Chapter Text
By her sixth year at Hogwarts, Eloise Bridgerton was a name everybody knew. She was clever enough to recall an entire book’s contents at a mere skim, quick-witted enough to draw a laugh from any crowd, and outspoken enough to frequently land herself in trouble.
Most people liked Eloise and found her charming, although there were some students (and admittedly professors) who found her to be somewhat overbearing. There were also those who disliked her on account of being a Bridgerton, and thus found her stances on politics at the least annoying, and at the worst hypocritical. The Bridgertons were one of the wealthiest and oldest pureblood families in the country.
But that had never stopped Eloise from doing what she loved best, which was to loudly complain about any injustice she perceived.
“I simply don’t see how it’s fair that one’s birth should dictate access to opportunity. How is that controversial? Except apparently to dear old Professor Wartsface -”
“Warford,” Daphne pointedly corrected.
“- it was unnecessary and attention-seeking,” Eloise carried on, as if she hadn’t even heard her older sister. “Can you believe that? He accused me of attention-seeking! It’s as if the man doesn’t know a thing about me! I’d much prefer to live a quiet life but when there are old fools like him stumbling about, I have no choice except to give voice to those without one. I mean, goodness, do I look like a Slytherin to you? No, obviously not, because I’d rather die than associate myself with that house and its egotistical, twattish drivel! How dare he accuse me of acting out of anything other than the goodness of my own heart?”
Eloise huffed and crossed her arms, looking around at her friends for agreement, not that she particularly needed it. She was content with the feeling that, as always, she’d not done anything wrong. Honestly, it was absurd that she’d been accused of speaking out of turn. And anyway, why should she raise her hand to speak when so many professors at this school had developed an unjust habit of pretending not to see her waving at them?
“El,” Penelope intoned cautiously, “do you think maybe you should, well…maybe you should tone it down a bit?”
Eloise stared at Penelope like she’d grown another head. (She almost had once, actually, in a Transfiguration class which had gone incredibly wrong and they’d both vowed never to speak of again).
“What?”
“It’s just, we’re sixth years now and we’ve got our NEWTS and so maybe – I don’t know, it’s just a thought – you could try playing by the rules so you don’t land yourself in detention every week?” Penelope suggested in a nervous rush.
Eloise couldn't believe what she was hearing, and from her very best friend of all people.
“Pen, this is who I am. I am not some troublemaker - I simply speak my mind, no matter the consequences. It’s how I was raised and I will not apologise for it.”
“And whilst we think it’s wonderful you have such a strong mind, Eloise, I think all Pen means is that you must be aware by now that it’s not getting you very far at school,” Daphne said placatingly.
Eloise glanced at Francesca and Michaela to see if they were going to jump in on her side, but Francesca was pretending to be very interested in lining up her stationery and Michaela merely grimaced.
Eloise scowled down at the library table. She knew her friends ultimately only had her best interests at heart; they’d proved that by how often they'd helped her escape from trouble at the last second.
Still, it didn’t make her feel good to concede that maybe they could have a point.
“Sorry, Pen,” Eloise mumbled grumpily.
“Do my ears deceive me? Did an apology just pass Eloise Bridgerton’s lips?” Michaela pretended to gasp.
“Watch yourself, Stirling.”
“Eloise,” Francesca quietly admonished, apparently now no longer fascinated with placing her ruler and quills at perfect 90 degree angles.
“Nah, it’s alright, I could take her,” Michaela grinned. The Gryffindor Quidditch Captain badge on her robes glinted in the afternoon sunlight as she leaned forwards. “What do you say, Eloise? Would you like to battle it out on the pitch?”
Eloise mumbled something unintelligible, pretending to be extremely interested in the cobwebs on the ceiling. Everybody knew that, for all of Eloise’s proficiency in academics, she was useless on a broomstick. She’d gotten herself permanently barred from Broom Flight Class in second year when she managed to crash through the window of her older brother Benedict’s Divination class. The batty old Professor Trelawney had interpreted it as a hate crime and ever since Eloise had been subjected to glares in the Great Hall at mealtimes.
In Eloise’s defence, whilst she did think Divination was a wishy-washy subject, she hadn’t meant to crash through the window. She’d simply snuck away from the lesson to surprise Benedict. And, alright, so maybe she’d severely underestimated how fast she was going. So what? Was that a crime? By the way her mother scolded her afterwards and Professor Danbury (the Head of Ravenclaw House) reacted, you'd have thought she set fire to Headteacher Charlotte's robes. And she didn't do that until an entirely unrelated accident in fourth year at the Christmas ball.
Eloise smiled wistfully at the memory of Headteacher Charlotte spinning around as her festive cloak was sparking and spitting. She'd been trying to draw attention to the cruel treatment of dragons across Eastern Europe in a…creative fashion, let's say…and Headteacher Charlotte had simply been standing too close. The incident earned her two months of detention but afterwards she was nicknamed Firecracker Dragon Girl for the rest of the year, and personally she thought the nickname sounded completely badass, so it'd all been totally worth it.
“I can't believe how much homework I already have,” Francesca worried, staring at the stack of books and parchment rolls. “It's only the first week of term and I already feel behind.”
“Welcome to fifth year, Fran,” Daphne replied with a wry smile. “But don't worry, you'll be fine. You've always been a little brainbox,” she teased good-naturedly. “Me, however? I think seventh year is going to kill me.”
“Can I have your broom once you're dead?” Michaela asked.
“Sure.”
“Excellent.”
“Eloise, look out-!” Penelope stage whispered, but it was too late.
Eloise, with her feet inelegantly squashed onto the table amongst Francesca's books and Daphne's several ink pots (she had different coloured inks so that her notes looked “pretty” - typical Daphne), sensed a looming presence behind her.
And so it began.
“Miss Eloise Bridgerton.” Professor Danbury had a wonderful way of addressing Eloise as if her name itself were a school infraction. “In case you hadn't noticed, this is in fact a library and not your living room, so if you would kindly do everyone the favour of removing your feet from the property of our fine school.”
Secretly, this was Eloise’s favourite part of being back at school. The whole year was ahead of her to exercise her human right to challenge authority and its asinine rules.
“Professor Danbury! How lovely to see you! Have you had a haircut?”
Professor Danbury was wearing the face she usually wore when talking to Eloise, like someone had let off a stink-bomb in the next corridor and the faint traces of the stench were tickling her nose.
“I will not ask you twice, Eloise,” Professor Danbury warned.
Slowly, and then with more haste once she registered the deepening scowl upon Professor Danbury's face, Eloise removed her feet from the table. She was oblivious to the fact that she almost knocked over Daphne's blue inkpot and deaf to her and Penelope's panicked squeaks.
“Must you also make me address your improper uniform attire, Miss Bridgerton?”
“Ah, well you see Professor, it is half past four on Friday afternoon and therefore technically the weekend, and so technically I don't believe I am required to be in school uniform anymore,” Eloise grinned.
“And whilst that may technically be true, Miss Bridgerton, you are in the school library. Do you not think you ought to display a certain level of professionalism?”
Eloise smoothed her hands down her oversized black leather jacket. It had first belonged to Anthony, then Benedict, then Colin, and now Eloise. Their late father, Edmund, had bought it for Anthony when he was a teenager. After a rapid growth spurt and explosion of muscle, the jacket had turned into a hand-me-down.
“Not really,” Eloise replied.
Professor Danbury looked like she'd eaten something sour.
Penelope hid her face in her hands.
“Regardless of your attitude, Miss Bridgerton, which remains as spirited and obstinate as ever, I did not seek you out to merely discuss your library etiquette. If you would please gather up your things and follow me to my office, I must speak with you about something important.”
Eloise's friends were all looking at her suspiciously, probably wondering what she'd managed to do within five days to land herself in trouble with her head of house. To be honest, Eloise was wondering the same thing. Even she couldn’t think of anything that bad she’d managed to do yet.
“And may I be informed what this meeting is about, Professor, before I am carted away to a second location?”
“Oh my god Eloise, please just go with her,” Daphne quietly groaned.
“I would listen to your sister's wise advice, Eloise.” Professor Danbury cracked a satisfied smile as Eloise begrudgingly packed up her things. “If only you weren't in Gryffindor, Daphne. I would be proud to have you in my house,” she directed wistfully to Daphne, who didn’t bother to hide her pleasure at the praise.
Eloise scowled.
“Whatever you've done, please just grovel,” Francesca desperately whispered, grabbing Eloise’s arm before she left.
Eloise scoffed. “Please,” she said loudly, uncaring if the ancient Ravenclaw could hear. She was feeling more than a little bitter at the dig Professor Danbury had just made, undoubtedly just to piss her off. “Nothing could possibly be bad enough that I would need to grovel.”
A prompt five minutes later they arrived in Professor Danbury's office, and Eloise was moments away from eating her proverbial words.
“Do you know what this is, Eloise?” Professor Danbury took a thick, overstuffed A4 sized book from the shelf and slapped it onto the desk.
“I didn’t know you suffered with anomia, Professor,” Eloise quipped. Then, sensing that she might have lost some house points, quickly answered, “It is a book, Professor.”
“Correct, Eloise. Would you like to take a guess as to what is inside of this book?”
Eloise immediately thought of around twenty different jokes, but all of them were bound to land her in detention.
She settled for the safe option and shook her head.
“Hmm.” Professor Danbury paused, seeming a little surprised that Eloise had refrained from making some kind of Kama Sutra related quip. “Then allow me the pleasure of enlightening you. In this book contains a record of 264 school misdemeanours spread across a period of 5 years. That totals to an average of 50 plus writable offences per year. Now, would you care to take a guess as to which student this record belongs to?”
Ah.
“A passionate, vivacious and frequently misunderstood one?”
“This is no laughing matter, Miss Bridgerton,” Professor Danbury said sternly. “In my history of teaching, there is only one student who comes close to your level of disregard for the rules, and I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear it was Benedict Bridgerton coming in at -” She took an even larger book off the shelf and slapped it down beside Eloise’s “- a mortifying 401 school misdemeanours.”
“I’m in with a shot of breaking his record?” Eloise blurted out eagerly. She quickly realised her mistake once she saw the thunderous look on Professor Danbury’s face. “I mean- oh. Oh dear.”
“You are infuriatingly bright, Miss Bridgerton. You have a natural gift with both practical and theoretical magic, you excel with literature, and you have a wit and a sharpness beyond your years. You should be top of the school like your friend Miss Penelope Featherington, but you let yourself down with your behaviour.”
“So you brought me in here to…give me a reality check?”
Eloise couldn't tear her eyes away from the book containing her many escapades, detentions and class disruptions. She knew she should be taking this all a lot more seriously than she was, but to be honest, she felt like a rabbit who’d just been shown a big flashy carrot.
That book was guaranteed to be a compilation of Eloise’s Greatest Hits. Her professors liked to write down direct quotations of what she’d said and she knew there was bound to be some absolute gold in there.
“Not quite. I honestly believe that the concept of a reality check isn’t one which will ever get through to you.”
Eloise felt proud of herself upon hearing that, thinking it reflected well upon her strong mind. Then she thought about it a little more, and realised that Professor Danbury had just seamlessly insulted her.
“However,” Professor Danbury continued, “a predicament has landed in my lap, and I think I have finally found a way to kill two birds with one stone. Like I said before, you are – despite your shortcomings – one of the most competent students Hogwarts school has ever seen. You are aware, I hope, that as Ravenclaw Head, I am often involved in those students who are falling behind academically. Are you following?”
Eloise supposed that Professor Danbury was checking that she still had her attention because she’d gotten distracted by poking around at the abacus on the windowsill.
“Oh yes, Professor, I am listening to you intently.”
“If your mother wasn’t one of my oldest and dearest friends…” Professor Danbury grumbled under her breath.
Eloise pretended not to hear the resentful tone. Hands in her pockets, she leaned beside the window and flashed a charming grin.
“Did you enjoy the sponge at my mother’s party last week? I thought it practically melted in the mouth.”
“Don’t be facetious,” Professor Danbury disciplined. Then, begrudgingly, “But yes, Violet’s cake was divine, as it always is.”
“She’s got a real gift, hasn’t she?”
“Eloise, I am determined to shape you into someone who can operate in the wider world,” Professor Danbury said, switching straight back to Mega Serious Mode. Eloise really thought that Professor Danbury could do with a beach getaway somewhere. The woman was way too stressed. “Your intelligence and talent are undisputed, but you are not a team player. You must learn how to use your gifts to help others instead of merely using your wit to prove a point. That is why, for every Saturday morning from now until the end of the year, you will be tutoring a fellow sixth year student who needs help with her studies.”
Professor Danbury had steadily raised her voice throughout that last part, ignoring Eloise’s cries of protest.
“What? Professor, no way! Every Saturday morning? What about my lie-ins?” Eloise demanded.
“Adults don’t get lie-ins, Miss Bridgerton.”
“Well, I’m not an adult! I’m a child! You know what that makes this? Child labour. Have fun in Azkaban.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous, Eloise. And if you make another comment like that again, trust that I will be taking points from Ravenclaw.”
“But Professor, this is so unfair!”
“Lots of things in life aren’t fair, Eloise. That’s another lesson you need to learn.”
Furious, it took everything Eloise had not to start shouting. She didn’t want to push Ravenclaw into negative points, not this early in the year. (She’d done that in third year after – well, there was no need to rehash that incident. All you need to know is that it was bad).
“Well then.” Eloise gritted her teeth and inhaled a sharp breath. On the exhale, she forced herself to calm down. Okay, fine. Tutoring. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “And who exactly is it do you expect me to tutor?”
In the split second before Professor Danbury said the name, Eloise realised that her professor was doing this as a form of punishment. Maybe it was also partly about teaching her responsibility or whatever the hell she’d said, but most of all, this was about one thing, and one thing only: revenge.
“Miss Cressida Cowper of Slytherin house. I believe you are already familiar with her.”
A cosmic joke: that’s what this was.
“Cressida Cowper? You want me to tutor Cressida bloody Cowper?”
“Language, Eloise-!”
“You expect me to help that vile girl who tormented Penelope for the better part of two years? Forget it.”
“Eloise, I understand you may harbour some ill will towards Miss Cowper, but this is exactly what I’m trying to teach you.”
“To work with bullies?” Eloise spat.
“To be civil with people you dislike. In the real world you will encounter many such people. I appreciate how spirited you are, Eloise, but it only takes getting into a duel with one wrong wizard, one time, to lose everything. For as unforgiving as I may be, you must trust that I never want to see such a thing happen to you. I think this responsibility will be good for you.”
“But, Professor Danbury, I mean, come on.” Eloise paused, not because she felt bad about what she was about to say, but because she thought it was best to at least look like she hesitated about saying it. “This whole endeavour is surely pointless; Cressida Cowper is an idiot. The girl can hardly spell her own name!”
For once, Eloise wasn’t being hyperbolic. Cressida Cowper truly was a moron and everybody knew it. Eloise had borne witness to the blonde trying to answer questions in class, and although she disliked her on principle because of Penelope and should’ve rejoiced in her embarrassment, it was actually painful to listen to her stumble so often. Cressida would misunderstand the simplest of tasks, and once she overheard Professor Kettleburn gently informing the blonde that she received 0 marks on a Care of Magical Creatures essay because she somehow mixed up a chimarea and a centaur. Seriously? They didn’t look remotely alike.
To Eloise’s surprise, Professor Danbury didn’t refute her words. Eloise had a few deluded seconds of thinking she might have gotten out of it before the dream was shattered.
“Okay Eloise, let me be blunt with you. The Cowper family holds a lot of sway in this world, as I’m sure you know, and her parents are concerned about her academic performance. If I must be truly frank with you, Eloise…” Professor Danbury sighed heavily. “…I’m not certain anyone other than you would be able to handle her. When I spoke to Miss Cowper earlier, she was quite resistant at the idea of needing any help at all, although her grades would seriously suggest otherwise. I am confident that whatever Miss Cowper might try to throw at you, you won’t bend beneath it.”
“I see. So this isn’t actually anything to do with me at all, and it’s because Cressida’s parents want her to do better and you think I’m the only one who can stand up to her?” Eloise snorted.
“Think of the positives, Eloise. You see that book there? If you tutor Miss Cowper and you succeed, I’m willing to forget all about that book. I also think it might intrigue you to know that a recommendation letter from me goes a very long way, and I do not hand out such things very often. If a student was to help out in a delicate matter…well, that might make me willing to write such a letter.”
Talk about playing dirty. A recommendation letter from Professor Danbury? Now, Eloise was all about sticking to her guns, but even she couldn’t resist the sway of that offer. Before she’d become a teacher, Agatha Danbury had solidified herself amongst the wizarding academia with good reason.
Eloise may love rebelling against her perceived abuses of authority, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want a decent career one day. She was a Bridgerton, so whilst there was always a hefty trust fund to fall back on, she didn’t want to be that person. She wanted to make something of herself.
And Professor Danbury knew that. The damn woman knew that Eloise wouldn’t be able to resist this.
“I am not happy about this, Professor. I want it noted that I resisted for a long period of time,” Eloise finally said.
Professor Danbury almost smiled. “So we have a deal then? Good. I shall let Miss Cowper know to expect you at the library tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock sharp. Well, what are you still hanging around for, Miss Bridgerton? I’m not going to offer you any of the fudge in my drawer. You are dismissed.”