trailed off for a moment, before apparently uncovering whatever he had been looking for in one of the inside pockets of his enormous coat and letting out a triumphant noise. 

It turned out to be a slightly squashed box, which he passed off to Effie. She couldn’t help but notice her hands shaking slightly as she took it and hoped that it wasn’t too horribly noticeable to this man—this man that was brave enough to openly antagonize her Uncle Vernon and then sit calmly on his couch. Inside she found a cake, large and round, with chocolate icing. Red letters spelled out Happy Birthday Effie. 

It…it was the first birthday cake she’d ever gotten. 

It was the first birthday gift she’d gotten at all, actually. Well, the first gift that she actually enjoyed and wanted. 

She felt overwhelmed with gratitude, certain she had to express it to this stranger in a meaningful way, to tell him thanks at the very least. She looked up at him to tell him just that, but she found the words dying on her throat before they could get out. Instead, she just looked into his warm eyes and his kind face and all she could think about was…

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice a whisper. “How do you know my parents?”

The man blinked at her for a moment—long enough that she was sure she’d somehow messed up terribly—before chuckling warmly at her instead. “True, I haven’t introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Met yer mum an’ dad when they were goin’ there, I did.”

He held out an enormous hand, clearly intending to shake hers, and Effie hesitated for a moment before offering hers. Rubeus Hagrid very politely shook her entire arm—nearly pulling her shoulder out of the socket—before letting her go with a friendly smile. Effie did her best to hide her wince of pain.

“What about that tea, eh?” Hagrid asked, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. “I’d not say no ter somethin’ stronger if yeh’ve got, mind.” He leaned forwards towards the empty grate—and though Effie couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, when he leaned back, it was lit. She couldn’t help but feel grateful—the shack they found themselves in wasn’t warm to start with, and the raging storm outside certainly wasn’t helping. Effie had spent the night on the floor, too, which definitely wasn’t the warmest part of the shack. 

With the fire lit, Hagrid began to rifle through his pockets again. Effie felt her eyebrows rise higher and higher with each item he produced from somewhere it probably shouldn’t have fit—a tea kettle, a package of sausages, an entire fire poker, a bottle of amber liquid she suspected was alcoholic, even a few chipped mugs. Nobody said anything as he sat to work making tea and cooking sausages—probably because everyone was far too dumbfounded by his pockets to consider saying anything—but eventually the smell of cooking sausages started to get to them a little bit. She saw Dudley shuffle out from his hiding spot behind Petunia, and even she couldn’t deny that her extremely empty stomach grumbled a bit at the prospect of food. 

Hagrid finished the sausages, and to her utmost surprise, offered one to her and no one else. 

“Thanks,” she said, as she hesitantly reached out to take it. 

It was, admittedly, a very good sausage. 

“No fair,” Dudley whined, piping up for the first time. “How come she gets one and—”

“Dudley!” Vernon yelled, cutting off his son. This was another novel experience in a long chain of novel experiences—Effie couldn’t remember a time when Vernon had yelled at his son before. Well, before the first letter came. “Don’t take anything from him! Who knows what he’s done to it!”

Hagrid’s face darkened at that, but he laughed it off (if a touch bitterly). “Don’ worry, Dursley,” he muttered. “Yer great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ anymore.”

Silence followed this proclamation, and Effie took several more bites of her offered sausage. The Dursleys were all watching her eat with disgust plastered on their faces—though it was jealousy on Dudley’s, she was sure—and Hagrid tore into the remaining sausages himself with gusto. By the time she was halfway through her sausage, she couldn’t take it anymore. 

She lowered her food, picking at the tender meat of the sausage with her fingers as she worked up her nerve, and then looked up at Hagrid. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then cleared her throat when her voice cracked over the words. “I still don’t really know…why you’re here?”

“Oh! Right,” Hagrid said. “Well, like I said, I’m Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts—yeh’ll know all about Hogwarts, o’ course—”

“No,” Effie interrupted, before he continued. “Sorry,” she added quickly, at the sight of Hagrid’s thoroughly shocked expression.

It seemed like the wrong thing to say. 

“Sorry?” Hagrid demanded, turning to stare at the Dursleys. The Dursleys, in turn, shrank away in fear. “It’s them that should be sorry! I knew yeh weren’t gettin’ yer letters, but I never thought yeh wouldn’t even know abou’ Hogwarts, fer cryin’ out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yer parents learned it all?”

This last bit was said a lot quieter than the first, to the point where Effie almost felt bad for asking, “All what?”

“All what?” Hagrid practically roared. “Now wait jus’ one second!” He leapt to his feet, anger practically rolling off of him as he turned to the Dursleys. “Do you mean to tell me that this girl knows nothing?” 

“Hey now,” Effie interrupted, frowning. She liked Hagrid so far, but this was just too far. “I know some things. Like math, and…stuff.”

“Not about that,” Hagrid said, waving a hand at her. “About our world. Your world. My world. I mean, yer famous, Effie! You and yer parents both are!”

“What?” Effie said, feeling an uncomfortable curl at this revelation. “That can’t be right! Me, famous? My parents—my parents were famous?”

It was at this point that whatever dream she was in stopped being a good one. It was the matter of being seen, she thought—hearing about her parents was all well and good, but hearing that she was supposedly famous, known by people all over that she’d never met…that was no good, none at all. 

“Yeh don’ know,” Hagrid muttered, after searching Effie’s face to make sure she wasn’t just having him on. “Yeh don’ know what yeh are?” 

“What I am?” Effie repeated, her voice lilting with confusion. 

A moment of silence passed, then two. Whatever she was apparently required a bit of a workup before Hagrid could tell her. Right when he opened his mouth, though, another voice cut in. 

“Stop right there!” Vernon shouted, furious. “I forbid you to tell the girl anything!”

Hagrid turned to Vernon now, his whole figure rigid with fury. “You never told her? Never told her what was in the letter Dumbledore left for her? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it! An’ you’ve just kept it from her all these years? What for?”

“Kept what from me?” Effie asked, looking between Vernon and Hagrid rapidly, like they were two opposing players in a verbal tennis match. Neither of them answered her, too busy staring off with each other angrily. “What? What is it?”

“You’re just like her!” Petunia suddenly shrieked, breaking the tense moment up, popping it like it was a bubble. She pointed one crooked finger at Effie, eyes ablaze with fury. “My dratted sister, being what she was, and now you! Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that—that—and then every vacation she’d come home with pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. And oh, that boy! That horrible boy! I’m the only one that saw them for what they were— freaks! Just like you! And now look where they are! She got herself blown up, and we got stuck with you!” 

“Blown up?” Effie asked, feeling like something inside of her was breaking with the news. “You told me…you told me my parents died in a car crash.”

“Oh, no,” Petunia responded, with a derisive laugh. “That’s much too normal for them—” 

“Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh!” Hagrid suddenly yelled, and both Dursleys fell quiet and skittered back against the wall in fear. Hagrid turned to Effie then, face softening somewhat as he took her in. “Look at me, Effie.” She lifted her eyes to his only somewhat reluctantly. “Listen, right? What they aren’t tellin’ yeh—it’s not right, it’s not.”

Effie nodded when it became clear Hagrid wasn’t going to continue without a response from her first. 

Hagrid took a deep breath, looked her right in the eyes, and said, “Effie—yer a witch.”

A moment passed, and then two. The only sound was the crackle of the fire. 

She pinched her elbow.

Hagrid stayed where he was, eyes still full of kindness, revelation hanging in the air between them. 

She wasn’t dreaming, was she?

Chapter Text

As Effie followed Hagrid through a dingy pub and met all kinds of magical folk, she couldn’t help but muse over the fact that even her best birthday—because this was easily the best birthday she’d ever had, discovering that her parents were named James and Lily and they’d been murdered by an evil wizard named Voldemort aside—would have a bittersweet taste to it all the same. 

She was as famous as Hagrid seemed to think that she was. 

She shook hands with person after person in the Leaky Cauldron, which Hagrid assured her was one of the best magical hang out spots despite its dilapidated aesthetic. One of her professors was even amongst them—a stuttering man with a turban who was going to be her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher when she went to Hogwarts. 

Not that you’ll need it, eh, Potter? 

Not that she’d need it! Not that she’d need it. Was this what people thought of her? Expected from her? Was her entire time in this world going to be guided by a series of people telling her that she was going to be great, do great things…all on her own? It wasn’t even like she could remember what she supposedly did to vanquish this Voldemort fellow, anyway. 

Her disgruntlement and anger fell away as Hagrid tapped a brick on a wall in the back and opened a portal to what appeared to be another world. She couldn’t help but stare as she walked down the alley. There were shops with odd peculiarities everywhere she looked. Everyone was dressed in robes and pointed hats, like they had marched straight out of a storybook. There were shops that sold herbs and creatures in tiny pickled jars, a pet store that sold only owls and another that sold other pets too. Outside of the window of one shop several kids Effie’s age stood with their noses pressed to the glass, muttering about a racing broom called the Nimbus Two Thousand. There were shops for telescopes and shops for delicate looking silver instruments that Effie couldn’t imagine a use for, shops with books, shops with quills and parchment and everything in between, shops with potion bottles, and shops with globes. 

She had never seen so many wonderful things in one place before. 

Hagrid stopped, causing her to nearly run into one of his legs. Effie dragged herself out of her observations, looking ahead at the building in front of them. It was stone and white, made up of a giant dome and lots of pillars. It was an impressive building—easily the most impressive building on this street—and she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this was where the Ministry of Magic Hagrid had mentioned last night worked, or maybe this was a place for important people like lawyers, or maybe—

“Gringotts,” Hagrid announced, with a clumsy flourish of his wrist and a smile. 

Effie widened her eyes, taking in more of the building. This was a bank for magical people? This was so cool! She didn’t think the banks the Dursleys always talked about looked like this. 

“Ready?” Hagrid asked, even though he didn’t wait for Effie to respond before heading up the stairs.

Wizards and witches have the right of it, Effie thought, as she followed Hagrid up the stairs. A place that holds your gold should look this impressive. 

As it turned out, Effie was rich. 

Now that she was standing outside of Gringotts, blinking in the blinding light of the sun and holding more money in a pouch in her hands than she’d ever seen before—probably more than the Dursleys had seen before—everything was starting to sink in. She was rich. She was famous. People expected her to live up to these things. 

Her fingers tightened around her bag of money. 

“Might as well get yer uniform,” Hagrid said, nodding toward Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions. “Listen, Effie, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky? I hate them Gringotts carts.”

Effie tilted her head up (and then up some more), and took in Hagrid’s countenance. He was looking a little green—and it wasn’t really like she could blame him—so she nodded despite her nerves. She’d been alone dozens of times before—if she needed to, she could figure out the magical world on her own too. “Alright, Hagrid,” she said. “Feel better.” 

“Thanks,” Hagrid called, waving at her as he left. As with every time before, the crowds parted around him as everyone shopping got out of the way quickly out of fear of being run over if they didn’t. 

Effie couldn’t help but think it would be pretty cool to one day be able to part a crowd like that too. Imagine how much easier getting around would be if everyone just avoided her. It was a lot easier to get around when the Dursleys avoided her, at least. 

Amused, Effie wandered towards the robe shop. Since the crowd didn’t part for her, she had to do a great deal of ducking and weaving until she made it to the door. A bell tinkled merrily above her when she pushed it open, and she tilted her head up to blink at it. To her delight, it wasn’t attached to the door like in normal shops. Instead, it hovered above her head.

Feeling experimental, Effie waved at the bell. The bell almost immediately waved back—with gusto—tinkling at double speed. She couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. 

“Oh, hello,” a voice said, and Effie turned to take in a woman. Madam Malkin, she presumed, since this was Madam Malkin’s shop. She was a short witch with lots of curves, which her entirely mauve outfit accentuated. Her dirty blonde hair had been tied up in a bun at the back of her head, though several strands had escaped confinement throughout the day. The slightly frazzled look seemed to suit her, though, in Effie’ opinion. 

“Hello,” Effie greeted back, because it seemed to be the polite thing to do. 

“I wasn’t expecting anyone else in for a bit,” Madam Malkin said jovially, as she went behind her till. “Everyone’s out at lunch this time of day, you know. Well.” She sat a swath of fabric Effie hadn’t noticed she was carrying down and eyed her critically. Effie wanted to shrink away under her gaze. “Hogwarts, dear?”

“Yes,” Effie said, trying not to fidget. “Erm—my school list said I needed three sets of—”

“Don’t worry, dear, I know the Hogwarts list,” Madam Malkin said, waving her explanation away. “Come on back—we’ll get started on your fitting.”

She led the way to the back of the shop, where a few footstools were set up in front of mirrors. She indicated one for Effie to step up onto, and Effie complied, feeling strangely nervous. Madam Malkin produced a stick from inside her sleeve— Not a stick, Effie realized, with glee. A wand —and waved it through the air. A long black robe came floating over from a rack, which Madam Malkin draped over her head. Madam Malkin laughed when Effie spluttered in surprise, though not cruelly. 

“Sorry about that, dear,” she said. 

“It’s alright,” Effie said. She was practically swimming in the robe that Madam Malkin had dropped on her, and she was struggling to suppress a giggle at the sight of the sleeves falling so low they completely covered her hands. 

Then she swished a wrist, trying to unbury her hand from the fabric, and giggled anyway when even extreme movements weren’t enough to unbury her from the clothing. 

Madam Malkin let out an amused huff, sitting back for a moment to look at Effie. “Aren’t you a tiny thing,” she said, but like it was a little funny. Effie supposed, swimming in both the robe she was wearing and the cast offs from Dudley she was wearing under it, she could say that it was. 

“Well, let’s get to it,” Madam Malkin said, and began pinning up Effie’s robes. The pins were magical too, some of them floating down to Madam Malkin’s hands when she needed them. With great amusement and wonder, Effie noticed that some even came floating out of Madam Malkin’s bun. 

Watching someone working was only so interesting for so long, though, so Effie eventually turned her attention to everything else in Madam Malkin’s shop. She saw robes in every color on racks, shiny shoes sitting on shelves, hats and gloves and scarves arranged neatly in baskets, trousers folded in half and displayed on hangers. 

Effie thought of what she was wearing—Dudley’s old shoes, stuffed at the toes so they would fit her feet a little better. Dudley’s old denims, which she’d cinched at the waist with a ribbon she’d managed to sneak away from one of his birthday presents without Aunt Petunia noticing. Dudley’s old shirt, which hung down to her thighs. And she also thought about the bag of gold she had that contained more money than the Dursleys had likely ever seen. 

Effie swallowed nervously. “Um, Madam Malkin…”

“Hm?” Madam Malkin hummed a little distractedly, holding several pins between her lips. They were mauve too, Effie noticed, like her outfit. 

“Your shop—um, it’s called—you say Robes for Every Occasion? Could you maybe—I mean, I don’t know about robes, necessarily—but if I wanted new clothes, like trousers and shirts maybe—”

Madam Malkin straightened so suddenly that Effie nearly fell off her footstool. She yelped, pinwheeling her arms to regain her balance, and Madam Malkin grinned brightly at her. “You’d be interested in buying casual wear today as well?”

“Um…” Effie said, suddenly unsettled by the delight in Madam Malkin’s eyes. “Yes. Please.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Madam Malkin said, clapping her hands together. “Oh, you looked just awful in whatever it was you wore into my shop. I didn’t want to say anything, of course, since some people just like what they like, but if you’re in agreement… Well, what are you looking for? Some good clothes for winter, I’d bet, what with Hogwarts and all. I assume you’d like some trousers—best to cover your legs on a cold day, isn’t it—and hm…could I interest you in winter gear?” She held up a crimson scarf, done up with little accents of gold. It looked very soft. And very warm. 

“Yes,” Effie said, after a moment. “You can interest me in every season, if you’d like, Madam Malkin.”

Madam Malkin looked like she’d just been handed a hundred Galleons. 

…Come to think of it, she might have. 

Effie’s fitting forgotten, Madam Malkin left her standing on her stool while she occasionally brought over things for Effie to inspect. She started with shoes—since evidently Dudley’s old trainers were the most offensive part about anything Effie was wearing—and then huffed and puffed about Effie’s insistence that she only needed the first pair of black boots she was shown until Effie eventually caved and let herself be talked into a pair of shiny gray flats the likes of which she’d always seen other girls wearing but never had herself. She was shown trousers in a soft gray and black and had to legitimately fight Madam Malkin about not needing more than two pairs. She bought two button up shirts—one in white and one in blue—and two soft knit sweaters. She bought socks that didn’t have holes in them and winter gear. She even bought a set of robes that Madam Malkin informed her were the height of casual fashion—they also happened to be mauve—even though Effie informed her she really didn’t have any reason for clothes she could only wear in the magical world, since she didn’t live in it. And then Effie bought a charcoal gray cloak, too, because Madam Malkin apparently didn’t care. And when all of this was decided on and added to Effie’s bill—the clothes would apparently have to be resized to fit her perfectly before she could pick them up later—Madam Malkin finally returned to her Hogwarts robes fitting with a pleased expression. 

“Well, that was a spot of fun,” Madam Malkin said, and hummed to herself as she kept fixing Effie’s hem. 

Effie had never felt more frazzled and bewildered in her entire life. 

It was at that moment that the door to Madam Malkin’s shop opened again. The other customer was a boy Effie’s age, by himself just as she was. He was taller than her and pointy looking, with hair so blond it was almost white and stern looking gray eyes. Effie didn’t want to say she disliked him at once, but she was definitely immediately on guard. His appearance reminded her too much of wealthy boys she used to go to school with that liked to sneer and mock her to not be. 

“Hello, dear,” Madam Malkins greeted him, just as she had greeted Effie. “Hogwarts?”

He sniffed, and in a way that he probably thought was very dignified and superior of him, said, “That’s right.”

“Come on back,” Madam Malkin said, gesturing him in. “I’m helping this distinguished young woman, but Lucille will be out in a moment to help you. Lucille!” she added, directing the call to a little curtained area behind the till. 

Lucille emerged. She was a different kind of woman than Madam Malkin was—all tall and willowy instead short and curvy. She was incredibly pale and had long brown hair that reached to her waist. She was dressed in plain gray robes that looked a little bit too big on her, and her entire appearance gave off the impression of being a little shabby or rumpled, like she maybe struggled to afford the clothes she had to buy to work here. Something about her eyes was incredibly sad, and when she turned to the side, Effie noticed a long, puckered scar on the side of her neck that looked remarkably like a clawmark. She gave Effie a closed-lip smile when she noticed Effie looking at her before adjusting her collar to hide the edge of the scar, and for some reason, Effie turned away, embarrassed. 

She was quickly distracted from her embarrassment when the boy that had entered the shop stepped up onto the stool next to hers. Lucille covered him in a black robe a moment later, remaining completely silent as she did. When the boy emerged from the neckline of his too large robes, he eyed Effie like he was assessing whether she was worth his time or not. 

Effie bristled. 

“Hello,” he said at last, having apparently come to the conclusion that she was good enough to at least converse with to pass the time. “Hogwarts too?”

“Yes,” Effie said, a little curtly. 

The boy looked away from her, sticking his nose up in the air and looking ridiculous as he held his arms out for Lucille to pin his sleeves to the right length. “My father’s next door buying my books and Mother’s up the street looking at wands,” he informed Effie, like she should care what his parents were doing. “Then I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don’t see why first years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully father into getting me one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”

Oh, no, Effie thought. He’s the skinny rich wizard version of Dudley. 

“Have you got your own broom?” the boy asked her, after a slightly awkward pause. 

Effie considered leaving him hanging for a moment, but ultimately decided against it. Sure, he reminded her of Dudley, but that still wasn’t a good enough reason to just completely ignore someone she had only just met. “No.”

“Play Quidditch at all?” he asked. 

What’s Quidditch? 

“No,” Effie answered. 

“I do—” And he was about to brag about it, wasn’t he? “—Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree.” And there it was. 

There was another awkward pause when Effie didn’t leap to assure him she also thought it was a crime, and she used the time to discreetly look at the side of Lucille’s face when she had it turned away. Effie liked to think she was good at reading people, and she didn’t think she had seen anyone look as tired as Lucille before. Was she sick, maybe? Should she be working?

“Do you know what house you’ll be in yet?”

“What?” Effie asked, before the boy’s words caught up to her. “No.”

What did he mean by “house” anyway?

“Well,” the boy said, clearly starting to flag a bit under the pressure of carrying on a conversation with someone that gave only monosyllabic answers. “No one really knows until they get there, do they? I know I’ll be in Slytherin, though. All our family have been—imagine being in Hufflepuff! I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”

So Slytherin and Hufflepuff, those were houses, she presumed. And houses contained people that went to Hogwarts, so if the options were just Slytherin or Hufflepuff, that meant half of all witches and wizards probably went to Hufflepuff. 

That seemed like a pretty insulting thing to just be declaring in the middle of a robe shop.

Madam Malkin poked Effie’s leg with a pin, and Effie blinked down at her in surprise. She seemed tense, all of a sudden, and when she glanced up at Effie briefly her smile was a little too bright. “Sorry, dear, didn’t mean to get you,” she said. 

Maybe Madam Malkin was in Hufflepuff when she went to Hogwarts. 

Which definitely meant skinny Dudley had just insulted the perfectly nice lady that had just really aggressively alleviated Effie of a lot of her money. 

“I say, look at that man!” Skinny Dudley shouted suddenly, nodding toward the front window. Effie almost didn’t want to look but she did anyway, peering at Hagrid. He looked a lot better than he did when he had gotten off the Gringotts cart earlier, and he grinned at Effie as he held up two ice cream cones. 

Feeling very done with Skinny Dudley and not knowing what he was talking about and having to listen to him insult perfectly good people, Effie folded her arms over her chest—then suppressed a grimace when a few pins in her sleeve got caught in the crossfire—and said cooly, “That’s Hagrid. He works at Hogwarts.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of him,” Skinny Dudley said, his face twisting up in clear disgust. “He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?”

“He’s the gamekeeper,” Effie corrected, because Hagrid had told her what a gamekeeper was, and it certainly sounded a lot more prestigious than being a servant. Not that being a servant was bad, just that Hagrid wasn’t one. 

“Yes, exactly. I heard he’s sort of savage— lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”

Well, this was the last straw. Hagrid was a perfectly nice, funny, friendly man, who was maybe a little big and a little hairy, but he wasn’t a savage. And he certainly wouldn’t like to be called a savage, not anymore than Effie lied being called a freak. And if it had been Dudley that had just said all this about her new friend instead of skinny Dudley, she probably would have punched him right then and there, even if it meant she spent the next two weeks in her cupboard or avoiding Effie Hunting. 

She paused. 

She thought about what she had just thought about. 

She spun on her stool, fist already rolled up into a little ball of poky knuckle bones and fury, and she swung as hard as Dudley had inadvertently taught her to do. 

Several things happened at once.

First, her fist made contact with Skinny Dudley’s face, accompanied by a very satisfying crunching sound. Skinny Dudley made a noise that was a cross between a squealing pig and a braying donkey. Lucille stepped back, eyes glinting with some kind of vindictive amusement. Skinny Dudley, unbalanced by both the punch and the way his hand automatically came up to his nose, went toppling off his footstool. Madam Malkin let out a gasp that was also a little bit of a laugh, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. And finally, Effie—unbalanced by the footstool, her stupid stuffed shoes, the extra weight of the robes she was being fitted for, and the punch to beat all punches—went toppling off of her own footstool and spilling gracelessly onto the floor. 

She wheezed as her back hit the floor, deciding to lay there and let the world stop spinning for a minute. She deserved it, she thought. Standing up to bullies wasn’t really something she normally excelled at. 

Unfortunately, her moment of peace didn’t last very long. 

“You hit me!” skinny Dudley shrieked, still holding his nose as he sat up. “You hit me like a filthy Muggle! What are you, a mudblood?”

Muggle was a word that Effie knew, but mudblood was a new one. Judging by the way Lucille took a sharp breath in and Madam Malkin gasped, it wasn’t a very nice one. 

“You deserved it,” Effie said, scraping herself off the floor and wiping her own nose with the back of her hand just to be sure. “Calling people savages—what’s wrong with you? Were you raised in a barn?”

He puffed up, looking remarkably like an angry kitten all of a sudden, but right when he opened his mouth to speak Madam Malkin interrupted them with a cold, angry voice. “Get out.”

For a moment, Effie thought that she was the one Madam Malkin had been talking to. She had been the first to resort to violence, after all. But when she looked at the seamstress, she found her gaze fixed firmly on the boy instead of Effie. 

“I beg your pardon?” the boy said, like he was trying to be intimidating, but was way too confused to pull it off. “You can’t be talking to me?”

“I’m talking to you,” Madam Malkin said. “Get out of my shop.”

He spluttered defensively, looking around for a supportive face, but no one else seemed sympathetic to his plight. “But—but— she broke my nose!”

Madam Malkin drew her wand, pointing it directly at the boy’s face. His eyes went comically wide—though Effie wasn’t one to talk, since she was sure hers were doing the same—but all Madam Malkin said was a strange word that might have been, “Episkey.” Skinny Dudley’s nose made another crunching sound and he cried out, but when he lowered his hand, it looked like his nose had never moved from where it had sat pompously upon his face in the first place. 

“Now it’s not broken,” Madam Malkin said, her voice deceptively pleasant, “and you can take off those robes and get out of my shop.”

“But—but—you can’t!” he said. “Don’t you know who I am? My father will hear about this!”

“Let him hear about it!” Madam Malkin said. “I’m sure he’d love to take you to some other robe shop that isn’t run by a muggleborn anyway!” 

And with that, the boy stiffened, got a strangely constipated expression on his face, tore the robes over his head, and left without a single word. Effie watched him go—and watched Hagrid outside where he motioned frantically at her, probably wondering what was going on—feeling very bewildered and confused by…everything that had just happened. 

The door closed behind the rude boy, the bell tinkled him sadly out of the door, and a hush fell over the room. 

It was Effie that broke it, blinking at the two women that still stood nearby. “Erm…sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cause a scene…I can go?”

Lucille swept over to her, eyeing her a little curiously before she offered her a hand. A hand up, Effie realized, and blushed over her confusion as she took it. 

“There’s no need to go,” Madam Malkin said. There was another moment of silence, and then she giggled, breaking the tension that had settled in the room. “Well, I would say you probably shouldn’t keep hitting people that say bigoted things, but, to be honest with you, I might have enjoyed it.” 

Of all the confusing things to happen today, this was definitely the most confusing of them. Effie was pretty sure an adult had never sided with her on anything, and certainly not anything delinquent. “Erm…what?”

“You were right,” Lucille said, moving to pick up the discarded robes and righten the footstools Effie and Skinny Dudley had toppled. “He did deserve it.”

“Malfoys, honestly,” Madam Malkin said, rolling her eyes. “I’d have loved to have an excuse to throw one of them out of here years ago, and then their son just waltzes in and hands it to me on a silver platter.” 

“I’d prefer a golden platter, I think,” Lucille said, one corner of her mouth quirking like it was a funny thing to say. 

“Oh, you,” Madam Malkin said, and slapped her on the arm. “Honestly, saying slurs in public company like that…”

“Sorry,” Effie said, raising a finger a little timidly, “but what is it he said? Mudblood? What’s that mean?”

Lucille and Madam Malkin shared a glance, and then Lucille looked away and Madam Malkin looked over at her. “It’s a very unkind word,” she said. “A certain crowd uses it for anyone magical born to Muggle parents. Don’t listen to a thing they say, dear—just because witches like you and I didn’t have magical parents, it certainly doesn’t mean we’re any less than them. And it certainly doesn’t mean we’re dirty.” 

Effie just stood there and processed this, eying the sleeves where they fell to her wrists now. She didn’t bother to correct Madam Malkin about the assumption she made about her parents. It wasn’t like it wasn’t true anyway—even if Effie’s birth parents were magical, she had been raised by the Dursleys. She was as good as a—what was the other word? Muggleborn?—anyway.

The bell above the door tinkled again, and Effie looked up sharply. There was another boy there, though this one had to be at least a few years older than her with how tall he was. He paused awkwardly at the door, taking in the scene as if could sense he’d just walked into something and then looking back outside, where Hagrid was still standing. His hair was light brown and wavy, and though his eyes were gray too, they didn’t look nearly as cold as the last boy’s had. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt…anything. Uh, I think Mr. Hagrid might be waiting for you…?”

Effie snorted at the “Mr. Hagrid” bit—how Hagrid would hate to be called a Mr., she’d bet—and the new boy went a little pink in the face like he was embarrassed. 

“Oh, come on in, don’t worry,” Madam Malkin said. “Hogwarts for you too, I presume?”

“Yes,” he said, stepping more fully inside. “I…outgrew my old robes a bit.”

“Lucille will get you fitted right up,” Madam Malkin said, gesturing to Lucille, who nodded. The boy stepped over to her, and Effie turned her attention back to Madam Malkin as Lucille began his fitting. 

“I really am sorry,” she said. 

“Nothing to worry about,” Madam Malkin said. “You’ll be more than making up for the loss of patronage with everything you’re getting today, anyway! Speaking of, you’re all done. Come back in a bit and I should have everything ready for you. It was a pleasure having you here today.”

“...Thanks,” Effie said, feeling a little wrong footed as she took off her fitted robes and gingerly handed them back to Madam Malkin. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Of course, of course,” Madam Malkin said, turning her about at the shoulders and pushing her gently towards the door. “Now off you pop, dear. I’ll see you later.”

The bell tinkled sadly at her as she left the shop—she offered it one last little wave, all the same—and then Effie was stepping out into the sunlight and blinking up at Hagrid’s concerned face. 

“What was all that about, then?” he asked, his ice cream cones half melted. 

“Hagrid,” Effie said, and then laughed. “I honestly don’t even know.”

The rest of their shopping went without violence, which Effie supposed was a good thing even if it was less entertaining this way. Hagrid rushed her through the bookstore—she did get a little upset when he wouldn’t let her buy books on jinxes, though she made sure not to say so to his face. Honestly, even if she couldn’t use them on Dudley whenever she was stuck with the Dursleys, she was allowed to do magic at school…

…and Skinny Dudley was there. 

After Effie left the bookstore with only the books she had been assigned in her classes to read, they headed to the Apothecary, where Hagrid bought her some kind of Hogwarts starter kit for Potions (and denied her the golden cauldron, since she only had a pewter one on her list…though really, she had probably spent enough money at Madam Malkins’ alone). While he did that for her she looked at some of the single ingredients being sold. She was inordinately drawn to anything covered in slime—though she couldn’t say why, exactly, there was something appealing about pickled animal parts that were intended to be brewed up and fed to someone. Hopefully she never had to take one herself, come to think of it. 

She moved on, eyes trailing over jars of herbs and dried roots, fingers brushing against plaques labeling ingredients. 

And then she paused, eyes catching on one particular label and staying. Asphodel root. She looked at the jar, seeing it certainly contained something that appeared to be a dried plant, and felt her fingers tighten. She had the strangest urge to by one of these jars—not because she was going to use it in a potion, but because—

“Effie? Where’d yeh get to?” Hagrid’s voice boomed across the crowds, and Effie winced. Hagrid appeared a moment later, people parting for him as they were wont to do, and he clapped Effie on the back jovially (and slightly painfully). “Ah, there yeh are. Got yer stuff for yeh—we best be off, eh?”

“Hagrid,” Effie said, reaching for the jar of asphodel root, but she stopped herself halfway. Hagrid said no every single time she asked to buy something—if she waited until sometime he wasn’t with her, because surely she would eventually come magic shopping without Hagrid—she could get it then. And she still had her potions book for class—there was nothing stopping her from looking through it later to find mentions of asphodel. Maybe she could find what it was used for. 

It felt…it felt like some kind of clue had been left for her. One of her parents had given her “Asphodel” as a middle name, asphodel was a potion ingredient. She could solve it on her own, if that was the case. She should solve it on her own. 

“Nevermind,” Effie said instead, smiling brightly at Hagrid. “The wand is all that’s left, right?”

Secretly, the wand was the part she was the most excited about. 

“Aye, just yer wand left,” Hagrid agreed, as he led her out of the Apothecary. “‘Cept wait—I still haven’t got yeh a birthday present.”

Effie felt her cheeks get very warm very fast. A birthday present, really? Even after all this?

“You’ve already done more than enough for me,” she said quietly. So quietly, in fact, that she didn’t think Hagrid heard her. 

“Tell yeh what, I’ll get yer an animal,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Not a toad, toads went outta fashion years ago. An’ I don’t like cats, they make me sneeze…I’ll get yeh an owl, then, that’ll do. All the kids want owls—they’re dead useful, what with the mail an’ everythin’.”

Effie remained silent as Hagrid redirected them towards Eeylops Owl Emporium. Truthfully, she was only silent because she was worried that if she opened her mouth she might start crying. An owl as a birthday present! She’d never had a birthday present before, let alone a pet. 

Eeylops Owl Emporium was a dark place. It had a musky, animal scent, and everywhere she looked she saw glowing eyes peeking out at her from the darkness of a cage and wings rustling. She got the impression that it was the sort of place that most kids would hate to be in, but she couldn’t help but love it. It reminded her a bit of her cupboard, except a little less lonely. Every owl she passed seemed to like her just fine, nipping affectionately at her fingers as she placed them at their cage doors. 

“See one yeh like yet?” Hagrid asked, but Effie shook her head. 

She couldn’t explain it, other than to say it was like magic. She felt like she was holding out for something—like all these owls liked her and she liked them but none of them were the one— and then she stopped. 

The owl that had caught her eye was a beautiful one, snoozing gently in a rare patch of sunlight. She had snowy feathers, dappled with a few black spots here and there like little kisses. She cracked one eye open curiously, as if sensing Effie’s attention on her. Effie stared into that slit of yellow and the owl stared back, and then slowly opened her other eye too. She blinked once, calmly, and let out an inquisitive little hoo? 

“Ah, there yeh go,” Hagrid said, and promptly paid for the snowy owl. He presented her cage to Effie once they stepped outside, and Effie stood there and stared at her now fast asleep snowy owl, head tucked into a wing, and couldn’t think of anything she could say that would properly show her gratitude. 

She’d never had a pet before. 

“Don’ mention it, you,” Hagrid told her gruffly, the moment she blinked up at him and tried to do with her face what her words refused. “Don’ expect you’ve had a lotta presents from them Dursleys. Just Ollivander’s left now—only place for wands, Ollivander’s, and yeh gotta have the best wand.”

If only they knew then, exactly what wand Effie would leave Ollivander’s with. 

Hagrid let her go pick up her clothes from Madam Malkins alone—seemingly a little confused about why she’d bought clothes at all—and was instead content to wait outside of the shop while Effie went in. 

Thankfully, Madam Malkin wasn’t busy when she got there. There was only one person in there—a pretty Asian girl that looked close to her age—getting fitted, and she left quickly with a smile and a little nod to Effie as she went out. 

“Be with you in a minute!” Madam Malkin called out as she put some fabric away, her back turned to Effie. Effie just waited awkwardly, not sure what she was supposed to do here. Before she could start feeling too awkward, though, Madam Malkin had turned and saw her. “Oh! It’s you! Hello again.”

“Hello again,” Effie greeted quietly, as Madam Malkin came bustling up to the front of the shop.

“Well, you look spectacularly gloomy,” Madam Malkin said cheerfully, as she stopped behind the till and started lifting wrapped bags from beneath it to set them out on the counter in front of her. Effie felt her eyes widen when she realized those were probably hers. “Didn’t run into the little Malfoy again, did you?”

Little Malfoy…? Oh, that was probably Skinny Dudley. 

“No,” Effie said. “No, erm…it’s nothing. These aren’t… all mine, are they?”

It wasn’t really nothing, but she found she didn’t want to tell Madam Malkin, or anyone else, that her wand was a brother wand to Voldemort’s. 

Especially since it seemed like Madam Malkin had no idea that Effie was rich or famous. Well. She had no idea Effie was famous, she should say.

“‘Fraid so, dear,” Madam Malkin said, mock somberly. “Sure you can afford all this?”

She didn’t seem like she thought Effie wouldn’t be able to afford it. “Um…probably,” Effie said. “How much is it?”

Madam Malkin didn’t say anything, just handed a sheet off to her. Effie read through every item she was buying and the individual cost of them, wincing more and more the longer the list went on until she got to the very end where her total was listed out. She could indeed afford it, but it would probably take almost everything she had left in her pouch. She still counted out the coins without complaint, Madam Malkin watching her with calculating eyes. 

“Good bit of gold for a muggleborn,” she remarked conversationally, but Effie could hear the undertone of her voice that meant she was fishing for something. It was the kind of tone teachers sometimes used to take with her when they asked her why she only ever dressed like she did and sometimes came in with bruises. 

For that reason, Effie remained silent, ears hot with shame or embarrassment or something else she couldn’t name. Thankfully, Madam Malkin didn’t say anything else, up until she thanked Effie for her payment and then offered to help load her clothes into the trunk she brought with her. 

She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, but right when Effie was getting ready to stumble out of the door with her trunk, the curtain behind Madam Malkin twitched open. Lucille stood there, just as willowy and tired as she had been earlier, though the scar on her neck remained carefully hidden away beneath the collar of her robes. 

“Ms. Potter?” she called softly, and Effie froze. 

“Potter?” Madam Malkin repeated, a little startled, her gaze snapping back to Effie and her eyebrows rising. “Effie Potter? The-Girl-Who-Lived?”

That can’t be what they call me, Effie thought, a little horrified. 

Lucille didn’t seem to care about the revelation that Effie was famous, though. Instead she seemed torn—eyes darting over the room before landing back on Effie. Her face flitted through several emotions until finally she settled on calm blankness, and she bowed her head slightly to Effie.

“The late Head of House Potter was a good man,” she said, straightening back up. Her hazel eyes looked almost golden in the shadowed light of the room she was standing in. “Kindness to one of our own is never forgotten. Should you ever need anything…ask.”

What. 

Just, what.

Before Effie could ask—or even stare bewilderedly any more than she already had—Lucille ducked back behind the curtain and disappeared. Effie and Madam Malkin were left alone in the store, and all it took was one look into Madam Malkin’s equally confused eyes for Effie to decide she would rather leave than get answers. 

And leave she did, awkwardly high-tailing it out of the shop with her trunk in tow and setting off for where Hagrid waited, hoping she didn’t look nearly as unsettled as she felt she was.

Chapter Text

“Wonder when Lee will be done terrorizing the masses,” Fred mused, as he led the way back down the train after he and George had already found and laid claim to their usual compartment. 

“When the girls stop stroking his ego by shrieking at his pet tarantula,” George responded wryly, rolling his eyes. “Or the train almost leaves without him.”

“So we won’t see him until a minute before eleven, then,” Fred replied, with a wicked grin. 

George snorted, about to reply further when he heard a sound. Vaguely familiar, after a few years riding this train—someone was probably struggling with a trunk. It was a common problem with first years—they didn’t know any magic, and they were usually also too small to lift their trunks. He rolled his head to the side to look at Fred. 

Shall we go endear a future test subject to us? Fred asked him, with an eyebrow wiggle. 

George rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he had a different idea, though, so he stopped outside the open compartment door, rapping his knuckles on it. The tiny first year girl inside the compartment looked at him in surprise, completely losing her grip on her half-raised trunk. The trunk, in turn, promptly fell down and clobbered her. Girl and trunk clashed to the floor in a painful sprawl of spindly limbs, blood red hair, and sharp edges. The glasses she had been wearing landed somewhere to the side of her head, comically delayed where they must have slipped off her face during the clobbering and got caught up on part of the trunk. 

George covered his mouth quickly to keep from laughing at her suffering. 

Fred had no such qualms. 

“Oh, Merlin,” Fred wheezed, grabbing his side and doubling over. “You’ve killed her, Georgie. You’ve—” But whatever else George had done, it was lost to Fred’s wild cackles. At least for the moment. “Poor ickle firstie.”

George dropped his hand, confident enough that he was only going to grin a bit mean spiritedly instead of laughing his head off like his twin as he stepped inside the compartment fully. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I was only going to ask if you wanted help with your trunk.”

He moved to lift the trunk off of her, shooting a grin her way as he did. Which was a mistake, considering he nearly fumbled and dropped her trunk onto her again at the sight of a scar branching across her forehead. 

It was a series of twisting pink scar tissue, slightly raised against the pale skin of her forehead. It looked like a bolt of lightning carving a path through a stormy sky, or maybe like cracks in a porcelain doll. It was striking to look at, and, moreover—there was only one person that should have a scar like that. Merlin—and she would be a first year, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t that the whole point of Ron’s complete and utter obsession with her—they were the same age?

“Effie Potter?” George asked incredulously, before he could stop himself from blurting it out. 

It cut through Fred’s laughter like a knife. “What?”

Effie Potter cracked one eye open at him, light from the window streaming in and catching little flecks of gold in her hazel iris and sending them dancing. She cracked the next eye open, leaving it near squinted shut, and seemingly elected to ignore him in favor of tilting her head away and clawing at the ground with one hand. 

Oh! Glasses, George remembered, and finished hauling her trunk off of her and setting it upright. 

“Hang on there, I see them,” George said, plucking her glasses from the ground and placing them in her hand. He raised an eyebrow at them once he had them, though—they seemed to be held together with Spellotape or something, and there was at least one crack on the right lens. He passed them over all the same, though, laughing slightly as she fumbled them onto her face just as clumsily as she’d fumbled the trunk situation. Then she started to sit up, one hand moving to the back of her head, clearly a little dazed. 

“Alright, alright,” George said, grasping her free hand loosely and using it to pull her up to her knees. “Up you get.”

Fred appeared at this point, older brother instincts apparently kicking in as he gently pried her hand off the back of her head and checked her skull for an injury. “Just a bump,” Fred offered. “You’ll live, in my expert opinion. I think.”

She blinked, then shook her head a little, then blinked some more. Finally, she looked up at George. She was confused, then glanced at her trunk and seemed to have an epiphany, and then she was embarrassed, and then, finally, resigned. The parade of expressions was admittedly very amusing to witness. 

“...Thanks,” she said, a little reluctantly, as she looked at George. “I think.”

George laughed, giving her a little half-bow despite how he was crouching on the floor. “Anytime.”

Then Effie blinked at Fred for a moment, face cycling through all the same emotions again before she looked at her lap, rubbing the back of her head while the tips of her ears steadily grew redder and redder.

“Feeling alright?” Fred asked, with a teasing grin. 

“What? Oh, fine. I’ve had worse,” Effie said. 

From the door of the train, their mother called, “Fred? George? Are you in there?”

George looked at his twin, grimacing slightly. On the one hand, hell hath no wrath like Molly Weasley. On the other hand, there was no way they could leave this first year here alone, Effie Potter herself or not. Fred shared the look, then nodded. 

“I’ve got this. I’m sure Mum will understand why you aren’t coming off to say goodbye,” he said, climbing to his feet. He ruffled Effie’s dark red hair—seemingly surprising both her and himself in the process—and then left the compartment with a lazy backwards wave of his hand. 

George turned to look at Effie. “I really didn’t mean to do that,” he said. 

“Sure,” she said slowly. “I don’t think it was your fault.”

He grinned a bit at that. “Sure about that? I was the one to distract you from your all-important task, there.”

“Um…I’m still the one that dropped the trunk.”

“You know what, I think you must be delusional from hitting your head. I’m clearly the one at fault here—anyone with sense would use this as a good time to demand a thousand favors from me.”

“I’m fine,” she said, her nose wrinkling in confusion. 

“Are you sure?”

“...Yes.”

“You hesitated.”

“I…always hesitate?”

“Well, just to be sure,” George said, holding up his hand with a flourish. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“...Two.”

“And how old are you?”

“...Eleven.”

“What’s your name?”

“Effie.” 

“A- ha!” he crowed, grin widening. “So you are Effie Potter.”

“What? Oh, her.” She paused, turned bright red so suddenly it was like someone cast a skin color changing charm on her, then shook her head as if to clear it. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, well, well,” George said. “I guess I should give myself a pat on the back. Not many people can say they felled a celebrity.”

It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Effie’s expression instantly shuttered. She looked away from George, adjusting her glasses with one hand as an excuse to not meet his eyes, her gaze sliding over to her trunk. “Like I said,” she muttered, “if anyone felled me, it was me. And I’m not a…” She frowned as she trailed off, and then corrected her statement to, “And I shouldn’t be a celebrity anyway.”

George remained silent, though he felt his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. The-Girl-Who-Lived, trying to deny she was a celebrity when she literally defeated Voldemort. Now that was a little unexpected. 

Effie pulled herself to her feet using a combination of her trunk and the seat, then placed her hands on her hips and eyed the upper rack very critically. Standing up straight like that, she suddenly looked very small, even smaller than first years normally looked. 

For some reason, that also struck him as unexpected. 

“Um,” she said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear as she glanced at him a little nervously. “Georgie…right?”

George blinked. Georgie? Well, Fred had called him that a second ago. Not that he expected her to remember. “I’m Fred,” he said automatically. 

“I thought Fred was—” She gestured behind her, indicating he was the one checking her head, then caught sight of George’s expression. “You’re joking.”

“Very discerning of you, Effie Potter,” George said, giving her another cheeky grin. 

She just went a little still and awkward at that. Godric, first years. He couldn’t imagine himself ever being one of these weird little balls of social anxiety. 

“George Weasley, at your service,” he said, taking pity on her. 

She squared her shoulders. “You said you were going to ask—well, I mean—if it’s still okay, could you…”

“Help you get your trunk up on that big tall rack?” George asked, grin sharpening when she awkwardly looked away from him, arms folded over her chest. “Of course! It’s the least I could do, really.”

He stood, finally picking the trunk up and hauling it on to the top rack for her. Once that was done and there was nothing left to do but stand here awkwardly with a first year, he fished his wand out of his pocket and cast a quick tempus. 

“Well, that’s four minutes left till the train leaves,” George said, pretending not to notice the way she had watched him cast that very intently. “Reckon I’ve got time to get off, give my mum a hug, evade certain doom, and get back on. You’ll be good if I leave you unsupervised with this big bad trunk?” The last part he said while pointing at said trunk with his thumb. 

Effie only nodded, sitting down on one of the benches and looking out the window like he was good as gone already. He laughed at that, suddenly understanding Fred’s earlier urge to ruffle her hair. Maybe it was just where her hair was so red—even if the shade was wrong, maybe it was a reflex for a Weasley to look at another redhead and see a disgruntled sibling. Acting on impulse, he reached out to ruffle her hair too, disrupting her fringe more than anything else, and then laughed himself out of the compartment when she gave him a look of wide-eyed confusion. 

Maybe this would be an interesting year after all. 

After the last twin finally left her, Effie felt like it took ages for her cheeks to finally cool off. Honestly. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t even made it to the actual magic school yet and she’d already managed to drop her trunk on herself, lose her glasses, and need assistance rescuing herself from herself. 

At least the twins seemed nice enough, even though she was an embarrassment to magic-kind. Even if they did laugh at her. A lot. But she probably did look funny, didn’t she?

Oh, bother. 

The compartment door slid open, and Effie blinked curiously at the newcomer. She was immediately embarrassed all over again when she realized it was the younger brother of the twins that had just helped her—the gangly boy with the long nose that his mum called “Ron” when she was helping Effie onto the platform. 

“Hello,” he said, not quite managing to meet her eyes. 

It was a good sign that he hadn’t come here to mock her for her inability to lift her own trunk. “Hello,” she greeted, as pleasantly as she was able to through her nerves. 

“D’you think I could join you?” Ron asked. “Most the other compartments are full.”

Well, having never been on the receiving end of someone her age actually wanting to be in her presence before, what else could she say to that?

“Of course,” she said, beckoning him in. “There’s plenty of room.”

Ron blushed from the tip of his chin to the roots of his hair, making the smattering of freckles on his cheeks stand out in stark contrast, but he came in and sat down on the bench across from her. He looked at her and then away again, blush darkening even more. 

Maybe he was shy?

Not that Effie was really one to talk, considering she was feeling plenty of shyness herself right now. 

“I’m Ron, by the way,” he blurted, after a suitably awkward silence passed. “Ron Weasley.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Effie said, because it was. She played with the hem of her shirt a bit—one of the new ones that she’d gotten from Madam Malkins, though she’d elected to not wear robes over it so she didn’t look like a weirdo at the station—and then, nerves steeled, added, “It was really nice of your mum to help me get onto the platform.”

It was a bit of a foreign concept to her, admittedly. A parental figure of any kind being nice to her. At her old school, everyone’s parents had thought she was a delinquent, or a bad influence, or anything in between so long as it wasn’t a very positive thing to think about a kid. 

Admittedly, they weren’t exactly wrong, since Effie did plenty of delinquent things like fighting Dudley and then hiding from Dudley in places she wasn’t supposed to be, but it still hurt. 

“Don’t mention it,” Ron said, somehow going even redder. “Mum loves helping people. Sometimes too much. You know how it is.”

Effie didn’t, not really. She knew objectively that Ron was implying his mum’s love was a bit of a suffocating kind of love, since she’d seen other people that thought that about their parents before, but having come from a place where she experienced no parental love herself…Effie couldn’t really understand how it might be a bad thing. 

Thankfully, though, she was saved from responding by the compartment door opening once more. 

…Or maybe saved was a strong word, considering who was there. 

“Found Ronniekins,” the twin that she was mostly sure was named Fred said.

“Yeah, that’s Ronnie,” the twin that was probably named George agreed. He smiled, and Effie gave herself a mental pat on the back. Definitely George. “Hello again, ickle Effie.”

Effie wrinkled her nose at being called ickle anything, but she supposed fair was fair. “Hello again, Georgie.”

“It’s George.”

“I know.”

“Ooh,” Fred said appreciatively. “She’s got some spine in her, this one does.”

Ron, who was looking back and forth between Effie and whichever twin she was talking to like this was an extreme sporting event, suddenly asked, “Do you know them?”

The twins opened their mouths to answer. 

“Georgie helped with my trunk,” Effie said quickly, before a more detailed version of the truth than that could be told. 

Fred let out a bark of laughter at that, and George’s lips twitched. “That’s right,” he said. “I did.”

“Really?” Ron said, now staring George down. “You weren’t having me on when you said Effie Potter was the girl that was with us at the station?”

Effie stiffened.

“What?” George asked, blinking strangely. He glanced at Effie, still sitting across from Ron. “I didn't say anything about Effie Potter being on the train. I didn’t.” 

This last part was declared whilst making direct eye contact with Effie. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them for comfort, hugging herself tight.

Fred clapped a hand on George’s shoulder, giving his twin a little shake as he did. George finally looked away. “That was me, I’m afraid. Can’t pass up an opportunity to gossip about an Effie Potter sighting.” He looked at Effie now, and with a flourish and a grin, he let go of George’s shoulder and gave her a grand bow. “Apologies to the little lady, of course.”

He didn’t sound or look very serious, but underneath the wicked grin and the posing, Effie could tell he was being sincere. It was what was in the eyes that counted more than anything else—and Fred’s eyes glittered with nervous anticipation, like it really did matter to him that she forgave him. And in a way, he had just diverted George’s attention from her when it started to make her uncomfortable, and for that, she could be grateful too.

Well, alright. She had never had friends before, but she couldn’t help but feel like these twins would be good ones. Even if they did laugh at her earlier. But then again…she probably did look funny.

“All’s good, Freddie,” she said.

There was a brief second where they just hovered in that moment, and then Fred’s smile changed into something more mischievous, one of his cheeks dimpling as his eyes glinted with mischief. “Freddie,” he exclaimed, sounding strangely delighted. “Did you hear that, George?”

“I heard it, Fred,” George said, his smile now going a little mischievous at the edges too. In a different way than Fred’s had, though it was hard to explain what exactly the difference was. 

“Reckon that means I’m as good as forgiven, don’t you, Georgie?”

“I reckon that’s right, Freddie,” George responded. “Seems like Effie here—”

“Might just be doing that thing with our names—”

“Because she likes us,” George finished, before turning his gaze on Effie. “Do you like us, Effie?”

Effie resolutely avoided the question, raising out of her knee shelter only enough to point at herself. “Ickle Effie,” she said, then pointed at Ron. “Ronniekins. You deserve it, I’d say.”

That startled a laugh out of both twins, though Fred’s was a little louder. 

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Ron asked, but not like he was mad. Just confused. 

“Oh, nothing,” George said, waving his hand at Ron lazily.

“We’ll tell you when you’re older,” Fred added, with another laugh. 

“Anyway, Ronniekins,” George said, shooting a grin towards Effie at the nickname for his brother. “We only came to tell you we would be further up the train if you need us.”

“Lee’s got a new pet tarantula,” Fred added. Ron went a little pale at the word tarantula . “He’s set up in our compartment down the middle of the train and showing it off.”

“Right,” Ron said, still looking a little pale. “That’s great.”

“Anyway,” George said, already moving towards the compartment door. “See you later.”

“Yeah, see you later!” Fred added, following after his twin with a grin and a wave.

“Bye,” Ron said, and Effie echoed the sentiment awkwardly a moment later. By then, both twins had already stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind them. 

This left Effie alone with Ron, who was eying Effie very critically. Effie couldn’t help but shift slightly, uncomfortable under the scrutiny, and shift again when the staring continued for even longer than she felt was probably necessary. 

Finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she asked, “What?”

It came out very small-sounding and not at all confident and cool sounding, which was what she had been going for. 

Ron continued to look at her for a moment, blue eyes keen as he worked through whatever he was working through. Then he nodded to himself decisively—an action that was somewhat alarming for Effie, as the object of his scrutiny—before breaking out into a grin. The grin eased all of the tension that had building up in Effie’s shoulders, for it wasn’t malicious or even teasing. Instead, it was open and bright. Friendly-like. 

“Well,” Ron said. “I think you might be my hero.”

“What?” Effie asked, eyes widening in alarm. 

“No, seriously,” Ron said, still grinning. “Never seen anyone talk to Fred and George like that in my life. Brilliant, that was. Normally they just talk people around in circles and only leave when they’ve dropped a few dung bombs or something.”

“Oh,” Effie said, relaxing. “Well, if that’s what I’m your hero for, I think I can live with that.”

Ron laughed. He had an infectious laugh, all boisterous and rolling. It made Effie want to laugh too, even if she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d done it. She settled for a smile, the biggest one she could manage. 

“Hey, Effie,” Ron said, once he was done laughing. 

“Hm?”

“Let’s be friends?” he asked. “No matter what house we’re sorted into?”

Effie felt like she could soar. A friend. For the first time.

“Okay,” she said, and felt her impossibly big smile widen. “I’d like that. Even though I’m still a little confused by houses. Hagrid didn’t do a very good job of explaining them.”

Considering Hagrid had really only told her You-Know-Who had been in Slytherin and people tended to think Hufflepuff was spectacularly uncool, that was a pretty fair aspersion to cast upon Hagrid. 

Ron evidently agreed. “What?! You don’t know about the Hogwarts Houses?”

“Hardly a thing,” Effie said gravely. 

“Well, that won’t do…” Ron started and then launched into an explanation. It was a little gloomy at points and a little judgmental at others, but Effie didn’t mind. 

If anything, it was just good to have someone to talk to.

Roughly ten minutes in to Ron’s extremely detailed description of everything Quidditch—a description that included everything from what exactly a Quaffle was to the Snitch’s past history as a magical creature to exactly what each player position did in a game to professional teams and their entire player and score history—the door to their compartment opened for the fourth time. 

This time, unlike last two times when a boy had come asking after a toad, Effie knew exactly who this person was. Well, who one of these people was, she should say.

“It’s you!” Effie exclaimed, pointing at Skinny Dudley.

Skinny Dudley, in turn, went extremely pale—and he was already very pale to start with—and echoed, “It’s you? You’re Effie Potter?”

Effie stiffened. She was quite certain that she’d never told Skinny Dudley her name before. And if she had, she certainly wouldn’t have told him her last name, because she never did. Though, come to think of it, as unusual a name as Effie was, there probably weren’t a lot of other people she shared with 

“How’d you know that?” she asked him. 

“They’ve been saying it all up and down the train,” Skinny Dudley replied, still so pale about the face he might as well be a ghost. “That Effie Potter’s in this compartment.”

Effie might have only been friends with Ron since somewhere around 11 a.m. that morning, but she still exchanged a look with him in which they managed a silent conversation with their eyes. 

“The twins again?” Ron asked, at the end of this silent conversation. 

Effie shook her head. It seemed implied to her during Fred’s apology that he would not do so again, and as poor of a decision as it was to make such lofty declarations about people she barely knew, both twins seemed the type to keep their word once they gave it. 

“Your other brother?” she proposed.

Ron grimaced. “Maybe. He’s a boaster.”

Considering the only other candidates for the leak were the toad boy and the trolley witch—neither of whom Effie had introduced herself to—this seemed like the most likely explanation. That, or Fred had already told other people who were now telling other people prior to his apology to Effie.

“Are you ignoring me?” Skinny Dudley asked, in a tone that indicated this was the height of insulting behavior. 

Effie once again had a silent conversation with Ron, and they both shrugged. 

“Yeah, pretty much, mate,” Ron said. 

And just like that, Skinny Dudley’s emotional range had expanded to include rage as well. 

“You think you’re so special?” he asked Ron, perhaps rhetorically. “Just because you get to hang out with a celebrity? Doesn’t change the fact that you’re wizard filth— red hair, freckles, second hand robes…you’re a Weasley!”

Effie frowned. This was not acceptable. Insulting her was one thing, but insulting all three of her first friends in one go? That just wasn’t acceptable. For a moment, she considered punching him again—unlike his much rounder counterpart (from whom Effie derived his name), Skinny Dudley had a tendency to leave himself wide open for attack—but the consequences felt a lot realer this time, standing on a train next to her first friend and going to the first school where they didn’t seem inclined to believe Aunt Petunia about her being disturbed. 

Besides, she wasn’t given much time to decide, considering Skinny Dudley quickly continued talking. 

“And you!” This was directed to Effie. “You think you’re tough, do you? Let’s see how tough you feel now that I have you outnumbered and your adult mudblood friend can’t save you. And just remember you asked for this.”

This inspired Effie to spare a second glance for Skinny Dudley’s companions. They were the big, heavyset sort that Dudley loved surrounding himself with, too. But the trick with people like them was understanding that they likely weren’t very fast. And when it came to being fast, Effie liked to think herself a bit of an expert. 

One of Skinny Dudley’s cronies lumbered forward, reaching to grab Effie. His intentions after he succeeded with that were unclear, since she was fairly sure he couldn’t get away with holding her down and clobbering her if she decided to be loud about it, since there were a lot of witnesses in a close radius that would probably come running quickly if someone started screaming. 

…Ah. 

Effie aborted her motion to dodge, allowing herself to be caught instead. Goon #1 wrapped one meaty palm around her forearm, grip tightening when she jerked to escape his grasp. He grinned, probably congratulating himself for a job well done. 

Effie opened her mouth. 

She wasn’t much of a screamer, when it came down to it. She’d gotten used to stifling any noise she might make during a beating a long time ago. No one came to help, anyway, and truthfully, it was her fault for being slow enough to be caught by Dudley anyway. But, to her delight, she was pretty good at it anyway. Ron, Goons #1 and 2, and Skinny Dudley all reared back as soon as she started making the noise. Ron went as far as covering his ears. 

“Crabbe!” Skinny Dudley said, eyes going wide with panic as soon as he realized what loud, girlish screaming meant for him and his goons. “Let her go! Quick!”

“What?” Goon #1—who was apparently named Crab, which was unfortunate enough that Effie was more than willing to change his moniker—asked. “I thought you wanted me to grab her?”

“No, you buffoon—well yes—but not if she’s—”

The door to the compartment opened again. It was a whole crowd of people, most of them being people she didn’t know. Which was a very good thing, because that was a whole lot of people with no personal bias whatsoever that just witnessed a big beefy eleven year old holding the arm of a screaming little girl. Crab was even in the midst of giving her a shake, when the compartment door opened, which was even better. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” a pretty girl in blue-lined robes asked from her place in the front of the crowd. There was a shiny badge pinned to the front of her robes that was just like Ron’s older brother’s. Perfect, she was a prefect, too. 

Well, it would be perfect, so long as she didn’t somehow conclude Effie was at fault in this situation. 

Effie stopped screaming at the sound of the question. Crab, still looking confused, finally worked out that he should probably let go of her arm. Ron uncovered his ears, and Skinny Dudley, looking around at both the crowd and the situation the crowd had walked in on, quickly opened his mouth to speak. He clearly knew what he was doing at least a little, since he seemed to know the first rule of schoolyard bullying too—whoever speaks first is usually deemed the most credible.

“They just burst in here!” Ron shouted, before Skinny Dudley could get a word out. “They came into our compartment looking for Effie—” A murmur went through the crowd, which as good as confirmed Effie’s theory that her name was weird enough she was probably the only one carrying it around. “—and then when they realized it was her, they said a bunch of mean things… I really don’t want to repeat some of it… And when Effie tried to run he grabbed her and tried to keep her here!”

“Is that true?” the prefect girl asked, looking between the five of them with very concerned brown eyes. “Did he grab you?”

“Yes,” Effie said. “That’s why I screamed.”

The girl looked a little angry as she turned her attention to Crab. “It’s unacceptable to grab people without their permission. And—oh, no—you aren’t all first years, are you?”

Effie was more than happy to allow Skinny Dudley the chance to answer this question. “We are,” he admitted begrudgingly. “But she—” 

“I don’t want to hear it,” the prefect interrupted, raising her hand to stop him before he even got a chance to finish. She frowned, thinking for a moment. “All three of you are going to have to come with me. I’ll need to explain things to the other prefects so we can decide what to do with you.”

And now, Skinny Dudley looked properly furious. “But—”

“Save it!” the prefect shouted, already half turning away. “Clear out, all of you, this isn’t a show!” The crowd grumbled a bit at that, but reluctantly did as she said. “Now, come on.”

Crab and Goon #2 left with dumbfounded looks on their faces, but Skinny Dudley hung back, looking all furious and pointy. He glared at Effie, who put on her nicest smile for him. “This isn’t over, Potter,” he spat. 

Effie couldn’t believe her luck. The magical world was the best! Never in a million years would she have gotten away with that in her old world, no matter if she was innocent or not. 

She waved Skinny Dudley out of the door, beatific smile plastered on her lips, and Ron was struggling to fight off his own grin as he closed the compartment door behind him. Once that was done, and they were once again the only two people in their compartment, Effie tentatively raised her hand for a high-five. 

Ron complied quickly, which was really very nice of him, considering it was Effie’s first high five possibly ever. “Effie,” he said, still grinning like a loon, “that was epic.” 

“We make a good team,” Effie agreed tentatively. 

Ron laughed his infectious laugh. “We really, really do.”

Chapter Text

The boat ride to Hogwarts was just as magical as getting on the platform had been, as seeing a picture moving on a chocolate frog card had been, as putting on her school robes for the first time had been. No, that wasn’t really true—nothing could really beat her first glimpse of Hogwarts. 

She and Ron had ridden over with Neville—the boy who had lost his toad—and Hermione, the somewhat bossy girl that had been helping him look for it. Effie couldn’t quite figure out how to talk to either of them. With Neville, she suspected that their specific brands of awkwardness were too complimentary and left no one with the courage to start a conversation. With Hermione…

Well, Hermione just didn’t really leave room for anyone else to talk.

But everything was fine, really, because all four of them had made it to the castle and gotten off their boat and immediately been broken up into two groups again as the crowd pushed in on them. 

They were met by a stern-looking woman with black hair tied up in a bun. Hagrid called her “Professor McGonagall” when he passed Effie and the other first years off to her, and she peered over the rims of her glasses as she looked at all of them. Something about her gaze seemed judgmental—or at the very least critical—and it sort of made Effie want to hide from it.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” Professor McGonagall eventually said. Her voice was even, if it was as stern as her appearance, and laden with a distinctly Scottish cadence. She then went on to briefly highlight the importance of the Sorting Ceremony, describe their living arrangements for the next seven years, and explain the values of the different houses as well as the point system.

“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school,” she finished, peering at them intensely. “I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”

She looked pointedly at Ron and Neville, the former of whom still had a smudge on the end of his nose and the latter of whom had his cloak fastened wrong. Though spared a look herself, Effie still tried to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear nervously, hoping that it would be alright. 

“I shall return when we are ready for you,” McGonagall said. “Please wait quietly.”

Her emerald robes swished impressively as she walked out, but Effie was too distracted to watch her full retreat over something she said. Or more accurately, something she didn’t say. 

“Hey, Ron,” she asked, as quietly as she dared. “How do they sort us into these houses?”

“Some sort of test, I think,” Ron said. 

Well…that made sense. And it wasn’t ideal, since she didn’t know anything yet, but surely they probably accounted for that, since there were other students raised by Muggles here. So, it should at the very least be something she could do. As long as it wasn’t painful or likely to injure her, it would be fine.

“Fred said it hurts a lot,” Ron continued. 

Oh, great. 

“...But I think he was joking,” Ron finished, eying Effie a little worriedly. 

And then behind her, several people screamed. She practically leapt into the air—feeling suddenly all too exposed in this open air room that wasn’t her cupboard under the stairs. She spotted the source for the screaming a moment later—there were several translucent people that had to be ghosts floating overhead. 

Ghosts!

She’d already come to terms with magic being real, but ghosts too?

“Forgive and forget, I say,” one of the ghosts was saying, as he floated over Effie’s head. He looked like a monk, but definitely not one of those monks that fasted for days on end. “We ought to give him a second chance—”

“My dear Friar, haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves?” This was a different ghost, who floated over Effie’s head a moment after the first. He was wearing a ruff and tights, like those that she saw Shakespeare painted in at school. Muggle school, that was. “He gives us all a bad name and you know, he’s not even a ghost! I say, what are you all doing here?”

There wasn’t an answer, as everyone in the crowd, Effie included, was too busy staring at his outfit to actually speak. 

“New students! That’s what they are!” the monk like one said, smiling at them. It was a very kind smile, but admittedly, it didn’t change the fact that he was a ghost and he was smiling at them. “About to be sorted, I suppose?”

Some people nodded. 

Effie tried not to contemplate what else might be real if magic and ghosts were on the table. 

“Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!” the monk said, apparently not perturbed by their silence. “My old house, you know.”

The Shakespearian fellow next to him opened his mouth to add something, but before he could, McGonagall interrupted him. 

“Move along, now. The Sorting Ceremony is about to start.”

The ghosts didn’t seem to mind the interruption, just smiling and waving to students (or in some cases casually ignoring the students altogether) as they floated through the wall, once again leaving them alone in the chamber with McGonagall. 

“Now, form a line,” she said, clapping her hands as she did. “Good, good. Follow me, please.”

Effie, who had been shuffled behind a boy with sandy hair and in front of Ron, had little choice in the matter but to proceed into the next room with the rest of them. The next room, where the entire school would be waiting to watch them perform this possibly painful test one by one. 

The room that she was led into was grand in a way that only something magical could be. Four long tables stretched out across the length of the room, candles bobbing above them, though they clearly weren’t suspended by anything. At the end of the room, a fifth table sat perpendicular to the other four, and a passing glance revealed that those sitting behind it were likely staff. Effie barely paid the staff table any mind, though, her attention wholly captivated by the ceiling that stretched up and up above her. It looked like there was no ceiling at all, in fact, even though there had to be, and Effie couldn’t stop staring at the luminescent stars splattered through the night sky. 

“It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside,” Hermione whispered, though she hadn’t quite grasped the mechanics of a whisper, and that it was supposed to be hard to hear. “I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.” 

The line of first years condensed into a gaggle, right at the base of the staff table, and then came to a stop. McGonagall turned to face them with a swish of her robes, placing a four-legged stool down in front of them. On the stool, she placed a hat. It was pointed and tattered, patched in places where it needed to be patched. Effie couldn’t help but think that it looked like the sort of object that would never be allowed in Aunt Petunia’s house. 

And for that and that alone, she loved it at once. 

The Hat opened a crease in its brim and sang them a song about the different houses. Despite promising herself a moment ago when she saw the ghosts for the first time that she wouldn’t be surprised by any other magic things in a magic school being magical, Effie was still surprised. She staggered back a step into Ron when the hat started, and then felt her entire face go red in embarrassment when Ron gently pushed her back upright. 

As the song ended, and McGonagall stepped forward, Ron angrily muttered, “So we’ve just got to try on the hat! I’ll kill Fred, he was going on and on about wrestling a troll.”

Trolls were real too?

No, not surprised. She wasn’t surprised. Not even a little surprised. Ghosts were real and hats could talk, obviously trolls were a thing too. In fact, she’d predicted it to be so long before Ron said anything about them. 

McGonagall cleared her throat, once again getting the attention of the first years gathered before her. “When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted.” She paused for a moment, as if allowing them time to give a verbal affirmative, and then moved on without one anyway. “Abbott, Hannah.”

Hannah Abbot stepped out of line, looking just as nervous as Effie felt as she tugged on one end of a blonde pigtail and stumbled a bit on her way up to the stool. Effie could understand—as grateful as she was that she would only have to put on a hat to get sorted into her future house instead of taking a test or battling an apparently very real troll, she really wished they didn’t have to do this while the entire school watched them. 

“HUFFLEPUFF!” the Hat declared to the hall, startling Effie with its speed. It hadn’t even been on Hannah’s head for a full thirty seconds. 

The Sorting proceeded like that. McGonagall called a name out, a nervous looking first year separated from the line and made their way up to the stool, the Hat decided where they would go. Though it was hardly like the Hat was rotating through the houses in a pre-decided pattern, Effie was interested to realize that there seemed to be a fairly even split anyway. If anything, there seemed to be more Hufflepuffs than the others. 

And people like Skinny Dudley thought they could get away with insulting all Hufflepuffs, honestly…

McGonagall called for “Granger, Hermione!” and Effie tuned back into the Sorting, a little curious. She wouldn’t say that she was friends with Hermione—or even, really, that she wanted to be—but Hermione was at least familiar territory, considering she’d spoken to them on the train a few times. On top of that, Effie had it on good faith that she would probably be sleeping in a room full of other girls, considering it was a boarding school, so knowing at least one other person in her room would be nice, probably. Even if it was Hermione, and she was kind of rude and bossy. 

The hat sat on Hermione’s head for at least a whole minute before it declared: “GRYFFINDOR!” 

Ron groaned loudly.

“That’s the house you wanted, isn’t it, Ron?” Effie asked, fidgeting with one of her sleeves. 

“Dunno,” Ron said. “My whole family’s been Gryffindor, but I’d really rather not be in a house with her.” 

This seemed like a somewhat unfair thing to say. Hermione really wasn’t that bad, Effie didn’t think, and besides, it wasn’t like Ron would have to see her every second of every day even if they were in the same house. 

Neville-with-the-toad also ended up going to Gryffindor, after the Hat sat on his head for a long time, too, and then it sunk in for Effie. L, M, N, O, P. If the M’s were starting now, then that meant she would be going sooner rather than later. Sooner, considering there really weren’t all that many first years still standing in their little clump. 

“Malfoy, Draco!”

Skinny Dudley—evidently named Draco Malfoy, which was almost as silly sounding of a name as “Effie Potter” was—swaggered out of line and up to the stool. Effie suspected he thought walking like that made him look cool. In reality, it made him look like he had something in his shoe that he couldn’t get out. The Hat barely touched his head before it bellowed out, “SLYTHERIN!” 

Effie frowned. Ron didn’t like Slytherin, as he’d said on at least two different occasions on the train. Effie frowned over to the table sitting under the green banners as Malfoy did his painful-object-in-shoe walk over to it. The Hat had said that you’d meet your true friends in Slytherin, but admittedly, they didn’t look like a very friendly bunch. Especially not with the most recent addition to their numbers. 

What would happen if the Hat decided that she needed to go over there, too…?

“Potter, Effie!” McGonagall shouted. 

Effie jolted, having not been paying a lot of attention to the names prior to this. It was too much info to process in too little time, especially when she had other things to be worrying about like where she was going to get sorted or if she even was. Worse, though, was the way the hall broke out in whispers as soon as her name was spoken. 

“Did she say Potter?”

“The Effie Potter?”

Effie almost considered hiding behind Ron and then just going back to the Dursleys afterwards. 

It wasn’t that she had never been in front of a crowd before. She had every pair of eyes in the room on her often enough that she couldn’t precisely recall every single time it happened. A mini musical in preschool where everyone had at least one solo to “be fair” came to mind, as well as the time she turned a teacher’s wig blue by accident. Neither situation ended in nervous vomit, but both had been deeply unsettling, and Effie would rather not repeat the experience ever again.

But if the alternative to being stared down by a hundred different eyes and whispered about was going back to the Dursleys, well…

She supposed she would take the staring. It was hardly a landslide victory, but it was still a victory.

Effie stumbled slightly as she stepped out of line—though thankfully, everyone was too busy whispering about her fame to whisper about that— but she made it to the stool in one piece and pulled the Hat over her head.

The crowd fell away into blissful darkness as the Hat slipped over her eyes. For a moment, nothing else happened, causing some of Effie’s newfound insecurities to once again show themselves.

And then a voice in her ear said, “Well, aren’t you something.”

Effie was very alarmed for the five seconds to place the voice that had just spoken as the same that had sung to them in the Hall a moment ago. She then tilted her head back, as if trying to spot the source of the voice within the depths of the Hat. “Mr. Hat?” she asked.

“Mr. Hat!” the Hat echoed, but it sounded pleased. “That’s not a first, but I can’t claim it happens very often either.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Effie said. “Do you prefer a different name?”

The Hat was silent for a great long moment, and then huffed. “Mr. Hat is fine. We aren’t here to talk about me , though, Ms. Potter. We are here to talk about you.”

“I would really rather talk about you, I think,” Effie said. “You seem very interesting. How did you learn to talk?”

“An inquisitive mind, I see,” the Hat said. “Not unlike your mother. You could do well in Ravenclaw, perhaps.”

Effie sat up a little straighter, her blood suddenly feeling like ice water in her veins. “My mother? You remember her? Can you tell me anything about her?”

The Hat did not immediately offer a story about Effie’s mother, or even a fraction of an anecdote. Instead, it went oddly quiet, and then said, “Desperate, are you?”

Effie said nothing.

“Yes, you are,” the Hat answered, after another moment. “I see it all right here—desperate to learn about your parents, desperate to make friends, desperate to prove yourself. You have ambitions, and oh so many ways you’ve already planned on achieving them. Interesting, so very interesting.”

Effie still said nothing. 

“Slytherin isn’t a bad house, you know,” the Hat said, but quieter now. “It’s simply a house, like all the others. It would help you on the way to greatness.”

“All due respect, Mr. Hat,” Effie said, “but I don’t really care about greatness.”

“I know,” the Hat said. “And that doesn’t change my opinion. You are guided by your ambition, whether you care about your greatness or not, and Slytherin is the house for the ambitious. I ought to shout it out for all the hall to hear, you know.”

“So, why haven’t you?” Effie asked. She felt a little cross with the Hat, now, and a little cross with herself for ever thinking she liked it in the first place. 

The Sorting Hat chuckled, a surprisingly dry sound. “I’m just curious about what you’ll do, Ms. Potter. I can tell that you are reluctant to accept Slytherin, even though you will ultimately defer to my judgment on the matter. And I know why you are reluctant to accept Slyherin. So, I’m giving you a chance to change my mind. Prove yourself, if you will, as you are so desperate to do.”

Effie’s eyes were still covered by the hat, but she turned her head towards where the Slytherin table was all the same. She thought about it, that sea of green. Everyone there all looked so unhappy, so cold and distant. She remembered the controlled clapping and the cool nods whenever a new student was sorted there, and the way they sat at their table with plenty of elbow space between their nearest neighbor. 

It reminded her of a life spent in a cupboard, with only spiders for friends. A life of looking and seeing but never experiencing. Not knowing what a hug felt like, or what it was like to see a smile directed her way. It wasn’t fair, that extra space between people’s elbows. It wasn’t the way that it should be. 

“That’s incredibly Hufflepuff of you,” the Sorting Hat remarked, sounding pleased. 

Effie huffed. “I wasn’t done thinking.”

The Sorting Hat chuckled at her again. “By all means.”

It wasn’t fair, that extra space between people’s elbows. Everyone deserved a chance to have more with others , to establish connections that were deeper, brighter, stronger . And though she shouldn’t—though it was greedy of her, and she had learned to stop wanting things a long time ago—she wanted that importance for herself. 

And, Draco Malfoy was over there, and though she thought Ron’s reaction to Hermione Granger’s Gryffindor sorting was a bit dramatic, Effie would literally rather punch herself in the face every single day then spend it in that great blond git’s presence. 

The Sorting Hat made a choking sound. “Really? That’s it? But you could do so well there…”

“Put me anywhere near Draco Malfoy and I’ll find a way to test whether the people that made you also kitted you out with fireproof materials,” Effie said decisively. 

And a little loudly. Judging by McGonagall’s startled laugh-turned-cough, she had been heard. 

There were several moments of silence from the Hat. Effie liked to think she had stunned it at last. 

“Well,” the Hat said, drawing out the l’s slightly. “You are certainly your mother’s daughter. Perhaps, even, your father’s daughter. In that case, better be…GRYFFINDOR!” 

Effie smiled. Gryffindor, just like her parents supposedly had been. And if that wasn’t the best thing that could have happened for her particular ambitions…

“Thank you, Mr. Hat,” Effie whispered, speaking to the wizened object for the last time. 

“Hm,” the Hat said noncommittally, but it sounded pleased. 

Effie stood, taking the Sorting Hat from her head as she did, and placed it back on the stool she’d found it on. She made eye contact with McGonagall as she moved towards the predominantly red table at the end, and smiled a little nervously at the professor. McGonagall’s expression seemed softer up close than it did from far away. If Effie didn’t know better, she’d almost say that McGonagall looked fond. 

Effie took a seat at the end of the table, right next to a girl that had been sorted not long before her, and felt a little like she might have finally made it home. 

After a long and winding journey following Percy Weasley up to Gryffindor tower, Effie found herself absolutely swallowed by red in the Gryffindor common room. 

She had expected it, to a degree, considering she ate a feast under red banners and sat with older students with red lined robes, but it still surprised her to the degree that the color appeared as well. She had grown up exclusively in a world of minimal color—Petunia decorated not with loud pops, or even variation on a palette, but instead with shades of a tone, used over and over, almost to a sickening degree. Nothing in Petunia’s house would ever be allowed to be this loud. 

Nothing in Number 4 Privet Drive would ever be this red. 

Effie spun in a circle, probably not paying Percy as much attention as she should be as she took in the room that she found herself in instead. It was different from Number 4 Privet Drive in other ways besides the color. It was cramped and cozy, with more furniture than there were likely people to sit in. Everything was fluffy and comfortable, with big cushions on the couches and shaggy rugs in front of a fireplace that she was sure would probably be wonderful once winter started to set in. There was a notice board that was already cluttered with pages, despite school not even being in session for a full day, and windows that pointed at nothing in particular. 

She loved it. She loved it, she loved it, she loved it. 

Her parents had stood here once. 

“The girls dormitories are up those stairs,” Percy said, pointing the staircase out to them. “Boys, you will find that should you try to enter the girls’ side, the staircase will take measures to prevent this.” 

Take measures to prevent it? Effie raised her eyebrows. She wondered what those measures were. And whether or not she could convince Ron to try and activate them. Though, theoretically speaking, considering these rules usually didn’t exist for no reason, she likely would see these preventative measures in action without having to get someone specifically involved. One day, anyway. 

“Boys, you can all follow me,” Percy finished, turning with a swish of his robes and heading up the other staircase. Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean followed after him, but only after Ron made eye contact with Effie, pointed at Percy’s back, and rolled his eyes. She smiled. 

“That leaves you ladies with me,” the other prefect that had been trailing behind them as they made their way to the tower said. Effie knew she was a prefect only thanks to the badge on her robes. Otherwise, she hadn’t said a thing—she hadn’t even introduced herself yet—seemingly content to allow Percy to do all the leading around of first years instead. 

As if remembering her lack of introduction herself, she added, “My name is Mia. Mia Roberts, that is.”

Hermione shot her hand up into the air, which seemed to bewilder Mia slightly, judging by the way her nose wrinkled. “Um…yes?”

“What happens to boys if they try to come to our side of the dorm?” Hermione asked, in her bossy, no-nonsense sort of tone. 

Beside Effie, the girl with bouncing blonde curls named Lavender rolled her eyes. 

“The stairs turn into a slide,” Mia said, blinking her brown eyes blankly. “Come on, then.”

The stairs turned into a slide? Oh, Effie was absolutely going to see if Ron would be willing to give them a go, now. That could be very wicked. 

They followed Mia up the stairs, spiraling up and up and passing door after door until they got to the uppermost room. Mia told them where the bathrooms were and then promptly left them alone. Effie looked around this room in wonder, too. It wasn't as luxurious as the common room seemed, but it was cozy. There was a large red rug in the middle of the room and four beds with curtains, nightstands, and accompanying wardrobes facing off against each other. Effie was surprised to find her trunk had already been brought up and placed at the foot of one, and then was pleased to see that it was the one by the window. 

“Our beds are next to each other’s!” Lavender squealed. Effie squinted in confusion for a moment—because her bed was definitely next to Hermione’s—before realizing that Lavender was talking to Parvati and not her when the other girl squealed in the same high pitch and hugged Lavender.

Effie turned towards Hermione slightly, wondering if the two of them were supposed to have a similar reaction to rooming next to each other. She didn’t exactly fancy the notion, but she would do it if it seemed necessary for her prolonged social survival at this place. 

Hermione only sniffed at Parvati and Lavender, holding her nose high up in the air, and began methodically unpacking books onto every available space around her bed. 

Well, that certainly settled the conundrum. 

Effie smiled to herself as she changed into her pajamas, getting ready for bed. She still couldn’t believe that she’d made it here at all, that at least, for now, she was free from the Dursleys, surrounded by magic, and able to actually make friends with people her age. 

She could only hope that this peace would last.

Chapter Text

Though Effie would hardly call herself a voluntary early riser, years of Petunia pounding on the cupboard door so she could come out and help with breakfast had ingrained the instinct to get up early in her all the same. So she rose, the soft sound of her dormmates snores still filtering through the room, and dressed quickly in one of the sets of school robes she hadn’t been wearing to the feast the day before. She was surprised to find that the inside lining had changed from a deep black to a vibrant red seemingly overnight. It made her feel like a proper Gryffindor, something she had felt a little subconscious about last night at the feast. 

She crept downstairs to the common room, completely ready for the day without disturbing anyone else in her dorm room with her. She’d learned the art of moving silently almost as quickly as she had learned to move—silence was safe, when she was with the Dursleys. The quieter she was, the more likely they were to forget that she was there, which meant the more likely she was to get her chores done without Dudley’s interference. 

The common room wasn’t necessarily full, but there were still a lot more people in it than what she had come to expect. She suspected the people in question were all older students, judging by their height and stature, and all of them looked to be on the slightest edge of harried, with their ties askew and their hair standing up in weird places and their robes only half buttoned. None of them seemed to pay her any mind at all, which was exactly how she would have wished it to be if she had thought to wish for things at all. 

Effie considered waiting for a moment. Waiting for Ron, maybe, or one of the girls that she lived with, even. Except the sun hadn’t risen yet, and though she knew breakfast would start soon and run for three hours after that, she doubted that anyone else her age was going to intentionally wake up early enough to get to breakfast right when it started. Especially not when they wouldn’t need to get up for at least another hour to give themselves plenty of time to eat. 

She was a little curious about why so many older students were awake. 

She followed a group of three girls out of the portrait that led to their common room. All three girls were about equal in height, though their appearances differed wildly other than that. One girl, who was walking in the middle of the group, was dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with black hair pulled back in a silky looking ponytail. Another girl had a skin tone darker than Effie’s though not quite as dark as the first girl’s and curly brown hair. The final was a brunette with freckles and blue eyes. 

Effie understood maybe half of what they were saying to each other. 

“Snape’s took the longest,” the dark-skinned girl said. “Thirteen inches, over the summer! It’s like he doesn’t understand the concept of fun.”

“Really?” the brunette asked, scrunching up her freckled nose. “It was McGonagall for me. It’s not exactly like I can just walk to the Muggle library down the road and check out books on the magical theory behind Transfiguration. All I had to work with was my textbook and a few books I could find in Diagon Alley when Mum and Dad took me to get my school supplies for the year. Frankly, I’m still probably going to have to look it up real quick before I go.”

“What’s the subject McGonagall gave you to look into?” the first girl asked. “I might have done the same last year. I’d be willing to look at my notes for you.”

“You’d do that?”

“‘Course. That’s what Chasers are for, isn’t it?”

“Honestly, Angie. I don’t care what anyone else says—you’re the best.”

The first girl—Angie, apparently—laughed heartily at that, before sobering quickly. “Wait. Who says I’m not the best?”

“Me,” the curly-haired girl said, without missing a beat. “I’m still annoyed about the Hufflepuff match last year.”

Angie’s cheeks darkened slightly. “Diggory kept blocking me!”

“Uh-huh. Tell that to the dropped Quaffles I had to keep saving.”

“He was a nuisance!” Angie continued. “He knew he wouldn’t beat Charlie to the Snitch so he kept interfering with our goals instead!”

“Ugh,” the brunette girl said, from Angie’s other side. “I can’t believe Charlie graduated. He was such an amazing Seeker.”

“I know,” Angie said, with an exaggerated moan. “He’s going to be so hard to replace.”

“Now that Wood’s captain, he’ll find someone,” the curly-haired said. “He’s Wood, Quidditch is his life.”

Oh! Quidditch. That was the wizard sport with flying broomsticks and floating hoops in the sky that Ron loved so much. Effie knew what that was after all. 

She wished she could remember what a Seeker was too. 

“And now Wood’s captain, Quidditch will be life for all of us,” Angie said somberly, but both of her companions broke out into giggles at that. 

With that, Effie realized that she had followed the three girls all the way to the Great Hall, and was now still awkwardly following them over to the Gryffindor table too. She scanned it quickly, looking to see if any of her yearmates were awake after all. No luck on that front, though she did see all three of Ron’s brothers. Would it be weird to sit with one of Ron’s brothers…? Probably, actually. She would just sit by herself, and then hopefully people in her year would sit next to her when they came downstairs too, and—

“Effie!”

Effie froze in the middle of examining the table for vacant seats and slowly turned towards the voice that had just called out. She found herself looking at Ron’s twin brothers, though perhaps more dismayingly, they were sitting with the three girls she had followed down here. And the brother that had called out to her—Fred, judging by the sharp twist of his smile on the right side—was flagging her down. 

She couldn’t sit there, right? That would be weird. But she couldn’t just ignore him either, because that would also be weird. 

Oh, no. 

“Come on, Eff, don’t be shy,” George added, now also waving her down. “Here, there’s a seat open next to me and everything.”

People were starting to look, which meant Effie walked around the table and sat down next to George very quickly. 

She felt very warm. 

“Steady on, Effie,” George said, laughing a little as he did. It didn’t sound cruel, though, that laughter, and he accompanied it with a brief squeeze to her shoulder that was definitely supposed to be comforting. 

And then, she was promptly jumped on by all of the surrounding older students. Because she was sitting in the middle of a whole pack of them, apparently. 

“Early riser, are you?” Fred asked, eyes glinting mischievously. 

“...Yes,” Effie said. 

“Your hair is such a gorgeous color,” the brunette girl said, smiling at Effie. “I’m a little jealous of it, actually!”

“...Thanks,” Effie said. 

“You’re in the thick of it now, Potter,” a boy with a complexion to match Angie’s said from George’s other side. “Surrounded by the Gryffindor Quidditch team on all sides. How’s it feel?”

“Um…”

“Oh, right,” George said. “Introductions. Not that anyone needs to introduce you, Effie, but I doubt someone as impressive as yourself spends a lot of time amongst us bottom feeders.”

“Hey!” Angie said sharply. “Speak for yourself. I’m definitely not a bottom feeder.”

“Anyway,” George continued. “You know George and I, obviously—”

“Nice try, Georgie,” Effie broke in quietly.

Across from them, Fred slammed his fist on the table, but he was still grinning. “You’re right, she is good at that.”

“Dunno how she’s doing it,” George told his twin, though he was looking appraisingly at Effie as he did. It was a look that made Effie want to crawl under the table and stay there forever. “We must have missed our chance when she was young and impressionable.”

“Did you call him Georgie?” the curly-haired girl asked, leaning forward with a bright smile. 

“...Yes.”

“That’s so cute,” she whispered.

“Oi,” George said, shooting her a glare. “That’s uncalled for. This is warfare, not cuteness, Alicia.”

“Oh, my bad,” Alicia said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

“Well, that’s an introduction for you,” Fred said, gesturing to the girl now dubbed Alicia. “Alicia Spinnet, Ms. Effie Potter. One of three lovely Chasers on our humble little team here. Or rather, soon to be one of our three Chasers, once we actually get through tryouts. But the job’s basically guaranteed to be hers—Wood more or less had all of us picked out before we left school last year.”

“Nice to meet you,” Effie said to Alicia, despite being a little intimidated by her.

Alicia made a soft sound that might have been a coo. Effie wasn’t entirely sure she liked it. “First years,” she said. “They get cuter every year, I swear.”

“Nah, that’s probably just Effie here,” George said, reaching up to ruffle her hair. Effie’s hair, which was sleek and long, fell right back into place where he ruffled it. Other than her bangs. Those had a tendency to stick up in the air. 

“Our little brother is a first year this year, too,” Fred continued. 

“Not nearly as cute,” George finished, with a sad shake of his head. 

“I think we should be the judge of that,” the brunette said. She smiled at Effie and then leaned over Fred slightly, so she could offer her hand. “Katie Bell. I was only a reserve player last year, but since one of our Chasers graduated too, it seems like I’ll get the job.”

“Oh,” Effie said, not being sure what to say to that. “Congratulations?”

Katie laughed. “Thanks!”

“I’m Angelina Johnson,” Angie introduced, also smiling at Effie. “The final Chaser on the team.”

“Is it Angelina or Angie?” Effie asked.

Angelina blinked. “Either is fine. How did you…?”

“She followed us down here, Angie,” Alicia said, rolling her eyes. “Did the first year thing where they just quietly follow you around so they don’t get lost.”

“...Right,” Angie said, looking as embarrassed as Effie felt.

“And I’m Lee Jordan,” the other boy introduced, grinning from ear to ear at her. “Not actually on the team, mind, but I do all the announcing.”

“Oh!” Effie said. “Like one of those men on the telly that narrates everything for the people only listening?” 

Effie liked those men a lot, seeing as she couldn’t actually watch the telly from her cupboard. Dudley liked the volume loud, though, so she could usually hear what was happening. 

“Yeah,” Lee Jordan said, grinning impossibly wider. “That’s it exactly. Do you know other Muggle things, Effie?”

Effie nodded, a little confused about why he was asking and not feeling in the mood to share about the Dursleys in the slightest. 

“You know the radio?” he asked, brown eyes gleaming encouragingly.

Effie nodded again.

“I want to have a radio show one day,” Lee announced. “Not a Muggle radio show. One for wixen. We don’t already have one, can you imagine that? Just one music channel that’s mostly Celestina Warbeck and one for Quidditch League games.”

George rolled his eyes and elbowed her in the ribs. Strangely, she didn’t really mind it so much. “He’s an ambitious one, isn’t he?”

“Practically a snake, he is,” Fred agreed, eying Lee across the table with faux suspicion. 

Effie, because she figured she might as well eat, said, “Katie, could you pass the toast?”

For some reason, all six of the older students broke out into laughter at that, leaving Effie to blink at them in confusion. 

Angie pulled herself somewhat together first. “You know what,” she said, wiping tears Effie was fairly sure didn’t exist out of her eyes, “I must admit I was a little doubtful at first, but I understand why you invited her over here now.”

“Doubtful?” Fred repeated, sounding scandalized. 

“Of us?” George finished, in the same tone. 

“Angie, how could you?” Fred asked, breaking out into wails. Because Angie was sitting on one side of him, that meant he also flung himself at her and started shaking her back and forth while he pretended to cry into her shoulder. Angie just patted him on the head consolingly like she was too used to this to care anymore. 

It was magnificent to witness. 

I hope I can have friends like this one day, Effie thought. It wasn’t the first time she had ever had the thought looking at someone else, but for the first time, it felt like it could be real. 

“She is entertaining,” Alicia said, jarring Effie out of her thoughts. “First she calls you Georgie, then she completely ignores both of you in favor of toast…”

“Insulting, that,” George said mildly. 

“Eff, you should try out for the team!” Katie exclaimed suddenly, looking very excited by the prospect. “First years can’t be on the main team usually, but you could be a reserve like I was last year. Then, if one of us ever has to miss a match, you can play!” 

“Oh, um…”

“What position would she be a reserve for, do you think?” Angie asked, now sounding contemplative. Fred wailed even louder and burrowed his face in her shoulder, but she continued to ignore him. “You’re little for a first year, Eff, so I’m not sure. You’d probably be wicked fast, but Chaser might not be the best, since you’d also probably be easy to knock off your broom. No offense.”

“None taken…?” Effie said, but not very confidently. 

“Don’t listen to Angie,” Alicia said, winking at Effie. “The key is just dodging before you get hit. Just because Angie likes flying through obstacles instead of around them doesn’t mean we all have to be that way.”

“What position do you like to play, Eff?” Katie asked. “I’m sure you probably have a preference from playing as a kid, don’t you?”

And of course, this was the one question the whole group went silent for. Every other time they moved on quickly, but no. The first time she has no option aside from bringing up the Dursleys, they actually wait to hear her answer. 

“Um.” Looking at them was too much to deal with, so she focused very hard on buttering her toast instead. “I’ve actually never played Quidditch. Or even knew about it before I came here. Ron told me some things about it on the train, though.” Effie got nervous after the silence following this declaration stretched longer and longer, and then added, “I was raised by Muggles.”

Fred sat upright so fast that Effie nearly fell off her bench, though George caught her before she could. “No!” Fred wailed, grasping his hair dramatically. He left the red strands standing up all helter-skelter around his head after he took his hands away. “Ron can’t be your introduction to Quidditch! He’s a Chudley Cannons supporter!”

Everyone started talking all at once. 

“Don’t worry, Eff, I’m a muggleborn, too,” Katie said, smiling comfortingly at her. “Well, I guess you’re not really a muggleborn, you know what I mean…”

“Who in their right mind supports the Chudley Cannons?!” Lee asked. 

“That’s just it, Lee,” George said. 

“He’s not—” Fred continued. 

“In his right mind,” George finished. 

“Seeker, I bet,” Angie said contemplatively. “You would probably be a good Seeker.”

“Don’t be daft, Angie,” Alicia said, rolling her eyes. “Chaser, for sure. She could probably fly circles all around those burly Slytherin players.”

“I’ve never actually ridden a broom,” Effie felt the need to remind them.

She was completely ignored.

“Anyway, don’t feel like it holds you back, being muggleborn!” Katie continued. “Or Muggle-raised, I mean. We can play the sport just as well as the others, even if we didn’t grow up knowing what it was.”

“The Chudley Cannons!” Lee exclaimed, still distraught. “Of all things!”

“I know,” George said, shaking his head. “It’s a shame—”

“We’re related to him at all!” Fred finished. 

“Yeah, but think about it,” Angie said. “We need a Seeker. Someone else can be a Chaser reserve.”

“Eff’s a first year!” Alicia protested. 

Effie jolted, noticing something for the first time. “Eff?” she questioned. 

“Short for Effie,” five people said at once. 

“I know, but don’t you think it sounds a bit like you’re calling me…F? As in, the letter, F?”

“F as in Fred!” Fred said, and then laughed. 

“The Chudley Cannons,” Lee protested. “Even barring the fact that they can’t win anything, the fact that their uniforms are orange—” 

“You ought to see Ron’s room if you think the uniforms are bad,” George said. 

“Well, I meant a Seeker reserve,” Angie said. “For all we know, it’ll be a seventh year that gets it this year, and then Eff is free to play the position next year. You and I are only third years, and Katie is a second—we’ll be around for a while, I mean, and it would suck for anyone to be a reserve player for five years.” 

“Of course, when you have flying classes, if you’re not good on a broom naturally, I’d love to give you pointers,” Katie told Effie. 

“But Angie, she could be our reserve player,” Alicia argued. 

“What’s this?” a voice said, from somewhere behind Effie. She tilted her head back, taking in the newcomer upside down. He had to be the oldest of them all, probably closer to Percy’s age, and had sandy brown hair and broad shoulders. He was smiling faintly, as if very pleased about something. “My team, talking about Quidditch this early in the morning?”

“Hi, Oliver,” Alicia said, smiling at him and also going a little pink in the face. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Morning,” Oliver grunted, and then swung a leg over the bench and sat down heavily next to Effie. He then blinked at her, as if just now noticing she was there, and slowly raised his eyebrows. “Effie Potter?”

She didn’t think she was ever going to get used to people she didn’t know recognizing her on sight. 

“Hello,” she greeted, though her voice came out a lot quieter than she wanted it to. 

George slung an arm over her shoulders, leaning around her to talk to Oliver. She was beginning to sense that the twins were very tactile as friends, and she didn’t feel very equipped to deal with either this realization or the realization that they likely were her friends. 

“That’s Oliver Wood, Effie. He’s a Keeper,” George said, and then winked salaciously at Oliver. 

“Not just any Keeper,” Fred said, batting his lashes at Oliver from across the table. “Our Keeper.”

“Stop you, I’m blushing,” Oliver said flatly, though he wasn’t blushing even a little bit. 

Effie was confused. 

“He’s also the captain of the team,” George said, giving Effie an encouraging nudge with his shoulder. “Oliver, you know Effie, I’m sure.”

“We were just trying to convince Effie here to join the team as one of our reserves,” Angie informed Oliver, shooting an almost mischievous smirk towards Effie. 

Oliver perked up so suddenly that Effie leaned back into George, startled by the sudden movement. “You play Quidditch?” he asked her, suddenly sounding ten times more awake than he had a moment ago. 

“...No,” Effie said. 

Oliver deflated like a balloon Dudley had just popped. 

“...Only because I’ve never flown on a broom before,” Effie found herself saying, because droopy Oliver was making her feel droopy, and she didn’t want to start off her first day feeling droopy. “I’m sure I’d probably love it if I tried it!” She wasn’t very sure of that at all, actually. Historically, sports and Effie didn’t get along. Not only because she was naturally clumsy and seemed to have two left feet instead of a left and a right one, but also because she was always picked last for teams, and Dudley and his friends always went after her with a vindictive kind of glee. 

Oliver perked back up instantaneously. “Well, that’s alright,” he said, now talking very quickly. “You’re a first year, right? You’ll have flying lessons with Madam Hooch soon. You’ll get to try out flying then. And you’ll love it, because there’s no way not to love flying, and then we can do a tryout for you.” He eyed her up in a way that once again made her want to hide under the table. “You’re kind of small, aren’t you? Seeker, I bet, or maybe a Chaser. Though, ‘course, size doesn’t really matter. You could be a Keeper just as easy, if that’s what you fancy. And what you’re good at, mind. I won’t let any slackers onto my team.”

“Maybe you’ll be Oliver’s reserve, Effie,” Angie said, in a way that didn’t seem at all comforting. “He seems to have taken a shine to you.”

“Reserve?” Oliver exclaimed. “What would I need a reserve for? I’m either playing Quidditch, or I’m dead!” 

Everyone laughed, and Effie found it surprisingly easy to join in, despite only meeting over half of these people earlier this morning. Oliver reacted surprisingly nonchalantly to her presence, and the attention seemed to have turned primarily to him as he described first Quidditch plays and next team tryouts and last the team training schedule. He was kind of comforting to listen to, as strange as that was for her. Maybe it was the singular focus he used when he was talking about playing Quidditch, or the fact that the singular focus distracted him from talking about anything else, like how famous Effie was or wasn’t or whether or not she would be a Chaser or a Seeker. 

George nudged her with an elbow to get her attention, while Oliver continued to entertain the group on her other side. “Doing okay, Eff?”

“Fine,” she said, and then vindictively added, “Georgie.”

He laughed softly. “Good. I was wondering, you know, since Fred and I kind of sprang all this socialization on you all of a sudden.”

It was true that the socialization had been sprung on her, and doubly true that there was something intimidating about the fact that everyone she talked to was older than her and also, evidently, extremely talented athletes. But at the same time, she was grateful, because she knew objectively that the twins had done it so she didn’t have to sit alone. 

“It’s okay,” she told George quietly. “Thanks for inviting me over.”

“Anytime,” George said, shooting her a grin. “The more favors anyone owes me the better, really.”

Effie took a bite of her toast while maintaining eye contact, then after she swallowed, said, “I thought you owed me a thousand favors for nearly killing me with my trunk.”

“And I thought you said I wasn’t to blame,” George shot back. 

“And I thought you wanted credit for felling a celebrity,” Effie countered, raising her eyebrows. 

“You know what, I did,” George said, giving her a smug look. “Because that is pretty dashing of me.”

“...Sure,” Effie said after a moment’s pause. 

George reached over and flicked her right in the middle of the forehead. It didn’t hurt, but she still sat there and blinked for a lot longer than she needed to, because… what?

George didn’t give her very long to think on it, though, because he shot her a sly grin like he hadn’t just been weird and asked, “What are you doing up, anyway?”

Effie decided it was best if she just let it go. “I think I’m used to getting up early,” she said. “Aunt Petunia always dragged me out of my cu—uh—my room to help with chores. What are you doing up early?” She hoped the quick question distracted George from noticing her near slip. 

Honestly, it was like Effie hadn’t learned mentioning the cupboard to someone else brought her nothing but shame and suffering years ago. 

“Solidarity,” George said happily enough, but there was something a little sharp about his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Her diversion hadn’t been as successful as she hoped. “Fred and I finished our summer homework ages ago, but this lot still had stuff to work on.” Sure enough, everyone at the table had gotten out rolls of parchment and quills at some point, and while they were still chatting with one another, a lot of them appeared to be working too. 

She frowned. She hadn’t realized that summer homework would be a thing she would have to work on, but she was confident it would probably be a problem with the Dursleys. 

“Anyway,” George said in a deceptively casual voice. “What sort of chores do Muggle kids do? I bet it’s loads different than degnoming and trying to calm down the ghoul in the attic.”

“I’d be more interested to hear about your chores, honestly,” Effie deflected. “It sounds way cooler than…” What were the tamest chores Aunt Petunia had her do? “...pulling up weeds and dusting.”

“I’ll give you that,” George said, laughing heartily. “Degnoming can be fun, when you’re lucky enough to avoid the biting. You know, there was one time Ron got—”

“Effie?” 

Effie looked up once again, making eye contact with a familiar pair of blue eyes. Well, speak of the Devil and he shall appear, as Aunt Petunia sometimes said when she was pretending she was religious for the benefit of the neighbors. 

“Ron!” Effie said, feeling an odd mix of being glad to see him and feeling guilty over the fact that she was waiting on him but had forgotten about it. It didn’t help that Seamus and Dean were with Ron, too, and all three of them were ogling her position in the midst of a pack of older students. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” Fred said dramatically. “Leaving us for our younger brother as soon as he appears. It’s not like he’s actually in your year or anything.”

“However will we cope, Fred?” George asked, equally as dramatic. 

“By wasting away to nothing, I’m sure,” Fred answered. “Second to Ron, of all siblings.”

“A tragedy,” George agreed. 

“Oh—whatever,” Ron said, scowling at his brothers. “C’mon, Effie, you can sit with us.”

Effie nodded, getting to her feet. She glanced back at the twins and their friends, observing their easy smiles and their unoffended eyes. She didn’t know if it was standard procedure for people at Hogwarts to take in stray first years so that they didn’t have to sit alone or if this was a special circumstance, but all the same, she was grateful for this kindness they showed her. 

“It was so nice to meet all of you,” she told them sincerely. “Thank you for letting me sit with you today.”

She still didn’t think she would be any good at flying, but she would try to be anyway for everyone sitting here. Being a reserve didn’t sound so bad anyway—she could still practice with and be part of the team, without the added pressure of actually playing the games, too. Unless, of course, someone else was sick or injured. 

They all waved her off with smiles and different variations of “It was nice to meet you, too” and Effie grabbed her plate and headed down the table with Ron and his friends, who were all clearly bursting with questions. They waited until they’d sat down, and then Ron leaned across the table to furiously whisper at her. 

“Fred’s told me about those people! Those are the members of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, aren’t they? What were they talking to you about?”

Effie thought about what they had been talking to her about as well as Ron’s enthusiasm for all things Quidditch, and grinned brightly. “The craziest thing,” she said. “They offered to let me be a reserve for the team, if I’m any good.”

“What?!” Ron exclaimed. 

Effie laughed. What a way to start off classes, honestly. 

As Effie rushed into Transfiguration with Ron on her heels, very nearly late due to all the changing staircases and trick doors, she decided that maybe it was a good thing she was still on Aunt Petunia’s morning schedule after all, since it meant that she at least would have more time to find classes in the morning. So long as she didn’t wait for Ron every day, because Ron was certainly not an early riser. 

Despite it being her first class of the day, week, month, year, Effie already had a feeling that Transfiguration was probably going to be the most difficult of her classes. McGonagall was a formidable sort of teacher, too. One of those ones that scowled impressively and talked sternly and showed a great deal of competence to boot. She turned her desk into a pig and back again in their first lesson, explained to them the theory behind how transfiguring a match to a needle worked, and then rewarded Hermione points for Gryffindor when she was the only person in class that managed to change her match at all. 

Class ended at a quarter till, and Effie tried to calm her nerves as she packed up her bag. It was going to be fine. McGonagall had been a fair teacher so far, if she didn’t want to talk to Effie, she could just say no. 

But McGonagall was also the Head of Gryffindor House, and possibly had been when her parents were students here too. Effie wished she didn’t have to start by asking McGonagall of all professors this question, but she had made a promise to herself, and she was going to keep it. She only hoped that underneath all that stern lecturing and stiff competence, McGonagall was kind, too. Or, at the very least, of a kinder make and model than Effie’s old teachers had been.

“Come on, Effie,” Ron said, while standing by the door. “We need to get to Herbology.”

Effie shook her head, feeling too sick with nerves to speak. But Ron still hovered, concerned and anxious to not be late, so he required words all the same. 

“I just need to ask the professor a question,” Effie said, then swallowed thickly. “About class.”

Ron frowned. “We don’t have a lot of time to get to Herbology.”

“I know,” Effie said. “I’ll be fine. Go on without me.”

Ron finally relented, shrugging and rushing out so he could catch up with Dean and Seamus. Effie was lucky in that not even the swottiest of swots asked professors questions about the material on the very first day, which meant she was the only student here.

All the same, it took McGonagall a moment to notice her, straightening papers on her desk until she caught Effie’s eye. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, and she asked, “Ms. Potter?”

Effie steeled herself.

“I have a question,” Effie said. It didn't come out as confident as she wanted to.

McGonagall pursed her lips. “If it’s about the material, I have office hours on—”

“It’s not about the material,” Effie interrupted with a wince. She really didn’t have time to be hashing this out with McGonagall when she had to get down to the greenhouses soon. “It’s about my parents.”

These words hung heavily in the air between them, as if Effie had handed McGonagall a live grenade instead of saying two words that weren’t even names. 

“Your parents?” McGonagall echoed, strangely quiet for what Effie had come to expect from her. 

“Yes,” Effie said, and like a leaky tap, the words were suddenly flowing out of her bit by bit. “They were in Gryffindor too. That’s what everyone else says, anyway.” A pause, and then another drip. “You’re the Gryffindor Head of House.” Another pause, another drip. “I don’t think they were very old when they had me, so you probably would have been Head of House when they were here too.” A final pause. “Whatever you could tell me, Professor, please. Even if it’s just that they were hopeless at Transfiguration and you barely remember them.”

McGonagall looked away from her eyes, distracting herself with straightening a bit of her robe that was already fairly straight. “Ms. Potter,” she began sternly, before seemingly forgetting where she was going with it. She finally met Effie’s eyes, something weary and hopeless in hers.

Effie ached.

“It’s hardly appropriate,” McGonagall said, but she sounded softer than she had a moment ago. “I doubt I could tell you anything you haven’t already heard from your family.”

Effie shook her head quickly. “That’s not true. Anything you could tell me is probably something I wouldn’t already know.”

Their middle names, Effie thought, unbidden. Why they named me something like Effie Asphodel Potter. What subjects they excelled at in school. Whether or not they had friends.

“And if it is something I already know,” Effie said for McGonagall’s sake, “it isn’t like it’ll hurt me to hear it twice.”

It seemed to do the trick. McGonagall caved in a very upright and straight laced McGonagall way, which was to say she breathed in sharply and drew herself up to her full height, all traces of her softness from a moment ago gone. “Very well, Ms. Potter. You’ll meet me in my office on Saturday at one for tea. I presume that’s acceptable to you?”

“Yes,” Effie said, a smile creeping across her face. “You presume correctly, Professor. It’s very acceptable to me. I’ll be there, I promise!”

“Don’t be late,” McGonagall said pointedly. “To tea or Herbology.”

It was a dismissal, so Effie took it as one, seeing herself to the door. “Thanks, Professor,” she said. “I really can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

“Then don’t, Ms. Potter,” McGonagall said, her voice even and kind despite the sharpness of the words. “I can see it clearly for myself. I’ll see you in class Wednesday.”

“See you in class!” Effie responded, before darting out of the classroom and down the hall. She nearly crashed into someone as she did, but not even that was enough to deter the smile on her face.

She would finally get a chance to know her parents. There was nothing that could kill her good mood.

Professor Sprout was a kind woman, who had a smile on her face throughout the entire lesson with the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors lined up in the greenhouse. They didn’t touch any plants today, as Sprout seemed to just want to introduce herself and discuss the class itself to ease them into it. This was fine by Effie, as McGonagall had already assigned them work and she expected that some of her other teachers would too, so she appreciated what was likely one of very few reprieves she expected she would get from schoolwork this week.

Once class let out, Effie once again hovered, and once again, Ron was confused.

“You can’t possibly have a question for her, too!” Ron hissed as everyone else packed up around them. “She didn’t even teach us anything today!”

“Just a quick one,” Effie said. “That’s all. Promise it will only take a second, if you want to wait this time?” She smiled at Ron in what she hoped was a convincing way.

He deflated after only a moment. “Yeah, alright,” he said with a sigh. “Just don’t ask so many questions you turn into Granger.” 

This was because only one class into the day Hermione had already started to develop a reputation for herself. She had raised her hand for every single one of McGonagall’s questions and even asked several herself, and then did the same to Sprout in Herbology as well. Both teachers handled the situation with a lot of patience. The students much less so. 

Even Effie was a little annoyed by it, since all the boasting and bragging and condescension reminded her of kids she’d known before, and she had been the brunt of their worst comments too many times to be interested in friendship with them. 

“Don’t worry about that,” Effie told Ron, nudging him towards the door. “The day I open a textbook for fun is the day all my worldviews are collapsing and Hogwarts is on fire.”

“That’s oddly specific,” Ron said, though he was grinning. 

“I do try,” Effie said, before nudging him again. “Just a minute, Ron. Okay?” 

“Yeah, alright,” he said, and finally left. 

A few students were still trickling out of the door when Effie hesitantly approached Sprout’s desk. Unlike McGonagall before her, though, Sprout seemed to have an inherent sense that Effie was seeking a conversation with her, considering she smiled at Effie the whole time Effie trailed up to her desk. 

“Anything I can help with, Ms. Potter?” Sprout asked, as soon as Effie was in earshot. “Have questions about the material already? Something from the textbook catch your eye? Or do you need help getting around the castle?”

“No, not really,” Effie said, and then took a deep breath. “Professor Sprout, I wanted to ask…were you working here when my parents went to school here, maybe? It’s just…I would like to hear about them, if I could. They died before I got a chance to know them, and well—”

To Effie’s absolute surprise, Sprout pulled her into a tight hug at this point, cutting her off mid-sentence. Effie blinked a few times, her vision suddenly filled with a whole lot of brown robe sleeve and not much else. 

“Oh, you poor dear,” Sprout said, giving Effie a pat on the back before letting her go as quick as she’d hugged her. “I would love to tell you more about your parents. I’m afraid I won’t have as much to say about them as some of your other teachers might—your father, James, was always Minerva’s star pupil when he wasn’t getting into trouble. That’s Professor McGonagall, of course. And Lily—oh, Lily. She was almost always in FIlius’s office when he had office hours. Almost should have been a Ravenclaw, that one. Of course, she got on well in Horace’s class as well, but Horace did retire a while ago…”

This was already an almost overwhelming amount of information that Effie hadn’t had about her parents a moment ago. It would be very uncool of her to start crying just over hearing her dad was good at Transfiguration or at least enjoyed it immensely and that her mum seemed to be a little bit of a teacher’s pet. 

“You remind me of your mum a lot, Ms. Potter,” Sprout said, smiling widely at Effie. “It’s the hair I think—just like hers. You have your father’s eyes, of course.”

Effie blinked, touching a bit of skin under her eye absently. It wasn’t the first time she had heard this refrain, but it still felt novel to her, like it couldn’t possibly be true. “Do I?”

“Oh, yes,” Sprout said, with a laugh. “James Potter and those doe eyes of his. I’m ashamed to say I fell for them so often myself whenever he was trying to get himself out of trouble after he got himself into it.”

Effie felt a little trickle of warmth going through her at this revelation. “Did he get himself into trouble often?” she asked. “My father?”

“You wouldn’t believe the half of it if I told you,” Sprout said, shaking her head fondly. “In fact, there was one time when—oh!” She cut off suddenly. “You’d better get to lunch, dear. Oh, don’t look so glum. We can get to the story some other time. Are you busy on Saturday? Perhaps we could have a bit of tea in my office.”

Effie couldn’t believe her luck even a little bit. She hadn’t expected even one offer like this from a professor, let alone two in the same day? What? 

“I’m busy at one,” Effie said slowly. “What about noon, maybe?”

“Noon works just fine for me, dear,” Professor Sprout said. “I’ll see you then. And the rest of the week in class, of course!” She laughed delightedly. “Now, off to lunch with your friends, Ms. Potter. I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”

Effie left Professor Sprout’s classroom in a bit of a daze, finding Ron waiting outside the door. Her mum could have been in Ravenclaw, her dad was a troublemaker. McGonagall was willing to tell her about them, Sprout already had. 

“Could she answer your question, then?” Ron asked, a little dubiously.

“Yes,” Effie whispered, and then smiled. “She could.”

“Again?” Ron groaned, as Effie shuffled from foot to foot at the end of the desk she had shared with Ron in Defense Against the Dark Arts. “What are you doing, trying to talk to every professor on staff at Hogwarts?”

Well, yes. Not that Ron really needed to know that, because, well. It was a little embarrassing, wasn’t it, that Effie needed to talk to teachers to get information about her parents?

“This one will be quick too,” Effie promised him. “I don’t think Professor Quirrell will have the answer I’m looking for.”

“Oh, whatever,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “Be a giant bloody suck up if that’s what makes you happy. It’s not like it makes a difference to me. I’ll still see you at dinner though, right?”

“Of course,” Effie replied, and with one last roll of his eyes that almost seemed fond, Ron was off.

“Ms. P-Potter,” Quirrell said, stuttering over her name as she approached. The scent of garlic that pervaded the room was strongest around him, and Effie had to fight off the urge to wrinkle her nose at it. “How c-can—can I h-help you?”

There was a flash of something in his eyes. Something like greed, or maybe just peculiarly sharp intelligence. It made Effie frown a little—Quirrell was a little hard to take seriously normally, what with the stutter and all, but those were not the eyes of a man that was not serious. It made Effie hesitate to ask her question—even though she had every intention of asking this of every professor she encountered, since it was the only lead she had, and the only place she knew to start looking. 

Effie shook her head. “Sorry, Professor. I just have a bit of a strange question.”

“You kn-know what they say,” Quirrell said, fluttering his hands nervously. “N-no qu-question i-i-is too strange a qu-question, Ms. P-Potter.”

Years with the Dursleys where any question was too strange a question had Effie begging to disagree, but she kept her mouth shut and dropped her eyes to the corner of Quirrell’s desk. “Of course,” she agreed softly. 

“What i-is it then, Ms. Potter?”

Effie shifted slightly. She glanced at Quirrell and then away. Everything smelled so overwhelmingly of garlic. 

She took a deep breath while also trying to avoid inhaling any more garlic scent, and steeled herself. She told herself she would ask everyone. It was the least she could do. 

“I know you’re not, um, old enough,” Effie began awkwardly. Quirrell blinked strangely, and Effie did her best to pull together the scraps of her courage again. “Not old enough to have been teaching here when my parents were students, I mean,” she said more coherently. “But did you maybe…know them anyway? Go to school at the same time as them, or meet them afterwards somehow, or…I don’t know. I don’t really know why I’m asking you.”

Quirrell folded his arms across his chest and leaned against his desk. Then he yelped when he pulled a bit of his turban and immediately straightened back up, somewhat ruining the effect. Effie resisted the urge to laugh, trying to remember that this was a serious moment. 

“A-are you g-going around asking a-all your t-t-teachers this, Ms. P-Potter?” Quirrell asked, once he had draped the ends of his turban over his shoulders and leaned against the desk. 

“Yes,” Effie admitted, embarrassed. “It’s…it’s the best way I could think of—of getting to know them. Asking people that might know. And the only adult wixen I know are my professors, so…”

“It’s commendable,” Quirrell said, and the fact that it was the first time she’d ever heard him speak without a stutter had her glancing up at his face quickly. He looked different than he had a moment ago. There was something faraway in his eyes as he tapped his fingers against one arm where he had them crossed over his chest. “Is this an ambition of y-yours? To g-g-get to know your p-parents?”

Effie thought of a battered old hat and the words, “ Slytherin could help you achieve greatness.”

“Yes,” she told Quirrell. “It is.”

Quirrell eyed her. She eyed him. This entire interaction was starting to feel more important than it should be, like some otherworldly being had snuck in when Effie wasn’t looking and charged the garlic scented air with something like fate too. She didn’t like it one bit, especially since Quirrell seemed immune to the change. 

“That’s good to know,” Quirrell said softly, like he was a completely different person if only for this moment. Fate, again, Effie suspected, and she liked it even less the second time than she liked it the first. 

And then, just as suddenly as he had changed, Quirrell was back. “W-well, Ms. Potter, I’m a-afraid I’ll have t-t-to disappoint you today. I d-did go to school with J-James and Lily, y-yes, but I was quite a few y-years—years above them. N-not to m-mention, they w-were both Gr-Gryffindors l-l-like—like yourself.”

“What house were you in?” Effie suddenly felt compelled to ask, looking directly into her professor’s eyes. 

He smiled, a strange thing, and without even a trace of a stutter, answered, “Hufflepuff.”

For some reason, Effie got the impression that she was being lied to. 

“Thanks for answering my question,” Effie said, taking several steps backwards now. She wanted to get out of here and possibly never come back, as soon as she could. 

“A-any t-t-time, Ms. P-Potter,” Quirrell said, with his normal, slightly nervous smile back on his face. “I’d b-be happy to t-talk to y-you about D-D-Defense Against the Dark Arts next time, p-perhaps. M-maybe then I’ll a-actually be able t-to actually a-a-answer the qu-question, eh, Potter?”

I’m never asking you a question again even if my life depends on it, Effie thought a little viciously. 

What she said was: “Of course, Professor Quirrell. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Then she turned tail and fled out of the room.

Chapter Text

“Every teacher!” Ron exclaimed, directing his words to the rest of the first years sitting around them at the dinner table. “She’s already talked to every single teacher!”

Effie pushed food around on her plate and tried not to be bothered by Ron’s retelling of Effie’s professor-cornering habit. She knew, objectively, that if she asked him to he would stop making a big deal out of it. But that would also mean telling him why she was talking to all the professors instead of just letting him assume it was because she was trying to get ahead in her studies, and that was almost worse than the teasing. 

“Every teacher?” Seamus repeated, shooting Effie a glance. “What for?”

“Just…” Effie said, when it became clear she was going to have to give some kind of answer to this question. “You know.”

“Do we know?” Dean asked, looking confused. 

Effie shrugged unhelpfully. 

“Well, I know,” Hermione butted in suddenly, despite not being part of the conversation before this moment. “I know your type very well. You just don’t want to put in the work to get good grades, so you’re trying to get all of the teachers to like you another way.”

“What?” Effie asked, a little startled by this accusation. “I’m not trying to—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hermione said loftily. “It’ll never work. The only students that will really succeed are the ones that put in the work on their own.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” Effie insisted. 

“Oh, really?” Hermione shot back, glaring at Effie. “What are you doing then? I saw you talking to Flitwick after class! You didn’t even leave until those fourth years started going in for their class!”

This was true, because Flitwick, much like Sprout, had been so delighted by the prospect of talking about Lily that he had started doing so immediately and only stopped recounting how she had made every feather in the room float with her overpowered levitation charm when his next class had started coming in. More important, though, was the knowledge that Hermione, who was not her friend and had no business waiting for her after class, had done so all the same in the hopes of getting information about her.

“You were following me?” Effie asked, bewildered and perhaps a little angry. Granted, there were plenty of people that had a tendency to stare at her in the halls, pointing at her when she walked by and whispering about her famed infancy of Dark Lord destruction, but Effie’s fellow housemates, for the most part, hadn’t engaged in this behavior. Not to mention, the staring was at least impersonal even if it was irritating. Lurking about while she talked to Flitwick about her mum, which was private information, was targeted.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “It’s not following if I was already there. Besides, you didn’t answer the question. You don’t have an answer, do you? Since it’s true, and you’re only talking to the teachers to try and get on their good side.”

Not knowing how to respond to that aside from incoherent angry yelling, Effie decided it was probably best to just keep her mouth shut and try to let it go, for once. 

She was apparently alone in that sentiment. 

“Nice going, Granger,” Parvati said snidely. 

“There’s nothing wrong with a girl trying to get ahead in her own way,” Lavender added, with a sly smile directed towards Effie. Effie still didn’t necessarily like the implication that she was only talking to teachers to get ahead in life, but she did prefer not being hated for that assumption, at the very least.

“It’s not actually a bad idea,” Dean agreed hesitantly.

“And,” Neville chimed in, quietly and nervously, “the professors here seem pretty nice, anyway.”

“Don’t talk to Effie like that,” Ron added. “Just because her personality is ten times better than yours doesn’t mean you have a right to be rude.”

He immediately went pink all over after saying this. 

Hermione only stuck her nose up in the air and sniffed, packing up her belongings and standing quickly. “Anyway, I’m off to the library, so I can actually learn something.”

She left in a swish of robes, arms already laden with books despite it only being the second day. 

“Don’t let her get to you, Effie,” Seamus said, once she was gone. 

“She’s mental, that one,” Ron agreed. 

Effie only frowned, staring down at her plate. This was weird, people standing up for her. She wasn’t sure if she liked it, even though she knew she was supposed to be grateful. Maybe it was just because it had never been this way for her before. 

“Thanks,” she said all the same, and thankfully, that was the end of that. For the time being, at least. 

Besides, at least Hermione mentioning the library had reminded Effie of something. Libraries usually kept yearbooks for all past years, didn’t they? Or at least some kind of record. Which meant, if she could find it…

She could verify whether Quirrell had actually been lying to her about what house he was in or not. And if he was, she could maybe understand why. 

By the time Friday came around—and with it, Effie’s last new class for the week—she had already set up tea appointments with three of her professors to talk further about her parents and asked three others, with much less success. She didn’t necessarily need anyone else to tell her about her parents—truthfully she could have stopped asking after McGonagall said yes. 

But Effie had also placed a great deal more emphasis on Potions than she had any other class because of her name. Not her first name, but her middle one. Asphodel, which was one of the potion ingredients sold at the apothecary Hagrid took her to. Asphodel, which was, for just that moment in the apothecary, the thing that tied her most strongly to the magical world. 

“Hey, Ron,” Effie asked in a quiet voice as they were taking their seats in the Potions classroom. It was dingy and dark down here in the dungeons, but she tried not to let that bother her. It was all the worst aspects of her cupboard at the Dursleys’ without any of the comfort that came from it being her own space. 

“What?” Ron asked distractedly, as he checked his other pocket for his wand. 

“My middle name isn’t common knowledge too, is it?” 

Ron paused his search, squinting at her for a moment. He scrunched up his nose as he thought, and then finally said, “Well, no. If I know what it is I can’t remember. Why? What is it?”

“A potion ingredient,” Effie said dodgily. 

Ron reemerged from his left robe pocket with wand in hand and said, “Really? You’re named after a potion ingredient? That’s almost as bad as my middle name.”

“What’s yours?” Effie asked, suddenly possessed by the same curiosity that had caused her to ask Quirrell about his Hogwarts house a day ago. 

Speaking of, she still needed to look into that. 

“Uh,” Ron said, going red from embarrassment. “You know what, let’s not talk about it.”

Effie could accept that, especially since the Potions professor was now sweeping into the room, his black robes billowing behind him as he walked. 

Effie had placed a lot of importance on Potions, but she did not have high hopes for the class outside of that. She had seen the way Snape glared at her when she had made eye contact with him at the welcoming feast, and she had felt the odd spike of pain in her forehead. She’d even heard the older students whispering about him in the common room and at the dinner table—he did not like Gryffindors. Any Gryffindors. Even Percy—who according to everyone got along with every teacher and got phenomenal grades—struggled to get Exceeds Expectations from Snape on perfectly good potions that any Slytherin student would have gotten an Outstanding for. 

So her expectations were not high, but upon actually sitting through a class with Snape, she suspected they definitely should have been lower than what they actually were. 

“Wands away,” he said, once he was done sneering over roll call—and Effie’s name in particular, at that. “You are here to learn the exact art of potion making. 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 a softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…”

Oh, he was full of it too, on top of being mean. Effie supposed she probably should have predicted this based on the rumors—it was always teachers that took themselves too seriously that were the worst for students. 

“I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”

Silence followed this speech. The reactions in the room were varied. Hermione, for some reason, looked eager to start brewing a potion at once, while Neville seemed to be wishing he could disappear into his cauldron. The Slytherins wore matching neutral expressions, other than Crabbe and Goyle. The former was poking his cauldron with his wand, clearly having not heard Snape’s command to put their wands away, and the latter was poking the former with his wand, clearly not having heard Snape’s command to put their wands away. Malfoy was sitting next to them, looking a little pained.

For a moment, Effie almost felt bad for him. 

“Potter!” Snape barked, and Effie, who had been busy contemplating whether or not she was willing to be the kind of person that actually felt bad for people like Malfoy and not paying even a little attention to Snape…jolted so violently that she knocked into her small stack of Potions textbooks with her elbow. It was enough to send them clattering to the floor, and Effie winced, especially at the look Snape then gave her. 

“Pick them up,” Snape told her, in a low voice that could best be described as threatening, and Effie scrambled to do so. In her haste to straighten back up once she’d collected them, though, she knocked her shoulder against the desk. Ron had to scramble to catch his own books before they fell too, and both cauldrons rattled dangerously. 

The class laughed, because of course they did. Effie supposed she should just be glad that some of the Slytherin students tried to be polite about it. She could practically feel Snape seething, even though she could only see his shoes from her new position on the floor, and she closed her eyes and contemplated just staying here for a moment. Or two. Or forever. 

“Merlin’s beard, Effie!” Ron exclaimed, through his own laughter—contained as much as he could contain it, just like the Slytherins. He helped her up, though, so Effie supposed she could forgive him for laughing if she must. 

Effie didn’t get a chance to respond, since, seeing as she was upright now, Snape had evidently run out of patience for children and their laughter. “Quiet down!” he snapped. 

When Effie had finally sat back on her stool and looked up, she realized that Snape was standing right in front of her, looking absolutely furious. 

“Thank you, Potter, for joining us again,” Snape said in a dangerous sort of drawl. Effie swallowed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you would prefer clowning off in class over all else.” 

Effie knew protesting his accusation wouldn’t do her any good, so she just did her best to look contrite as she said, “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

Snape’s lip curled up. “I should hope not. Now—what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

“I don’t—” Effie started to say, before the words caught up to her. “Asphodel? You said asphodel?”

“Yes, Potter, pay attention.” 

Effie glanced to the side, distracted by a bit of motion in the corner of her eye. It was only Hermione, practically falling out of her seat with the force she was trying to raise her hand with. 

It was the wrong thing to do. Snape slammed both hands down on the desk in front of her, causing Effie to flinch backwards. She thought of frying pans and the hard knuckles hidden underneath the flesh of Dudley’s fists, the loud banging on her cupboard door every morning and the avalanche of dust that rained down on her when Dudley jumped on the stairs. She swallowed, refusing to meet Snape’s eyes as she bid the memories to leave. 

“Don’t ignore me,” Snape said, with his voice full of loathing. 

Effie closed her eyes. He was not going to tell her anything about asphodel, not even what potion it made when it was added to an infusion of wormwood, and the sooner she got this over with, the better. “I don’t know the answer to the question,” she very nearly whispered. “Sir.”

“No?” Snape asked, a spark of delight, of all things, catching in his eyes. He enjoyed the fact that he was making her uncomfortable. “Clearly fame isn’t everything. Let’s try again, then. Potter. Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

Effie knew better than to look away again, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Hermione stretching. On her other side, she could hear Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle laughing. 

“I don’t know that either, sir,” she said. 

“Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?” Snape asked cruelly. 

“Oh, I opened a book,” Effie said, suddenly fed up with this. “I opened several, in fact. I even read them, believe it or not—which is how I know you’re asking me things that aren’t from our textbook. You said, ‘Clearly fame isn’t everything,’ but you seem to put a lot of stock in it since you think I should know more than half the class probably does.” Effie paused for a moment, feeling hot with anger and shame and everything else, and then added, “Ask someone else your questions, Professor. Hermione seems eager to answer them.”

The room went deadly silent. This, Effie had experience in. She’d induced the same effect in classrooms since the first day she first walked into one, usually right after she said or did something that was sure to result in—

“Five points from Gryffindor, Potter,” Snape said, in a very dangerous voice. 

Honestly, Effie had been expecting detention, once what she said caught up to her. 

“Regardless of your impudence, here’s one last question for you, Potter. Think of it as a chance to prove yourself, if you will. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Effie actually knew the answer to this question. She really had read everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. She’d even read some of it twice, when she was looking through it for information about her middle name. The thing about that book, though, was that it only listed information about the flora like what their alternative names were and where they could be found, and rarely mentioned what exact potions they were used in. 

But she had told Snape to ask someone else, so she was not going to answer him. Even if she had to sit on this stool and lose every point Gryffindor had ever gotten and start off her first year in a new school attending detentions for three months straight. 

It was a resolve that Snape seemed keen to test. 

“Another five points from Gryffindor for your silence,” he snarled. “Now answer.” 

Effie folded her arms across her chest. She looked at a seam on Snape’s shoulder. She did not answer. 

“That’s another five points from Gryffindor,” Snape said. “You’ve lost fifteen already. Do you really want to keep playing this game, Potter?”

Effie said nothing. 

“Ten points from Gryffindor,” Snape said, his lips curling nastily from beneath his great hooked nose. How Effie wanted to punch him in that nose—maybe she’d even be doing him a favor and setting it back straight for him. “That’s twenty-five points in one sitting.”

“They’re the same!” Hermione suddenly cried. She was standing, her hand still raised up to the ceiling. Effie figured that she had probably gotten to the position trying to catch Snape’s attention. Now she looked horrified, her spare hand coming up to cover her mouth as she stared, wide-eyed, at Snape. 

Effie let out a very quiet breath when Snape turned away from her at last. “Five points from Gryffindor, Granger, for your outburst . And sit down.”

Hermione sat, tears welling up in her eyes before she blinked them away. Effie understood the feeling. 

Snape eyed her for a moment longer, then shot one last venomous look towards Effie before sweeping back to the front of the room. “For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, Granger is correct—they are the same plant, which is also called aconite.” He paused as if he was waiting for applause, and when none came, snapped, “Well? Why aren’t you copying that down?”

The flurry of activity that followed as everyone scrambled to get out parchment and quills was a relief to Effie, as it was easier to blend into a crowd when everyone was making noise. And thankfully, at least for the time being, Snape was done with his little demonstration. He assigned them pairs and set them to making a potion that would cure boils. He wrote the directions on the blackboard with chalk, and then proceeded to circle the room like a shark that smelled blood in the water, swooping in on unfortunate souls and criticizing their work until even the most stone faced Slytherins were cracking a little under the pressure. Except for Malfoy, who seemed to be either a Potions prodigy or naturally cruel enough that Snape felt no need to ruin him further. 

Ron shot Effie concerned looks the whole time they worked together—and he wasn’t alone, either, though she was pretty sure some of the looks she was getting might be on the right side of admiration. This only succeeded at making her even more uncomfortable, to the degree that she almost didn’t notice when Neville exploded his and Seamus’ cauldron while Snape was in the middle of praising Malfoy. The potion got everywhere and got there quickly, seeping into the stone floors and burning holes into clothing. Neville, who had taken the brunt of it, collapsed, red boils breaking out all over his body. Effie stopped crushing her snake fangs, looking over at Snape. Surely even a teacher like him would—

“You idiot boy!” Snape snarled. “I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?”

Neville only whimpered in pain as Snape caused the potion to disappear with a wave of his wand. 

Effie was appalled. 

“Take him to the hospital wing,” Snape snapped at Seamus, though he offered no directions to the hospital wing despite them being first years. Seamus, who quickly picked Neville up off the floor and left with him, didn’t seem too keen to stop and ask, either. 

Effie clutched her pestle a little tighter in her hands. 

“You, Potter!” Snape said, suddenly rounding on her. “You read the book, you said. Why didn’t you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he’d make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That’s another five points you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”

This was a ridiculous enough statement that Effie was more than willing to break her vow of silence to contradict it, just for the record if nothing else, but Ron stepped on her foot before she could. 

“It’s not worth it,” he muttered. “I’ve heard what my brothers have said about him—he’s nasty.”

Seeing as Effie had already lost thirty points on her first day, she supposed this was probably sound enough advice. 

That didn’t mean she had to like it, though. 

Potions ended an hour early that day, but it was still an hour too long. Effie had never been happier to leave a place in her life—and she had grown up with the Dursleys. Ron followed her out just as quickly, both of them having their things packed up nearly as soon as Snape had let them go. Ron stayed hot on her heels as he followed her to Herbology, for once not mentioning Effie’s professor-collecting thing. Or lack thereof, in this particular circumstance. 

Instead, he caught up to her quickly with his longer legs, nudged her with an elbow, and said, “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

Effie thought it might be Ron’s way of asking if she was okay, in a rude, terrible, boyish way, and this made her laugh. It was a slightly wet sounding laugh. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to cry. Let’s go to Herbology.”

“Herbology and then Hagrid’s?” Ron asked. 

Hagrid had sent a note along with Hedwig earlier asking Effie if she wanted to come to tea after her classes Friday. Effie, who was already getting tea with at least three professors, figured she might as well get tea with the gamekeeper as well. 

“Herbology and then Hagrid’s,” she agreed. 

“Mind if I come?” Ron asked, looking for a moment like he genuinely thought she might turn him down. 

Effie blinked and then smiled. She’d never had a friend willing to go out of his way to spend time with her before. Well, she’d never had a friend at all before Ron, if she was honest. “Honestly, Ron? I’d love that.”

It was a good reminder, she thought. That despite Snape and the terribleness of her first Potions class, there were still plenty of good things that had come out of this world, too. 

Hagrid, thankfully, was incredibly understanding about Effie’s Weasley shaped tag along when she showed up for her Friday afternoon tea appointment with him. This was a good thing, since Effie had never had friends to take places with her before, and so had not thought to send any forewarning. 

“Make yerselves at home,” Hagrid said, once he’d wrestled his giant dog that was named Fang back long enough to let them through the door and Effie had introduced Ron.

Effie took a moment to glance around Hagrid’s cabin, doing her best to disguise her outright fascination. There was only one room—Effie recalled Malfoy using the word savage to describe Hagrid’s living situation, but she thought this was cozy. Well, cozy with a definite side of rustic, considering there were dead animals hanging on the walls and everything was more patchwork than original material. All the same, Effie would live somewhere like this and be quite happy about it to boot. 

Though Effie was perhaps not the best judge, considering anywhere was better than the Dursleys. 

“Reckon yer a Weasley, eh?” Hagrid said conversationally to Ron, as he poured boiling water out into teacups and started setting rock cakes onto a plate for them. Effie eyed them dubiously—she liked Hagrid, and as a general rule she liked food, but those hardly looked edible even to her. Judging by Ron’s face, he had the same idea. 

“Yes,” Ron said, looking a little startled he had been addressed. 

“Good lot, you Weasleys,” Hagrid said. “I know yer brothers, ‘course. Spent half me life chasin’ yer twins away from the forest and nearly spent the other half talkin’ to Charlie about dragons.”

Effie knew for a fact that Ron had two more brothers besides these three, but Ron didn’t mention them, so she figured it would probably be weird if she did. 

“That sounds like Charlie,” Ron said. “Annoying, he is.”

Hagrid laughed. Impressively, the sound alone very nearly succeeded at rattling their dishes. “He’s a good lad, Charlie. Great with animals. How’s that job holdin’ up fer ‘im, eh? Does he like the weather in Romania?”

“Wouldn’t know. Charlie only talks about dragons when he writes,” Ron said, braving a bite of the rock cake he’d been given. He’d lasted thirty whole seconds longer than Effie had thought he would—she might not have known Ron Weasley for long, but she knew him long enough to know he couldn’t resist food when it was placed in front of him. 

Ron immediately grimaced after placing the rock cake in his mouth and attempting to chew it, so Effie eyed hers doubtfully. Could she get away with telling Hagrid she wasn’t hungry? Probably, but, well…she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“What are the twins trying to get into the forest for?” Effie asked politely. 

“Who knows,” Hagrid said, shaking his head. “They’re rascals, the both of them. Haven’t had trouble like them ones since—well, since yer dad, I’d say.”

“My dad?” Ron repeated, somehow looking like this was both the best and worst news he’d ever had. 

Hagrid laughed again. “Arthur? No. Blimey—Effie’s dad! Spent all his time trying to get into the forest too, didn’t he? Caught him out there all disheveled and scruffy looking at least once a month, I did.”

“You did?” Effie asked, not quite believing her ears, or her luck. Her dad, regularly sneaking into the forest once a month! Though, as far as facts about her parents went…this was definitely a bit of a weird one. “What was he doing?”

“Never knew,” Hagrid said, with a shrug. “Got all tight-lipped when I found ‘im. Never even had his mates there. Couldn’t bring meself to turn him into ole McGonagall, either. Had enough goin’ on with Filch, I figure—oi, yeh haven’t run into Filch yet, have yeh?”

Effie didn’t want to talk about Filch, not when she could interrogate Hagrid about her father’s weird monthly excursions and the fact that he had friends—

But at the same time, she recognized it was probably best to drop it. 

“Haven’t seen much of him,” Ron told Hagrid. “Fred says he’s awful, though.”

“Right git he is,” Hagrid agreed, unexpectedly sourly. “Filch, not yer brother, I mean. Yeh’d be best avoidin’ him, if you can.”

“We certainly won’t be seeking him out,” Ron said. 

It was at that moment that Fang laid his giant head in Effie’s lap, covering nearly the whole thing and getting a bit of drool on her robes. Effie blinked at him, and he just looked very sad and pitiable back at her. She reached out to pat his head hesitantly, and then when nothing further happened, scratched him behind the ears too. She couldn’t help but be a bit nervous—the only dogs she had met before belonged to Aunt Marge, and none of those had been particularly friendly—but Fang seemed perfectly good. Nice, even. Effie found she quite liked dogs, when they were Fang. 

As Hagrid told Ron a story about Mr. Filch’s cat following him around, an idea occurred to Effie. She eyed the untouched rock cake still sitting innocently on her plate, and then Fang, and came to a quick decision. She could get away with this easily, and Hagrid’s feelings would be preserved. 

Effie finally took a piece of her rock cake onto her fork, completely unnoticed by either Ron or Hagrid, and slipped it under the table to give to Fang. He seemed to love rock cakes, no matter how terrible Ron’s face had been when he ate some of his, and Effie smiled a bit as she fed Fang another piece. 

“...he hates Effie, too,” Ron said, and Effie focused back in on their conversation at the sound of her name. “You should have seen it! He took thirty points off of her just for not knowing how to answer a question.”

“Snape?” Effie asked. 

“Yeah,” Ron confirmed, a little distractedly. “You were pretty impressive, though. Him taking off points by the tens and you just sitting there and taking it like it was nothing!” He then seemed to realize what he said, because he went red in the face, causing Effie to go a little red in the face too. “I only mean—well—Granger was having a bloody breakdown over five points, but you didn’t even seem to care! Seamus and Dean thought it was cool too,” he tacked on, almost defensively. 

Effie ducked her head, glad when her hair fell into her face and hid Ron from her sight. “I’d hardly say it was cool,” she defended. “Just…just something I’m used to doing.”

“Hold on,” Hagrid said, nearly interrupting her. “What’s this about Snape takin’ thirty points from yeh on yer first day?”

Effie lifted her head enough to look at Hagrid, but only just. “He really hates me, Hagrid,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“Snape hates everyone,” Hagrid said, but it sounded like an automatic response. Effie felt her eyes narrow a bit. 

“No, Hagrid, it’s true,” Ron said. “He really hates her.”

“Rubbish!” Hagrid exclaimed, but now he seemed a little nervous, too. “Why should he?”

Ron and Effie exchanged an incredulous glance, just to verify they weren’t the only one that thought this was a little weird. Hagrid seemed to notice, too, considering he immediately asked, “So, how are your other classes going?”

Ron raised his eyebrow a little at Effie, she nodded. They weren’t going to get any further with Hagrid if they pushed it, so they might as well let it go for now. If there was some great and mysterious reason Snape might hate Effie more than anyone else—well, she was sure that it would come to light eventually. 

“They’re fine, mostly,” Ron said, in response to Hagrid’s question. “History of Magic though…”

Effie zoned out a little, having heard Ron’s many complaints about Binns and his terrible teaching before. She fed one more piece of rock cake to Fang while Hagrid was distracted—meaning it looked like she ate nearly half the rock cake—and then noticed something under the tea cozy when she moved her fork back to get another piece of rock cake for Fang.

Effie let out an involuntary curious hum, sliding the paper out from under the tea cozy. It was obvious at once that it was a newspaper, though the moving picture on the front still managed to startle her, despite her having time to get used to them by now. The headline for the article was: Gringotts Break-in Latest, and the first line read, “Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown.”

Ron had told Effie about a Gringotts break-in happening on the train, but she had honestly forgotten about it since then. And she hadn’t realized it had been on her birthday in the first place. The day she went to Gringotts, with…

“Hagrid!” Effie exclaimed, after she read the rest of the article. A vault that had been emptied that same day, when Hagrid emptied a vault. And that couldn’t happen all that often, could it? Effie’s trust vault alone had way more Galleons in it than she felt like she would ever manage to use. “That Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It could have been happening while we were there!”

This time, the subject change Hagrid made was so obvious it was very nearly insulting. 

“Oh, is that the time?” he said, looking at a watch in his pocket. “You kids best be off, then. Don’ want to keep yeh out too late.”

With that, Ron and Effie were promptly given rock cakes to go and herded out of Hagrid’s hut. They walked back up to the castle in silence for a bit. Effie was mulling over the conversation they’d just had—Ron was likely thinking about dinner. 

“It’s not just me, right?” Effie eventually asked, as they were approaching the Entrance Hall. “That was weird?”

“Yeah,” Ron said, shrugging his shoulders up in a slightly helpless looking way. “Definitely weird. Didn’t want to say anything about Snape, didn’t want to say anything about the break-in…and yet he left that paper out all the same.”

“He could have just forgotten to put it away,” Effie said, but now that Ron had pointed it out, it seemed weird to her too. The paper had been a day old, and there wasn’t a newer one sitting next to it, and that article hadn’t been on the front page, either. The front page hadn’t even been there. Which all pointed to one conclusion in specific: 

Hagrid wanted her to know that the Gringotts break-in was presumably to steal the object he had taken. 

The question, then, was why?

Chapter Text

“Hey, Effie,” Ron said, as they left the Great Hall together after an early lunch. “Do you play chess?”

“No,” Effie admitted a little nervously. Was that normal? Did all kids play chess? Was she about to expose her childhood as lacking by admitting she didn’t? “I’ve never played before.”

“Never?” Ron asked, sounding affronted. Effie suppressed the urge to wince—she was apparently right to be nervous. Chess was evidently a common experience amongst children. This was Ron, though, so maybe she could just tell him Muggles were different and he wouldn’t know to question it…? “That’s just it. Dean and Seamus don’t know the rules, Neville isn’t any good, and now this.” 

“Oh,” Effie said, brightening as she realized chess wasn’t something that all children played. It was apparently something that Ron alone played, which fit a lot better with her limited understanding of so-called ‘normal child activities’—some of them did indoor things like playing chess, but most of them preferred more active things with less strategy and more fun. 

Like Quidditch, for instance.

“Well, that’s alright,” Ron said, perking up a little. “I can teach you to play when we get back to the common room—”

“I’m not going back to the common room,” Effie interrupted, a little awkwardly. “At least—at least not until later.”

Ron paused, only just now noticing that Effie had stopped walking so she didn’t go so far in the wrong direction that she would be late to her appointment with Sprout, and turned to look at her askance. “You aren’t? Where are you going, then?”

Effie felt her cheeks warm. 

On the one hand, she could deter Ron pretty easily with a very feasible lie: the library. She did have homework to do, even if it wasn’t due until later in the week, so she had a reason to be there. And she hadn’t known Ron for long, but one week of classes was plenty to reveal he wasn’t exactly the studious type. She liked that about him, honestly. Years and years of having to be worse than Dudley or else meant that she didn’t really think of herself as the studious type either, especially not when she was living in a magical school and witnessing magical things. But, Ron was her first friend, and…she didn’t want to lie to him. Or have to miss out on any of her meetings on the off chance he decided he wanted to accompany her to the library. 

“Professor Sprout’s office,” she said. “I asked her to talk to me about—about something. It’s not a big deal.”

“What?” Ron asked, his brow furrowing. “Is this the reason you were always hanging around after the first day of class?”

“Yes,” Effie admitted. 

Ron stared at her for a moment. He blinked a few times. He covered his eyes with a hand and gingerly massaged his temple. “You really are a schmooze,” he said, like it was a great hardship to him. Effie felt a spike of fear go through her—Ron thought she was trying to get all the professors on her good side, this was going to be the end of their friendship, and she still couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth—

Ron lowered his hand, and he was grinning. “Well, that’s fine. See if you can convince Sprout to grade my papers kindly too, won’t you?” he asked.

“I’m not going to—to—schmooze,” Effie said, but her protests felt weak and lame. 

“It’s alright,” Ron said, shrugging. “Really. It’s a good strategy. Don’t tell Percy I said that, though. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Effie said a little quietly.

It was better if she just let him think she was talking to the teachers for student benefits, anyway. Since, you know, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the whole truth. 

“I’m teaching you wizard’s chess later, though,” Ron said. “You aren’t getting out of it.”

“Yeah, alright,” Effie said, though her heart wasn’t as in it as she wanted it to be. “I’ve always kind of wanted to know how it’s played.”

Which was true, to an extent. Though she didn’t exactly sit around thinking of how she longed to play chess when she could be thinking about how she longed to…go outside, or…get a full meal…or…or know what a hug from her parents felt like…

Well. Though she didn’t daydream about chess, it was something that had been denied her, and like all things that had been denied her, she wanted it.

“Great!” Ron said, and the genuine excitement in his eyes was catching. Effie found she didn’t really mind if he thought she was a schmooze—it didn’t really matter one way or the other, so long as he was still her friend.

She said goodbye to Ron with a wave of her hand and a promise to play chess with him later, and then left to go and talk to Sprout, the nervous thrum of her heart in her chest following her all the way.

Despite Herbology taking place outside in the greenhouses, Sprout’s office was tucked away into a part of the dungeons that Effie hadn’t been to before. It was strange, to walk through the dungeons—which had before only been the realm of Snape, coldness, and suffering—and not feel unwelcome. 

Effie found the door that she was looking for—“You’ll know it,” Sprout told her, when she was giving out the directions, “by the gold leaf on the door.”—and steeled herself quickly before knocking rapidly, hoping to get it over and done with quickly before she could chicken out. The door opened of its own volition as soon as she did, which should not have been as surprising as it was, considering she was in a magic school. 

“Is that you, Ms. Potter?” Professor Sprout called out from inside the room. 

“...Yes,” Effie said. A moment passed, and she became painfully aware that she was just standing there and being weird even though Sprout already knew she was there. With that thought, she stepped inside Sprout’s office, the door swinging magically shut behind her. 

To Effie’s surprise, Sprout’s office was actually incredibly casual. The round arch in the architecture behind her Herbology professor’s desk gave the room a soft feel, which was aided by the fact that Sprout had apparently opted for a full blown seating area consisting of fluffy couches and squashy armchairs in front of her desk instead of the single, uncomfortable looking chair Effie was used to seeing set out for students to sit in. There were a number of plants sitting in pots around the room, and Sprout was in the middle of attending to one of them when Effie walked in. Despite being in the dungeon, one wall was entirely a window, though it didn’t display any scenery familiar to Effie or even reminiscent of Hogwarts at all. Instead it was a lot of friendly looking trees and lushly green ferns, all swaying gently in a soft breeze as the summer sun beamed down through their leaves. It was magic, it had to be, and Effie couldn’t help but stare at it. 

“Charmed it myself,” Sprout said, apparently noticing where Effie’s attention had gone. “Difficult charm it was, too. Not normally my forte, but, well… I’ll make anything happen for my plants, as my partner always said.”

“It’s amazing,” Effie said, not taking her eyes off of the window. Sprout had said nothing to deter her—was still, in fact, tending some kind of flower in the corner—so Effie approached cautiously. She patted the wall that was a window a little cautiously, surprised to feel the cool texture of regular stone under hand despite the fact that it definitely looked like glass. She smiled, a small, fragile thing that was only for herself. “Magic is wonderful.”

Sprout paused in her plant tending for a moment, clippers in her hand, and smiled over at Effie. “Isn’t it?”

It was hard not to smile back, even if all of this was strange for Effie. She wasn’t used to teachers feeling like a safe person to interact with, and yet Sprout felt safe all the same. 

Before the conversation could progress further, there was a soft crack, and in the center of the room there was suddenly a very not-human entity. It had long, leathery ears like a bat and large blue eyes, and it wore what appeared to be a pillowcase tied at the shoulders. It set the tray it was carrying down on Professor Sprout’s desk. 

“Tea is being served at noon for Professor Pomony as requested,” it said in a squeaky voice, before taking a bow.

Sprout beamed at the creature. “Thank you very much, Twingy.”

The creature took one last bow, and disappeared from the room with a pop. Sprout sat about the task of setting down her clippers and taking off her gloves while Effie peeled herself off the wall she hadn’t realized she’d plastered herself against. 

Honestly, she really needed to get a grip on this ‘being surprised by everything magical’ thing. 

“Professor Sprout,” she began hesitantly. Sprout hummed encouragingly. “Who, um…who was that?”

Sprout blinked at this, pausing where she was about to pour tea into the two cups that had been left for them so she could look up at Effie. “One of the Hogwarts house elves, of course. He’s a good lad, Twingy. Very steadfast and hardworking.”

“Oh,” Effie said. Then, “What’s a house elf?”

Now Sprout looked surprised. “You don’t know?”

Effie shifted a little uncomfortably, feeling ashamed for giving away her lack of knowledge about something even though it really couldn’t be helped. “No. I was—I was raised by Muggles, Professor. There’s a lot I don’t know about…magic…stuff.” And her parents, of course, which was why she was here in the first place. Though that probably had more to do with the specific Muggles that had raised her than anything else. 

“Oh!” Sprout said, her face clearing. “Oh, I hadn’t known. Relatives of your mother, then, I presume? Don’t worry, Effie, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Well—a house elf is a type of magical creature. They form bonds with specific wizards or witches, or magical families, or even magical places like Hogwarts. They do tasks for the people or places they’re bonded to in exchange for the latent magic they get from the bond. Usually cooking and cleaning and the sort, though in the old days, they would assist in battle too.”

For some reason, this brought forth the imagery of Twingy and his large ears and protuberant eyes dressed up in a miniature suit of armor, and Effie shook it quickly from her head lest she laugh. “Are there a lot of them here?” she asked instead. 

“Oh, a good few,” Sprout said. “They mostly stay in the kitchens, but you ought to say hi if you ever see one out and about. They love the students a great deal, they’d always be happy to help you with anything you need.”

Effie thought about how when she was younger and cooking and cleaning for the Dursleys all she wanted was for one of them to tell her that she was doing a good job, and supposed she would do the same for one of these house elves if she ever saw one again. Though, thinking of the Dursleys did beg another question. “Are they…happy? The house elves?”

“Happy?” Sprout repeated, a little confused, before her face cleared. “Oh, yes. Muggleborns do feel a little weird about it when they find out. I promise it’s not really…oh, what’s the word you use? Slavery?”

“Yes,” Effie confirmed quietly. “Slavery.”

“The bond is mutually beneficial for both parties, and house elves genuinely enjoy doing work. Some families might treat their elves poorly, granted, but there are ways for the elves to protect themselves from cruel masters or leave bad households if they need to. The Hogwarts elves are very happy, though, I assure you.”

“That’s good to hear,” Effie said, and then fell silent as Sprout poured the tea. 

This was slightly awkward, as this whole ordeal had been slightly awkward since she thought of the idea shortly after talking to Hagrid. But she swallowed her trepidation, going easily when Sprout gestured to a seat with a smile. It was surprisingly comfortable, and Effie had to resist the urge to tuck her feet up under her in the armchair. Sprout didn’t seem affected though, since she just situated herself comfortably in the armchair across from Effie’s and sipped her tea with a satisfied sigh. 

“Well,” Sprout said, after that first sip. “You wanted to know about your parents, yes?”

Effie sat up a little straighter, holding her tea gingerly in her hands. “Yes.”

“Is there anything in specific you want to know about them?” Sprout asked kindly. 

Effie thought over her conversation with Sprout in the past, when she had asked about the possibility of this meeting in the first place. “You mentioned earlier that they weren’t good at Herbology, but you said that my dad liked Transfiguration and my mum liked Charms. Was there…anything else? That they were interested in back then?”

“Quite the question,” Sprout remarked, though she did it cheerfully. She seemed to take a moment to think, leaning back in her seat as she sipped her tea. “Well. I know your dad was good at Care of Magical Creatures.”

“Care of Magical Creatures?” Effie asked for clarification.

“An elective course here at Hogwarts,” Sprout said. “You can take it when you’re a third year. I think in fourth year your father might have been coming to Herbology right after Care of Magical Creatures. It stood out to me, since he was usually bursting in at the last second with part of his uniform missing and his hair all askew from running.”

Effie took this information and filed it away with all the other things she had learned about her father. Hazel-eyed, with glasses. A troublemaker that tried to sneak out into the Forbidden Forest and was frequently late to class, or at least, nearly late. She found she liked this image of her father—he reminded her a bit of Ron, or maybe Fred, or George. 

“His friends liked to tease him about it,” Sprout continued, smiling fondly at the memory. “Well, I don’t think…” She trailed off a little weirdly, then cleared her throat. “Not all of his friends seemed to have Care of Magical Creatures with him beforehand, since two of the four always came in later. But Peter—he liked to tease him about it. James took it well—I think he knew it wasn’t a bad thing to be teased over, being weirdly good with animals, and I think he knew that Peter deserved a chance to be on the other end of that kind of boyish ribbing.”

Effie slowly worked her way through all these words, savoring them as she went. James had three friends he was apparently very close to. One of them was named Peter. “What were his friends like?” she asked. 

Sprout blinked for a moment, then shook her head. She looked a little sad, all of a sudden. “I suppose you wouldn’t know much about them, growing up with your sister’s relatives. Well. I suppose you wouldn’t know much about them at all.” She went silent for a moment, stirring her tea. Effie began to worry that she’d maybe asked the wrong question and that Sprout was going to say this wasn’t a good idea after all and throw her out, but Sprout cleared her throat. “They were good boys, for the most part. There was Peter, of course. He was very timid, Peter was. A lot of the other kids teased him for it—you know how kids are. It didn’t help that Peter wasn’t really good at anything—nothing to cling to, but James looked after him. And there was Remus, of course. It was hard not to love Remus.”

“Why?” Effie asked, drawn into the story.

Sprout smiled. “Such a way about him. He had a hard life, Remus did, but he stayed strong. Kept his spine straight, stuck to it. He put so much work into all of his classes too—it was like he thought that if he didn’t everything would be taken from him in the end. James looked after him, too—can’t tell you how many times that father of yours came up to me to ask for additional copies of assignments or graphs so he could take him back to his friend when he missed class. I can imagine he probably did that with all his teachers.”

She paused, looking at Effie in a soft way. “You reminded me of him a bit, you know, when you came up to my desk after class that first day. Lily—your mum—she was always stubborn enough that she didn’t want to ask teachers for help when she could figure something out on her own, but James would do anything if he was doing it for a friend.”

James Potter, troublemaker. But the sort of troublemaker that was good with animals and looked after his friends, and asked teachers questions—not because he had questions to ask, but because his friend apparently would. And that last one was a trait she shared with him, to an extent. 

Effie felt a curl of warmth in her chest, and it wasn’t from the tea she just drank. 

“Then there was Sirius Black,” Sprout said, and there was a strange shift to her tone. “He was practically joined at the hip with your father when they were younger. He was a good kid too, if a little loud and occasionally destructive.” Sprout went oddly quiet, like she was lost in her thoughts.

That pensive silence made Effie ask, “What happened to them? My dad’s friends?”

Sprout sighed heavily. “Nothing good, I’m afraid. They were dark times, Effie, what with the war going on. And young people…they always want to fight, for one side or…or another.”

Effie swallowed. The war that ended her parents' lives. Of course they would have been fighting in it—why else would they have ever been a target for Voldemort himself? And of course their friends would be fighting too, in some capacity, in some way. 

“Peter is dead,” Sprout announced gravely. “Long dead. Died the same night as your parents did, when he was hunted down by…by a Death Eater.”

“What’s a Death Eater?” Effie asked softly. 

“One of You-Know-Who’s followers,” Sprout answered, giving her a strange look. “No one’s told you that before, really? Not even Professor Dumbledore?”

Effie felt her eyebrows rising slowly. “The Headmaster? Why would he have told me what a Death Eater was?”

Sprout stared at her for a moment, then shook her head with a laugh. “Right. Silly me. That’s really no subject for a child, is it?” She traced the rim of her teacup, lost in thought once again, and Effie found herself more confused than ever. 

As the moment stretched, it eventually became clear that Professor Sprout wasn’t going to shake herself out of it this time, so Effie asked, “And…Sirius? The one that was joined at the hip with my father? What happened to him?”

“He’s in Azkaban,” Sprout said, and gave Effie a sad smile. “Remember what I said? One side or another? He turned out to be a Death Eater, Sirius did.” She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, and then closed it, shaking her head. “Oh, Effie. This has turned dreadfully sad, hasn’t it? I suppose I should have known it might do that.”

“I—” Effie started, then realized she had nothing to say. One of her father’s friends, Voldemort’s follower? That must have been…that must have been horrible to find out. If he found out about it before he died, she supposed. 

“Anyway, there is some good news,” Sprout said. She did her best to sound her normal cheerful self, but the performance fell a little flat. Effie was okay with that, though—both for the attempt to return to normalcy, and the failure to do so shortly after that kind of revelation. “Remus is still alive.”

“Really?” Effie asked, staring at Sprout. “He is?”

“Oh, yes, last I heard,” Sprout said, and suddenly she looked incredibly sad again. “Though I suppose that could have changed since then, since it has been a few years since I last saw him.”

“Where…is he?” Effie asked, a little worried by this reaction now. She remembered, suddenly, that Sprout had mentioned this same friend of her father’s missing classes when he was younger—she hoped he wasn’t dying from some terrible wizard illness. “He’s…okay, isn’t he?”

Sprout pressed her lips into a thin line. “I couldn’t really say, Effie. I’m sorry. I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear. You never know, though—he might turn up at some point.”

Effie sat back in her arm chair, trying to absorb this information too. People that knew her father— really knew him, were friends with him, not just his professors—and one of them was dead, one of them was a criminal, and one of them was apparently at risk of keeling over dead with no one noticing. What…what could have happened to them, back then, when she had just been born? What kind of world had they lived in, where circumstances wreaked havoc on an entire social circle like that?

She thought, briefly about herself. She wasn’t exactly best friends with any of them, but she lived in a dorm with three other people. If she counted herself, that would be four of them, just like her father. Three other people that she saw every day and slept in the same room as every other night. And then…and then ten years from now, she was dead and Hermione was dead and Lavender was in a magical prison and Parvati was just out there somewhere, all alone, suffering from a mysterious illness. 

The whole thing made her incredibly depressed. 

Sprout, as if sensing where Effie’s line of thinking was taking her, switched topics expertly. “Your father had a close group of friends, but your mother was always more outgoing,” she said. “Well, that’s not to say that James wasn’t outgoing, just that Lily had a lot more friends. It wasn’t uncommon to see her walking the halls with a Slytherin student, or grabbing lunch at the Ravenclaw table.”

The only Slytherin student Effie knew was Malfoy, and she doubted she would ever walk the halls with him, but she liked that this was something her mum did. Socializing with more than just three people that all suffered tragic ends. 

“Does that mean more of her friends might be…alive?” Effie asked hopefully, before her words caught up to her and she winced a bit at the callousness of them.

Sprout let out a startled laugh. “It does,” she said, eyes still sparkling with laughter for a bit before they went a little sad again. “There aren’t too many that want to talk about her though. Lily was like a light when she was here—she was so kind and helpful—when she wasn’t being stubborn and trying to burn down my greenhouses out of frustration, that is—”

“What?” Effie asked, a little choked. “She did that?”

It was hard to believe any sister of Petunia’s would have it in her to even threaten arson. The fact that she actually committed it made Effie think her mom might have possibly been the coolest person ever.

Sprout laughed again. “Why, yes. Her fifth year, I believe. Normally your mother did so wonderfully in classes—imagine my surprise when I looked over at her one day and she had lit her plant on fire. I remember all her friends around her were screaming at her or about her and she just stood there with her arms crossed, refusing to put it out. She was a frightening little thing sometimes, your mother. I remember being livid with her at the time—but it was certainly the only time I was.” Sprout smiled a little wistfully at the memory. “She didn’t continue on with Herbology her NEWT years, which came as no surprise.”

“We can drop classes after our fifth year?” Effie asked, a little intrigued by this notion.

Potions was pretty awful.

“That’s correct,” Sprout said. “Your seven core classes you’re taking now will be the same until your fifth year, and then you can adjust your schedule based on what career you want to go into and how well you do on your OWL exams. In third year, you choose electives on top of your seven core classes, though, so you will have those to choose from as well when it comes to picking what classes you carry on into your NEWTs.”

“Oh,” Effie breathed. “Okay.”

Sprout sipped her tea knowingly, then smiled at her. “Like that idea, do you?”

Effie ducked her head, a little embarrassed. “I like the idea of not having to take Potions for all seven years,” she admitted.

“Was Severus hard on you?” Sprout asked, a little sharply.

“Well…” Effie said, finding she didn’t really want to talk about it. “He—he was a little hard on everyone, I guess.”

“That boy,” Sprout said, shaking her head. “Every year I talk to him and I talk to Albus and every year nothing changes—I’ll do it again, Effie, don’t you worry. I’m afraid nothing is likely to change, though.”

“That’s okay,” Effie said, a little bewildered. “You don’t have to talk to him at all on my behalf. I’ve had worse.”

She really hadn’t had worse than Snape, actually. 

In any case, Sprout was giving her a very concerned look that made Effie think she maybe shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“Other than lighting things on fire,” Effie redirected quickly, “did my mum do anything else of note when she was in your classes?”

“Why, yes,” Sprout said, accepting the subject change without question. “In fact, there was this one time…”

And so it went for the rest of the hour, Sprout’s rambling, easily distracted stories and Effie’s rapt attention. When it was a quarter till one and Effie had to leave to make it to McGonagall’s on time, Sprout offered to let her come back next weekend, and…even though it hurt, even though it hurt a lot more than Effie ever thought it would to hear these things about her parents and know that these people she was getting to know through stories were people she would never actually know…Effie accepted. 

She owed it to them, after all.

McGonagall, unsurprisingly, got straight to business the moment Effie walked into her office and sat down.

“I’ll start by saying I knew your father a lot better than your mother,” McGonagall said, as soon as Effie sat down in one of the straight backed chairs sat on the other side of McGonagall’s desk. “I knew your mother too, of course, but your father was always in and out of detentions and study sessions. Not to mention, he was on the Quidditch team, too.”

“He was?” Effie said, latching onto this new information gladly. James Potter, a troublemaker, good with animals, looked after his friends, played Quidditch. 

“Oh, yes,” McGonagall said, with the tiniest curve to her lips. “He was very good at it, too. Biscuit, Potter?” 

She held out a tray of them to Effie. Effie eyed them carefully before making her selection, and took a bite of it hesitantly. It was surprisingly good—Effie wondered if McGonagall got them from a house elf like Sprout had gotten their tea earlier or if she made them herself. To her surprise, McGonagall also took a biscuit when she sat back in her seat.

“What position did he play?” Effie asked.

“He was a Chaser,” McGonagall said. “And a fine one at that.”

Effie thought back to that time she sat with the Gryffindor team at breakfast, and without really thinking it through, said, “Angelina and Alicia were trying to convince me to be a reserve Chaser this year.”

“Were they?” McGonagall asked, arching one eyebrow in disbelief. “I wasn’t aware you knew them.”

“I didn’t,” Effie said, and then at McGonagall’s look, found herself hurrying to explain. “It was Freddie’s idea. My first day here, I woke up before everyone else for breakfast and he called me over to sit with them. Or maybe it was Georgie’s idea, and Freddie just backed him up. It seems more like something George would do, come to think of it.”

“Georgie and Freddie?” McGonagall repeated, a touch incredulously. “You don’t mean Fred and George Weasley?”

“Those are the ones,” Effie agreed. Sensing McGonagall’s next question, she explained, “I met them on the train. They were…nice.”

McGonagall sat still for a moment, before her lips twitched slightly like she was fighting off a smile. “Fred and George Weasley being something passable as nice, you say? I never thought I would see the day. Should I reward them five points a piece for looking after first years, do you think, Potter?”

Effie laughed softly in spite of herself. “I don’t know if they’re worth all that, Professor.”

McGonagall let out a very surprised sounding bark of laughter at that. “In that case, I shall refrain. Though I do feel obligated to ask—being a reserve player for the Quidditch Team is something you’re interested in, I presume?”

Effie didn’t even need a moment to think through whether or not she wanted to be a reserve player for the team—she knew the answer as soon as it had been offered to her, even if she didn’t know a thing about riding a broom. “I’d like that,” she told McGonagall earnestly. “I liked everyone on the team I met that day—it would be nice to get a chance to play with them. They’re crazy to offer it though, since I haven’t even ridden on a broom before.”

McGonagall offered her another one of those small, almost secretive smiles. “Not so preposterous as it might seem, Potter. You’ll have your first flying lesson here soon, and should you be good enough to impress the team captain, the team will teach you well. Besides that, Potter, your father was a natural on a broomstick. You very well might be, too.”

Effie ducked her head, feeling a little embarrassed by this apparent show of faith. “I don’t know about that,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m not my father, after all.”

There was a moment of silence where McGonagall sat back in her seat while her dark eyes glittered with unknown thoughts and her fingers tapped out a jaunty rhythm on the arm of her chair. “That you aren’t,” she said at last. “But we’re here to talk about him all the same. If Quidditch is something you’re interested in…” She trailed off for a moment, thinking, and then she sat up with an unmistakable gleam in her eye. It was, Effie had learned from her time with Ron, the gleam of a Quidditch fan. “How about I tell you about the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game of 1976?”

“Please,” Effie said, feeling a little infected by McGonagall’s evident enthusiasm.

Besides, Quidditch seemed like a safe topic. A lot safer than her father’s friends, for instance. And honestly? Hearing stories about her teenage father racing about on a broomstick and throwing a ball hard enough that he put a desperate Keeper and a Quaffle both through a hoop made him seem more real than anything else did.

Effie made it to the library for her independent research project on Sunday morning, after a quiet breakfast with Neville at the Gryffindor table. They and Hermione were the only first years awake, though Hermione had sat on her own. It was for the best, though, since while Neville wasn’t prone to asking invasive questions, she was sure that if she were to tell Hermione she was going to the library so early in the morning—especially with the tension that still hovered around them after the teacher conversation from a few days ago—that she would be hounded with so many questions she would either have to tell Hermione the truth, which she didn’t want to do, or give up for the day, which she also didn’t want to do.

Too intimidated to ask the pinchy, easily irritated librarian for help finding yearbooks—or even if there were any—Effie was left to find the yearbooks on her own. It took nearly an hour—at the end of which she was about to give up and ask for help anyway—when she finally found them. They were tucked away in a section that people rarely went to, if the thin layer of dust on all the spines was anything to go by. There was only one book that wasn’t dusty, and a glance at the letters printed neatly on the spine revealed that it was because it was the book for last year. 

Effie pulled it out, curious more than anything else. It wasn’t very entertaining to look at, unlike Muggle yearbooks, since it was lacking in pictures and anecdotes and everything else. Really it more closely resembled a guest book that someone might find at an inn—a list of names for first years, divided first into their house and then organized alphabetically from there. Two page turns later and it was the second years—she found Fred and George Weasley listed at the bottom of the Gryffindor names and smiled—four and it was the fourth years. She found Percy Weasley and Oliver Wood next to one another in the fourth year Gryffindor names. She paused when she encountered one last Weasley name amongst the seventh years—Charlie. Ron had mentioned having five older brothers on the train. She supposed this must be another one of them. She turned the page again and found the staff names.

And then she paused.

She found Quirrell’s name, like she expected to, but the book didn’t list former houses for professors unless they were the head of one. The real thing giving her pause was the class listed next to his name. 

Muggle Studies. 

She scanned the list more intently, finding that the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher last year had been some bloke named Earl Earlson, which was really just terrible, and frowned some more.

Quirrell had switched what subject he taught recently? But why?

Effie shook her head, driving the question out of her mind. Percy had told her at the feast that Snape coveted the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. It was feasible he wasn’t the only one that wasn’t teaching his subject of choice at Hogwarts.

She needed to find a yearbook where Quirrell was a student.

Effie did quick mental math in her head. He didn’t look like he was older than forty, though all she knew about him was that he had apparently attended with her parents, though he hadn’t specified their age difference. And all she knew about her parents ages was that Lily was younger than Petunia, and that they had been students in 1976, though McGonagall hadn’t said what year. 

Effie nodded decisively to herself. She would start her search eleven years back, just in case her parents had her right after they graduated.

Eleven years back had nothing promising—Quirrell wasn’t even a teacher yet, and apparently, neither was Snape. The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was a woman named Marie Johnson. Effie wondered if she might be related to Angelina Johnson. Twelve years back was equally as fruitless, and thirteen. 

And then Effie got to 1977-1978.

It was a another load of nothing until she got to the seventh years. Even then, it wasn’t immediately obvious to her. She was reading a list of Gryffindor names that just looked like names to her. Sirius Black. Alice Chancewith. Lily Evans.

She paused.

Was it possible? Now that she was trying her hardest to recall what Petunia’s maiden name might have been, she didn’t think she’d ever heard it. Or at least if she had, she wasn’t paying enough attention to remember it. Except Petunia had to have one, and her mother had to have the same one. They weren’t Petunia Dursley and Lily Potter when they were sixteen or seventeen. They were other people, with other lives, with a different name at the end of their given ones. 

It could be a coincidence. This could be another Lily, for all Effie knew, someone that was a few years younger than her mom. Or seven, considering Effie had already read through all the names of the previous years. But—no. That math wasn’t right, because if her mom was seven years older than this person, she wouldn’t be Petunia’s younger sister anymore.

Effie read through the list of names in Gryffindor House that year with renewed vigor. Remus Lupin. Mary Macdonald. Dorcas Meadowes. Peter Pettigrew. James Potter.

James Potter. It was them. It was her parents.

Effie read through all of the names for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, just to experience them. To know that these were people that went to school with her parents, that sat in classes with them, that worked on projects with them. People that maybe even played Quidditch against them, since after her father’s name were the words: Head Boy, Quidditch Team Captain, Chaser. 

And then she read through the Slytherin names for that year, too, and her blood went cold.

Severus Snape. 

He knew them. He knew them better than anyone else she could ask, probably, and he was—he was—

It doesn’t matter, Effie told herself fiercely. It doesn’t matter. I have enough. I don’t need Snape.

And truthfully…truthfully, his intense and sudden dislike for her seemed to indicate he might not have liked her parents much anyway.

Effie closed the book for 1978 with great care and placed it back on the shelf, opening 1976-1977 instead. She read her parents’ names in the sixth year section, and then having not found Quirrell anywhere in the book, moved onto 1976. It was strange to watch titles disappear from beside her parents’ names. Lily Evans had been “Lily Evans, Head Girl, Prefect” in 1978, but she was only “Lily Evans, Prefect” before that, and then only “Lily Evans” before that. James Potter had been “James Potter, Head Boy, Quidditch Team Captain, Chaser” when he was a seventh year, then only Team Captain and Chaser for his sixth, then only Chaser for his fifth. Curiously, though he had been Head Boy, her father had not been a prefect—that honor seemed to belong to Remus Lupin. The Chaser moniker dropped from beside her father’s name in his second year, proving he made the house team in his third. 

In 1971, both her parents were just names in a crowd, indistinguishable from anyone else in Gryffindor just like Effie herself was. They were first years. They could have become anyone. There could have been any number of titles slapped onto their names in the future, and no one could have looked at this book in 1971 and known what they would be. It was a strangely hopeful feeling that settled in Effie’s heart at this notion. Would she have ‘prefect’ written next to her name in one of these books like her mum? Would ‘Chaser’ appear after her name in her sixth year, like her dad? Would she be Quidditch Team Captain? Head Girl?

Would she be none of these things—a blank slate upon which entirely new things could be written? There were other titles that could be bestowed at the end of a name. Any position on a Quidditch team, Gobstones Captain (whatever Gobstones was), Reward for School Services. She could be any one of these things. She could earn any one of these things.

She found Quirrell’s name in the seventh year section—almost absently, having nearly forgotten why she was here at all—and all thoughts about the future went crashing out of her head, because he was there. 

Quirinus Quirrell. Near the bottom of the list of names all grouped up in Hufflepuff.

Effie sat back, stumped. He hadn’t lied, and yet…she had been so sure he had.

Hurried footsteps jolted her out of her contemplative yearbook induced trance, and she looked up right as a Weasley twin came barreling around the corner. Fred, she realized, once she got a look at his expression. 

Fred, for his part, looked surprised to see her, too. “Effie? What are you doing back here?”

It was a fair question, and Effie probably should answer it, but all she did was shrug half heartedly. 

Fred eyed the dust covered books around them, the one open in Effie’s lap, and where she sat on the floor, clearly curious. He shook his head, though, glanced over his shoulder, and then ducked in between the shelves.

“Listen, Eff, if you see Perce, cover for me, okay?” he whispered furiously, and then he scurried around a corner and disappeared from sight. Effie blinked after him, and then at the book still open in her lap, and then at the dusty shelves all around her.

She never seemed to know what to do with herself when the twins were around.

Another set of hurried footsteps drew her attention soon, though these ones were accompanied by a low mutter she easily identified. “...swore I saw him,” Percy was saying. “...only ever comes here to…Effie?”

He stopped at the end of her aisle, blinking at her in confusion. Effie blinked back at him, trying to look a lot less suspicious than she probably did, sitting on the floor in a dusty section of the library and apparently covering for Fred.

“Hello,” she greeted timidly.

“Hello,” Percy responded, though he still looked a little bewildered. “What are you doing here?”

“Um,” she said, which sounded very suspicious even to her. “Reading?”

For some reason, this seemed to work perfectly at diverting suspicion from her, despite how horribly suspicious it was to say it. Percy perked up, eying the book in her lap like he was tempted to read it himself, despite probably not knowing what it was. “Are you? There are more comfortable seats elsewhere in the library, you know.”

“I…” Effie said, and then glanced at the book in her lap. Cover for Fred, cover for Fred, cover for Fred… “I didn’t know, actually,” she lied.

Oh, Merlin’s beard, as Ron would say. Really? That was the best she could do? It wasn’t like the tables were the first thing you saw when you walked into the library, or something. 

“Oh, that’s alright,” Percy said, smiling kindly at her. She stared back, not believing for a second that this was actually working. “They can be easy to miss. Come on—I’ll show you.”

…Well, if she went with him to look at the tables, that would probably give Fred a chance to escape, wouldn’t it?

…Should she even be helping Fred with his escape?

“Okay,” Effie said, despite her sudden misgivings about Fred’s innocence. She sat there for a moment, staring at the record book for 1971-1972, and then closed it. She stood slowly. “Please, uh, please show me. Where the seats are, I mean.”

“Of course,” Percy said, and beckoned her out of the aisle, smiling kindly all the while. She walked stiffly after him, legs a little locked up from having sat on the floor staring at yearbooks for so long. To her surprise, Percy didn’t actually lead her to the tables at the front of the room.

“It’s nice to see someone as young as yourself take such an interest in your schooling,” Percy said conversationally (but pompously) as he led her deeper into the library, a direction that was not towards the tables at the front. “Merlin knows none of my younger brothers care. Oh, that reminds me. Ron mentioned you’ve been talking to teachers after class and that some of the other students have been giving you a hard time about it. Well, I kind of got the impression that Ron might be one of the students giving you a hard time about it…” Percy frowned, then shook himself. “I digress. The point is, Effie, don’t let them get to you. There is no shame in being inquisitive, or in asking teachers for help.”

Effie wasn’t sure what exactly did it. Maybe it was the fact that Percy seemed weirdly gullible, and she felt a little bad about misleading him for Fred’s sake. Maybe it was the fact that he was the first person that didn’t assume he knew why she was talking to the professors outside of class. Maybe it was just the fact that, despite his arrogance, he was being obviously kind to her. 

“It’s not that,” she said. “I…I’ve been asking them about my parents. The professors. I just…I just didn’t want to admit it to Ron.”

Percy looked at her, eyes soft but discerning behind his glasses. “Why not?” he asked in a quiet voice that was distinctly different from his regular tone.

“Just…” Effie trailed off with a sigh. “It’s embarrassing. That other people know more about my parents than I do. I mean, they’re my parents.”

“And you’re an orphan, aren’t you?” Percy said in that same gentle tone of voice.

Effie suddenly got the feeling she was being big-brothered, and, having no frame of reference for how she should respond or even feel about this, fell completely silent.

Percy interpreted her silence as an unwillingness to continue with the subject (which, she supposed, wasn’t necessarily untrue), and sighed. In his normal tone of voice, he announced, “Well, here we are. I found this place in my third year, when electives meant I was spending more time in the library. I still prefer the tables for studying, mind, but if I’m only reading…”

He trailed off, letting the little alcove he had led them to speak for itself, and speak it did. It was empty of students, though that might be a consequence of the time of day. It was made up of a semicircle of plush looking armchairs and little end tables beside them, looking cozy and quiet. There was even a window nearby that let in plenty of natural light.

It was one of those places that caused Effie to fall in love with magic all over again, even though there wasn’t anything particularly magical about this room.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Percy said, with a sniff. “I have a brother to find, and all. Happy reading, Effie.”

“Thanks, Percy,” Effie said, still standing and staring at the little space he brought her to.

“Of course,” Percy said confidently, and left without any further goodbyes. 

Effie stood there for a moment longer, a little stricken by everything that had just happened. Her parents’ names in a book. Quirrell’s status as a Hufflepuff. Percy’s kindness.

But at the end of the day, she had found what she was looking for and successfully distracted Percy, so she had no reason to continue standing there holding an old yearbook. Besides, looking at the names now would probably only hurt. 

She left after giving Percy enough of a lead that he wouldn’t know she had, heading back to the spot where she found the yearbooks to start with. To her surprise, she found not one, but two redheaded twins standing there and waiting on her, running fingers down spines and ultimately doing a poor job of not looking like they weren’t up to no good.

“Hello,” Effie greeted the twins, still confused about their presence here when Fred should have been long gone from the library as soon as Percy led her away. 

Two heads snapped to her at once.

“There she is!” Fred crowed, abandoning the book titles he was pretending to browse to swarm her instead. She took a startled step backwards, but Fred didn’t seem to mind. He swept her up in a side hug, awkwardly one-sided as it was, and smacked an obnoxiously noisy kiss into the side of her head. Effie blinked.

“Brilliant work, there, Eff,” Fred said as he released her. “I thought I was a goner for sure when you told Percy you didn’t know where the tables were, but it worked like a charm, didn’t it? Never had an easier time getting away from my brother in my life.”

“You’re…welcome?” Effie supposed that was the appropriate response to everything Fred just said. She wasn’t sure, but she hoped.

George laughed softly, then pulled her into a significantly less crushing side hug too. He forewent the noisy kissing of her hair, though, which she appreciated. “That’s Eff for you. Endearingly awkward to the end.”

Effie wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or not, but as with usual with the twins…she kind of had no choice but to let it go. 

“Seriously, though, thanks for your help, Eff,” Fred said. “Not just anyone would be willing to spend time with Percy—any time—for little old me.”

“He’s not so bad,” Effie said. Both twins’ faces twisted up, so she hastily added. “You’re better, of course. As far as older brothers of my friend go.”

Fred grinned at her, the curve of it sly. “Why, thank you much, Effie Potter.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” George said to his twin. 

“You’re right,” Fred said, voice going a touch melodramatic. “After all—”

“She hasn’t met—”

“Charlie or Bill,” Fred finished. “Coolest Weasleys of the bunch, those two. Off breaking curses and taming dragons, and then there’s little old us.”

“Don’t sell us short, now,” George said, nudging his twin with an elbow. “We did mischief successfully earlier today, after all.”

“Did we?” Fred said dubiously, eying his twin. “You know what I say—proof or it didn’t happen.”

“Doubt, brother mine? You know my transfiguration work is impeccable.”

“Impeccable seems a strong word,” Fred said. 

“Wonder what that makes your professed potions skills, then, if my transfiguration ones are less than impeccable,” George ribbed. 

“Oi!”

“Sorry,” Effie interrupted, and both twins swung their heads towards her, “but what did you need a cover for anyway?”

“Glad you asked, Effie, dearest,” Fred said, slinging an arm over her shoulders. 

“Yearly prank of ours,” George continued, also slinging an arm over her shoulders, even though there was very little space left there for arms to be slung. 

“We did it for the first time our first year—”

“And, well, Dumbledore seemed to like it, didn’t he—”

“So now, every year, tradition continues,” Fred said. 

“What tradition, you ask?” George said, despite Effie not saying anything of the sort. 

“Easy,” Fred said. “Georgie here, and his slightly less than impeccable transfiguration skills—”

“They’re impeccable, I assure you,” George broke in. 

“—his debatably impeccable transfiguration skills—”

“They really are impeccable,” George said to Effie, like her knowing he had impeccable transfiguration skills was of the utmost importance. 

“—turned Dumbledore’s beard pink!”

“I went for mauve this year, actually,” George said, grinning. “It’s in.”

Effie nodded in agreement at this. “I have mauve casual robes,” she contributed. “I like them.”

“As you should,” Fred said, with an all-too-serious nod of his head. “It’s a very good color, mauve is.”

“You should wear these robes to dinner later,” George said, with an all-too-serious tone. “You’ll match Dumbledore’s beard. No greater honor could be had.”

“Maybe I will,” Effie said, feeling herself smile a little bit at the idea. She hadn’t worn the mauve robes yet, despite feeling a peculiar fondness for them that she didn’t necessarily feel for any of the other clothes she’d gotten from Madam Malkin. Maybe it was because they were so different from everything else she’d ever known—not just distinctly witchy, but also, bright and colorful. 

“The better question, though,” George said, poking her in the forehead. 

“Is what are you —”

“—doing here?” George finished. 

“Hm?” Effie asked, a little lost in her thoughts, a little confused by their question. “In the library?”

“No, you dolt,” Fred said, also poking her in the forehead. “In this section of the library. It’s why I hung around here, you know. And why I summoned George here with my super secret twin mind connection powers.”

“That’s not a real thing,” Effie said automatically. 

“No, no,” George said, in the way of an obvious liar. “Super real, they are. That’s the only way I know where Fred is at any given moment—our super secret twin mind connection powers.”

“If you say so,” Effie said, and then decided it was time for some deflection. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“No one comes here, Eff,” George said, rolling his eyes slightly. “This section is only old Hogwarts records. The only reason anyone stops in is to look at ancient building plans or old school rules or—”

“Yearbooks,” Fred finished, snatching the one still in her hands with a triumphant grin. “An old yearbook. What are you doing with this, Eff? It’s hardly like it’s entertaining.”

George, though, had caught sight of the year on the spine, and was apparently good enough at mental math to figure out why Effie might be interested in yearbooks from this era. “Fred…” he said, a little like it was a warning. 

Effie snatched the book back quickly. Fred let her have it, though he looked a little confused by her reaction. She was a little confused by her reaction herself—like Percy had said, she really was an orphan, and looking for her parents in old yearbooks objectively wasn’t a weird thing for an orphan to do. But Effie already felt a little open and raw after an afternoon of talking about them yesterday and her admission to Percy earlier, and that meant she would rather talk about something else, anything else, anyway. 

“It’s the year Professor Quirrell was a seventh year,” she blurted out. 

Fred and George looked at each other, a thousand words passing between just their eyes. 

“Professor Quirrell?” George asked, hesitantly. 

“What do you care about him for?” Fred finished. 

“He’s so…” George trailed off, circling his hand in a way that could possibly translate to lame or mad as a bat or weird, really weird. Effie suspected all three interpretations were fair ones. 

“I know,” Effie said, frowning a little. “I talked to him after class on Monday. He was…” George and Fred both repeated the hand gesture for her, and she laughed. “Yeah, that.” And then that brought on all the memories she had of that conversation, and the smile slipped off her face. “I didn’t like him. Something just seemed…wrong.”

“So your solution was to look him up in a yearbook?” Fred asked, his eyes glinting in amusement. “Bet that was real telling, eh?”

Effie rolled her eyes. “It was telling, actually.” She opened the book back up to the page with the seventh years’ names, and then turned it around to show Fred and George. 

“Hufflepuff, really?” George said, as he took it in. “I would have guessed Ravenclaw, I think.”

“He told me that was his house when I talked to him,” Effie said, not sure how to explain her doubts in a way that sounded believable. “It felt like a lie, so…I was checking to see if it was.”

“It felt like a lie, you say?” Fred asked, raising his eyebrows as he looked back up at Effie. “Could it have been shame or something, instead? Not everyone’s too happy about a Hufflepuff sorting, you know.”

“Could be guilt, too,” George remarked. “You know how Hufflepuffs are all about loyalty.”

“What would he have to be disloyal to and subsequently guilty about, though?” Fred asked. 

“His old job?” Effie proposed, but it sounded weak, even to her. “I know he used to be the Muggle Studies teacher.”

Fred and George shared another one of their looks. This time, Effie didn’t need to be one of them to know what they were thinking: that wasn’t very likely. 

“We wouldn’t really know,” Fred said, looking back at her. 

“Seeing as we never took Muggle Studies when he taught it,” George continued. 

“But he’s different, some of the older students say,” Fred said.

“The stutter, for one,” George pointed out. “It’s new.”

“Where did it come from if it’s new?” Effie asked. 

“Well, his story is that he met a vampire on his travels and he’s terrified that they’ll come after him,” Fred explained. 

Effie wrinkled her nose. “Don’t tell me that’s what the garlic is for, too.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” George said, smiling loosely like it was a joke, “but that’s exactly what the garlic is for.”

“Hm,” Effie said, finally leaning down to place the yearbook back on the shelf she had gotten it from. “It’s just strange, is all. I probably shouldn’t be wasting my time worrying about it.”

Fred and George were in the middle of sharing another look when she straightened back up and turned to them. 

“You could ask Wood, you know,” George said. “He had Muggle Studies with Quirrell before he switched to Defense. He might have more to say about Quirrell’s…weirdness.”

“You’re taking this seriously?” Effie asked in surprise, as it sunk in for her. She was barely taking Quirrell’s weirdness seriously herself—she’d never expected anyone else to as well. She wasn’t really used to people listening to her at all, actually. 

“You were bothered enough to come look into it on a Sunday when you could be hanging out with friends or working on homework,” Fred pointed out. 

“And if it bothers you that much, it bothers us, too,” George added. 

Effie stared at them, something slowly dawning on her. Something, in fact, that she had just realized a moment ago with someone else. “Wait a minute. Are you big-brothering me too?”

Fred and George looked at each other, and then broke out in truly identical grins for the first time since Effie had met them. “To tell you the truth, Eff, you remind us of our little sister,” Fred said. 

“And we happen to like our little sister,” George continued. “Though maybe not the exact same way we like you.”

“So unfortunately, it seems you’re stuck with us,” Fred finished. “Not a problem for you, is it?”

Was it a problem with her?

She’d never really had people that cared about her before. For some reason, there was something daunting and terrifying about acquiring that now, after she’d already lived eleven years without it. Or, well, ten, she supposed, since her parents had only died when she was one. But she couldn’t remember being one, so she couldn’t remember being loved, and now, this was…it was a lot, to suddenly have people that…cared. And it would be harder, she knew, to have this and then lose it later than to never have it at all. 

It would be safer to be alone, where she had always been.

Which, really, made her decision about her feelings on the matter very easy to make. 

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “Not at all.”

It would hurt more to have and to lose, if it ever came to that, but it would always be worse to never know something at all.

Chapter Text

On Thursday afternoon, Effie found herself trooping down to the grounds with everyone else in her year and her house. It was a clear day, but a breezy one— “Not too bad for flying, but not great,” Ron assured her as they walked—and the trees and the grass were both swaying gently in the wind as they went. 

The Slytherins were there already when they arrived at the edge of the grounds, as were about twenty brooms laid out in the grass between them. Effie eyed both the brooms and the Slytherins warily. The Slytherins, because Malfoy seemed to enjoy nothing more than mocking Gryffindors and most of his housemates seemed to follow his lead (or at least publicly follow his lead). The brooms, because George had told her that they had a tendency to vibrate if you flew too high or always leaned slightly to the left.

The Slytherins weren’t paying her too much mind, though. They mostly hung around one another in groups, chatting about flying or their experience flying. In Malfoy’s case, it was a pretty loud bragging session, though Crabbe and Goyle and one of the Slytherin girls all seemed to be hanging off of his every word. 

“I hope this—I hope this is over soon,” Neville murmured beside Effie. Effie could recall him being nervous about their flying lessons—he’d spent the entirety of their lunch period earlier hanging off every word Hermione quoted from the book she’d gotten from the library called Quidditch Through the Ages. Hermione herself didn’t exactly look good either, but she was standing away from all the other Gryffindors with her arms crossed over her chest, looking both perturbed by their antics and incredibly unapproachable. 

“It’ll be okay,” Effie told Neville, despite her own doubts about whether she was actually going to be able to do this or not. Unlike the other kids she hadn’t grown up with parents to teach her how to do these things, so she couldn’t at least be comfortable in knowing how to sit on a broom. 

“But I’ve never flown before,” Neville said morosely. 

“Neither have I,” Effie confided. “It’ll be just like learning to do anything new—you’ll get it eventually.”

If Neville was going to say something else, he didn’t get a chance seeing as their instructor had arrived. She was a fierce looking woman, with short, gray hair and golden eyes like a hawk. She only briefly introduced herself as ‘Madam Hooch’ before she told them all to stand beside a broomstick and be quick about it. 

Maybe it was just Effie, but she kind of liked the pedal-to-the-metal, no nonsense approach. It gave her less time to be worried. 

“Stick out your right hand over your broom,” Madam Hooch called, “and say ‘Up!’”

Everyone followed her command. 

To Effie’s surprise, her broomstick shot into her hand immediately. There were only a few other people that managed this feat—Draco Malfoy amongst them. On either side of her Neville and Ron struggled with their brooms. For Ron, at least, it kept lifting about halfway before dropping to the ground again. Neville’s only managed a few rolls on the ground.

“Say it like you mean it,” Effie told Neville in a low voice. Neville paused in saying ‘up’ over and over again to listen to her. “It won’t come to you if you sound nervous about it, because then it doesn’t know it can trust you to fly it.”

“It’s not thinking, Effie,” Neville said, giving her a strange look. “It’s just a broomstick.”

“A magic broomstick,” Effie corrected. “Feel it with your magic, and it’ll feel you.” 

At least, that was what she thought about the broomstick in her hand. She couldn’t exactly say she felt the magic in it—mostly it just felt like old wood in her palm. But she had felt it, there for the moment when it first came flying up to her hand. 

Neville gave her a dubious look, but he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders out, and said with a mere sliver more confidence than he had before, “Up!”

His broom lifted off the ground a few inches this time.

On her other side, Ron said ‘up’ with a supreme amount of confidence, and the broomstick went shooting up to his hand. He shot her a grin, which she returned happily. 

Eventually, once they all had broomsticks in their hand—Neville wasn’t the last one to manage to summon his, which he seemed very pleased about. That honor fell to Millicent Bulstrode from Slytherin. Madam Hooch showed them how to mount the broomstick safely so they wouldn’t fall off. Then she went around correcting their grips, and Ron actually laughed out loud when she told Malfoy to reverse his. 

With that done, Madam Hooch moved onto the next part of the lesson. “Now, when I blow my whistle, you’ll kick off from the ground hard. Keep your broom steady as you rise a few feet, then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle. Three…two…”

Neville pushed off the ground before Hooch blew her whistle, and then immediately panicked when he realized he was the only one that had done it. 

“Mr. Longbottom!” Hooch called, and Effie was surprised to realize she knew his name, having not taken any semblance of roll call or even interacting with them other than pointing at them and telling them they were wrong. “Come back at once!”

Neville flailed in the air, legs kicking wildly for purchase. His broom continued to rise all the while, and he alternated between looking at his hands and his broomstick nervously. 

“Lean forward, Neville!” Effie called out, not alone in the crowd of voices that shouted out tips for Neville. 

It was for naught, though, because the next second Neville caught sight of just how far he’d drifted from the ground, went as pale and fragile as a piece of parchment, and listed sideways off his broom. Effie started forward a few steps, but before she could even think of getting anywhere near Neville, he’d hit the ground with a sickening thud. 

Effie felt all the blood rushing out of her face all at once. That wasn’t a very high fall, but if he landed on his neck—surely he couldn’t be dead, though—

Neville let out a pained noise and rolled over on his side, and Effie let out a relieved breath. 

Madam Hooch arrived at Neville’s side, bending over him with a pinched expression and worry in her eyes. Effie inched closer, wondering if there was anything she could do to help. Take Neville to the hospital wing, maybe? Though really, Seamus would probably be better at that, since Seamus likely actually knew where it was after taking Neville there last week during Potions. 

“Broken wrist,” Hooch muttered. “Come on, Longbottom. It’s alright. You’ll be set right in a jiffy.”

She grabbed Neville gently by the elbow and the shoulder and helped him to his feet. Neville immediately cradled his right wrist with his left hand. Effie felt a pang of sympathy—she’d had broken bones before, and they really weren’t a light injury. 

“I’ll take him to the hospital wing,” Madam Hooch announced to the class. “All of you had best stay grounded. If I catch so much as a broom thistle up in the sky, you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch.’” And with that she left, Neville tucked under one of her arms and making soft sounds all the while. 

A grim silence fell over the group following Neville’s departure, but it wasn’t permanent. Effie almost wished it had been—thinking about how easily their friend could have died here in their second week of class was far preferable to what came next. 

“Did you see his face, the great lump?” Malfoy asked, as soon as Hooch and Neville were out of earshot. Then he laughed, like he had just said the funniest thing in existence, and several other Slytherins joined in. 

Effie closed her eyes. Was it really too much to ask for one day, maybe two, where Malfoy could just shut his mouth, instead of calling people savages or lumps or freaks—

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Parvati snapped, and Effie felt her respect for her roommate suddenly spike.

“Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?” a girl that Effie thought might be named Peony or Pansy or something of the like asked. “I never thought you would like the fat little cry-babies, Parvati.”

Parvati went very red in the face very quickly, her mouth pressed into a thin line. 

“Look!” Malfoy suddenly exclaimed, reminding Effie of when he saw Hagrid in the store window at Madam Malkin’s. He strode forward confident strides—it was the same walk he’d done at the Sorting Ceremony where he looked like he had something painful in his shoe, but Effie couldn’t find the humor in it this time. Malfoy bent to snatch something from the grass—Effie saw a glint of metal and realized that it must be Neville’s Remembrall. 

Which had been a gift. From his grandmother. From his family. 

“It’s that stupid thing Longbottom’s gran sent him,” Malfoy proclaimed as he held the Remembrall up for the other Slytherins to see. “I wonder—if he’d given this thing a squeeze while he was up there, do you think he would have remembered to fall on his fat ass?”

That was it. 

Effie spun around, her broomstick in hand. She wasn’t sure if she was intending to beat Malfoy over the head with it or break his nose again with her left hand, but she was going to do one or the other. Unfortunately, Malfoy knew what to expect by now and skipped backwards out of reach from her, scrambling to get his broom underneath him. He lifted into the air—not far enough to go anywhere that he couldn’t still taunt her, but he had spared his nose both her fist and her broomstick. 

The group had gone completely silent as soon as Effie started towards Malfoy. Now, she tilted her head back to look at him, washed out and terrible-looking in the afternoon sunlight. He looked back at her, cruelty glittering in his silver eyes, and Effie hated him. She hated him with a sort of fervor she’d only really felt for the Dursleys before. 

“Give that here, Malfoy,” she said quietly. Threateningly. 

“I don’t think I will,” Malfoy replied, regaining some of his confidence now that he was in the air and she was not. Well. That was a problem that Effie could fix. “I think I’ll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find—how about up a tree?”

Effie very calmly and very pointedly mounted her own broom. 

Hermione suddenly burst out of the lineup of other first years, looking frazzled and very, very angry. “No, Effie, you can’t! You’ve already lost thirty points for us! If Madam Hooch comes out here and sees you on a broom we’ll all get in trouble!”

“You’re the only other first year that’s lost points for our house,” Ron reminded her. 

Effie ignored them both, pushing off the ground and starting towards Malfoy. It was surprisingly easy to fly, she found. It was just a bit of knee work and stubbornness and an iron grip—all things she was perfectly good at. Malfoy’s eyes widened a bit in surprise when she cleared the space between them in less than five seconds, and he started moving higher and faster. 

“Well, if you want it that badly—” Malfoy said in a high, thin voice, and then chucked the Remembrall as hard as he could towards an oak tree. 

If the decision of which was more important came between pushing Malfoy off his broom and rescuing the Remembrall, it wasn’t a hard one. Effie went racing towards the Remembrall as soon as it left Malfoy’s hand, body tight to her broom. 

She felt the wind in her hair, individual strands of it reaching out to slap her cheeks as she flew. Even with her hair in the way she didn’t lose sight of the glint of the Remembrall, falling and falling as if it was happening in slow motion. Her broom vibrated in her hands—surely this was what George was talking about when they reached their height limit, but she could live with that. This broom had done her well so far, it would continue to do so, she knew it. 

The vibrating stopped, just as Effie dipped lower, now racing almost directly towards the ground. She stuck out one hand, pulling her broom nearly parallel with the ground as she did to avoid crashing directly into it, and closed her hand around the Remembrall just as she dismounted in midair to avoid crashing. She stumbled slightly as her feet hit the ground, but she stayed upright, and more importantly, she had her broom in one hand and the Remembrall in another. 

Malfoy had never looked so surprised as he did when Effie turned to look at him. She wasn’t sure if she looked smug or angry as she met his eyes, but she figured either would probably do. 

And then, the worst thing that could possibly happen did happen, as it always went with her. 

“EFFIE POTTER!” McGonagall roared, as she charged across the lawn towards Effie. Presumably, after witnessing the entire spectacle. 

Well…

In the not so eloquent language of a lot of the boys at her old Muggle school, bloody hell. 

Effie was silent as she followed McGonagall inside the castle. She wasn’t sure what the protocol was for expelling students, but she assumed she would be meeting the famed headmaster now.

That was why she was surprised when McGonagall took a turn to head down a corridor that led to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, and then surprise turned to confusion when she stopped at the door to Quirrell’s classroom, knocked sharply, and opened the door.

“Y-y-yes, Min-Minerva?” Quirrell stuttered out from within the room.

Effie peeked around McGonagall’s robes a little hesitantly. She saw Quirrell standing at the front of the class holding a snake of some kind in his arms and putting half the class to sleep.

“I need to borrow Wood for a moment, if that’s alright with you?” McGonagall asked.

“Of c-course,” Quirrell said, and Effie pulled back as soon as a student stood up. Wood? That wasn’t Oliver Wood, was it? The Quidditch Captain?

It was, in fact, Oliver Wood, and no sooner had he closed the DADA door behind him and turned to look at Effie than he seemed to be overcome by the same confusion she was overcome with.

“Effie?” he asked.

Effie gave a helpless little shrug to communicate she knew less about what was going on than Oliver did. “Hi, Oliver.”

This seemed to give McGonagall pause as well. “You two are acquainted?”

“Yeah, I met her last week sometime,” Oliver said. “She’s a friend of the twins.”

McGonagall’s face cleared at once. “That’s correct. Potter did mention her friendship with them to me as well. She also mentioned Ms. Johnson, Ms. Spinnet, and Ms. Bell had proposed she become a reserve Chaser for the team?”

“That sounds about right,” Oliver said, his face clearing a bit. “Is that what this is about, Professor?”

“Not quite,” McGonagall said. 

Ah, Effie realized. I was brought here so that McGonagall can tell Oliver that I’m not allowed to ever play Quidditch. 

“I’m afraid Potter can’t be one of your reserve Chasers,” McGonagall continued, “because she’ll be too busy being the team’s Seeker.”

What?

“What?” Oliver asked. “We haven’t got a Seeker for her to be reserve for, though, since no one came to tryouts and, well…”

“Precisely, Mr. Wood,” McGonagall said. “Which is why Potter will play on the main team.”

Oliver’s eyes lit up with realization, and he glanced back at Effie. “Really? Even though she’s a first year? Is that allowed?”

“I’m quite certain Professor Dumbledore will be amenable,” McGonagall said. 

“And she’s good?” Oliver said, looking rapidly between Effie and McGonagall. “You just came from your first flying lesson, right?”

“Is she good!” McGonagall repeated, a little incredulously. “She caught a thrown Remembrall three feet from the ground in a parallel dive, and somehow managed not to break her neck! She’s even better than Charlie, I’d say.”

“And Charlie could have played for England if he hadn’t gone to Romania to chase after dragons,” Oliver said, with a slightly wistful expression on his face. “She’ll need a broom—”

“I’ll arrange it,” McGonagall said. “She can use one of the school brooms for now. You ought to take her out to train—teach her the rules of the game, show her the different balls in play—”

“Consider it done,” Oliver said, before punching Effie in the arm rather enthusiastically and somewhat painfully. “Potter, you hold out. I can’t believe you’ve never flown before!”

“You still haven’t actually seen me fly,” Effie pointed out a little faintly.

He waved her off before she even finished speaking. “If McGonagall says you’re good, you’re good. S’not like it matters anyway, since I havenae exactly got Seekers lining up out the door. The losing streak’s been brutal—no one wants to join up when we aren’t winning the cup every year.”

“I’ll leave you two to it,” McGonagall said. She looked at Effie, and for a moment, her eyes softened just a touch. “Just like your father after all. He’d be proud of you.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Effie said quietly, and Professor McGonagall nodded once before departing, leaving her standing in the hall with a grinning Oliver Wood. 

“Quidditch!” he exclaimed happily. “You’re going to play Quidditch!”

Effie found his enthusiasm infectious, and couldn’t help but crack a smile herself. “I’m just glad I wasn’t expelled, to tell you the truth.”

Oliver snorted. “Like McGonagall would let anyone with a talent for Quidditch get expelled. Come on—let’s go eat.”

“Don’t you have class?” Effie asked, a little startled.

Oliver also waved this off. “It’s just Quirrell. Had the forethought to grab my bag before I left anyway, just in case. Percy’ll tell me what the homework is—Percy always does. Besides, Quidditch!”

“You really love Quidditch, don’t you?” Effie asked, as she followed Oliver to the Great Hall. It felt a little strange to walk with and talk to a boy that was at least four years older than her. She couldn’t help but feel like he really ought to be embarrassed to be seen with a first year, apparent Quidditch prodigy or not. Then again…

“Quidditch is love, Quidditch is life,” Oliver said, with the utmost seriousness. “I’d marry Quidditch if I thought I could.”

…Then again, Oliver seemed to think of other people only in terms of Quidditch, so, maybe not. 

She glanced at Quirrell’s classroom door one last time as they left the corridor, accidentally reminding herself of something else. “Hey, Oliver? Quirrell was the Muggle Studies professor before he was the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Oliver said, frowning a little. “He’s a weird bloke, Professor Quirrell. Doesn’t like Quidditch at all.”

“I had a really strange conversation with him after class one day,” Effie confessed, though she avoided giving out any details about what that conversation was or why they were having it. “He kept…forgetting to stutter? Or, I guess, maybe he only stutters when he’s nervous, and he just wasn’t nervous at times. It was…creepy.”

Oliver gave her a thoughtful look, then hummed. “He dinnae stutter before, y’know. Had him for Muggle Studies two years before and he was fine. My mates sometimes like to make fun of him for it—though Percy doesn’t like that whenever they do—but I always thought he seemed like he was faking it.”

“Why would he fake a stutter, though?” Effie asked, after a moment of mulling this over. 

Oliver shrugged. “Tha’s the question, innit? But listen, Eff, it’s probably best not to worry about it. Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers never last more than a year anyway. Quirrell was mad to take the post at all, since he had a nice cozy job in Muggle Studies already.”

“They only last a year?” Effie asked. “Well…that makes sense. I did see a different name in almost every yearbook I opened, but I wasn’t really thinking about it.”

“Yearbook?” Oliver asked. “What were you looking at yearbooks for?”

“I…” Effie trailed off. Suddenly, checking for Quirrell’s house seemed like an embarrassing thing to do, even if she had been doing it for a very good reason. Likewise, saying she was looking for her parents seemed entirely too personal, which left her with no really good reason to have been looking at yearbooks at all. 

Oliver’s expression shifted, suddenly tipping over into understanding. “Don’t go all red like that, Eff. You don’t have to be embarrassed. I went looking for my granddad my first year myself. He died the year before I got to Hogwarts, you know, so it was fresh. Just a bit o’ curiosity. He was a Keeper too. Just like me.” The last part was added with a touch of wistful pride.

Effie felt strangely transparent, consumed entirely with sympathy and that all too terrible feeling of being seen. Her face was growing ever warmer, but she forced her embarrassment down the best she could. “I bet he would be proud of you,” she said. And then, in return for his openness, she felt compelled to add, “My dad was a Chaser. And Team Captain after his sixth year.”

Oliver whistled. “You’ve got it in your blood, Eff. I’m not even surprised—you are going to be somethin’ like the youngest Seeker in a century, or what have you. First years never make the teams as anythin’ other than reserve players.”

“Well,” Effie said, “by that logic, you’d have it in your blood too.”

It was clearly a very good thing to say, since Oliver went all prideful and pleased at that. “I like you, Potter,” he said, and then added, “Your fringe is sticking straight up in the air, though.”

Effie scrambled to pat her hair back down to her forehead where it belonged, and Oliver laughed at her expense. Even despite that, she found she liked him too, though, just as she liked the twins, and the three girls that played Chaser. She felt an unexpected and almost painful spike of gratitude towards McGonagall. As much as she had thought about being a reserve player for the team that let her sit with them at breakfast on the first day of classes, she never expected it to actually happen. 

And, if she were to be so bold, she found she was immensely glad that it did.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe it,” Ron said, as soon as Effie sat down at dinner and told him. “Seeker?” 

“Seeker,” Effie confirmed, shooting a glance at the rest of the table to verify that no one else had heard that. 

“But that must mean—you must be the youngest house player in about—”

“—a century,” Effie finished. “That’s what Oliver said.” 

Ron stared at her, then shook his head, then stared some more. “I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. You’re going to play Quidditch!”

“I start training on Wednesday,” Effie said. “Don’t tell anyone though—it’s supposed to be a secret.”

“Everyone’s going to be so surprised when we get to the first game and you fly out with the team,” Ron said. 

“That’s the idea,” Effie said, a little bit mischievously, when suddenly a bit of movement caught her eye. 

It turned out to be Fred and George, who had been sitting down the table a ways with Oliver last time Effie checked their location. They were both grinning at her in a way that seemed to indicate Oliver had likely told them about her new position on the team. And then they glanced at each other, seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, and invited themselves onto the bench on either side of Effie. It meant that Ron squawked as he was pushed out of the way by Fred. 

“Well done,” George said, in a voice so low it was a little difficult to hear him over Ron’s squawking. “Wood gave us the news. All that talk about you being one of our reserves, too, only for you to get on a broom and apparently upstage all our expectations in one fell swoop. That’s incredible, that is.”

Effie felt herself going a little warm and felt it important to remind George, once again, that, “You’ve still never actually seen me fly.”

“Don’t need to see,” Fred broke in, apparently having been listening to the conversation with one ear despite his brotherly squabbling with Ron. “McGonagall might be a nutter about Quidditch, but it doesn’t mean she just puts first years on the team for any old reason.”

“We have high hopes for this season,” George added, propping an elbow on the table and then placing his chin in his hand to better study Effie with an amused half-smile on his face. “Our team hasn’t been able to win the Quidditch Cup since Fred and I were first years, even with Charlie playing Seeker.”

“You’ll be better than Charlie though,” Fred said, reaching out to ruffle Effie’s hair. Effie made a halfhearted attempt to bat him away, which only set Fred to cackling at her. 

“Charlie’s amazing though!” Ron piped in from Fred’s other side. 

“Yeah, but Eff’s the youngest Seeker in a century,” George said, throwing an arm over her shoulders. Her attempt to bat Fred away was half-hearted at best, her attempt to shake George was downright measly, but she did at least attempt it. “You can’t say that about Charlie.”

“But Charlie—”

Whatever Ron was going to say in Charlie’s defense, though, Effie didn’t hear it. At that moment, a whiny, all too familiar voice sounded behind her. “Potter.” 

Effie turned to look at Malfoy, with some minor finagling required due to George’s arm still slung around her shoulders. All three Weasleys turned with her, though Fred and George did so with an air of confusion.

Effie would really rather he would go away—especially since the presence of Crabbe and Goyle at his side clearly meant he hadn’t come here for anything good—but she supposed if she didn’t ever acknowledge him, he wouldn’t ever get to the point. 

“Malfoy,” she said.

He cleared his throat as if to remind her he was there, even though she hadn’t forgotten, and then said, “Seems like you’ve acquired a few new Weasels since the last time I saw you. What are you doing, preparing to live amongst the poverty stricken now that you’re going to be expelled from Hogwarts?”

“It’s Weasley,” Effie said. 

Malfoy smirked cruelly. “Oh, I know their name.”

Effie frowned. “I don’t get it,” she said. 

“It’s because ‘Weasley’ sounds like ‘Weasel,’” he said. 

“Is this an insult?” Effie asked, raising her brows at him.

“Is it an—! Of course it’s an insult, you imbecile!”

Effie paused for maximum dramatic effect and then, in the most confused voice she could manage, asked, “Why?”

“Why? Why? Are you seriously asking me why calling someone a Weasel is an insult?”

“Yes.”

“Because weasels are rodents!”

“A lot of people like rodents,” Effie pointed out. “Some even keep them as pets.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Okay, then what’s the point?”

“Just—just—duel me, Potter!”

All seven of them fell silent following this proclamation. To be fair to Crabbe and Goyle, they had already been silent. To be unfair to Fred and George, they had been doing their best to stifle laughter and it took a moment for it to die. 

“You know what a duel is, don’t you?” Malfoy asked, after the silence stretched longer and longer. 

Well, if playing dumb about the ‘weasel’ thing worked so well…

“I don’t actually,” Effie said, blinking innocently at him. “Maybe you need to tell me.”

“It’s a fight!” Malfoy said, suddenly seeming very exasperated. “It’s a fight amongst wizards!”

“I’m not a wizard, though,” Effie pointed out. 

Fred lost the battle with stifling his laughter as it came spilling out of him in delighted peals. 

“You—that doesn’t—fine! It’s a fight amongst witches and wizards!”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Malfoy asked, now seeming at his wit’s end. 

George lost the battle with stifling his laughter too, and now Effie had to fight to keep a straight face. 

“Well,” she said, “why is a questioning word used by someone inquiring after the reasoning behind something. How could you not know that, Malfoy?”

Last but certainly not least, Ron lost the battle with stifling his laughter too.

Malfoy made a half-whistle, half-gargle sort of sound, going all red in the face. “You know what, you—” And then he stopped, mouth moving but no sound coming out of it, before he pointed a finger wildly at her. “You’re making fun of me!”

“It took you long enough to notice,” Effie said, before smiling innocently at him. Fred saw it, and buried his head in his arms on the table to laugh even harder. “I thought for sure Freddie would have given it away, at least, when he started laughing.”

This comment did not improve the redness of his face, as he gaped between Fred and Effie, and then Ron and George. If she tilted her head the right way, the resemblance was rather uncanny compared to that of a fish.

And then, he seemed to get an idea and recover himself. “You’re just too scared to duel me like a proper wizard.”

“I’m still not a wizard,” Effie pointed out.

“A wizard’s duel means wands only. No contact. That’s not the way you’re used to doing things, is it, Potter?”

Effie opened her mouth to say something in response to this—it was going to be equally sharp and cutting as everything else she had said, she was sure of it—but Ron beat her to the punchline this time. 

“She’s not scared,” he said. “She’ll do it, in fact. Name the place and time—I’ll be her second. Who’s yours?”

Did Ron just…

Did Ron just sign her up for a fight? Fighting couldn’t just be allowed at Hogwarts, could it?

Malfoy glanced behind him, apparently sizing his companions up, before he decided, “Crabbe. We’ll fight at midnight in the trophy room. It’s always unlocked.”

“That’ll be a surprise for the older students that sneak out after hours to snog there,” Fred said between snickers. 

“No one snogs in the trophy room, Fred,” George said. “That’s the Astronomy Tower. The trophy room is for—”

“You’re on, Malfoy!” Ron interrupted, before George could say what exactly the trophy room was for. “We’ll see you at midnight.”

Malfoy sniffed impressively and then took his leave. If Effie wasn’t mistaken, he only did so as quickly as he did because he was afraid to linger when Effie’s friends outnumbered his. 

Effie turned on Ron almost immediately, even though it meant she had to lean around Fred to do it. “What did you do that for?”

Ron looked absolutely bewildered by the look on her face. “What are you upset about?”

“I think it probably has something to do with you signing her up for something without asking her first, Ronniekins,” Fred said, with a gleam in his eyes that Effie didn’t like.

He might be older and cooler, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in punching range. Effie hit him in the arm, hard enough that he grunted in pain and jerked away. “What the hell, Eff?”

“I don’t need you speaking for me, either!” Effie said, before turning back to Ron. “And you! I wasn’t going to agree to fight Malfoy in the first place, and I definitely wasn’t going to do it after curfew. I only just avoided getting expelled today. I can’t sneak out and fight Malfoy!”

“But he’s terrible!” Ron protested. “You heard what he said about us! We wouldn’t be Gryffindors at all if we didn’t accept his challenge!”

They were starting to draw eyes from the other Gryffindors, which, more than anything else, prevented Effie from stating what her problem actually was. She was fine breaking rules when other people’s thoughts and feelings were at risk—like with the situation with Neville’s Remembrall—but to just do it, to break a rule just because, when the Dursleys were all that awaited her if things went south…

“You wouldn’t get expelled for sneaking out past curfew, Eff,” George said in a low voice. “You’d get a detention at worst. House points getting taken off is more likely. You wouldn’t even get expelled for getting in a fight. Trust me—if anybody would know that, it would be me or Fred.”

She found that she didn’t quite like that he had seen through her so easily, but as angry as she was about that she couldn't quite bring herself to be angry at him. For some reason, this was worse.

Effie made a frustrated noise and stood up, leaving her half finished dinner behind. “I’m going to go see Neville,” she announced, even though she had no idea of how to get to the hospital wing or whether Neville would even appreciate a visitor. At least it was away from here, though, with Fred’s confusion and Ron’s anger and George’s understanding.

Minus Ron (or anyone else from Gryffindor, really) but armed with directions to the hospital wing from a happy to help Katie Bell, Effie headed up to see Neville. She felt remarkably calmer after stomping angrily up the first flight of stairs in her way, and now she was feeling a little guilty about the whole thing. She was half tempted to turn around and go back to apologize, but, well…she still had Neville’s Remembrall, and even if she didn’t, if she had been to the hospital wing twice in two weeks she would probably want someone to come and visit her too.

Effie found the hospital wing easily enough, poking her head inside the two large doors that had been propped open and seeing two rows of bed made up with crisp white sheets. There weren’t any adults or doctors as far as she could see, but there was only one bed that was occupied, and a familiar head of blond hair sitting in it. 

Effie crept in, trying not to feel like she was doing anything illicit as she did. Katie had assured her that it was perfectly acceptable to go and visit your friend in the hospital wing—that she’d been there more than once, even, what with most of her friends being Quidditch players—but it still felt weird to not have to tell anyone what she was doing. Maybe she was just too used to living with the Dursleys, where every movement was monitored and getting out of the cupboard at all was next to impossible to accomplish.

“Hi, Neville,” Effie said as she approached the bed. 

Though she had tried to be quiet, Neville still jerked his head up at her approach. A whole menagerie of emotions warred on his face like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be embarrassed or ashamed or grateful. Effie could understand—injuries were one thing, but letting someone else know they were there was always worse. It was the vulnerability she struggled with too.

“Effie!” Neville exclaimed. He was still wearing his school robes from earlier, though the sleeves had been rolled up. His wrist was unsplinted and looked fine other than the purple bruise on it. If Effie didn't know better, she would have only thought he had walked into something rather forcefully. All the same, Neville pulled his sleeve over it to prevent her from seeing it once he caught her looking.

“What—what are you doing here?” Neville asked in a soft voice. “You aren’t—you aren’t also hurt, are you?”

“No,” Effie said, holding up both of her hands as if to verify this as truth. “I escaped unscathed. I came to visit.”

“Me?” Neville asked, as if there was anyone else here for her to visit.

Effie hummed in agreement instead of pointing this out with a healthy dose of sarcasm, though, and sat in the chair next to Neville’s bed. “How’s your wrist?”

“It’s fine,” Neville said, blushing bright red. “Madam Pomfrey could fix it right up.” As if sensing what she was about to ask next, he glanced at her and away before adding, “I—I didn’t want to go back yet. Madam Pomfrey said it was alright if I stayed for longer.”

Effie didn’t comment on this, since she didn’t really have anything to say to him that she knew would absolve his insecurities. Instead she only nodded, and then reached inside her robes to retrieve Neville’s Remembrall. She presented it to him, somewhat awkwardly since she was also doing it as a subject change to avoid talking about feelings, but thankfully Neville didn’t seem to mind. 

“My Remembrall!” he said. “Where…?”

“You dropped it when you fell,” Effie said, and then in perhaps what was the understatement of the century added, “I picked it up for you.”

“Oh,” Neville said, looking a little bit like he might start crying. “Thanks, Effie. I—I don’t think I’ve ever—just, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Effie said. 

At that moment a door in the back opened, revealing a woman behind it. She was dressed in something Effie might imagine a nurse in the 1940s would wear, though with a distinctly witchy flair. She paused for a moment when she saw Effie at Neville’s bedside, and then changed directions to head over their way. 

“Hello, there,” the woman said, and though she didn’t actually smile at Effie and Neville, her eyes went soft in a way that indicated she was kind all the same. “Just coming to visit Mr. Longbottom, or are you injured?”

“I’m alright,” Effie said. “Just visiting.”

“That’s good to hear,” Madam Pomfrey—because she must be the Madam Pomfrey that Neville mentioned earlier—said, straightening up a little. “You are in Gryffindor as well, I presume?”

“Yes,” Effie confirmed. 

“Very good,” Madam Pomfrey said. “You can walk Mr. Longbottom back to Gryffindor tower. No buts, Mr. Longbottom, you need to return to your tower. I’m sure Ms… Sorry, dear, but I don’t think I caught your name.”

“It’s Effie,” Effie said, vaguely surprised that Madam Pomfrey didn’t already know it. “Effie Potter.”

For some reason, Madam Pomfrey went a little white at that. Perhaps she was embarrassed for not recognizing Effie as the Girl-Who-Lived on sight? She shouldn’t be if she was—not knowing Effie was a good thing in Effie’s book. 

“Well,” Madam Pomfrey said, after a moment of silence. “I’m sure Ms. Potter wouldn’t mind accompanying you back to your tower, and you can’t stay in the hospital wing forever.” She leaned forward, and in a softer voice, she added, “See? It’s just like I said. Your friends don’t mind a bit, Mr. Longbottom.”

Neville stayed silent as his entire face went red, but he nodded. Madam Pomfrey straightened and left with a nod to both of them. Effie was left with Neville, who looked like he wanted nothing more than to fuse with the bed he was sitting on and never have to go back to Gryffindor tower.

“Come on,” Effie said softly, grabbing the wrist that hadn’t been broken and tugging Neville gently to his feet with it. “Let’s head back.”

Only after she left the hospital wing and got halfway back to Gryffindor tower with Neville in tow did Effie realize she’d forgotten something. 

There was a chance that Madam Pomfrey had known her parents too.

When Effie got back to the dorm with Neville, Ron had already headed up to bed. Neville followed that direction with one last stuttered thanks to Effie—not that she needed his thanks, which meant she lit up red like an alarm light. 

Effie trailed up to her own dorm room as well, figuring she might as well go there since all her other friends had headed to bed. Her dorm room was anything but unoccupied, though.

Parvati and Lavender were sitting on Lavender’s bed and occasionally giggling over a magazine they held between them, though Hermione paid that no mind as she turned towards Effie, her voice pitched high and demanding. “I heard Malfoy challenging you to a duel at midnight in the trophy room tonight,” she said, in that bossy way she had. “You can’t possibly go. You’ve lost us enough points already.”

“A duel? Really?” Parvati asked with interest.

“Do you know any spells that are good for dueling?” Lavender asked a moment later, her face scrunched in confusion. 

“Yes,” Effie told Parvati. “No,” she told Lavender. Then she looked at Hermione, doing her best to salvage her personality from somewhere amidst all the irritation she was drenched in, and said, “Look. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not going to duel Malfoy.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Hermione said, with a great big eye roll. “Just like you aren’t trying to get the teachers to like you. You were caught flying a broom without supervision—something anyone else would have been expelled for—and McGonagall let you off for it!”

Effie felt a pang of guilt over that, but she shoved it aside. It wasn’t her fault that Hermione had swallowed seven textbooks and a rulebook too and was taking it out of everyone else, so she had no business feeling responsible for it.

“Georgie said I wasn’t going to get expelled for that anyway,” Effie explained quietly. “Hooch probably just said that because she didn’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

“Because that makes it better!” Hermione practically shrieked. 

“I think you’re seriously missing the point,” Parvati told Hermione at the same time Lavender asked, “Who’s Georgie?”

Hermione and Parvati seemed content to leave their argument to get an answer to this question, considering Hermione asked, “Yes, who is this Georgie?” and Parvati suddenly looked like a predator on the hunt.

“George Weasley,” Effie answered somewhat reluctantly. “He’s Ron’s brother. He’s two years older than us.”

“Ooh,” Lavender said,  drawing out the sound. “One of the twins, isn’t he? They’re actually pretty cute, if you like redheads.”

For some reason, thinking about whether or not George was ‘pretty cute’ made Effie exceptionally uncomfortable, so she just shrugged in response. She shot one last look at Hermione that wasn’t quite a glare but was definitely close to one, and dove into her own bed so she could pull the curtains closed and do homework until she fell asleep. She tried not to think too deeply about the duel Ron had signed her up for. It wasn’t her problem if Ron went or not. It wasn’t. 

Except that it was, because Ron was her friend. The first one she’d made, if she didn’t count George and Fred, which she didn’t, since she actually befriended them after Ron. And as much as she hated the idea of getting sent back to the Dursleys, she hated the idea of Ron being sent back home and leaving her alone here more.

“Bollocks,” she whispered to herself, amidst the soft sounds of her peers sleeping, and then began pulling herself out of bed so that she could go to this stupid duel with Ron.

She dressed quickly, pulling her school robes on over her pajamas and tiptoeing out of her bed. Years of living with the Dursleys had made sure she could move without making a sound, and she would loathe to waste that skill now.

All of her roommates’ sleep went on uninterrupted as Effie slipped out of the dormitory and down the stairs where she found—unsurprisingly—one Ron Weasley lacing up his shoes. 

“Effie?” he asked, with a heartbreakingly hopeful look on his face before it shuttered. “You aren’t going to try and stop me again, are you?”

“I should, but no,” Effie said. Ron broke out into a giant grin. “You owe me so much for this, though!”

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll give you my dessert for a week, how does that sound?”

Effie folded her arms across her chest. “We get dessert at a buffet. Theoretically, you can eat as much as you want.”

Ron stared at her for a moment and then laughed a lot louder than he should when trying to sneak out. “True. Something else, then. I’ll think of it later. Are you in?”

Effie tried to hold out for a while longer, but in the face of Ron’s enthusiasm she found herself caving quickly. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit even though she could feel herself smiling. “I’m in.”

After getting nagged by Hermione (again), stood up by Malfoy (unsurprisingly), nearly caught by Filch (he really was as unpleasant as Hagrid said), and then nearly eaten by a three headed dog in the forbidden third floor corridor (she refused to be surprised about the three headed dog’s existence), she thought maybe she should have demanded Ron’s firstborn or something equally as drastic for what he put her through.

Then again, though, everything really turned out just fine.