Akua Sahelian and the Mirror of Desire

by Ammenuria

Summary:

Akua Sahelian, Diabolist of the Dread Empire of Praes, made plans for her death. But she was a villain, and a villain's plan is always thwarted.

She is reborn a child, then receives both owl letter and professor’s visit upon her eleventh year.

She is I, and I thought magic missing from this world. But now I am to attend Hogwarts. Alongside a famed hero, of all things. Still, the Boy Who Lived is not prepared for me, and the Dark Lord a paltry inferior to the power I once wielded and demonic armies I summoned.

This is a new world, and I have a new life. Time to begin a new conquering.

Notes:

This work is complete! I will be posting a chapter every sunday, until its all out.

This is a crossover between Harry Potter (the books), by no one in particular, and A Practical Guide to Evil, by Erraticerrata.

Practical Guide to Evil is a wonderful fantasy serial with villainous protagonists and where the stories of society have actual weight and power (and magic). Go read it, because its awesome.

The protagonist for this story, Akua, is a villain for villains. Even the bad guys think she's bad. She is not a full psychopath, but has a fun blend of selfishness and rationality that makes her act like one a lot. I've tried to balance this with the tone of Harry Potter (the first book), so she's only thinking about murdering people, not actually doing it. Besides, actually murdering people gets you caught, and that's just bad for the rest of your plans.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Prologue

I glared at the simple plastic cup, because I knew that I deserved gold. With rubies. No, emeralds. Green to match the foam coming from the mouths of the fools I would poison for putting me in this humiliating position.

The cup resisted my glare like it had resisted the attempts of my puny fingers to crush it. I instructed said fingers very carefully and brought the cup to my lips to drink.

Water.

From a… tap. Which I was still figuring out. Because turning the handle to make water come out made sense. What didn’t make sense was that it wasn’t done by magic.

I had pestered my new father and mother to tell me how it worked. But all that had happened was them cooing over me and saying:

“Oh look at her, she’s so cute.”

“Jamal. Jamaldine, look. She’s investigating the sink again.”

“Maybe she’s trying to tell us something honey.”

“Oh darling, she’s always been smart. Oh yes you have, yes you have my little easter egg. What are you trying to tell us, Akua?”

Eventually (a year later), my new father opened the cupboard under the sink and showed me the plumbing. Which was distinctly unhelpful. As if I were some peasant on the Green Stretch, who had ever lived without plumbing.

Of course, I was glad that this… rather small house… had plumbing of any sort. But I wanted to know. How. It. Worked.

I resigned myself to finding the answers in books. Leaving me to solve my problems myself was something that my parents – old and new – had done. But at least these new ones weren’t actively creating the problems for me. (I did have to wonder if they actually cared about ensuring I was ready to conquer my peers, assuming they didn’t already know I was me.)

My chief priority was learning to read. Which was easier without the motivational scorpions, I must admit. Then, once more armed with comprehension, I would read the colourful liquid containers that my father had hurriedly called dangerous and pulled me away from. And if those containers were volatile or toxic ritual components, then I would pour them down some throats.

The plumbing was really just a symbol I’d fixated on. Same with the classless, plebian, parental insult of this plastic cup.

“There we go! You’re doing so well!” My jailor cooed. I turned away, at which she sighed, muttering “even if it is a grumpy day.”

My new mother, proud at her daughter for drinking a whole plastic cup full of water. Despite it being a grumpy day.

Naturally, I retained enough mental acuity to be objective despite the travesty of growing up for the second time. My new mother was a fierce woman who would yell at anyone in the university she worked at that dared to question her bringing a toddler into work. I respected the willingness to put herself first. Much of the barebones childhood training I’d been given so far in this world involved toothless repetitions of themes such as caring about other people.

It was like these strange people with their even stranger architecture were actively trying to put moral constraints on my ambition.

Sharing is not ‘caring’. Sharing is a method of indebting others to oneself through the human urge to reciprocate gift giving.

Of course, this being my second go round, I knew what was up from the beginning. Which meant that my new parents had realised the futility of sending me to daycare. (Daycare was an ineffectual prison, never once searching anyone for blades!) I was going to attend kindergarten only because that age allows one enough strength and fine motor skills to effectively strangle another child.

Tragically, and as much as I loathed needing the duplicitous doting of my new parents, I did not yet possess fine motor skills. There was no point in betraying someone when their usefulness outweighed their negatives. Unless one needed to make a point to a bunch of (other, still useful) underlings who were getting a bit uppity.

Not that I had any underlings. In fact, I was as under and as ling as this society seemed to get.

Because I, Akua Sahelian, Diabolist of the Dread Empire of Praes, Governor of Liesse, and the most brilliant living mage on Calernia, was a child.

I, who had turned the entire population of a city into zombies and harnessed the resulting magical backlash to make the city fly. I, who had opened a greater hellgate and achieved feats unseen since the Dead King and Dread Empress Triumphant herself! (May she never return.) I, who had been poised to bring back the very Age of Wonders!

I, who had had her heart torn out by Catherine fucking Foundling. Literally. (I still woke up rubbing my chest, on grumpy days.)

Now, one such as me is not unprepared for death. My soul had been safely separated from my body when I was a child and stored in an unbreakable amulet. Except Catherine was there so, of course, even that had gone wrong.

Instead of gathering my consciousness and overwhelming the feeble soul of whichever fool took my amulet, I was experiencing life anew. Once more.

A child in a country called the ‘United Kingdom’.

A large island very close to a continent that everyone seemed to agree was far more exciting. Which wouldn’t be hard to do, because for some reason – that really lent weight to the theory that the Gods Below had devised a very particular hell just for me – this ‘UK’ had no magic.

And I had to drink out of plastic.

Chapter 2: The Villain Who Lived

“History is written by the victors.”

• A quote attributed to Winston Churchill, despite him never being publicly recorded saying it. The quote was, in similar words, uttered by Hermann Göring at the Nuremburg Trials. But the Nazis lost. So, to the victor...

 

It turned out that plastic was made from the liquified bones of ancient reptilian monsters that once ruled the world. Specialised and ludicrously wealthy organisations used the remains of these creatures to create materials that would endure long past anything else in the natural environment. Refining the liquidised bones even further made fuel to feed the engines of mechanical transports.

And – somehow! – it wasn’t ritual magic.

It had all the hallmarks. Carefully collected components. A meticulous process that only specialists could perform. A slow increase in efficiency and the realisation that earlier processes were actually poisoning people. The common understanding that current processes were still poisoning people, and that it was accepted by the powerful as a measured risk. Mix all components in an approprite vessel and add the catalyst (fire, which was wildly inefficient, but whatever).

That was a ritual. A ritual very cleverly bound to an ‘engine’ that turned axels and wheels which moved vehicles along roads faster than a team of skeletal horses. Or spun propellors to let some of these metallic contraptions fly.

Flight wasn’t that unusual, unless you were talking about big things. Like cities. Very few people had made flying cities. And I was one of them, a feat that alone granted me great authority in the field of rituals and making things fly.

All my knowledge and personal experience categorised the ‘airplanes’ of this ‘United Kingdom’ as mundane – if meticulously machined – metal tubes.

Except the civilisations of this new world I was in had managed to simplify flight enough to form a transport industry! I still didn’t believe ‘airplanes’ flew due to the same worldly laws that applied to birds. Propellors spinning very fast was not analogous to muscles and wings!

It was insane. Flight came from gravity-negating enchantments, not... combustion.

“Akua, I know you’re four now, but are you sure you want to read those kinds of books?” My mother asked.

‘Those kinds of books’ meant non-fiction. Which meant explanations of the world and the rules by which everything operated. Which meant vitally important information because magic didn’t exist and how else was I going to rule the world?

“Mum, its interestingggg,” I groaned, as if I was only childishly annoyed. Instead of frustrated enough to contemplate getting away with murder in this strange world where getting away with it was something you had to worry about.

“Oh honey, you say everything is interesting.” Aissata Sahelian (nee Konde), my mother in this new life, smoothed a gleamingly dark-skinned hand over my back. She did have some resemblance to the past High Ladies of Wolof – as if the portraits of my ancestors had been taken from their golden enchanted frames and traced onto the same parchment. Face layered upon face in blunt pencil until the individually striking features got melded into something you could describe as soft.

Because my mother – this mother – was soft. Her hand was gentle, thumb sweeping in circles next to my spine.

Her face held a gentle smile under a wider nose than my first mother had. Her cheekbones were just as high, but more rounded. The large forehead was very familiar though – genetics from her (and my first mother, may her schemes collapse around her head) meant my hairline started further back than most of the people I saw on the street.

Frankly, it was a little strange, seeing such a sheer majority of fair-skinned people. Even when I’d ruled Liesse, I’d never gone out among the locals – even before I’d poisoned them all and animated their corpses, which made skin colour much less relevant.

Nostalgic anecdotes aside, I did wonder if my nose and cheekbones would grow to be as devastatingly sharp again. Had my transportation to this world (or hidden hell) changed my body? Or soul? Hmm.

Aissata was still stroking my back like she wasn’t plotting some vengeance for me ignoring her in favour of the purity of knowledge.

I turned the page. Though I was still learning this language, my work with a dictionary before ‘bedtime’ earlier this year had been fruitful. And English was nowhere near as bad as Old Mezian. Even if English was cobbled together by a collection of people who owned printing presses, those people had merely been competitive, rather than possessing a malicious superiority complex that extended to refusing to teach conquered nations their language.

(The Mezians had only done two good things for my people: give the proto-Praesi empire something to unite against and prove that ruling the world is possible. But honestly, their wine was overrated and not worth the stasis spells.)

“I know you like coming to work with me and your Baba, but we never wanted you to feel like you needed to catch up to us or anyone else.” Aissata lifted the hand on my back and gently tugged my chin to face her. I went easily, because even if this book was painting a fascinating picture of how controlled chemical explosions could do the same things rituals could (but worse), my first mother had trained me well.

“We love you Akua. I know you hear what people on the street say. I know you see – and you see so sharply and so clearly, my little harrier-hawk. I know you understand that your father and I have to fight, and that you will have to fight for yourself too.” Aissata’s eyes burned, like Catherine’s eyes would burn when she was defeated (because Catherine always turned it around at the last moment, the bitch). I still found it strange that my second mother’s fire wasn’t directed at me.

I honestly respected Aissata. There was a fierceness and drive that this world’s smothering culture of morality hadn’t quite caged. And she was playing a masterfully long game to win my devotion and loyalty.

“Sometimes I wish your brain allowed you some innocence,” she sighed. Her hand brushed my cheek, so very caring.

“I will never tell you to stop learning,” she smiled (it even felt genuine, she was that good), “you hunt knowledge, a hawk soaring over the grasses! And I would rather have to remind you to put the book down than pick it up. Fortunately, you will never run out of books to swoop down upon.”

My mother let go of my cheek and reached back to the paper bag I’d noticed her come in with. My body was young, so I couldn’t effectively hide my emotions and subconscious reactions. Still, I could express my tension as curiosity – let her see only what she expected to.

And I was curious. These moments almost felt like a game between us. Aissata’s far reaching attempts to fully entrap my devotion, me portraying the perfect daughter to win hers. 'I will trick you into trusting me first’, we implicitly declared with every day.

I would try to find gaps and cracks in how she played the role of mother. There were some, of course. But only enough to make her seem real. Bad days that she would apologise for. Real anger when I’d tested things, but seemingly real regret whenever I cried for Baba.

The game was one of the few fun things I could occupy myself with that wasn’t learning how this world functioned without magic. Would Praes have achieved this if those damn gnomes didn’t wipe out anyone who invented the wrong things? We would have, obviously. We’d have done it better too – whoever thought that 25% was even a slightly okay level of efficiency for energy transference was a fool. Mechanical engines were ingenious, but still using fire as a catalyst? Honestly.

(I could think of five ways to power a ‘car’ for a whole year with but a single blood sacrifice. Seven years if it was a virgin.)

Unaware of my musing, Aissata pulled another book out of the bag. Expected, given her words, but four was a fine age to learn knives. Or maybe they had different, mechanical weapons here. They had to teach me at least one way to kill sooner or later. (Though it wasn’t like I needed teaching, just permission to start practicing with this body.)

“This book is an overview of history. Which will be useful since you start school soon.” It looked… wait.

“History?”

I was a fool. Letting an obsession with plastic lead to a fascination with dinosaurs and combustion engines. Intriguing topics, even inspiring in some facets of their innovation. But nothing, nothing, compared to the recorded stories of this society.

Because that was how one gained power. The Dread Empresses and Emperors of Praes had climbed the tower and ruled the empire according to their whims because Triumphant (may she never return) had left such a mark on the world that Fate kept filling the place she’d left.

Catherine’s insufferableness came mostly from the fact that her kingdom’s favourite pub songs were anthems of ‘fuck you’ to every nation that had ever invaded them. That, or stories of family grudges being held for generations and ending in petty shit-stirring victories that didn’t actually achieve anything. Which meant that whenever she was incredibly petty about my plans and refused to be defeated from sheer stubbornness, she won the resulting stalemate. And Catherine was always petty about anyone over her homeland (especially me).

The point was, stories held power. Simultaneously stored power and showed the paths to it. My knowledge of Praes’ history had made me aware of narrative roles beyond the ones everyone around me wanted to fill. And so, instead of being some minor Heiress failing to usurp the Dread Empress, I had unearthed a much older story that resonated to Praes’ very bones and become the Diabolist. Showing the reigning Empress that her reforms were nothing against the terrible and wondrous weight of the Dread Empire’s history. (Said weight was measured in pounds of demon-flesh, of which we’d summoned mountains of. Each century.)

Stories were Fate. Knowledge was power. And the history book held out in front of me was all four.

“My little harrier-hawk, this book is not a mouse. You cannot eat it, even if your brain is hungry.” Was Aissata being more condescending than necessary to a four-year-old child? I no longer cared. History was a key. I needed to open some doors.

As soon as I learned the broad strokes, I could discover the specific threads in the Fate of this world. If I could – again – tie myself to the right thread, I would make a city fly a second time. Even if there was no magic, stories were the real force of the world.

“Mum.” I didn’t plead or try to look cute. I didn’t do anything but let the very real impatience bleed into my tone. (Not all of it, I was supposed to be a child, and children weren’t willing to murder to get their way. But I needed open access to this knowledge and that meant not letting anyone know that it was more vital to me than… a lot of things.)

“Okay, okay. I forget you show excitement in your own way. Move, move.” I shuffled over on the somewhat satisfactory sage green couch. My mother sat down next to me and looped the arm holding the book around me.

I hated being small. Being short, I could suffer – though thankfully that seemed unlikely given both my parents. But being small? Having less power than someone? My memories of my previous childhood were clear, the lessons from my old mother (may she be poisoned by something embarrassing) even clearer.

“Now, would you let me read to you? I know you wish to fly and hunt little book-mice, but let me tell the story? This book does not cover our history very well, and I do not want you thinking Africa was not important.”

I snuggled into Aissata. Those were very good reasons – almost perfectly constructed to entice me. Implying that the book was not entirely correct, implying that she was, tying the whole thing to the country of our (her?) ancestors. If I were a child born of this would, I would have eaten that up like an Orc shucking eyeballs.

I didn’t know whether Aissata knew I was consciously making moves of my own in our game, but she seemed satisfied as she flicked through the first pages of the book. My mother cleared her throat.

“All stories begin with ‘Once upon a time’. And that’s just what this story is about: what happened, once upon a time.” Aissata’s voice drifted into her lecturing tone, which I knew from sitting in on her courses on African literature. But, as she kept reading, the melody of her accent came back.

“Behind every ‘Once upon a time’ there is always another. Have you ever tried standing between two mirrors? You should. You will see a great long line of mirrors, each one smaller than before, stretching away into the distance…”

Aissata’s accent was close to, but still different from the Soninke language I was (first) born with. Jamaldine, my father – my Baba – did not have any kind of accent I recognised from Calerina, my old continent. According to my new parents, the Soninke did exist on this planet as a cultural group. But not as feared magical harbingers of a dread empire. Not as I knew them.

My parents came from West Africa; Morocco for my Baba and Mali for Aissata. These facts didn’t mean much to me aside from the fact that geography had played a much larger role in separating ethnicities in this world. And that my mother teased my father about preferring horses to camels and my father made jokes about someone called Mansa Musa.

“But you will never reach the beginning, because behind every beginning there’s always another ‘Once upon a time’. Its like a bottomless well. Does looking down make you dizzy? It does me. So let’s light a scrap of paper, and drop it down into that well. It will fall slowly, deeper and deeper. And as it burns it will light up the sides of the well. Can you see it?”

My brain, for all my knowledge and control of it, brought up memories of my first father reading to me like this. Explaining magical theory, tutoring me on how to bend the world to my will. It had technically been over four years since I watched him burn alive. I wasn’t sure why it didn’t hurt less.

“It’s going down and down. Now its so far down it’s like a tiny star in the dark depths. It’s getting smaller and smaller… and now it gone.” Aissata’s arm brushed mine as she turned the page.

Fine. She could win this round. I let my awareness of her movements fade into something that definitely wasn’t trust but had the same outcome. Then let my brain start sorting, analysing, and dissecting the content of this history-story.

“Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper. We use it to light up the past.”

 

<{   ҉   }>

 

We’d finished dinner an hour ago. I had gone upstairs to bed and followed the night-time (it was barely night) routine like a dutiful child. My new parents were glad that the earlier tantrum had faded quickly. I was glad that I still had the ability to look like I was perfectly fine when I was not.

Two hours ago, Baba had come home to find me asking Aissata questions about a fundamental fact that she had been brushing aside.

Of course, now I understood why they hadn’t immediately answered my questions. But then?

“I’m home!” Baba called from the hall. His coat rustled and shoes clacked as he removed them. (This house had felt so small – the floorplan could fit in the ballroom of the palace I had ruled from in Liesse.)

The atmosphere in the living room, where Aissata had put the book on the table to focus on appeasing me, lifted in hope.

“Hello, little harrier-hawk! Hello, flame of my hearth, warmth of my chest, sun of my summer!” Baba swept round to the back of the couch and did not ruffle my hair (only my first father was allowed that) but did brush a kiss to my forehead. Then leant over to kiss Aissata lingeringly on the cheek.

My Baba had lighter skin than Aissata or I – or my first father. A neatly trimmed black beard that framed a sharp jaw, contrasting with the tight curls on his head he didn’t really care for. He managed to be quite lithe for someone who spent so much time at a writing desk. Or library. Or lectern, rambling about Arabic contact with European civilisations.

“Baba,” I broke their moment because my questions were, objectively, more important than anyone’s libido. “Why aren’t there any Pharaohs if Egypt still exists?”

Aissata sagged wearily back into the couch. “She’s hunting, Jamal. Please feed her.”

My Baba turned back to me, dark eyes mischievously. “Oh? The pharaohs?” He then leaned towards Aissata and said quietly, “Go make tea, I’ll handle dinner. Rest and leave your paper for tomorrow.”

I waited for them to swap places. Then asked again, because children in the UK are allowed to ignore manners sometimes: “What happened to stop the Pharaohs from continuing to rule Egypt?”

Jamaldine adjusted his glasses, glanced inquisitively at the book on the table, then met my eyes. “Well, darling, did your mum explain that Egypt was taken over by other people?”

I nodded. “But why didn’t they come back?”

He hummed. “Most of the world, for most of the history we know, had rulers from one family. Like the Queen in London. Her father was the king, and his father was the king, and one of the Queen’s children will be the next king.” He made sure I was following.

“The pharaohs of Egypt were the same. So when another country came along and took over Egypt they… sent the pharaoh’s family away and made their own children the next rulers.” Jamaldine, for some reason, tried to paper over the fact that this previous line of Pharaohs had been systematically murdered, as any logical conqueror would do. But I had bigger questions.

“Why didn’t the next group of people become Pharaohs?”

“Well, partly because they weren’t from Egypt. And partly because while they called themselves pharaohs, we like to divide history into 'this time' or ‘that time’.” My Baba smiled, like that was supposed to make sense.

I frowned to express my disapproval with such ambiguity. “Were they Pharaohs or not?”

“Yes… but a different kind.” Baba smiled apologetically like he could tell that he hadn’t helped.

I had been trying to understand since it came up in the book Aissata was reading. But Names like Pharaoh, or anything that meant god-emperor even slightly, were powerful. A Name that, apparently, people held for thousands of years. Something like that, with so many people playing such a powerful role in the story of the world, became like a groove in Fate. A space that was filled, so would be filled.

It was a bit weird for another people with a different culture and set of stories to become Pharaohs as well. It seemed the Name had very little restrictions. Which only increased my fundamental confusion.

“So, why are they gone?”

“The pharaohs?” Jamaldine hummed again. “Well, Rome took over. Then the Caliphate. The Ottoman Empire, then Britan of course. Now Egypt is ruled by Egyptians, but so many different things happened over hundreds and hundreds of years that the pharaohs are just a memory.”

I struggled a little with that. Not because the ideas were complicated. But because they didn’t match. If people still remembered the Pharaohs, if they still saw the pyramids and visited landmarks, then surely – surely – someone Good would rise with the Name.

Because Aissata’s book wasn’t written like the Pharaohs were evil. And Names endured. They were roles in the story of the world. Patterns in the tapestry, colours in the painting. They appeared, because otherwise reality was uniform and beige.

This conversation felt wrong. On a level I was still trying to articulate.

Which is why Aissata had handed me off to Jamaldine. Except that hadn’t helped. Baba was just repeating the same points. But it wasn’t the argument, it was... something about how they were both framing this. The implicit assumptions. Like the Pharaohs coming back wasn’t even an option. Like...

Oh.

Like the story was over. Even the book described it like that. Framing history as if the events described were over. Done. Discrete, unique, and finished.

The book and my parents described the Pharaohs like Praesi tutors described Dread Emperor Sorcerous’ invasion of Callow with an invisible army. While his reign being recent reminded everyone of Praes’ grand magical might, probably helping me become the Diabolist, that invasion was but one event. An event that influenced Praesi military tactics going forwards, but not something that changed the paradigm, that had to be factored into current or future stories. Unless someone else decided to make an invisible army.

Thinking like that it nearly made sense. But the scale was completely wrong.

The Pharaohs had reigned for thousands of years. Their grand achievements still shaped the skyline. Treating that like it had no broad effect on Fate was like… treating the entire prehistory of Praes as a single period. A wrong and stupid attitude, when those stories still shape the internal divisions of the Dread Empire and were fundamental to my becoming the Diabolist.

Acting like thousands of years of history had only marginal impacts on today was naïve. Yet my parents were scholars. And, while gullible and morally chained, they were not naïve.

I needed a new hypothesis. Maybe the Pharaohs weren’t that powerful. It would raise more questions, but it would answer why Egypt seemingly... moved on.

“So were the Pharaohs special?” I asked Jamaldine. Hopefully he understood what I meant, because I was increasingly tempted to start constructing proper arguments and four year olds didn’t do that. (According to a chart on child development I’d stolen from a doctor’s clinic.)

While I’d been thinking, Aissata had served tea in an ornate metal teapot Jamaldine had inherited from his grandfather. Who had died in Morocco before I’d been... born the second time. Aissata still liked her herbal ngolobe more, but it was harder to get than mint tea. Ordinarily, I would drink with them.

Ordinarily, the subtle scent would have drifted upstairs, drawing me down to lean against the tan walls or the white moulded round arch that led from the hall into the living room.

Ordinarily, my metaphysical understanding of... everything... would not be being undermined by new evidence!

“Baba.”

“Just let me–” He saw my expression.

“Okay.” He put his teacup back down. “Look, Akua. There are many reasons why things happen in history, but the one thing that always happens is change. Sometimes the change is big. Sometimes it’s just new people taking over.” He reached forwards and took my tiny hands.

“What happened to the Pharaohs happened to every country. Times change and the world grows, just like you are growing.” Jamaldine cared. I could see it in his eyes, so different from my first father’s. But the same warmth.

I didn’t know what to feel.

“So the Pharaoh’s weren’t special.”

Aissata sighed over her tea, then reached around my Baba to place her hand atop ours.

“Oh Akua.” Jamaldine smiled and it was a little sad. “Pharaoh is just another way of saying emperor, caliph, king. There is difference, yes, but the meaning is the same. And – you must remember this, little book-hawk. All these people we call fancy titles are still normal. They were not in normal positions, but they were the same as you or I.”

He smiled, warm and inviting me to trust, open myself, and be vulnerable. “Although, I do think you’ll grow up to be smarter than most rulers of history.”

“So no one is special?” I needed to know. Cover my bases. Understand... this nonsense they were driving at. (That was more important than stopping this ridiculous body’s voice from wobbling.)

Aissata gasped in the other room. I didn’t have the capacity to figure out why. Not right now.

My Baba pulled me in to a hug. Spoke into my hair. “You are special to us, Akua. Special and precious. And we appreciate your questions. I love that you ask, my curious bird, scouting the skies for answers.”

“But?”

Aissata had come back in, and moved to sit on my other side on the couch that was both more and less comfortable than the lounges of my first life. She rubbed my back in long slow movements, the other arm around Jamaldine.

She answered my question, soft and hard at the same time. “Everyone is human Akua. We are all the same. No one is better than you, no matter what they say. But no one is worse than you either.”

At that point I’d screamed and raged and lashed out with poorly coordinated limbs that simply did not have the muscle, weight, or leverage to murder anyone. Which really wasn’t helpful, because four-year-old brains were not equipped to fundamentally change their world view in any peaceful manner.

Because what she’d meant wasn’t that there were no hierarchies. But that the hierarchies weren’t based on anything. There were no Names in this world, no settled positions that Fate filled and supported and nudged.

The Pharaohs would not return because magic in this world was not rigorous sorcery, but misdirection and tricks. And Names were just that, names.

It certainly explained a lot. Like how democracy could even function.

But it also changed everything.

Studying history would not let me find a place in this world’s story. There would be no Fate guiding, smoothing, or accelerating my path.

Lying in my bed, I had to laugh.

It had seemed like the end of the world. Just like realising that there was no magic. Just like feeling Catherine rip my heart out of my chest as the city I made fly burned.

But if there were no Names, no mainstays of Fate, that I could use to propel myself to glory? Well, that meant there were no Names for anyone else either.

If I were a hero, this world would doom me. For heroes were tools Fate used to topple tyrants before they changed the story that had come before. No Fate, no stray thoughts or gut instincts to help the heroes on their quest, no guarantee that they would win.

But I was a villain. We rose by intelligence and willpower. We dared to have ambition.  

I didn’t cackle. Cackling was gauche. And four-year-olds didn’t wake their parents with malicious laughter in the middle of the night.

I wanted to, though.

Because here was a world where villains lived.

Notes:

The book described in the first part of this chapter is ‘A Little History of the World’ by E.H. Gombrich. The passages that Aissata reads aloud are from the first chapter of that book. If you have children, or ever need to give a gift to a kid that likes books, I highly recommend this one. It is easily digestible, great for general knowledge and humanising history, and was banned in Nazi Germany for being ‘too peaceful’.

Chapter 3: The Vanishing Blood

“Educate the children and it won’t be necessary to punish the [adults]”

• Pythagoras, better known for triangles and giving his name to the one basic geometry formula people joke about remembering that was actually discovered (and forgotten) a thousand years earlier.
• ‘Adults’ is used in place of ‘men’ in the quote because Ancient Athens was a wonderful progressive democracy (for the time) that women couldn’t vote in.

 

Even though Fate didn’t exist, there were stories that repeated themselves. ‘By virtue of us all being human’ as my Baba would say.

In the five years since my realisation about the absence of Fate’s hand in this world, I had felt the draw of freedom. I was still drawing inspiration from stories, using them to understand and influence how people world would see me, and outlining the established paths to power. Learning the past and applying it to now, just as I had before.

But key – vital as my heart, necessary as my mind – to this new world, to my new life, was creativity. Because while similar stories repeated themselves, there was no Fate guiding everything to the same outcomes. It was… refreshing.

A challenge. Me against the world.

I stared into deep into the dark, dark brown eyes (that used to be gold) in the mirror. Then grinned with my teeth.

“Akua!” Aissata called from downstairs.

I’d had a few more realisations – nothing so major as the absence of Fate – in the past five years since my mother had given me my first history book. Like how the morality of this world was sickeningly Good. Or that physical ability was not necessary to climb the ranks of the society. Or, that skin colour was something some people actually cared about.

That most everyone else was restricted by their morality simply gave me an advantage. That physical ability didn’t matter in the long term (hah, fuck you Catherine) made me wonder if the Gods Below had provided one final blessing before dumping me here, because I was made for mental and social games. Lastly, racism was annoying and served no benefit in a society that criminalised slavery.

I was above the sidewalk side-eyes and sniffs, of course. One does not grow up alongside the Praesi elite and get upset by people being rude. It wasn’t like there were assassination attempts. Or non-lethal but fast-acting poisons. Really, the things my parents and I faced here were… petty.

But petty could be very annoying when the petty person held power over you. Especially when murdering them for their insolence would be detrimental to my long-term plans.

Other realisations had come suddenly, often thanks to other people. The three main ones were: that money was finite, that chocolate was worth having my heart ripped out for, and that most people here saw life as a mutually beneficial exercise.

My… first life… as I’d settled on thinking about it, been as the heiress of Wolof. An ancient city of Praes that had been accumulating magical knowledge, artefacts, and power since before the Dread Empire was founded. Oh, and money. Always accumulating money.

I’d used my inheritance – Wolof’s hoarded everything – to become the Heiress, symbolic inheritor of the Dread Empire. So many people in my or similar positions had climbed the Black Tower and become Dread Empress (or Emperor) that Fate had generated a Name that symbolised change coming for the throne. Being heir to Wolof and Heiress to the grand and terrible traditions of Praes had meant that my funds were effectively endless.

Necromantically poisoning a whole population was not cheap. And making the then-zombified city fly? I had happily drained all the money my first mother (the bitch) had given me. And then more, because her dream of becoming Dread Empress was lowly compared to the schemes I had started enacting.

As a result, I had needed to… adjust… when my parents sat me down and explained the basic economics of the UK and this broader world.  Which managed to be the most schizophrenic mix of ideology I had ever come across.

I had rationalised, then come to understand, that in this new life, I was not already part of the elite. The lack of servants had been an obvious clue, but the inventions they owned, the general quality of life they enjoyed… I had mentally seen my new parents like a skilled side-branch off the main Wolof line. Above the middle of the pack due to knowledge or something that made their use in a blood sacrifice a net loss, but not with their own manor.

In reality, however, my current societal status was ‘middle class’. Which meant that we could afford many nice things that did not include grand pianos. (The economics, if I understood capitalism right, were as unsustainable as trying to feed Praes without blood sacrifices to boost the harvest. And Praes was mostly desert.)

Being middle class did include access to chocolate. Which the nobles of my Dread Empire would have started wars over. It warmed something in my heart that Catherine would never get to taste what I could now devour at my leisure.

Lastly, the UK – and broader world – was infested with this idea of helping. Sharing. Caring. Specifically, the theory that you got more benefit from it than just progress towards your own ambitions.

The idea wasn’t alien. I had seen how other people in my first life had shared or cared. Seen before exploiting them like the fools they were, that is. And I had earnestly cared about my first father – it’d been the reason he died, really.

I wasn’t so simple minded to think that love was weakness or to regret caring for my first father. It had been years since I saw him die, after all. But neither did I deny that my desire to have the one person who’d loved me close in my moment of triumph had places him in danger – exactly when I’d dared danger to do its best. So, I didn’t understand the willingness of people in this world to share and care and be benevolent without any risk or cost-benefit analysis.

“Akua I swear, we will not miss another year!” Aissata yelled up the stairs. Her footsteps followed her voice, and I arranged my face into something appropriately nervous.

“I have one photo from five years ago. I want to be able to look back and see each of your first days of school.” My mother strode into a room in stylish but sensible black shoes and a royal blue dress – an attractive contrast to her dark skin and golden earrings.

“And I know what you’re going to say but photos at the end of your first day don’t count...” She trailed off, blinking at my forlorn expression.

“Akua, what’s wrong?” Her strident tone – powerful enough to pull Baba away from his current paper on how the Mongols expanded trade routes from Asia to Europe through the power of mass murder – softened. For me.

I twisted my hands in the hem of my navy and burgundy school dress. The colours really didn’t work together, much less with accessories.

Aissata bent down to gently pull my hands away and smooth the faint creases I’d been careful not to make too bad.

“Talk to me.” I stared into her face, then dropped my eyes and mumbled something derogatory about the standard of public education.

“Akua?” A black eyebrow raised on brown-black skin.

“I’m just nervous.” I lied (just obviously enough), then looked back into the mirror. I couldn’t wait until I finished with this farce of education. Red and gold looked so much better on me. And by then I’d be old enough to wear some of the fun styles I'd seen in store-front magazines.

“Oh Akua,” my mother shuffled round so her head was next to mine in the mirror. “My harrier-hawk.” She smoothed her hands over my shoulders then straightened the lapels of my (still unflattering) uniform dress.

“Do not think me a fool. And do not pretend uncertainty. You are fierce. Do not smother the fire in your eyes.”

I stared at myself in the mirror. Yes, I was nine years old. Yes, this life was almost so easy as to be boring. But also, yes. I was not suited solely for slow shadow games. I should be centre stage, commanding all the attention. (While the plots I’d already set in irrevocable motion bent the entire theatre to my whim.)

“There we go.” Aissata sounded proud. My reflection held a small smile, like I’d managed to insult someone (Catherine) in a way they couldn’t do anything about.

I let her lead us out of my room and down the stairs to collect the school bag I’d organised days ago and that we’d double checked last night.

Aissata was continuing a stream of encouragement, just in case I had been nervous. Having my ego massaged was always nice, but I was wearing a school bag, not wings.

“Mum, I am not a bird.” I stated firmly. She blinked, something wistful and complicated passing over her face – like she was losing and gaining something precious at the same time. Which wouldn’t do. I needed my parents to be happy (or just content) and secure in their relationship with me. Asking them for favours would be less fruitful otherwise.

“I will tell you about all the prey-facts I’ll snatch from my lessons when I get home. And we can take a photo then.” I said as earnestly as I could. But also, I meant it. Testing the knowledge my pitiful teachers spouted was a genuinely useful exercise.

A different complicated emotion swam in her eyes, but she breathed out and pulled me into a tight hug. “Nothing escapes you, does it my darling?”

I scoffed. I should think not.

Aissata laughed and turned me around to face the door. “Go, get on the bus by yourself.”

A last, small touch on my made me look back over my shoulder.

“Fly, Akua.” My mother said. I grinned.

 

<{   ҉   }>

 

My first day of sixth grade started with the usual how-was-your-summer questions, appearance appraisal, and interrogating glances and whispers.

I’d skipped grade three to do grade four last year. And it’d only taken me a month for that to become so soul-crushingly boring that I’d decided appearing ‘normal’ wasn’t worth it. Which meant I was now two years younger than most other children in the class.

(I’d literally crushed other people’s souls in my first life, so appearing ‘normal’ was only ever going to be temporary.)

As a result, this year was the start of my full commitment to the child genius pathway to power. My parents were university lecturers, but not highly paid enough to put me in a school that would guarantee me a network. Still, professor-parents was an excellent ‘in’ for any gifted child philanthropy organisations that a precocious young girl might happen to ring out of innocent self interest.

But that was the future.

Now? War.

The very brief social war that children fight to reassure themselves that their friends have not changed over the summer or that no one else has come in to threaten their position in whatever hierarchy they imagine for themselves.

This conflict took place in recess. Everyone was gearing up for it, mustering their pre-teen attention spans for the deciding battle that would shape the social scene until Christmas break.

I wasn’t worried, because most children in this standardised institution could not see the slings and arrows that the competent flung at each other. Less than half could even tell that there was any kind of social jockeying going on at all. It was slightly, very slightly, pitiful.

Still, with the animal instincts that everyone possessed, deep down, the sixth grade tribe finished their small (or not small at all) snacks and gathered around the newcomer. The different one.

Me.

Because I was holding court. Commanding attention from children sitting on painted wooden benches, on asphalt, on a brick edged planter bed that was probably too small for the bushy tree it held.

It was easy, just as every other first day had been. They were interested in me, unconsciously testing the newcomer who had entered their tribal territory. I answered their questions cheerfully, presenting myself as someone special – but not different – complaining about how recess wasn’t longer, or how summer was more fun. Smiling at the shyer hanger-ons and anyone who drifted into my growing circle.

It was trivial to guide the existing friend groups into catching up themselves – in the area that was revolving around me. More attention went into forming new friendships from the uncertain innocents who were only just neurologically able to comprehend change and social dynamics. They would remember my role in them finding happiness and look upon me favourably.

Oh, I had missed this.

My games with Aissata had stopped being about power a few years ago. Apparently parents in this world were expected to unconditionally care for and support their children. And most of them did so! Truly, Good had gone too far.

Playing games with pawns was so much more interesting. After all, you couldn’t tell a story without an audience.

The audience had come to judge the newcomer and the newcomer had been nice. Inevitably, because some part of me still thought Fate was real and just being subtle for once (or ‘by virtue of us all being human’) someone would come to ostracise me.

Tribes had leaders and last year’s leader was seeing a threat. Of course, the leader could have seen me as a friend and thus been manipulated into a useful second. But Catherine Wilson had been styling herself as a queen bee from fourth grade, building a group last year like she was in some american high school movie.

When she stalked towards me, hair in pretty braids woven through with ribbons because her mother was a housewife who lived vicariously through her, the tribe around me noticed. Tensed. Quietened down – like a good audience.

“Hi Catherine!” I said bubbly, like that name didn’t remind me of a missing heart and broken bones and rivalry to feed a vengeful soul.

“You.” Catherine sneered with more competence than she’d shown in our morning lessons. “Who are you?”

“I’m Akua. Ms Davis introduced me this morning but it's okay if you don’t remember.” I smiled welcomingly.

The audience drew breath.

“I don’t remember things that aren’t important.” Catherine sneered. Maybe she’d focused so much on getting that sneer down that she never studied what bait looked like. Because she took mine so blindly that I wanted to yank the hook through her cheek.

But... best make it a little more secure. A clean catch and all that.

“Is that why you forgot your books?” She sputtered at my blatant lie, but the audience was children and children were too self-absorbed to remember small things like truth when there was a story happening. “Do you want to borrow mine back in class?”

Catherine scoffed contemptuously.

“Okay, then I’m sure Mandy could lend you her books!” Bright and happy I was, solving a problem to help someone out even if they were being mean to me.

“Of course, you can have whatever you need Catherine!” Mandy promised, having been tentatively let into Catherine’s group just ten minutes ago and jumping at the chance for validation.

“Shut up.” Catherine tossed over her shoulder. Mandy looked at the ground, hands fidgeting at her sides.

Outwardly, I frowned. Inwardly, I laughed. I could have set this up in my sleep, but it was incredibly cathartic to have (any) Catherine blundering so blindly and ending up exactly where I wanted her: in the role of the villain.

“That’s mean.” I hammered it in because my audience was children.

Catherine sneered. “How old are you anyway?”

“Nine!” Look at me, the innocent child. (It chafed a little, but this life hadn’t put me in a position to use this shallow caricature of an adversary in any ritual blood sacrifice, so I endured.)

Catherine scoffed. She was getting repetitive. “You’re a baby, what are you doing in our class?”

“I’m really good at reading, so they moved me up. School is boring and I want to finish it as soon as I can.” Look at me, relatable, different in a small way that doesn’t threaten anyone, with clear and understandable motivations.

“And what do you read? Fairy tales? Stories from Africa?”

“Sometimes,” best to throw small bones to the kids already being designated nerds, “mostly I read history cause the best stories are true.”

Catherine was angry. The queen bee had threatened and buzzed at the newcomer, but she’d also buzzed at her entourage. And the rest of the hive was currently wondering if this queen was actually as scary as they first thought. Because the newcomer wasn’t acting scared at all.

Catherine stormed (petulantly) forwards and shoved me back, off the brick ledge and into the planter bed. I moved with the motion to get my hair mussed by the tree’s low leaves. (But not dirty, I still had standards.)

“Oh, where did she go?” Catherine mocked. “All I can see is brown dirt.”

Oh, well done. Good insult, focusing on the most obvious thing that made me different and tying into broader social prejudice. Delivering the line with her hands on her hips, standing tall(ish) while I lay on my back – a clear visual of the social outcome Catherine wanted to result from this.

I knew this was coming. I’d sat in this spot so that the teacher on recess duty would happen upon us when Catherine was looking her most villainous.

But, as I stared up at her smug satisfaction – her shallow superiority – I realised that this scheme wasn’t scratching my itch.

Catherine – the real one, my rival, had been a challenge. A contest. Someone with enough intelligence to force me to make my plans interesting. Dammit, even the long-dead fools who competed with me for the title of Heiress forced me to adapt a little.

This was so easy I couldn’t even laugh. I hungered for something greater than playing with a toy. And while I had toyed with Catherine (the real one), setting up plans so she made of a fool of herself and advanced my goals no matter her decision, she’d been an adversary. I could beat her at any defined game, so she’d learned to collect the pieces, roll them up in the rules booklet, and beat people over the head with her ‘improvisation’.

Half the time, the metaphorical rolled up rules-baton was also on fire. (Catherine had a thing for fire.)

She’d been fun. Losing to her had meant losing, but it wasn’t shameful. We'd had our utterly dishonest poisoned-knife shanking match of a competition and she’d come out on top. If I hadn’t have ended up here on Earth, I would have possessed her or someone else and restarted the game. Because the real Catherine was worth playing with.

This Catherine was barely one dimensional in comparison. She would never challenge me, or even learn the games I played. Her name had got my hopes up, possibly subconsciously, but now I was disappointed.

And since she’d ruined my mood, it was time to ruin her life.

I was already different – the kid who skipped two grades. A mathematical prodigy (because this work was easy even compared to the sorcerous equations I’d learnt when I was this age the first time) and a budding playwright (it was easy to recall the greatest Praesi productions, and climbing the tower was a concept people in ‘liberal democracies’ resonated with). Not to mention my general devouring of history, the history of technological developments especially.

I was special – this was fact. I’d already positioned myself ahead of the pack. Why should I bother fitting in? No, there was no reason not to get more early recognition, then unobtrusively climb to the top with the aid of helping hands and daggers in backs; only revealing myself when it was too late to be stopped.

So. Fuck it.

This futureless background prop of a person would never learn. I would have to teach.

“I once read a story about a princess,” I started. “The princess lived in the grandest castle in the world and had everything she ever wanted. Everything except real friends.”

I stared into 'Catherine’ Wilson’s eyes and sat up from the planter bed. “Everybody wanted to be her friend, to have her sit with them or hear what she thought. But it wasn’t real. No one wanted the Princess, they just wanted her castle and her special magical blood.”

The sixth-grade audience-tribe attended my every word.

“One day, the Princess had managed to escape all the people who pretended and smiled fake smiles. She was in her favourite place in the castle, the garden. This garden was also the best garden in the world, thanks to the servant family who had maintained it for generations. This servant family knew every flower, tree, and blade of grass like the back of their hand.

“On this day, when the Princess had escaped the awful fake people who only wanted her for her special blood, she saw the servant family teaching their children how to care for the flowers and make them bloom like nowhere else in the world.”

I let some of my accent slip in to make my tone exotic, describing fantastical orchids and trees with leaves of every colour. I shifted forwards, now sitting on the edge of the low brick wall. My words painted pictures of the Princess befriending this family and finding people who cared for her as much as they cared for the plants – like she was part of their family, not someone required to produce anything (blood or children).

A shift in scene, the evil stepmother introduced as the fakest of the people who only pretended to care about the princess.

“Eventually, the Princess was sneaking away to eat with the servant family at least once a week. They felt like the parents and siblings she’d never had before.” I paused, letting my audience picture the wholesome scene, breathing in until patience started to fray. Even the Wilson child-speck wanted me to continue.

I obliged. “But then, the Princess’ stepmother found out where her daughter was going. And she knew that the Princess was coming to care for the servant family more than she did for the castle or the fake people the stepmother had so many alliances with.” A pause, my face frightened – then angry. “And the stepmother couldn’t have that, could she?”

Someone gasped. My vengeance sharpened its teeth.

“No. The stepmother plotted and schemed and slipped poison into the servant family’s food. When the Princess joined the servant family that night, escaping from a massive banquet full of people who cared more for the magical plates that kept food hot than anything else, the servant family cooked a warm, loving meal and served her on a simple table they’d made together. The Princess thought that being there, with people who actually cared about her, made the food taste better than anything served up in the main hall. Until the servant family–"

I suddenly jumped up, stiff backed. Choking, spluttering, gasping. My audience leant back in shock – I didn’t let them recover.

“The Princess watched as the only four people who had really cared about her started choking on nothing, veins turning green and faces sunken and grey. And while she was sitting there, watching them die and not knowing what to do, her stepmother walked into the small servant house.”

A silence of bated breath reigned. It felt like the overcast day got a little darker.

“‘This is your fault’, the stepmother told the Princess. ‘I had to do this. For your own good.’” I gave the stepmother a haughty voice that a discerning ear might have compared to the forgettable Wilson child.

“But the Princess was smart and desperate to try to save the family that had cared for her. ‘What did you do?’ She cried.” (The Princess’ voice was mine.)

“The evil stepmother laughed cruelly and told the Princess ‘I had these peasants poisoned! But don’t you worry, my dear, your magical blood protects you from illness.’ And the stepmother smirked as the Princess watched the servant family choke to death on the table while she was perfectly fine.”

The audience was wavering – enjoyment of the story mixing with uncomfortable or horrified comprehension of what I was actually saying.

“The Princess was smart though. And the evil stepmother had revealed that the Princess had power. She quickly grabbed a knife and pricked her finger so that her magical blood started dripping onto the table.”

I swiped my finger over the edge of the brick wall I was now standing in front of. The crowd watched the rough cut begin to ooze red. A few children paled.

“Then, as the stepmother shouted for the guards, the Princess touched each of the servant family on the forehead with her bloody finger. The magical blood seeped into their bodies and they suddenly all stood up, quickly looking healthy again. Except...”

I trailed off, beginning to mime stomach pains.

“The Princess’ magical blood had cured the servant family of the poison, but the poison still needed to get out of their bodies. So, the servant family all turned to the evil stepmother and threw up all the poison on her fancy dress!”

The audience laughed, the tension released.

I had been, when I started this tale, tempted to describe the stepmother then ordering the guards to murder the servants and ordering the Princess to water the garden she had come to love with the blood of the people who had loved her. But Praesi ‘fairytales’ had never been processed by the Disney corporation. And these children wouldn’t appreciate the moral lessons of power and how emotions can be important factors in constructing rituals. (The Princess had animated the garden and commanded it to tear the stepmother limb from limb.)

“That’s so gross! You’re gross! That’s not a real story, you made it up because you’re gross!” The Wilson child who didn’t deserve her first name interrupted. Right when I’d held the audience in the palm of my hand.

A breath swept out of me, fury at this insignificant pest coiling right back up my spine. I stepped forwards, Soninke words spilling hushed from my lips as vengeance brushed my bloody finger across her forehead.

I stepped back to the position and posture of the lead actor. Because this gnat was barely even a background character in any story, much less mine.

The Wilson child gasped. The audience held their breath. And something deep inside me surged.

Little Miss Wilson vomited down the front of her dress.

The audience laughed again, even louder. My victory felt complete, my vengeance sated, and... oh. My finger was healed.

My mind wandered, even as the teacher finally did their job and guided the humiliated queen-of-her-own-puke to the infirmary. My impulsive need to punish someone so disappointing had ruined the image I’d first planned to paint: Ms Wilson, the bully; me, the nice girl. I would subtly interrogate the teacher later and make sure their opinion of me was positive – which shouldn’t be hard since they’d become part of my audience halfway through the tale. And, despite how I’d acted and cut open my own finger, they’d seen me get pushed over, so at most I would get a confused warning not to scare people with red markers.

Because there was no blood. Not on her forehead, nor on my finger, the brick, or even dripped onto the asphalt.

Almost like the story had evoked something. Caused effect. I’d provided the fuel, focus, and metaphorical fire, and a new social outcast provided her breakfast. The whole thing felt remarkably like a ritual.

A ritual where, instead of large circles and grand workings, the only thing involved was a story. And blood, of course.

I wondered what exactly had primed the magic for the catalyst. (For that was magic. Magic must be real in some way, even if I was the only person to know about it.)

What had set off that surge in my soul, that rush in my veins? I’d performed each component separately, and some in combinations with another – storytelling, bloodletting, tearing someone down – but never all together.

If this magic truly worked by ritualistic analogies, then I would have to relearn everything from the ground up.

I smiled and nodded at the audience of children around me. And started conceptualising my first experiments.

Notes:

This is Harry Potter, so there is magic around - Akua just has to find it

P.S. Thank you for the engaged comments, please leave more to fuel the writing machine

Chapter 4: The letter that just made sense

Notes:

Akua turns eleven. Nothing else happens, nope not at all.

“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”

• Aslan on Jadis, who would be the White Witch, and who was present at the creation of Narnia after robbing a jewellery store in London.
• C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

 

I ran down the stairs. “Come on, come on! I want to see the older rounds!”

I jumped and nimbly landed in the hallway, facing the living room. My new fencing jacket still needed a little breaking in, so I’d ben rushing around all morning. The movements of fencing were very particular, and while I had memories of mastering five different styles of actual sword-fighting to help me, a brand new jacket and epee mask would restrict my movement if not stretched.

(I’d win regardless, but the victory wouldn’t come with the satisfying eau de crushed dreams of my opponent.)

My parents, who were only just putting their dishes away from the lunch I had methodically devoured before running upstairs, looked at each other. Baba raised his eyebrows, which made Mum sigh.

It had been my memories of my first parents that shaped my early childhood interactions with Aissata and Jamaldine. I was now comfortable enough to label them Mum and Baba in my mind. At least half the time, anyway. But really early on, when I was still figuring out that this wasn’t a possession gone wonky but a whole new life and world to conquer?

Well, there was a reason Aissata still played the bad cop role.

“Akua.” She said, sighing. “We are not arriving four hours early. We agreed to be two hours early only because you need to ‘warm up’.” Her tone clearly communicated her lack of belief in that need.

Which was fair. We’d found an actually pleasant balance of independence and parenting where I gave a paper-thin excuse (like needing to warm up) and she either accepted it or started a debate.

“But it's my birthday!” I tried. Unfortunately, wearing the gleaming new fencing gear I’d gleefully unwrapped this morning would weaken my demand. Gods Below, I couldn’t wait to enter my teen rebellion phase. Aissata and Jamaldine were wonderful parents – even by this society’s standards – but I missed autonomy.

“Akua,” my mum repeated, “you agreed to two hours early. You do not need to compare your footwork with the adults.” Ah, she had picked that up (we did share genetics, so I wasn’t surprised by her intelligence).

“You’re already facing off against the fifteen-year-olds! And only just turned eleven!” She threw her hands up and turned to my Baba.

I also turned to my Baba. And pouted at him.

It was a carefully crafted pout and I’d been psychologically associating it with my Baba feeling guilty since I was three. It meant I couldn’t use it much, but one always needed a range of manipulation for every occasion.

“No. No Jamaldine. Do not give in, we have raised a hawk and–”

Someone knocked on the door.

We all – me and the two adults that were semi-knowingly supporting my rise to power because they loved me (and that still felt like an unusual motivation, but I’d take it) – silently cursed the stupid religious doorknockers who still hadn’t got the message.

The person knocked again. I wondered if I should orchestrate another tripping accident to ruin their white pressed shirts.

“I’ll tell them we’re busy,” my Baba sighed.

I didn’t narrow my eyes, because that would be a tell. However, my Baba’s body language basically broadcast his relief at avoiding another debate.

Aissata and I met each other's eyes over the living room couch that formed some of my youngest memories in this world. The green had faded from sage to… something beige stained by multiple tea accidents that I would never admit my complicity in. My sentimentality about this ridiculous piece of furniture was a luxury of this world, but if I couldn’t have enchanted dresses, I’d settle for indulgences like the family reading couch instead.

“Hi, we’re having lunch and not interested in…” Baba trailed off.

Mum’s eyebrows raised in actual surprise rather than the challenge of a staring competition where my face was covered in metal mesh. When we still heard nothing after a moment, her teasing smile turned to confusion. I turned towards the door. It wasn’t often that Baba trailed off. Usually, he’d keep building on a sentence until it resembled the first draft of a particularly drunken thesis.

“Hello,” a clipped Scottish voice replied. A woman – on the aged side of middle-aged. “I represent a very special and prestigious school which has a place set aside for your daughter.”

“Oh.” Baba articulated what we were all thinking. “Well, I suppose we‘ve just finished lunch. Come in and tell us more about this school. We’ve had a few enquiries already, you know.”

I tugged the epee mask off my head. Aissata walked around the couch to stand at my side. Proudly, but also to grasp some authority in this situation before I started interrogating whichever school representative decided noon on a Saturday was the time to convince me they were worthy.

I would refuse, of course. If a school was actually prestigious enough for me, we would have received a meeting invite for someone with a fancy title who worked in a suitably decorated office in a solid stone building that had stood for generations.

“I can assure you that the institution I represent simply surpasses any other option.” The Scottish voice followed my Baba into the hall and turned the corner. Said voice was owned by a tall woman wearing a red tartan suit jacket and long grey woollen skirt over an old-fashioned white blouse. Her face looked much sterner than she’d sounded – primarily from pursed lips and black hair pulled back into a tight bun.

Aissata bristled at the implications in this woman’s words. “Our daughter is being sought after by many schools for gifted children throughout London. We are still waiting for an offer from an establishment worthy of her.”

Pursed lips grew thinner, but then this strange Scottish woman – there was something too confident about her, and she was far too sprightly for looking seventy-something – blinked in realisation. “Very well. My name is Minerva McGonagall, and I am a Professor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Hogwarts. She may think her school was prestigious, but I had never heard of it.

Wait a minute…

“Your daughter is quite a bit more special than even you may think. For Akua here, is a witch.”

My mum scoffed. But the rest of this Minerva’s words registered.

I stared up at this stranger as the rest of the world dropped away. Faded, with this vital moment the only thing that mattered.

“Magic is real.” I… fuck, no. No, I never pleaded or begged. Never. But my tone had been too questioning (too desperate) for that to be a demand.

Minerva McGonagall’s tight face relaxed into a very slightly warm smile. She suddenly resembled one of my school minion’s grandmothers, giving out cookies, happy to make children happy.

“Magic is real.” She assured. A hand reached into the pocket of her suit jacket (too far in) and came out with an oddly ornate, tan-coloured wooden stick that was twice as long as the pocket’s stitching.

My mind started piecing together warding enchantments and pocket dimension stabilisers – things I hadn’t thought about since discovering combustion engines and chemistry – to hypothesise how she managed to keep the dimensional opening mobile, stable, and attached to clothing.

“Now wait,” my Baba’s frown was audible, “who said anything about–”

Then a flick of a knobbly wrist sent swirls of coloured streamers shooting into the air. From the tip of the stick.

Staff, my memories supplied. Wand, they then clarified. A tool that mages – not particularly competent ones – would use to focus their magic.

I hungered. My soul was starving and here in front of me was the feast.

The streamers twisted and then were birds, fluttering around the room. Chirping cheerily. They looked like little swifts but held the colours of the streamers they’d been made from. And then those colours started shifting and swapping around.

My parents gaped. Baba was sputtering – starting sentences that would get overrun by the next sentence in line – too much happening in front of him for his mouth to cooperate with his brain. Mum was still, hand gripping my shoulder tighter and tighter.

Twitching. My fingers were twitching. The urge to reach out – metaphysically – and cast something to visualise the functioning of these spells was…

Theories for this kind of transmogrification flashed through my head. Laws of Creation and equations to summon, to transmute, to animate.

Wands were for the barely competent. Proceran and Levantine fools who played at real sorcery. But this… Professor… had just done something impossible according to two fundamental assumptions of Trismegistan sorcery. But she wasn’t using any high arcana. No glyphs, no concepts, just… magic!

“How.” Again, I’d wanted to demand, but instead I sounded wretched. Malnourished and dying of scurvy – a fresh orange right there.

McGonagall’s highland features relaxed, sympathetic. “Magic is real, Miss Sahelian. Some people, like you and me, are able to use it to do wonderful things.” A flick of the wand and the birds exploded like tiny fireworks into sparkling dust that drifted (guided by that thin tan stick) down in spirals and helixes.

My eyes burned. I refused to blink. This was… I felt fractured. Healed. Sundered apart and finally made whole, all in a single moment.

Eleven years of missing the power that was so core to… to me. A gap in my identity that I’d filled with plans of domination and knowledge of modern science. I’d thought the gap was properly filled, but now what was only a thin plastering-over blew out like someone had tried to fix a hole in an airplane with paper.

Magic.

That had been what I was missing. Sure, I’d managed some rudimentary form of blood ritual that was shaped by stories. But that had only worked when... improvised. I couldn’t plan out a story and produce specific effects through sanguine runes or do anything to prepare in advance. That power of mine was unreliable, obvious, and uncertain. I could not control it, so I could not count on it.

That power of mine had been but a minuscule situational advantage for me to use in highly specific moments on my path to real power. Political office. Vast wealth. Public respect. Influence.

(But now?)

I’d been waiting for prestigious institutions built for gifted children to propel me up the societal ladder. Jump up a number of rungs and then climb, climb, climb with everything I had until I could remake the ladder below me into a tower and rule.

The path had looked long – lifelong – and slow, for the only tool I could wield was my intelligence. Sure, there were many ways to get my name into the history books. But raw cunning was the only sustainable tool that would let me author that history.

(But now?)

The slow path of building prestige, becoming known, entering and slowly subverting the right circles until I owned elite society? That was a plodding journey constrained by the UK’s morals and laws. My future, a struggle against the entire system unless I settled for the easy mediocrity of the British middle-class ‘dream’ that was just as unpalatable as the American version. The challenge – pitting myself against the world – had interested me, the game being entirely restricted to intelligence and one’s pre-existing resources. I’d even thought I was excited.

(But now?)

“I’m not sure what games you think you’re playing at,” Aissata’s tone was icy, “but this family is educated. We do not have time for tricks and–”

The wand flicked, a mug soaring from the coffee table to hover in front of my mum. “I assure you, this is no trick.” The Professor held that unshakeable confidence that people have in basic natural laws; like gravity. “You may check for wires.”

My Mum, with an unshakeable confidence that comes from denial, passed a hand over the mug. Then she moved both hands around the innocuous floating object. Then she picked it up.

It moved with her hand and she sagged with some kind of relief.

McGonagall’s expression resembled the Scottish housekeepers on period TV dramas when they imparted some life lesson – sympathetically, but only because the lesson must be learned by whichever tearful young innocent the show chose as protagonist.

Her wand flicked, and the mug in Mum’s hand duplicated – hard ceramic somehow oozing around her fingers to form another mug that hung in the air. Mum gave a low cry, denial breaking like a bone.

She sagged into Baba, who managed to close his mouth for the first time in a minute. He was always more analytical, but when Mum shuddered, he shoved all his observations into a box (to be compared with current theories later).

“You need to explain yourself,” he demanded. “No games, no deflections. Why did you come to our home?”

The stranger in the living room nodded. “In short: magic exists, your daughter is magical, I work at a school where we can teach her to use and control her abilities.”

Silence reigned.

“What? How?” Baba demanded further. “What - why... if this is true, why does nobody know?”

“Ah,” the Professor flicked her wand, and the original mug flew back to the coffee table. Everything else vanished.

“Due to rising aggression and diverging cultures, the international magical community enacted the Statute of Secrecy in 1692. Our societies were already very isolationist, so we hid ourselves to avoid the exploitation that was so connected to imperialism. The main element of the Statute was a spell to make the non-magical world believe that magic existed only in stories. Wizarding governments have ensured the secrecy of magical societies ever since.” McGonagall laid out these facts like they weren’t describing some grand ritual that effected the entire world and probably altered Fate itself.

Hahahaha. Hah. (They had so much power. I was so hungry.)

“But that’s...” Baba started, but trailed off – it was his turn to reevaluate his entire worldview. I tuned him out.

I walked to the landline, my body moving almost independently. My fingers numbly entered the memorised number of my fencing teacher. (Inside I was laughing – cackling.)

“Hello, this is Ms Sahelain,” I said in a harried version of my mother’s voice. “Yes, well, I’m afraid that Akua got… too excited this morning and injured herself.”

A pause of denial – then a gasped exclamation of horror from a mediocre teacher whose star student wasn’t there to attract more paying parents.

“I’m sorry, but we’ve just got back from the hospital, and…” I paused, let him blabber. “Tore a ligament, they said. Not warming up enough and practicing too hard.” I waited another appropriate amount of time, then said, apologetic and conflicted: “I have to go, she’s trying to get up the stairs on crutches. Just… just withdraw us from the competition – I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I hung up, satisfied with my performance. Impersonating one’s parents was an important skill that I had cultivated early due to memories of how useful it would have been earlier in my first life. I didn’t have to fight for independence here in this United Kingdom, but societal convention was merely a less direct leash than vials of my blood being held for ‘safe keeping’.

Then I turned around and remembered where I was.

My parents were staring at me. Baba, like he’d seen a side of me he hadn’t known existed. Mum, like she’d failed somewhere along the line and was looking for an answer as to when.

(Annoyingly, the usual satisfaction from eau de crushed dreams disappeared. Irritatingly quickly. Maybe because my fencing teacher wasn’t someone working against me.)

“Mm.” Scottish Professor Minerva McGonagall, who had magic (!!!), no longer looked so warm. She was impressively hard to read, but my instinct said she was feeling discomfort because…

Shit.

I swapped my excited-to-learn expression with one of suddenly-realised-guilt. Magic was real, but so was ridiculous English morality and social customs. And so was parental disapproval. (I had been careful, very careful never to go too far with my parents.)

Time to mitigate the consequences best I could.

I looked down and tangled my fingers together. Then shuffled towards my parents and grabbed their hands. Baba’s warm pen-calloused grip in my left, Aissata’s slender fingers – dark as my own – in my right.

I held their hands tightly but kept looking away. A glance back at the landline. Baba’s other hand clasped mine in reassurance, because I was feeling ‘oh so much guilt for acting like I had’ and ‘hiding secrets’ and ‘being sneaky’ because all of those traits weren’t very good in a Good society. Tsk tsk.

Aissata ran her fingers through the loose curls on my shoulder – lightly, because we both knew and hated the frizz that was all too easily conjured in English humidity. She cupped my cheek (her hand still so large compared to my childish body) and gently lifted my head until I was looking at her.

Her disappointment was smoothed off most of her face, but her dark brown eyes (the ones I had now) still held an internal conflict. Her thumb brushed my cheek and a distant part of me waited for some new curse that I would have to (painfully) research and counter on my own. But...

“We’ll talk about this later Akua.”

...was all she said.

(What?)

Her face softened and some of the pain in her eyes seeped into sadness. She squeezed my hand.

Why the fuck was my chest tight?

I looked away, trying to figure out what was up with my respiratory rhythm. Huh. That was my epee mask, there on the floor. I must have dropped it when… well, when the magic happened.

I had had so many plans for my life. And sure, magic had literally happened. Proper magic, not my unreliable emotion-and-blood fuelled curse of completely random effects. A new oasis had appeared in front of me, full of fresh water and minted gold. (This secret oasis would disappear if I drank from any other source.)

Still, having a spiritual drink of water after eleven years of dehydration was no reason to make mistakes.

My Baba must have noticed where my gaze fell. “I guess we should stop paying for fencing lessons then?”

There was a much bigger question behind his words.

“I liked fencing because of the stories.” I said, with just as much left unspoken. (How many of the stories were actually real?)

He sighed. Both my hands were being held rather tightly. I felt a look pass between my parents, above my head. I could have guessed what it was – I should have. But my breath was shaking in my chest.

Baba’s other hand started rubbing my shoulder. I couldn’t move my hair out the way, but he was careful to avoid squishing my curls.

“The sorcery was always more exciting than the swords, huh.” He mused. My hands squeezed those of my parents  – involuntarily. (Am I sick? Are there magical diseases? Why was my breath hitching?)

I looked away from the epee mask that – for a moment – had symbolised my previous life plans. The stranger – the Witch – in my living room were easier to examine than a brand new helmet I would never wear again.

Minerva... no, she was probably one for titles. Professor McGonagall was still politely standing. But the thinness of her face had eased at the family moment she had witnessed.

(Gah. Focus on what's important, deal with my weird breathing issues later.)

We watched each other for a second, while I did my best to seem like a child who, having remembered guilt, was now remembering excitement. I twisted in my parents’ hold (without letting go of their hands) to face her properly. “Show me everything.”

“…please, Professor.” I added, with a balanced amount of cheek and contrition.

Professor McGonagall’s mouth didn’t move, but a slight lifting around her eyes belied her humour. That, and the much more obvious signal of her tapping the couch with her wand. (It turned into a sheep.)

“First, my dear,” she said with a hint of Scottish vowels, “your letter of acceptance.”

A letter flew out of that extra-dimensional pocket and into her outstretched hand. (Without a wand movement. Interesting.)

I reached forwards and took the thick envelope. Quality parchment. The kind that accounting would be done on back in Praes, to allow for duplication (or anti-duplication) enchantments.

But by the highly specific address on the front, this one had a powerful tracking spell. I made a mental note to learn it.

The ornate, dark red wax seal cracked with an appropriate snap.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Akua Sahelian,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress

Another page with uniform requirements (a wonderful return to sorcerous fashion... except for a mandatory hat), course books (I wanted to laugh at how convincing my teachers to let me read ahead in class was going to pay off now), and other equipment.

A wand.

Part of me was insulted at the implication that I would need one. Another part of me reasoned that I hadn’t yet mastered magical theory in this world. The main part of me was remembering McGonagall’s (probably paltry) demonstration and hungering.

(The other equipment was interesting too. Cauldrons implied brewing implied poisons. Poisons were useful.)

I handed the letter upwards to my parents, who hadn’t been subtle in reading the swooping green ink over my shoulders.

Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall was smiling. I grinned, as innocently enthusiastic as I could. Which was a lot.

“How did you do that?” I asked energetically, pointing at the sheep that was placidly looking around my living room.

Her lips twitched wider, but another tap of her wand returned the couch to its original shape and lack of sentience.

“That,” the Professor enunciated, “I will teach you in class.” She lifted her gaze to my parents. “I imagine you have many questions. I am free for a few hours today and will receive any post with my name addressed to Hogwarts if you have questions later on.”

“Yes, yes…” Baba trailed off. The sound of parchment shifting indicating that he was lost to us until his rereading was concluded.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Mum gestured to an armchair opposite the couch, then pulled me down onto no-longer-woollen cushions.

Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall sat with impeccable posture, and Baba was dragged down to the couch on my other side, still scanning the course booklist.

To say that the next few hours were informative was like saying the invention of fire was helpful in winter.

A whole new world was waiting for me. Again! I thought I’d left magic behind, so I had distracted myself from unproductive grief with the challenge of consolidating the United Kingdom under my banner.

But the path in front of me now had awakened something sleeping. The path now in front of me led to flying cities and performing feats unseen for millennia.

As the Professor assured my parents that she would guide us through London’s magical district, and that Hogwarts had a fund for my school supplies, I felt my ambition start to lay its spiritual dinner table.

In another thousand years, the name Merlin will be nothing. The devils of the world will be chained at my feet. The governments remade in response to my rule.

In a thousand years, the world will curse – oh yes they will curse – but above that, they will revere the name... Akua Sahelian.

Chapter 5: New Dimension Alley

"A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement.”

• Mikhail Gorbachev, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War and either hailed or hated as the statesman who reformed the USSR until it dissolved.
• (There was a failed coup to oust him along the way, but both credit and blame ignores that.)

 

The street where my parents and I were supposed to meet Professor McGonagall was representative of the boring majority of London that really isn’t that bad, just always compared to the good bits.

Of course, the whole city had earned my respect the first time we’d drove in to pick up Baba’s parents from the airport. To be utterly clear, even the best parts of London had nothing – nothing – on Wolof. The best Earth-based analogy for the city I had been heir to in my first life would be to imagine Memphis on the Nile, at the peak of Ramses the Great’s power. Then imagine that city being founded and ruled by mages. Then imagine that city never falling.

A financial, cultural, and literal fortress of a regional capital that had forgotten more knowledge than other civilisations learned.

Still, there was a quality in quantity. And London had a lot of quantity. Skyscrapers were quite inspiring, for how boring rectangles usually were. The effect wasn’t as pronounced as with flying cities, but any human experienced some amount of awe when seeing something reaching up towards the heavens.

My parents were focused the ground level, looking around the street. Used to this metropolis, even though we lived an hour out of the city itself.

This was the boring-in-comparison part of the city though, so I joined them in scanning the crowds as we walked down the street. Scanning the crowds and positively skipping. Moving with a childish glee because the hungers of my soul required some outlet and I didn’t want to scare people who would be more useful trusting me. Or, at least, underestimating me.

Thus, when I spotted the Deputy Headmistress of my future, I grabbed my parents’ hands and tugged them along.

McGonagall was wearing much stranger clothes than she had while unveiling what had been missing from my life. Today, the fashion still seemed to come from a time before my parents were born, but it was flowing – robed and cloak-like. There was a dramaticism about her now, a sense of authority that just needed a tall, wide-brimmed, pointed hat.

“Akua! Slow dow – oh. Good morning, Professor McGonagall.” Mum straightened her blouse with one hand, the other not letting go of mine. (Which had become common in the past two weeks since my eleventh birthday – I’d overheard wistful comments about ‘boarding school’ and ‘letting her fly’.) (I didn’t actually mind the handholding, but one must protest or risk one's independence being shaved away, sliver by sliver.)

“Good morning.” Said McGonagall. “I trust you had a pleasant trip.” Her accent made the sentence sound snippy, but she was so imperturbably polite in every other manner that offence couldn’t be taken. A useful self-presentation (if you were over fifty).

“Yes, we did thank you,” Baba held out a hand and they shook once. “We do have a few questions, just to clarify a few expectations about this magical district – best to iron out flawed assumptions before they generate flawed conclusions.”

(He had mentally categorised magic the same way he did theoretical physics. Aware that it exists, not even attempting to understanding it, and joking with fellow academics about its impenetrability.)

“Of course.” Professor McGonagall awaited further questions much more politely than the theoretical physicists at the faculty Christmas party.

Baba cleared his throat. “Firstly, you mentioned a fund for students. We just wanted to check what was covered in terms of school equipment; if it was a true scholarship or more of a loan.”

“Hogwarts offers full scholarships to muggleborn students. The fund will pay for all necessary equipment and course materials on the list, excluding any pets.”

I made a disgruntled noise. I hadn’t really wanted a pet, unless there was some magical familiar ritual one could perform. But ordinary children wanted pets and I still had to appear ordinary in a few ways. (The fact that children could get away with such blatant pettiness was a side benefit.)

The Professor continued. “You are of course welcome to purchase any additional equipment you wish, and I am happy to advise on anything useful. You will have an opportunity to exchange pounds to our currency during our trip.”

Mum nudged Baba, because she’d made a bank withdrawal ‘just in case’.

Baba didn’t grumble, even well-meaningly, because here was an opportunity for knowledge. “Is there any government registration or identification we need to set up? We brought birth certificates just in case.”

At this, McGonagall frowned thoughtfully. “Miss Sahelian’s magical citizenship is organised through the Hogwarts records now that she is enrolled. Our government, despite being independent and essentially sovereign, is a ministry of your parliament due to legacy from before the Statute of Secrecy.” She paused. “I believe that our Ministry liaises with the muggle government if they ever need records for the parents of muggleborn.”

Mum’s hand came to rest on my shoulder. More for her sake than mine – she'd been suspicious of the magical vs ‘muggle’ divide and hadn’t liked the idea that the wizarding world had replaced racism with an ideologically inconsistent form of classism.

(Really, any discrimination was just irrational. One should use everything and everyone on your path to power – dividing society was only useful if you wanted internal discord, and even then only in the short term. Because long term discrimination just created created opportunities for pesky heroes.)

(And, yes. I could be accused of perpetuating discrimination back in my first life. But it wasn’t about hating Orcs or hating Callow. The main reason I had chosen to murder and make fly a city from Catherine’s kingdom was because she was my rival, and it was simply advantageous for me if Catherine was angry and impulsive. Also, Praesi cities had more rituals built into their architecture than a pirate had tattoos, and it was just more efficient to design my masterwork on a sorcerous blank slate.)

“About this Statute of Secrecy,” Mum began, “we are obviously allowed to know about magic, but are her grandparents? Old school friends? Anyone she might meet in future?”

“Ew.” I said, because my grandparents believed in well-behaved children, and well-behaved children weren’t supposed to deliver logically structured arguments against arranged marriages. Baba still chuckled at that particular expression of my romantic disinterest.

I ignored Professor McGonagall’s standard-sounding answer. Mum wouldn’t get an honest answer out of someone whose job it was to make her feel comfortable with entrusting her daughter to witches and wizards. Besides, my old school friends had been barely capable minions, I was not interested in staying in touch. And if I did ever ‘meet someone’, they would have to be useful (magical).

“Come onnn,” I groaned when Baba asked an admittedly important question about whether I technically held citizenship in multiple magical countries. “Walk and talk, I want to see magic!”

My parents laughed and Professor McGonagall smiled, ever so slightly. Then a wand was waved, and my parents were gasping at a dingy pub that I’d known was there the entire time.

Huh. Selective invisibility had some fun applications.

Hopefully the inside wasn’t as... dull.

I led my parents in following Deputy Headmistress McGonagall into the wizarding world.

The Leaky Cauldron looked and felt like it had gotten stuck in the era of whale oil lamps. A thorough application of modern cleaning supplies might make it look only two centuries old.

Most of the pub glanced up when we entered. As if we were in a small town. Also reminiscent of a small town was the collective welcome given to the Professor. Many even joked about seeing her outside of Hogwarts, which... she did seem like one who appreciated deference from former students.

Actually, McGonagall was on the older side of the crowd, which lacked in the middle-aged department. Everyone here was either young or grey haired. Intriguing.

Only a tiny portion of the crowd kept paying attention after the Professor declared she was “ensuring a new student was made welcome.” Two obvious malcontents looked over my parents and I, then sneeringly sank further back into their seats.

One jovial fellow wearing lilac and some beer stains raised an almost empty pint. “Welcome! Welcome!” The pint was entirely empty a moment later.

“Come along, the entrance to Diagon Alley proper is out the back.” McGonagall guided us out the back to an even less impressive, cobblestone bin-yard. She tapped several specific bricks in a pattern, and I yearned for something to visualise the magic that suddenly filled the air like a heavenly combination of honey, ozone, and steam.

Then the back brick wall split open. Folded itself, brick by brick, into the walls.

“Welcome to Diagon Alley.” Professor McGonagall declared.

Ah.

Relief.

My eyes. My ears. My nose.

Magic filtered into me – an ambient bleed of sorcery that came from either massively inefficient rituals or places where so much magic has been cast that Creation started rearranging itself without prompting. Although… this was Earth, where the rules seemed to be different.

But I could learn the rules later.

There was magic here, and my soul was finally feeding.

<{   ҉   }>

The centre of commerce for magical society in London was...

Small.

Vibrant.

Busy.

I looked further down the single street. There were lots of colours. So much going on that my parents were still boggling at everything and everyone we passed. (At least half the colour came from the fashion of a society that had decided neutral tones didn’t belong.)

(I appreciated the boldness, but lavender and bright orange swirls was a sin.)

This was different from Praes. Very, very different from Praes.

Everyone was just... performing magic. For everything. But the spells were all so uniform. Wand movements and incantations all repeated as people changed the fundamental states of reality to... clean spills. Tidy their hair. Or levitate boxes as they walked through the streets.

Now, it made sense. All very practical. This society had isolated themselves and replaced all the functions of servants and employees with spells. Anyone who would want to attack them didn’t even know they existed. And, of course, they were magical. Magic was why Praes threatened the continent, back in Creation.

Except it made no sense. This place was so small. Where were the wonders? The marvels and the masterworks?

I’m sure wands were perfectly useful, but I had seen McGonagall use magic without hers a few times. Thus, wands were an aid. But everyone here was using them. Did no one care about defending themselves when disarmed?

It felt vaguely disrespectful – a rejection of the awe this place could generate if it really wanted to.

Ugh, this society would have hidden away during the world wars. Did they even comprehend the Cold War? When was the last time a narrowly-escaped assassination attempt had motivated them to reach new personal heights and crush their opponents?

Even so, surely there would be people who learned to perform magic without wands if only for the social status. Or the convenience. Or... there were countless reasons. So why was every bit of magic performed with wands?

There was something... spiritual missing. More than just the look of this alley, compared to my... home country, there was something fundamentally different in the spirit of this society.

The people here were relaxed. Easy-going, like hobbits living in the damn Shire. They either lacked purpose or had a purpose that was better described as a hobby. Even if this was just the lazy Saturday morning crowd, I didn’t have high hopes for the elites. Hells, I couldn’t even see a police force. Despite being in the middle of the central commercial hub of wizarding society! Were they not worried about someone acting on a blood feud without approval of the authorities?

It seemed to me that behind all the jovial quirks and bright bustling of the wizarding world was a kind of orderliness that whispered of stagnation.

These people were complacent. They had magic and they used it to cushion their lives – comfort over actually living. Great eagles with beaks strong enough to break bones and talons sharp enough to score rock had used those gifts to... build a big nest and have a nap.

I was in the heart of wizarding society and all I saw were soft fluffy sheep.

In Praes’ capital city, you couldn’t look at the sky or stars without seeing the Black Tower and its preternatural ring of storm clouds. It was a pillar of our power, a monument to our might. A beacon, that called to all who saw it and said: ‘Come, climb, challenge.’

When I looked up in the middle of Diagon Alley, I couldn’t even see London skyscrapers. There was a bit of weather manipulation magic to make the sun shine, but fuck. Did this society have no goal?

I reflected on my journey into the wizarding world so far.

For context, it is an important fact to note that I have been to multiple dimensions. Creation was but the most stable layer in an infinitely tall lasagna of realities. If one was being crude. I had visited the fae realm of Arcadia, countless misty pocket dimensions, and – of course – seen a respectable number of the hells. My slow growth in this world from infant to actually conscious felt much more complete than simply transposing realities to reach into my personal storage dimension.

But now, after eleven years and two weeks, I had found that Earth too had multiple realities (in a sense). The normal world, where laws of nature and physics were constant. And now the magical side of the UK, where reality was what you could make of it.

The joy, the freedom, the inevitable satisfaction of my plans reaching fruition. Ah, it was like my first journey to The Hell of Apes and Iron. That hell, number 47, held a special place in my memories. I already knew I would remember Diagon Alley the same.

It's not every day that one takes the first steps towards changing history.

So, because of my exhilaration, I hadn’t focused too much on stores that sold ice cream or pets or animated kitchen equipment. I had barely focused on the well-stocked apothecaries, though I did notice that they advertised antidotes, which hopefully indicated that poisons were more prevalent in magical Britain than… ‘muggle’.

I paid no attention to the store selling brooms. Chariots were infinitely more useful – if you couldn’t just fly yourself.

None of these small distractions interested me, no. I was searching for something more… important.

“This is Gringotts Wizarding Bank,” Professor McGonagall gestured at a multi-storeyed building that managed to combine the architectural styles of Ancient Athens and brutalism. White marble columns and faint carvings were a rounded exception to harsh lines and a sense of looming.

“Know that Gringotts is run and managed by the Goblins, who value aggression in their culture.” I (very consciously) didn’t start grinning. “I will help Miss Sahelian set up a vault, which you may also use as her blood relatives. Transferring currency is a much simpler process, though I am unsure of the current exchange rates.” McGonagall addressed my parents, since I appeared distracted by the Alley.

I wasn’t, but looking over the creatures in gold and scarlet military uniforms was more immediately interesting than banking bureaucracy. They were very different from the Goblins of Praes, mainly in that they were wearing (matching) uniforms and standing still. The similarity came in how the readiness of their bodies spoke of an urge to violently stab until they knew – scientifically – what would kill a wizard. Or what would leave them mostly dead but still able to talk.

We walked up the snow-white marble steps and past giant bronze doors. My parents got long suspicious glances, but I was given matching scowls after the guards eyed my hands.

This general suspicion, plus the inscription on the smaller silver doors past the giant bronze ones, absolutely screamed ‘we’ve gone to war before’. If some past conflict wasn’t the reason why Goblins ran this bank but weren’t wandering the Alley outside, then I would force feed someone their hat.

My contempt of wizards grew a little more. They had evidently had wars – some form of challenge. But with it over, they just... returned to rural village life? The grandest building in Diagon Alley was built by an entirely different people. Who did get a point of favour with me for coming the closest to making me feel at home since I discovered that Earth was moving towards nuclear disarmament.

The architecture fed my nostalgia a little – angled and magically gravity-defying, not like the sweeping opulence of ‘muggle’ London banks. It even had weapons hung up on the wall! (Just add a wall of skulls or bind a thief's soul to their doorknocker and this would be a minor Praesi noble’s fake treasury entrance.)

But the main feeling of familiarity was not visual. No, it was the atmosphere, like some stimulant for my senses. Making me feel awake, giving some immediate stakes to the world. The atmosphere in here was positively foggy with distrust.

Nothing active, just that background understanding where everyone – no matter their proper conduct in society – knew that the other parties in the room had goals mutually exclusive to their own. The wizards and goblins here may be cooperating in the name of commerce and wealth protection, but they both knew that knives and fire needed only a small excuse to come out.

Everyone was waiting for the betrayal.

But it didn’t happen today, because banking bureaucracy is as efficient as it is boring. I bled onto paper, got a key, and carefully watched them dispose of my blood. My parents exchanged pounds to galleons, deposited half the sum into my new account, then promptly left the bank. (Good people always had problems with Praesi society.)

The goblins felt steady to me though. Unmoving, like the wizard society – but as if it were stone, rather than a river running too slow to dissolve the mud. These goblins would generate conflict like an avalanche. Tense but stable relations until suddenly: war.

Even despite the enemy in the middle of their... quaint... CBD, the wizarding world had other, more immediate, sources of conflict. Glaringly obvious ones. Like me.

(I would lever open any and all societal cracks until I could rebuild the broken shards of civilisation in my image, of course. But my mere presence in this Alley was representative of a larger conflict.)

Every society has tension between a group that wants to conserve and a group that thinks things can be done differently (better). Praes too had these factions, represented by the beliefs of the current Dread Empress or Emperor – and whoever worked against them.

Dread Empress Malicia and her Black Knight had spat on thousands of years of traditions. So, I made a city fly, opened permanent portals to hell, and spat on them from the sky. Then they – mainly Catherine, their protégé – set my city on fire and ripped my heart out.

Such rivalries were essential to keep both culture and technology moving forwards.

This world I was reborn into was honestly a bit weird in that killing political opponents was considered a ‘bad thing’. Since magical Britain only shut itself away three hundred years ago, maybe they’d be okay with some disappearances. Or so I hoped, anyway. Because the wizarding world had real, living symbolism for its conservative and progressive factions to use as real, living ammunition. Those who liked their isolated society exactly the way it was would not be happy with children coming in from outside.

Professor McGonagall had labelled me ‘muggleborn’ two weeks ago. And I was sure that the barely-washed thugs in the back of the Leaky Cauldron had called me something worse under their breaths.

As we walked to get my wand (I showed excitement instead of offence at the implication I’d need one), my parents gave an example of why my entrance into the wizarding world would cause... political tension.

“Do you count age differently too? Does your counting system use... prime numbers as bases?” Baba asked, baffled.

“No, we count in base ten and determine age as you do – though there are some differences in ages of majority and consent.” Professor McGonagall replied good naturedly.

It didn’t help Baba. “So why is it twenty-nine knots to a sickle and seventeen sickles to a... the gold ones?!”

“Well,” the Professor definitely explained this multiple times a year. That kind of blank face came with practice (and actual boredom). “The British wizarding economy originally grew from trade with the fae, and those currency denominations were found to be more useful in ensuring you actually got what you paid for.”

“Oh.” Baba managed to keep walking. “Well then. I suppose that’s okay.” (It was obvious he was struggling to believe half of what he’d learned today. The other half was pushed aside to struggle with later.)

“Which kind of fae do you trade with?” Mum interjected, like someone who hadn’t grown up simply knowing these basic facts. Like an outsider.

I was a symbol of societal change. A refugee, welcomed, but highlighting flaws in the society even when merely trying to learn their customs. An outsider, fuelling a fire that the people in power had kept calm for what felt like a very long time.

(Catherine always had been an arsonist.)

Hmm. Maybe being on the progressive side of politics would be liberating. So long as I got to rip out a rival’s heart, at least.

<{   ҉   }>

I stared at the wand in my hand.

My parents were huddled back against the door of the shop. (The shop which hadn’t had looked like a tornado came through – nor had any scorch marks – before I entered.)

The wandmaker with eyes that saw far too much had slunk closer again, staring at my wrist, shoulder, and heart before his gaze snapped back to the wand in my hand. Professor McGonagall was off running an errand.

I turned my hand back and forth. Flicked towards a window – my parents ducked.

The wand I held was lighter than my skin, but not by much. Carvings followed the flow of the grain, evoking a visual of flames growing with the wood. There was enough texture that it wouldn’t easily slip from my fingers.

It had cut me when I picked it up from a purple velvet box. Yet, I couldn’t feel any splinters or edges sharp enough to do anything more than provide tactile satisfaction. When it cut me, the not-quite-flame carvings had suddenly stained themselves burgundy.

I’d flicked my wand at the dusty box that had held it, and the box had turned to golden smoke.

I rotated my wrist the other way. (There was a little nick in my palm, but no blood.) (The red stains in the wood seemed to spread out from where it’d cut me.)

“Black walnut, a phoenix feather core, fourteen and a half inches. Faintly flexible.” The wandmaker was staring at the wand – at my hand – like he could read more about me from that than he could from my eyes. “A fascinating reaction. I shall have to read your exploits very carefully when they make the papers.”

I didn’t look away from my wand. (My wand – it was mine in the same way my bones were.) But I thanked him, because one was always polite to those who held more power.

Part of the hunger in my soul had been fed. Was continually being fed, by the wand I was so aware of in my hand. My wand was feeding that hunger, and feeding on that hunger in turn. A circular spiritual loop that had managed to ground itself in a physical object.

It was like fire – a combustion reaction that somehow was its own thing while producing light and heat and dancing.

Mum tugged me outside while Baba paid with large gold coins. I wasn’t really listening to her, but I did let her run a finger down the length of my wand. (My wand.)

Diagon Alley was far brighter than the dim and now-dusty shop.

It felt fundamentally different from before. All these wizards and witches, I thought them complacent. I thought they were too lazy to focus their magic. I thought that wands were tools to help magic like triple lined books helped one’s cursive. (Maybe they still were, but...)

I looked at Diagon Alley differently now. How many of these wizards were relaxed not because they were lazy, but because they could do so much, so easily?

My wand was held so tightly in my hand that it might actually cut me again.

Really, this society was a bit mad. Who decided to let the population walk around with semi-sentient magic amplifiers in their fucking pockets?

<{   ҉   }>

My room now had a few new additions. A fancy trunk, holding next year’s school uniform and some nicely layered wizarding casual robes. A black pointed hat, resting on the coat hanger on the back of my door. Books of magic, hard-backed and thick-papered, in pride of place on my bookshelf. (The previous scientific texts were crammed down on other shelves.)

And my wand, which hadn’t left my hand for a second since (it started feeding my soul) I first picked it up.

It was slightly inconvenient to turn pages while holding a wand. But feeling how the yet untapped magic inside me might flow through the grain, along the shaft of the phoenix feather, and out? After eleven years of nothing, that was as intoxicating as commanding a hundred devils.

Professor McGonagall said not to use magic before I entered Hogwarts – because of the Statute of Secrecy and the dangers of making mistakes when no adult witch or wizard was around to dispel anything I did. Which meant I would read these books until I could recite this world’s magical theory in my sleep. And then pick apart that knowledge until I understood it in my bones.

And only then perform magic with no one else around.

First though, were the new plans I needed to make to take power in wizarding society.

My parents had bought me only ten books aside from the booklist. I had already finished two – one shortly after dinner the night we got back from Diagon, and the other today – prompting my parents to make jokes about ‘their hawk finding new prey’.

Hogwarts: A History was dry. Any story (the actual impactful playing-out of Fate) was implied at best. But having useful facts and general knowledge about the domain of my next seven years was always good. I would appear the perfect muggleborn to both camps of wizarding politics.

Even though the progressive or ‘Light’ camp was currently winning. (Toppling a government was shockingly easy when they weren’t expecting it.)

A Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts was blatantly biased in the current regime’s favour, but it confirmed a few societal trends that I needed to know. As well as being generally useful as a guide of where previous villains failed. (There were only two surprisingly niche things I hadn’t already accounted for.)

The last chapter of Rise and Fall was... very informative. Very recently, there had been a guerrilla civil war to prosecute muggleborns that ended when a baby killed the Dark Lord. Apparently, this ‘Boy Who Lived’ would be in my Hogwarts cohort.

Which meant there would be ample opportunities for me to take advantage of the inevitable societal chaos.

Because if I knew Fate at all, then this latest Dark Lord wasn’t finished. And since I was very well-acquainted with Fate (I’d basically invited it to tea back in Praes), I would bet that Dark Lord Name-Unknown wasn’t dead at all.

He sounded like a good rival though.

Chapter 6: A Train Ride to Power

“So, Magellan, where are we going?”

“Away. To danger. I’m open to any location, so long as it doesn’t involve returning to your house while Wart-Head is there.”

• Alleged quote of Ferdinand Magellan, who actually died before he circumnavigated the globe due to the then-common use of poisoned arrows in Philippine Island politics. All in the name of spices. And Portugal’s international street-cred, of course.

 

King’s Cross Station was more of a monument to the UK than any skyscraper. The Tower of London and other things were mentioned more, of course. Probably because King’s Cross – despite its clocktower and history – wasn’t very tall. Comparatively.

Another factor might have been the station’s purpose. The Tower of London symbolises royalty and history and a lot of things this pseudo-Kingdom didn’t really do anymore (like torture, boringly). King’s Cross Station did symbolise British industrial supremacy – which was fascinating enough to make me respect the country, despite their restrictive morality and failure to maintain empire. But unlike the Crystal Palace’s history of exhibiting inventions and fantastical things, the industrial symbol of King’s Cross Station was...

Public transport.

Vitally important, of course. If I were back in Praes, I would recreate trains along an empire-wide ritual network to speed our economy to heights unseen. We would rival the City of Bought and Sold itself!

But, in the modern United Kingdom, not a lot of people celebrated a monument to getting to work on time.

Besides, as my parents as I walked through the bustling crowd, we were going to the magical world. Which made a train station much less interesting.

“So,” Mum said, but didn’t continue.

The three of us were examining the brick pillar holding up the signs for platforms nine and ten. It looked – like the rest of the structural pillars in the station – rather solid.

I stepped closer, tugging the trolley with my tightly packed trunk (and my second, non-magical trunk of non-magical books). Was there a way to detect the enchantment? Was it an enchantment? Surely the element that obscured the real magic was. But beneath the illusion there should be a whole array of runes. Though the size and necessary power would change depending on if this was the entrance to a pocket dimension or some passageway. Or teleporting, though I doubted that – not even Dread Empress Triumphant, the founder of Praes herself, (may she never return) had been able to teleport.

(Not while keeping the teleported person or object in one piece, anyway.)

I refocused from my musing in time to see Baba poke the brick pillar. He poked it again. Gave it a tap. Leant closer and knocked.

“Well, that’s brick. Solid... brick.”

Mum stepped up to my other side. I could tell without even looking at her that her eyebrow was raised. Rather doubtfully.

I reached forwards to the brick pillar.

My fingers passed through – not sank, it wasn’t liquid – the brick like it wasn’t there.

Mum made a noise that sounded a little like choking and a lot like disbelief. After Diagon Alley, her struggle with magic being real had proceeded to swing dance with her struggle to let me go to a boarding school, with that choreography resulting in bustling weekends where our family did a number of activities to make up for me not being around come September.

But now September was here, and we all realised that the magic barrier opened only for magic.

Aissata grabbed my hand. Marshalled herself. Reached forwards, and hiccupped when her hand sank through the brick.

I leant further in, feeling around. Huh. The pillar was not that wide on the outside. Time to see how advanced magical Britain was with pocket dimensions.

“Hold my hands.” I told my parents. “We can push the trolley through first then go in one by one.”

I felt Mum staring at me. But she stepped back to let Baba push the trolley, and didn’t suggest anything else.

The trolley passed through the bricks, my Baba’s arm pulling me gently forward towards solid brick that wasn’t solid because... hmm, the barrier had obviously detected my magic, but how? Was the whole enchantment hidden or was an illusion of brick laid atop something transitive?

Actually walking through the barrier was a brief experience. Uninformative. No wash of magic to slip just outside reality to...

Wait. This wasn’t a pocket dimension.

The station looked old. Brand new and spanking clean, but clearly designed in the 19^th century and pristinely preserved. The biggest thing in the station was the train. Steam train. Wrought iron and solid steel. Painted bright red and glossy black – a fresh coat shining like it had never met steam or country rain before.  

“Well then,” Mum said, “I suppose we should... clear the path?” (She had assimilated to England enough that politeness had become engrained as a default response to shock.)

She ushered us out of the way of the barrier, which from this side looked like faintly billowing mist. Mist that, soon into my observation, flowed outwards and dissipated around a family with two children, dressed in grey and various shades of blue.

The station – open to the air and absent of any noise from other platforms – was dotted with a dozen other pairings of parents and children. All wearing flowing clothes in a range of colours that marked them as magical. Talking and hugging, having last moments before children went to find their friends.

But there were only a dozen.

Sure, we were early, but the secrecy law McGonagall described were recent enough that being on time should have bled over into magical culture. Unless they had other forms of transport and this was how the muggleborn and wealth-challenged got to school. Except everyone else was very obviously part of wizarding culture, so the muggleborn hypothesis was ruled out. (That everyone else here was poor was still up for consideration, because magic could eliminate many of the usual signifiers.)

Still, from how this train had been described, I had to assume that wizards were either late by principle or that there simply weren’t many of them.

Baba was staring at the train, his mind visible in the flickering of his eyes behind his glasses and the twitching of a hand that was rarely without notebook.

Mum was scanning the rest of the platform, cataloguing other families like books on a shelf – a shelf that might be trapped to activate floor spikes if you touched the wrong leatherbound spine – and trying to distract herself from how I wouldn’t be coming home after that scarlet steam train pulled away.

I was suddenly struck by how long eleven years (to be imprecise) actually was.

Eleven years was long enough for me to call that small, inexpensively furnished, bookshelf-filled house, home. The palace I commandeered in my flying city had been more like home than the suite of rooms I occupied for nearly two decades in Wolof. Because I hadn’t owned them, not while my first mother controlled the House’s finances. (Hmm, I didn’t own my room at... home... either. But it was still mine.)

Eleven years was long enough for me to dedicate my ambitions to this new world. (But not long enough to jump ship again when I found that the grass on the other side of the fence was magical.)

Eleven years was long enough for me to care about... long enough for me to actually consider these people parents. In Praes, my ‘mother’ was a passive opponent at best and my father was turned into a pincushion by crossbow bolts. In this world, my mother verbally and logically lacerated teachers that didn’t acknowledge my genius and my father... acted almost exactly the same.

(But I had no enemies who would kill him to distract me.)

“Oh darling, oh my little hawk.” Mum was hugging me.

(Eleven years was long enough for this stupid Good morality to infect me enough that I didn’t automatically reject this public vulnerability.)

“Do you think they stole the train or built their own?” Baba asked absentmindedly. He was faking it, emotion crackling at the bottom of his voice. But it still made me laugh. (A little bit too hard.)

“The Christmas break really isn’t that far away.” Mum commented much less casually than Baba.

I was being ridiculous. I had realised early on in this life that I was heading to a boarding school. All the best institutions that had the prestige to actually be ‘institutions’ still subscribed to the idea that living at school meant more learning at school. (Or more money from parents.)

So, I was always going to have this moment. I’d spent years looking forward to the symbolised freedom. Goodbye parental authority. Hello independence and stand-in guardians I could twist around my little finger.

But apparently, eleven years was enough for group cohesion to effect even me. And all this... attachment (that wasn’t actually a weakness in non-magical society, strange as it seemed) was driving me to remember these last moments. To... make this short time before I got on the train, if not happy, then not sad.

They didn’t need to worry about me. But a full explanation as to why that was the case would not calm them. And I did still need to learn a few more things to properly (conquer my opponents) defend myself. That was all irrelevant for right now.

I wanted to leave Aissata and Jamaldine with a good memory of me. Because having them longing for my return would be beneficial to my long term plans, and that was what I was focused on.

“The train is interesting Baba, but I wonder how they made this.” I gestured at the floor.

“Oh?” Mum questioned, voice hiding a quiver.

“Yeah, this looks like the platforms from old drawings. Did wizards build this or did they just enchant a whole platform of King’s Cross to be hidden from everyone else?”

“Ah,” Baba looked around, “are we assuming that this is physically part of the station?”

“It’s not a pocket dimension, and the sky still looks the same as outside so I doubt we’ve been spatially shifted. And these people are no where near real teleportation.” Although English weather was rather... samey, so the chance couldn’t be ruled out.

My parents blinked at me a little. They were used to me engaging with scientific concepts in a manner ‘beyond my years’, but this time I wasn’t bothering to present my magical knowledge as new. I knew magic like Einstein knew physics. (And I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.)

“How could they have... hidden it... if they hadn’t built it?” Mum was in her theory-hole-poking mood. Curious, surprisingly analytical, and ever so slightly vindictive. This mood was part of some of our best family discussions.

“Memory charms exist, and I’m sure that tampering with paper records isn’t difficult.”

“That’s a point.” Baba said, mind going off on a tangent. “Why do they even have a market for books? The Deputy Headmistress definitely duplicated something at some point. Books were only rare due to time and cost of reproduction, and now only due to intellectual property laws. Wait, why did we buy your school books?” The final words were said with the dawning horror of a man realising that a society had eschewed utopian library systems in favour of capitalism.

Mum rolled her eyes at him fondly, then frowned – still parsing out the problem. “Memory charms would have been feasible before, but with satellites? Or... they would have had to survey the station for renovations? There are just too many ways for people to realise the floor plan doesn’t match what's actually there!”

She flung an arm up at the sky. “And they’ve taken the roof off!” (The other hand was still holding mine.)

“There just isn’t the manpower for people,” she sputtered for a split second, “or government agents in sunglasses and black... robes, to go around wiping peoples’ minds!”

She had a very real point. Mass mind control was always temporary – otherwise Fate couldn’t set up a hero team to fight the tyrannical villain. Wiping memories was similar enough that someone would inevitably remember the secrets and overthrow the whole scheme. Honestly, any attempt at world domination had the equal and opposite reaction of a bunch of goody-two-shoes doing their best to uphold the previous status-quo.

Unless the wizarding world was as lacking in Fate as the rest of Earth. Then a repetitive, planned, and regular approach to mind wiping – like the method Catherine’s awfully competent mentor used to kill Heroes before they got any narrative weight behind them – would feasibly work for hundreds of years.

But satellites did change the game. The distribution of information was becoming so advanced that this world might maintain some record or memory even if an Absence Demon was running amok. (Praes only knew that one – or more – had gotten free because there was a four hundred year gap in all historical and archaeological knowledge.)

I looked around, slipped my hands free, and stepped towards the train.

More wizards had filed onto the platform. Despite my adjusted understanding of just how much their wands were capable of, I still couldn’t see this small crowd of garish garments managing anything even remotely as coordinated as the ritual sorcerers of Praes.

“Maybe...” I paused, looked up. The station was open to the sky, but the walls and ceiling of the rest of the station were simply not there.

An older man in blue robes and a gold sash was obviously eavesdropping on our discussion. But the rest of the crowd still lacked that... drive – that I couldn’t comprehend not having.

“Maybe the barrier transported us somewhere.” All of the theory in my head said it couldn’t have, but this was a new world with new magic. “Wizards could have built this station separate from King’s Cross, but they would have borrowed the steam train. Then enchanted it from tip to tail.”

Then I turned at looked the wizard in the eyes.

“Hmm,” the eavesdropping elder said without any shame, “that’s very insightful of you, young lady. But a clever team of enchanters managed to adjust the relative space of both this station and King’s Cross outside. The barrier and the Hogwarts Express,” he waved a hand at the steam train, “are entrances to the area of differentiated distance.”

My parents turned, and he smiled at them as well. (Absently, focusing back on me and ignoring my parents like one ignores trees – or lamp posts.)

“I think you might do very well in Ravenclaw. Inquisitiveness and an ability to arrive at apt conclusions will get you very far, if I do say so myself.” He then chuckled, a man seeing a child and mistaking them for a mirror that cared.

“My grandson Anthony is starting this year as well,” he smiled, “he would be happy to help get you up to speed, I’m sure.” He turned around and pointed at a conspicuously blue copy of the now many two-parent-one-child groups.

“Oh, thank you very much!” I burst out cheerfully. “I’ll be sure to remember you, Mr... um...” I dragged out my confusion, enjoying the momentary freeze of his features.

But then his politics triumphed over tarnished ego. “Goldstein. Head of the House – my grandson can explain what that means, of course. Now, I wish you a wonderful welcome to our world.” And with that he walked off, too ably for someone of his apparent age, which was becoming a theme among wizards.

I turned back to my parents and let my irritation show. “How did these people manage to create a pocket dimension that isn’t a different dimension?”

Mum, who had drawn herself up at Goldstein’s dismissal of her and Baba, suddenly coughed. “I’m sorry honey,” she looked around, then knelt down near me, “but did you say ‘pocket dimension’?”

“Yes, but that is the process of anchoring and entering an area of less stable reality to define its reality yourself.” I huffed. “This is... I mean, it’s possible, but it implies these fools discovered a whole new set of theories hundreds of years ago!” The best sorcerers in Praes could probably achieve this effect, just... not without the effect leaking outwards – or worse, inwards.

My parents were wearing the look that mixed both pride and hey-I’m-pretty-sure-her-books-didn't-cover-that.

“Quantum physics.” I said sheepishly. (My emotions had slipped their leash and loosened my inhibitions in the escape attempt.)

Mum sighed, and pulled me close. “I’m going to miss you.” She whispered into my hair. (I couldn’t remember when she’d figured out that I only really accepted emotional exchanges when I could deny they ever happened.)

With my eyes closed firmly against the shoulder of Mum’s coat, I reached out for Baba. Found his leg, moved upwards for his hand. Pulled him close, to stand over us like his bookshelves did for the stacks of reference volumes he always left on the floor.

“You’ll write.” Mum stated into my hair. “Every week, even if it's only a few sentences.” I nodded (rubbed my face into her shoulder).

(If anyone had seen me like this in Praes, I would be facing assassins by supper. Why was I trusting these wizards?)

I pulled away. Blinked to clear my eyes of dust. Scanned the station. No one was paying attention, not obviously. But my body language had been obvious enough to give anyone trained the time to blend back into the crowd.

I didn’t know if anyone trained would be in this crowd. And I apparently didn’t know enough of this magic or wizarding society in general.

Baba crouched down to join Mum at my eye level. Their eyes were filled with... a lot, but still warm. (Some caged, clawing thing inside of me wanted to demand of him ‘don’t die’ and demand of her ‘don’t hate me’.)

I looked down, glanced back up.

“Oh, I think the train is some kind of ritual.” Nope, look away from their eyes. “Centuries of kids journeying to school has some weight, and the train is definitely a symbol of... growing up? I wonder If there is some magic to help people find friends or want to learn.”

Mum smiled at that, but I knew she’d read at least one layer into what I was feeling. Baba opened his mouth. Closed it. Cleared his throat.

“Do you think you could lend me some of those magic books, little hawk?” Baba asked, forcing his academic interest to overcome whatever was stuck in his oesophagus.

“Only at the end of the year.” I smirked (less successfully than I should’ve). “Now come on, I need to get a good train compartment!”

Baba groaned and tugged the trolley cart around from where we’d left it.

I was about to step forward to help him push (cement those good memories) when Mum grasped my hand.

She kissed me on the forehead, then breathed words into my hairline: “We both know you’re a big hawk, so fly free. Soar and hunt and read and do magic, my daughter.” Another kiss. “Just fly back to me – even if you land on my bare arm with your sharp claws – just fly back and tell me all you saw from the sky.”

I held her hand very tightly and considered the likelihood of oesophagus-blockage being contagious.

And dust kept getting in my eyes.

Then I let go and ‘helped’ Baba push the trolley to the train. Which definitely held ritual magic of some sort. I would have to glean all the benefit from it I could. And maybe find ‘Anthony Goldstein’. Bookish minions were always useful.

(I stared out the window for a long time after the train left the station, even though my parents had dwindled to specks in the first thirty seconds.)

Notes:

She's not crying. I'm not crying. No one's crying, what are you talking about?

Chapter 7: A Hat Gets Sorted

Notes:

All of your comments are delightful and were great motivation to start book 2, which is now 1/18th done! (And looking very fun)

“In the nature of man, we find three principle causes of quarrel:

First, Competition;

Secondly, Dissidence;

Thirdly, Glory.

The first, maketh man invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation.

The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second (use Violence) to defend them; the third (use Violence) for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue.”

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

 

“Hello, have any of you seen a toad?” I asked politely. Casually, as if searching for a pet toad was utterly ordinary and not…

Well, it was consistent with the ‘muggle’ stories of witchcraft. But toads were apparently a ‘boy’s pet’ in the wizarding world. And pet toads were a distinct breed from the sort used for potion ingredients.

It was all very particular in a way that felt silly (and, honestly, backwards) to my experience with Praesi sorcery.

The older students – who were at an unfortunate stage of puberty – in the compartment I’d leaned into had in fact not seen a toad. I briefly enquired which house they were in and got some advice (which I’d heard at least ten times by now) on dealing with the professors.

I shut the door and let go of my young-and-innocent posture. Allowed myself a breath.

Social engineering was a requirement to climbing Praes’ Black Tower. I’d been taught to read people and allow others to read only what I wanted them to from childhood – even in games as an infant! Which might have been why it wasn’t as fun this time.

Being eleven didn’t allow for a wide variety of approaches, after all.

(What actually drained the fun – like blood from a corpse – was that nobody else was playing. The corpse was just that, a corpse. Dead – and on blood clotting agents to boot. The most interesting thing about these repetitive conversations was drawing inferences about wizarding society’s social classes and how they responded to behaviour on various spectrums.)

“No luck?” A partially-defeated voice asked.

“We still have half the train Neville!” This voice, like it’s owner’s hair, had much more energy.

Neville and Hermione had knocked on my compartment on their way towards the front of the train. I, wanting to present my best self in this irritatingly Good society, had volunteered to also aid Neville in finding his already-misplaced toad.

Searching for ‘Trevor’ was a much better way to establish myself. (And, despite my disappointment at the lack of any challenge, a far better activity than sitting with the nervous and awkward girls in my compartment who were only useful for describing enchanted sweets. Sorry Sally-Anne, you are not worthy of being my minion.)

Soon enough, we only had a quarter of the train left to search.

With each compartment, I was collecting snippets of knowledge – little fragmented facts – ready to assemble a… social directory… in my mind. I’d updated the mental image of a web I’d woven in my first life to kind of phonebook; individual entries full of hyperlinks. But instead of phone numbers, my ‘book’ would hold blackmail and other personal levers I could pull.

The most immediate – and somewhat accurate – way to categorise students in compartments was by school House. The extracurricular books I’d bought did reference House traits – and it seemed the teenagers were broadly conforming to their tribe’s behaviour. (The second, more interesting, way to categorise students was whether they chose compartments full of their House or deigned to mix.)

I closed the door on a compartment of older Slytherins who appeared to think that you only needed to be cunning around other members of the elite. (Gods Below, this society needed some pruning.)

Next door. Listen. Knock. Polite conversation stops, but the door didn’t open.

“Greg, you’re closest.” Someone spoke – faint, but snooty.

 The door was opened by a big brawny boy that… hmm. If magic was as solely mental as it was in my first life, this boy was in trouble. I glanced around. Oh, two lumps. Ah, bodyguards. (I wanted to grin.)

“May I come in?” I asked. Addressing my words past the lump to the haughty blond boy. ‘Greg’ also turned to hear his answer.

Blond boy looked pleased being seen as the leader. “Your name?” He asked loftily.

“Akua Sahelian.” I gave my last name some gravitas. Not enough to challenge, like some older Slytherins (already wearing green ties) had, while greeting each other in the train corridor, ahead of our Trevor search party. But just enough weight that Mr Self-Important would see me as someone worth something.

Sure enough, the eleven-year-old child raised his eyebrows and called ‘Greg’ back to join the other vertically challenged ogre.

I stepped into the compartment and nodded at the leader. Then at the girl next to him, who was, at this tender age, already rather pretty. (Unless you’re openly opposing someone, always get on the good side of your opponent’s minions.)

“I haven’t heard of the Sahelians before? Are you important in Africa?” Blond boy inquired.

“I’m attending Hogwarts, aren’t I?”

He smiled predictably at my stroking of his patriotism and held out a hand. “I like you. Draco Malfoy.”

I widened my eyes at his last name – something I’d been doing for every obviously upper-class student I met. He preened. (This was so irritatingly easy.)

“Have you seen a toad, by any chance?” I casually wondered. “I’m helping out another student and thought this would be a good way to make connections on the side.”

Draco’s eyes flashed with ‘inspiration’. (There we go, get out there and maybe you’ll play an interesting game in a few years.)

“I can’t say I have. But I hope to see you in Slytherin, once we’re all Sorted.”

I smiled, nodded in farewell, then closed the door behind me. That had been refreshing.

<{   ҉   }>

“Oh are you doing magic? Let’s see it, then.” Hermione said from behind me.

I stayed polite, giving the compartment I was facing every sign that I was simply a happy, helpful ‘first year’ doing a good deed.

(Their help in suggesting places the toad might have gone was wasting my fucking time there was magic happening and–)

“Thanks, that’s really helpful!” I lied through my teeth.

I slid the compartment door shut and turned in the same motion. Hermione was now sitting inside the opposite compartment and, having dragged Neville behind her, was chattering away at the two boys opposite.

The refreshing feeling of magic – in the air, in the train – just wasn’t enough to satisfy the need I felt.

Except the poetic spell uttered by a small red-headed boy was as magical as a brick. The slightly disappointed faces inside the compartment were the barest reflection of how deep my loss felt in that moment.

Quietly, slowly, I leant against the open door. (A hand on my wand to feel the spark – to keep myself calm – and persist. Until my soul could be sated.)

“I’ve learnt all our set books off by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough – I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?” Her diction was precise, but that didn’t help how the sentence tumbled out of her mouth like tangled string.

“I’m Ron Weasley.” Said a remarkably red-haired boy with the clothes and tension of someone with an economically reinforced inferiority complex.

“Harry Potter.” Said the unassuming one.

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Defeater of the Dark Lord, Saviour of the Status Quo, had messy black hair that looked like it was cut (badly) at home. Baggy (non-magical) clothes that made his thin limbs look even more like sticks. He was still – pressing himself against the back of the seat – and watching with an alertness I hadn’t seen in anyone else on this train.

Others had been observant, sure. But no one else’s eyes had held that edge. This child knew the world could hurt him, yet still hoped – the pile of sweets around him, the way he looked for reassurance in the taller child beside him.

Harry Potter – in everything he was – screamed Hero.

His appearance, fitting to so many of the rags to riches and boy-king patterns that Europe and the US emphasised in its stories and history, was a great big neon sign to anyone who had passing knowledge of Fate. I’d logically noted his age regarding the disappearance of the Dark Lord, but I’d been so focused on my own plans and trying to relearn magic that the full implications of him being in my year hadn’t struck me.

As Hermione rambled about Hogwarts Houses, the Hero finally noticed me in the doorway. Striking green eyes went wide behind round glasses, scanning me with such distrust that I felt nostalgic. I smiled at him, but Hermione had used up his willingness to open up – for the moment.

(I was dressed too nicely for the shy act to work on him, so I simply waited.)

“Anyway, we’d better go and look for Neville’s toad.” Hermione’s self-awareness kicked in (my ‘phonebook’ got a new entry). “You two had better change, you know, I expect we’ll be there soon.”

I stepped aside to let her and Neville continue down the train to combat his anxiety – a fruitless task, considering it had just grown to include the fear of not having time to change.

Ron the red head still hadn’t noticed me, going on to insult Hermione. Then expressing insecurity about not joining the rest of his family in their (apparently traditional) Hogwarts House, drawing Harry Potter’s attention. Two puppies, learning the world, each lonely in their own ways.

I ducked out of sight and let their discussion filter out of the door no one had closed.

The Dark Lord – who's unspoken name was known by the Hero and began with ‘Vol’ – wasn’t dead. Why would the Hero need such a specifically formative childhood, if he was?

I listened, until... there. Someone broke into the bank. Someone competent enough to pass by an actual security force.

Now, I still needed to gather information, and lots of it, but the Dark Lord and the Boy Who Lived had what those well-versed in Fate called a rivalry. Different from ordinary petty conflict between people who didn’t matter, because Fate would be actively pushing the rivals into contact, seeking conflict and opposition until only one remained.

(I was delighted by the notion that my schooling experience might be a little more... interrupted... than I’d originally factored for.)

When the conversation turned to a sport involving broomsticks, I walked away to (engage in social engineering) rejoin the search for Neville’s toad.

Would killing Harry Potter myself be worth it? Did I want to fight the Dark Lord for his Name – prove my mastery of magic and dominion of the world?

I’d only met one actual Hero back in my first life – the Lone Swordsman. He’d been Catherine’s rival, ready to risk his Kingdom’s destruction to crusade (read: murder) through Praes in some angsty vengeful flagellation that saw the sacrifice of himself and his people as having some righteous higher purpose. Which just goes to show how ridiculous Heroes were – I sacrificed innocents and murdered my enemies due to clear and rational goals. Still, I had used that Hero and manipulated his rivalry with Catherine in an effort to remove her from the board and obtain some miscellaneous Angel pieces.

(But I’d had a rivalry with Catherine, so she’d used necromancy to reanimate her own fucking body and ended up breaking most of the bones in mine after I'd been too furious at her insufferable success to word a contract properly.)

The Boy Who Lived seemed much less... grey... than the Lone Swordsman. I would let Harry Potter’s rivalry with the Dark Lord play out.

This world called it the Xanatos Gambit – orchestrating the game so every outcome led to your benefit. Back in Praes, we called it winning properly.

<{   ҉   }>

“Abbot, Hannah.”

The girl walked towards the stool. Towards the dirty, stained, hat on the stool (that sang like its creases were a face). Towards the tables of students – and high table of teachers – to be Sorted.

“Hufflepuff!” The hat shouted. (A hat.)

“Bones, Susan.” Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall was standing next to the stool – and the hat.

The hat was reading Susan Bones’ mind. Personality. (Probably not her soul.)

This school possessed a mind reading hat and there was still doubt about who supported the Dark Lord. Did they actually use it only to – “Hufflepuff!” – determine the school House of eleven-year-olds?!?

“Brocklehurst, Mandy!”

It was a waste of... of such staggering magnitude that, in my moment of affront, I wished for nothing more than my old power as the Diabolist to – “Ravenclaw!” – storm this castle with demons and wrest its treasures for my own gain. So that they would be used for something of merit.

Not this...

“Brown, Lavender.”

This...

“Gryffindor!”

Well, it was an excellent spectacle. A single moment to determine how this society will shape its young. A mind reading hat speaks, and your caste is chosen.

It was reflected in both the tables (everyone sitting with their House) and discussion I’d heard and eavesdropped on throughout the train ride. If I were back in Creation, the red Gryffindors would be soldiers, yellow Hufflepuffs labourers, blue Ravenclaws as sorcerers (or Priests, considering this society was Good), and the Green –

“Slytherin!” Tracey Davis walked to the table of merchants, politicians, and spies.

If this were Creation, I would enjoy pitting myself against this society. (Correction, I would enjoy winning.)

But this was Earth. And wizarding society had hid itself away for hundreds of years. There had been no wars to wage, no struggles to survive, no... need. So, the warriors were jocks, the labourers ignored, the scholarly subdued, and the...

“Slytherin!” Wait. How did one of Malfoy’s gormless goons get into the House of cunning and ambition?

I looked up, trying to lose myself in the sky-ceiling.

Part of my frustration at this ceremony (and the reason I didn’t feel compelled to murder any fools) was that this castle was so much more than I had imagined.

Not overwhelming – I had grown up (the first time) in Wolof, no amount of magic would shake me – but awakening. Relaxing. Like opening a permanent portal to the Hell of Rusty Skulls to decimate Catherine’s army and sinking into an enchanted bath all at once.

The magic here flowed through stone and air.

(And my starving soul was drinking.)

Hogwarts Castle was not as old as Praes, not as... improved. But in the roughness, there was a respect for the founding, the original action of making this school. Unlike the challenging aura of Praes’ cities, reflecting my ancestors’ attitudes so hundreds of layers of enchantment were constantly improved-upon and added-to, Hogwarts had settled with its original magic like fine wine.

The magic of the castle was deep. Spells lingering and being absorbed into the land itself with the faintest impressions left behind, the magical equivalent of seashell fossil prints at the top of a mountain.

For the weight and history of the magic here felt like a mountain – or the bottom of an ocean. The only reason everyone wasn’t crushed by the pressure was because the stones and bones of the castle absorbed it all.

This building – no, this history – was a monument to learning and protecting. (A much better societal symbol than King’s Cross Station.)

It was almost as if I could take one of the goblets off the table and scoop power out of the very air. Like this place would be the oasis where my very being found water. And I would drink as much as I could. Then more.

“Granger, Hermione.”

I didn’t glance down. The night sky was full of clouds and yet the moon still illuminated this Great Hall. It was truly great, the culmination of this ritual that started back in London. ‘The Sorting.’

This ritual wasn’t… formalised. More folk dance than ballet routine. Stages to pass through, with freedom to step and sway however you wanted before you arrived at the next location.

The social freedom of the train ending, changing into (not-quite-familiar) robes – the brief quaintness of Hogsmeade (so like the villages Catherine dedicated herself to protecting) – three innocent children and me, sharing a boat that glided forwards on a still lake until…

Well, had I a weaker soul in that moment, tears would have streamed down my face.

Hogwarts castle had a presence. Be awed, the castle said. Be safe. Be young – grow, learn.

“Gryffindor!”

I blinked away my… distractions. Looked down and clapped with the others. I wouldn’t have made Hermione a warrior myself. She seemed driven in a way that beget innovation (and I would rather have that drive in my pocket). I doubted she was interested in the physicality of fighting anyway.

But wizards didn’t wage war anymore.

Not actually. Not purposefully. Not with intent.

My eyes drifted up to the ceiling again. Enchanting the ceiling to depict the sky was simple – in the theory I remembered anyway. Such a spell could be more complex for this magic, but… there was more to it. The ceiling was not simply displaying an illusion. No, it let things through. The smell of the evening, the shade of clouds, and – when it came out – the light of the moon. But no temperature, no humidity, no sense that up was undefended.

I pulled myself back from the memories – the relief and safety and welcoming feeling of the magic of this castle, so unlike the bloody might of Praesi sorcery – to watch the students be Sorted around me.

But it wasn’t like I needed to watch. Figuring out who went to which House would be the work of a day. Less. Besides, watching the reactions of the older – already seated – students at the tables was more interesting.

The hollers when someone joined Gryffindor. General applause for Ravenclaw. Hufflepuffs cheering their own while the other tables talked amongst themselves. The tension, when certain last names were called, heightening when the ridiculous hat shouted: “Slytherin!”

The head table provided less immediately obvious observations. But as Professor McGonagall progressed to the ‘Ps’, the rest of the staff tightened.

A giant of a man, with hair just as maximised in proportion, had clapped for everyone, but now he actually looked up from his food. An array of more professionally presented Professors stopped their conversation and looked over the group waiting to be Sorted around me. A previously anxious man in a turban was holding his knife very still. And a younger male Professor, enveloped in black, was attempting to glare his empty plate into… hmm.

(The Hogwarts staff would surely be proficient with magic without wands. If only for the necessity of teaching such a skill.)

Regardless, the most intriguing figure on the head table was the Headmaster. Because he showed no sign of stress at all, clapping equally encouragingly for every Sorted student.

So, I watched. Until–

“Potter, Harry.”

Silence.

The tiny boy stepped – slightly shivering – to the stool, picked up the hat and, in a burst of action, shoved it onto his head. It came down past his eyes.

Moonlight filtered through the ceiling crowds. The few whisperers were hushed quickly.

Headmaster Dumbledore was smiling genially. The black-smothered Professor’s face was a rictus of rage. Turban Professor’s smile was cold. McGonagall, right next to the young Hero, looked like something horrible might happen with every second that the hat grumbled to itself with its animated creases.

I was now sure it spoke to, rather than just reading, the minds of the Sorted.

(Did it have a personality? Knowledge of the world? An understanding of what this moment actually meant?)

Because a Hero’s path was being determined. The path of his life, the shape of his story, the Fate of the Boy Who Lived was being decided. In the same moment as he was finally presented to wizarding society.

(His face suddenly screwed up in desperation, the rest of his body held still.)

“Gryffindor!” The hat’s declaration was overtaken by a roar of jubilation from the red table. Cheers from the blue and yellow, too.

Harry Potter, the orphan Hero, was welcomed in a rush by the defenders of the Good society. As I suspected, he would be shaped into some Christian warrior-saint archetype. Not particularly original, but that was how Fate operated. (At least he would have good strong morals to be manipulated by.)

When Professor McGonagall – looking much relieved – remembered that other students existed, everyone else was still distracted.

“Sahelian, Akua.”

I walked up, looking at the Gryffindor hubbub in innocent curiosity, smiling at McGonagall, and not showing an ounce of how ready I was for the culmination of this day-long ritual.

I had to tilt the hat back for it to sit properly – it was sized for an adult, interestingly. But as soon as it settled:

Laughter.

Shocked, delighted, curious (verging on patronising) laughter.

So, it speaks.

“Of course I speak.” The hat (a hat!) said dismissively into my mind. “The surprise here is not me, no indeed.”

I directed my thoughts at the hat – the centrepiece of this ritual – sitting on my head: [I am simply here to learn magic.]

More laughter. “And I’m a boot.”

A pause.

(If I were being judged, evaluated, sorted, I would avoid antagonising the thing that could reveal any secrets – or one big secret, really – regarding my plans.)

“Ah, calm down. I’m rather against witch hunts, so stop stressing about… huh, that is an ingenious telepathic alarm system.”

[Could we take a little less time? You see, I –]

“Don’t want to be noticed. Yet. Oh.” Chuckles, kinder this time. “Okay, you lost little thing, sell me your story.”

I was far too mature to bristle. More mature than this waste of an enchanted object anyway.

[Well,] I started, [I possess qualities valued by every house.]

“Of course you do.” The hat said agreeably.

[The bravery of Gryffindor, the intelligence of Ravenclaw, the ambition of Slytherin. These things I possess undeniably.] I sat straight backed, breathing evenly.

Memories rose to the surface of my mind – the hat watching in more detail what I had hinted at. My fights with Catherine, the times when it had been just us. My grand workings, recreating magical feats unseen for millennia. My pride, being the one to return Praes to its wondrous glory.

[But underlying each of those qualities, fundamental to my being, is my loyalty. I belong in Hufflepuff House.]

The hat didn’t laugh. (Why did that make me want to flinch?)

I pressed on. [My actions may, on the surface, seem selfish. Many of them were, I do not deny. But I was not selfish in my goal. Had I been, my purpose would have been climbing the Black Tower, sitting myself on the Dread Throne.]

I sunk into more memories. [I am loyal to Praes. What I did was for me, in part. But more for the Empire. Praes was being undermined. There were termites in our support beams and mould on the throne, and I was going to show everyone what the might of the Empire truly was. The history – the soul – of Praes was being discarded, and everything I did was, at the root, in loyalty to what my nation should be.]

“I’m only being quick about this because you really listened to my song. But kid, you gotta convince yourself of something before you can hope to convince me.”

(Who wouldn’t listen to the song? For all its lack of musicality, it seemed suspiciously like a prediction for the year. And this was a telepathic hat – I was discounting nothing.) 

My posture was already straight, so I lifted my head and opened my eyes to stare at the grand doors of the Great Hall – closed behind the other children waiting for their turn in this ritual.

[I am loyal to Praes.]

“It's been eleven years.”

My jaw was clenched. (It wouldn’t relax.)

[You do not know] – I imagined my words as venom, my mind the desert viper with fangs bared – [how much I gave to my country. Countless nights researching. Countless more nights perfecting my plans and rituals. The opportunities for living that I discarded and the opportunities to return Praes to its true glory that I forged with my two hands in spite of an Empress who tried to remove me forty-seven times. I would – I did – die for Praes.]

“Alright, alright. We’ll revisit this. You find a way to wear me again – let me see more of this fascinating other life – and I’ll let you have an easier life this time.”

I nearly snarled. That wasn’t why I wanted –

“The House of caring and finding friends… with the second most revolutionaries…

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

I stood, feeling oddly reluctant to hand the hat to a visibly surprised Professor McGonagall. I hated when other people snuck in the last word.

(Especially when they were so obviously wrong about things.)

I took a deep breath and injected cheer into my smile and walk. I sat down among smiling faces and yellow ties, and smiled back with honest excitement.

My Fate was determined too, but exactly how I had planned.

So hello, wizarding world. And, by the way, checkmate.

Notes:

Congrats to the person who guessed her House in a comment on the 2nd or 3rd chapter!

Chapter 8: The Poison Master

“It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not"; for she had read several nice little stories about children who got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked "poison," it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.”

• Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

 

I walked into the potions classroom and stopped. Everyone else stopped too – Susan steeling herself against the atmosphere and Hannah glancing between us for some reassurance. The boys simply blustered.

When I turned back to young, innocent, nervous Hannah, I was smiling. (I made sure it had softened from my initial... delight.)

Whoever Professor Snape was – potions master, Head of Slytherin House, dreaded dungeon-bat who had already terrorised the new Gryffindors – he had a sense of atmosphere.

The classroom was dim, but the air was fresh; both details in spite of the candles hanging from walls and ceiling. Jars of gruesome parts and sinister plants lined the shelved walls. Tables stood above stools too short to sit on if one wanted to use the paired cauldrons. At the back of the room was single wide desk, a cauldron that looked five times the quality of everyone else’s while being utterly plain, and a blackboard. The blackboard was framed like an ornate painting and had the strange effect of feeling like the backdrop for a stage.

This classroom was as much of a theatre as a laboratory. I loved it, just a little.

“Come on,” I told the children, “Let’s grab seats before the Ravenclaws get here.”

The Hufflepuffs followed me. The way wizarding society seemed to gravitate towards leaders was quite pleasant – unconsciously holding onto inherited hierarchies that the muggle UK had long replaced with their fragile democracy. I chose a table as close to the middle of the room as I could, then reflected on the five days I’d already spent at Hogwarts. Particularly that first night where I met the group surrounding me now in yellow-striped ties.

<{   ҉   }>

“Hello Hufflepuff!” A warm smiling woman who, with that same old-but-ageless appearance as McGonagall, managed to make the whole group of first year children relax.

The room, Hufflepuff House’s common room, was accessed via a laughable coded knock on one barrel in a highly conspicuous stack. But once the portion of corridor sunk down into the floor, we’d all been ushered into a round and low-ceilinged room. My immediate – and current – assessment was ‘earthy’ even though any inspection found the place to be almost clinically clean.

Nevertheless, the tan tones, burnished copper highlights, and round windows that looked over wind-rippled grass and bright flowers (despite us being a) underground, and b) inside) made one feel rather close to the natural world. This effect was furthered by the many, many plants – potted, curling up columns, flowering in forty or more colours – that hung from the ceiling, sat on windowsills, or drew one’s eye to the tables and plush, bumblebee-striped sofas scattered throughout the… den.

(Hogwarts was lucky that this interior design felt so open, because I would not live in a basement.)

“Welcome, all of you, to Hogwarts. I hope you will have a wonderful seven years at this school, but most especially in our lovely House. My name is Professor Sprout, and I am here to make sure your time at Hogwarts and in Hufflepuff leaves you with lifelong memories and a House full of friends.” She paused, managing to keep her face animated without ever ceasing to smile.

She cared. I was used to that, what with the UK’s (annoyingly) impressive compulsory education system. It was possible that I had, upon feeling the magic in the air, subconsciously expected figures from my education in Praes.

(They had cared too; about their own egos. And – once they knew me – their hides.)

“You know, when I first sat where you are sitting now, somebody told me that at Hogwarts you learn about more than magic.” A wistful tone, then some of the softness fell from the Professor’s sun-reddened cheeks. “There is more to the world than learning spells. Here at Hogwarts, you will learn how to keep going, regardless of how much homework sucks.”

Shocked giggles from the chorus.

“You will learn that fairness is something we have to make and give to others. And, though I hope none of you ever have to, fight for.”

(Professor Sprout had callouses. Not from wielding any sword, but having some where other wizards had none was a thing to note.) (Had she ever dared to go beyond gardening?)

“We do not have to be brave – or silly – like Gryffindors. Smart – or always focused – like Ravenclaws. Cunning – or cruel – like Slytherins.” Professor Sprout held a kind of inner pride that didn’t need bright banners to display itself.

“You do not have to be anything but yourselves. The two most important things you will learn in the next seven years is not any one marvellous spell, but how to work hard when the work is hard and the importance of giving – and getting – help when its needed.”

I returned Sprout’s scanning gaze with an innocent, hopeful smile. I was a master of persistence and resilience – becoming a half-way competent villain required both in spades. (Even before one started dealing with those happy-go-lucky heroes who had Fate guiding them like an IV line of liquid advantage.)

“Alright,” Professor Sprout’s lightness returned, “off to bed with you all. Make some friends and remember why more Ministers for Magic have come from Hufflepuff than anywhere else!”

The shuffling grew to whispers, which grew to chattering as the children filed themselves away into the dorms.

My sleeping quarters – for most of the next seven years – were reached through circular doors and tunnels that had a thankfully normal floor. The four-poster beds, more yellow than black, had initially pleased me with their heavy curtains and tall mattresses. But then I remembered that I was sharing a room.

Despite how magic would solve any privacy concerns sooner or later – either removing sound or removing listeners – I still felt disgruntled. The patchwork quilt (soft as it was) didn’t help.

(Nothing against the… rustic nature… of the room. I simply remembered enchanted silk sheets and beds large enough to sketch rituals in.)

There were three other girls in my dorm. Who, thanks to the naivety and need-to-be-liked of the young, happily listed all the important people they were connected to.

Susan Bones was a red-haired orphan living with an aunt that had instilled within my new minion a fierceness that made her stare at certain Slytherins with the knowledge of which relations of theirs were in prison. I also respected her as someone who, despite being an orphan, was grounded in the world and not an idealistic fool. What I truly appreciated though, was her aunt and guardian’s position as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Susan was going to grow into a very useful minion (if only to stop her ending up as an unfortunately angsty proponent of order and the status quo).

Hannah Abbott was a halfblood seemingly accepted as part of wizarding aristocracy despite said aristocracy’s obsession with ‘purity’. She would need a little forging to be useful (along with dropping the pigtails). But my plans were more than long enough to make her into a blade eager to slice.

My last dorm mate, Megan Jones, was another halfblood girl, but one who didn’t get a free pass for it. Her features so wonderfully average that I immediately designated her my future spy. Megan was also the self-proclaimed favourite niece of the team captain of a woman-only Quidditch team. The excitement following that fact added ‘investigating wizarding sports’ to my to-do list.

Sports and gender equality in general needed a broader investigation.

<{   ҉   }>

Back in the present of the potions classroom (theatre laboratory), Susan and Hannah had grabbed a table together. It seemed we would be working in pairs.

I let them sit together, not encroaching too fast on an existing childhood friendship. Which left me with the rest of my cohort.

Justin Finch-Fetchley, the only other muggleborn, was still adjusting to our shared and shaky social status in wizarding society after coming from a distant remnant of English aristocracy. Thankfully, his mere eleven years meant conformity was working its wiles and he paired up with Ernie MacMillian, who was pompous enough for Justin to bond with.

I sat down at an empty table. I was not interested in forming bonds with any boys. (1. They were boys. 2. They were eleven. 3. That the heteronormality of this world made me justify even this to myself was insulting.)

Megan bustled in with some Ravenclaws and plonked her bag next to mine. “Sorry,” she paused to catch her breath, “some Gryffindors wanted to know if I could get them an autograph from my aunt. I mean, I could, but I was going to be late, and there are rumours about Professor Snape.”

I held out a spare quill when her bag-searching became counterproductive to the activity of calming down.

“How far did you have to run? Because if they want an autograph, they should have to give you something in return.” I saw the benevolence of Good societies rear its head behind her eyes, but I was ready. “Like some dessert at dinner or notes for an assignment or something? Seems only fair.”

Megan blinked and imagined the slew of sweets that appeared on the Great Hall tables each night. Then actually registered the jars and specimen display boards lining the walls of this classroom and turned pale.

Opening my potions textbook and asking Megan what she knew about potions helped keep her focused as the minutes passed and conversations dared to grow louder with the absence of any Professor.

And then, just as the jokes about Professor Snape not being so bad received nervous laughter, every candle in the room flickered. The air got colder – not enough that the spooked children consciously noticed. A pause, where… nothing happened and the heart sped up.

But where my classmates were getting suddenly anxious, I was basking. Like a cat in the sun.

The door slammed open behind us. A swirling black cloak swept up the centre of the room, flicking and flapping with the stride of its wearer.

Professor Snape positively whirled around when he reached the blackboard and stared the class down.

I had to look down because grinning like I’d met an old friend would not give the right impression. I cared not for Professor Snape as a person – certainly not as any kind of friend. No, I was simply enjoying the atmosphere.

It had been eleven years and eleven months. But finally, I could once more feel the presence of Evil.

The Professor may not be anything more than a minion to the real Villain. But orchestrating the fear of children was a sweet nostalgia that reminded me of visiting the Black Tower’s twenty-sixth floor with my tutors.

“There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few...” Professor Snape scanned the classroom disinterestedly “Who possess the predisposition...”

Another pause, his scan turning contemptuous.

“I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.” His gaze caught on the group of Ravenclaws who thought that a teacher’s every word was worthy of record.

“Then again, maybe some of you have come to Hogwarts in possession of abilities so formidable that you feel confident enough to not pay attention!” A hand flicked and words scrawled themselves across the blackboard.

“Find a partner and we shall see if you are competent enough to brew even this.” His doubt was evident.

I was still masking my grin. Which got harder to do as we started weighing dried nettles and crushing snake fangs next to a bubbling cauldron because this was so very nearly like preparing a ritual and oh I missed it.

My mood wasn’t even dampened by Snape’s litany of criticism. Or how meeting his eyes reminded me of the Black Knight. Specifically, how you could look him in the eyes and see nothing but a cold machine of infinite cogs ticking implacably towards the fruition of his goals. While I hated the bastard for murdering my father (and mentoring Catherine, ugh), I had to respect the sheer competence by which the Black Knight pursued and achieved the destruction of his opponents. The lack of emotion behind Professor Snape’s eyes was nostalgically similar, but if I had to make an analogy, it felt more like there was something dark and unfinished brewing away in the depths of Snape’s soul – endlessly emitting caustic fumes of hate.

My potion – our potion – was handed up by Megan. It received a scoff, but from watching the rest of the room, I was confident that I – we – had brewed the best batch.

<{   ҉   }>

A week later, I still enjoyed the challenge of Professor Snape’s performative laboratory.

Classes in general were fine. They would’ve been great if I was allowed to read more theory after I completed the tasks. But alas. Completing said tasks was an exercise in timing, and interesting enough due to that.

I still had to make attempts at spells, but I’d already experienced a whole education that reached heights far beyond what I expected wizarding curriculum to cover. Irritatingly, my mastery of Dread Emperor Sorcerous’ principles of ritual efficiency didn’t translate to transfiguration or charms.

Fortunately, classes this week involved our first (approved) attempts at spellcasting. Which was where timing became a factor. My dorm had transfiguration with the Ravenclaws and charms with the Slytherins. Being the perfect student was an option; casting every spell correctly (perfectly) on my first try. (First try around others, anyway.)

But the Ravenclaws valued their intelligence and the Slytherins valued their… well, half of them valued their futures, and the other half valued Draco Malfoy. (Draco Malfoy somehow managed to value himself but not his future.) Being obviously better than the rest of either class would make me a target.

Which is a hindrance best sidestepped.

So I was the second student to correctly cast the spells. And spent the rest of those lessons experimenting (within very narrow limits) to see just how fine a detail I could achieve or make different.

(Being able to transfigure a bone needle to and from a matchstick would come in handy one day.)

The rest of my classes were easier to excel in without standing out.

Professor Snape hardly acknowledged Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws as human, and saw Gryffindors as demons, so I started building Megan’s skills more blatantly. Maybe my grade would suffer for a few weeks, but the words “hard work” motivated my small group rather nicely.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was… limp.

Astronomy – thanks to my earlier studies of constellation stories – was a breeze. A cold breeze, with the class starting at 10:30pm at the top of an open tower.

History was taught by a ghost.

Hogwarts had ghosts. The fact that they a) had personalities, and b) weren’t possessing people or draining anyone’s life, made all my expertise in Praesi necromancy want to violently prove that they were, in fact, spirits. (And that if any of these soft children encountered a ghost, I would love to watch their naivety shattering.)

The (spirit) ghost teaching history was a boring fool who apparently didn’t understand how Fate played a part in any of the events he discussed. I mean, with the sheer number of goblin wars my textbook covered, you’d think the patterns were obvious!

(I spent two entire lessons mentally designing a ritual that used Professor Binns’ untethered soul to power a garbage incinerator. And then, once I realised I was still ahead, I spent another lesson working out a way to ensure he felt the fire too.)

The final class on my timetable was herbology. It was practical. I usually didn’t mind practical. Practical meant applying things. And my past of applying my learnings usually involved death. Or pain. Or devil summoning. Often, all three. (And always, always, social manoeuvring.)

I didn’t like herbology. I had grown up in desert castles. Then city suburbs. Herbology involved dirt. And gloves, thank the Gods Below, but dirt.

Or maybe it was that I was fussing over something alive.

Carefully tending to growing things was well within my wheelhouse. But – apparently – only if the thing doing the growing was a mighty spell or some great plan. Or an impressionable mind. A fiendish host. The downfall of a rival. My own might and magical supremacy! 

Professor Sprout – that Hufflepuff’s Head of House was the herbology professor explained the plants in our homeroom – had pulled me aside after a lesson and explained that magical plants are attuned to the environment.

“They pick up when you’re nervous,” the Professor had said with a caring smile, “you have to trust them and yourself.”

Which proved she could not read the situation at all. I was simply disgruntled at being so close to the act of farming. Akua Sahelian was born from an ancient line of ruling sorcerers and a single generation of academics. I did not farm.

And trusting plants? Ridiculous. I didn’t trust anyone in this castle, much less the source of burn paste.

<{   ҉   }>

The first incident of the year – other than Harry Potter doing what literally everyone expected and becoming a Gryffindor – happened in the third week. After a history double at the end of Thursday, when everyone was sufficiently bored and both us Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins were descending towards the lower levels to put our bags away before dinner, Draco Malfoy got an idea.

As soon as it started, I knew it would be the first incident. Partly because two weeks is enough for even the most enthusiastic child to realise that this magic school was still school. (Hermione Granger was an outlier and not be counted in the dataset.) But I knew this mostly because Hannah Abbott, being of noble birth, had played with Neville Longbottom and the – possibly higher status – Anthony Goldstien as a kid. A few conversations guided Hannah to taking the first step on the path to one day establishing herself as my primary information gatherer: gossip.

(I got Megan to talk to Lavender Brown in Gryffindor. Just to confirm the details.)

The fact that this first incident revolved around me was pure chance and definitely not my own manipulation.

Because as the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins ambled to their respective Houses, I noticed Malfoy giving me a stink eye. (I promptly shuffled to the middle of the corridor and crouched to ‘retie my laces’.)

A grumble from the Slytherin clump. Who had stopped moving.

“You guys go ahead,” I cheerfully told my dorm mates, “I’ll catch up, this knot is so dumb.” Hunger beat loyalty and they walked off. Slowly. (They really were kind. Silly children.)

A few moments later, andddd:

“You.”

“Malfoy, hi!” I stopped my game and stood up. He frowned at the realisation I was taller – at a height with his two orc-without-the-tusks bodyguards

“You lied to me, Sa-whatever your name is.” He did a great job with the vowels, excellent drawl.

“What do you mean? When?” I asked, innocently concerned.

“On the train,” the blonde ego-balloon huffed, “you’re not anyone important.”

“Oh. No, my parents are professors.” My plan shifted from stalemating to actually stabbing the tosser who would insult my name. “And the name Sahelian is very important where I come from.” 

“From muggles…” An excellent sneer. I would wipe it from his face.

“Speaking of where I come from, there is a story.” I’d raised my voice, and the corridor was focused on our confrontation. “A story of an oasis in the sands – the water as smooth as a mirror, as fresh as the rain. One day, a thirsty man approached the oasis. He had been walking for days, this great warrior from an ancient House. This man, though he was so thirsty, walked upright and strong beneath the sun.

“When he reached the first of the trees of the oasis, a witch walked out of the water and hailed him. ‘Weary wanderer! Welcome to the water!’

“The man startled, because this witch looked like the slaves back at his palace. Yet here she was, giving him instructions: ‘Drink only until you are full. Do not take more from this place that is free for all who come.”

Malfoy snorted condescendingly. Forcibly, because he knew enough that I’d taken the upper hand, but not enough to do anything about it.

“But this man – this great warrior of an ancient line – he thought he knew better. He smiled and nodded at the witch, then sat in the shade until she walked back into the lake. And then… you see, this man was not only a great warrior. He knew magic, more spells than there were grains of sand in the desert. But no one could conjure water in this desert.

“The man knew spells to turn the heat into a cool breeze, spells to absorb the sunlight as energy, spells to turn the sand to gold. But the water of this oasis was more precious than any metal. The man had survived walking for days in the burning sun – he was so strong, he did not need water to live.

“But he wanted it. He turned the sand to gold. Turned the gold into a cup. And he drank from the oasis. The water was so pure that he sat there and savoured it until the sun reached the horizon.

“The man was clever. He was so great a warrior that the witch would stand no chance. Why fight when you can simply have? So, he waited until the sun was just about to set, with a plan to fill his pack with water and – just as the moon rises – turn into a desert falcon to fly onwards.

“And that is exactly what he did. Once the sun set, he drank two more cups of water to feel full, then filled his pack. The witch walked out of the water, but could not even open her mouth before the man snapped his fingers and she could not move.

“The great warrior and sorcerer smiled and filled his pack to bursting with precious fresh water. Then – as the moon rose above the sand – he turned into a massive falcon and flew off.”

I finally paused for long enough to let the crowd breathe. Waited for Malfoy to start opening his mouth, then jumped back in:

“But as the great warrior flew away, the witch opened her mouth – despite his spell – and cursed the man: ‘With all you drink, you didn’t think. Upon your blood, find only mud.’

“The next morning, the man turned back into himself and opened his pack to drink; for it had been a long flight. But inside his magical flask, the water was red and mixed with dirt.”

I let myself bask in the attention of the rest of the corridor. Older students had finished their classes and paused in the thoroughfare to be my audience. I could feel magic thrumming through my veins.

“What the hell?” Malfoy broke the moment. “That’s ridiculous. You’re not important, and that story was garbage.”

Sniggers from his cronies.

“In fact, since you don’t know anything, let me show you what a real wizard warrior would do. Mudblood.” Gasps from the Hufflepuffs, but Malfoy had already whipped out his wand and –

“Flipendo!”

A bang, and I was shoved backwards. I did not resist, simply biting the inside of my lip.

My back hit the stone floor and I tasted iron.

“Akua!” My dormmates cried out and finally rushed into the empty circle of space around us. Hannah and Susan started berating Malfoy while Megan helped me to my feet.

“Oh my god – Akua, you’re bleeding.”

I straightened up and thanked her. She grimaced, unused to seeing red in anyone’s mouth. My other minions noticed I was up and paused long enough for Malfoy to spin on his heel and strut away.

I spat my blood on the stones of Hogwarts castle. Whispered to the magic in the stones around us:

“For all you speak, its but a squeak. Seek your fame, find only shame.”

The churning whispers, gasps, and scoffs throughout the corridor died away. Megan was staring at my mouth (the taste of iron was gone).

Everyone else though – my lovely audience – was staring at Malfoy’s feet.

Because as he walked away, he left behind footprints. Mud.

I wanted to laugh, but watching him feel smug as everyone stared ‘at him’ was too good.

And really, the boy was lucky. The original Praesi tale involved poison, after all.

Notes:

Ah what fun

Chapter 9: Watching and Wandering

Notes:

A day late apologies - but there's rather a lot to be distracted by in the world atm huh

“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.”

• Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

 

“Hey!” Hannah grumbled. “You’re tugging.”

“No pain, no gain.” I replied sweetly.

Susan and Megan giggled.

After I had cemented my image as the smart-but-safe Hufflepuff (albeit a muggleborn), I had started doing my hair in more ornate braids. By complete coincidence, I had also claimed the seat next to Susan for the past week. It had taken a few days longer than I expected (wizarding children were not as encouraged to be socially aware as I’d been in Praes), but Hannah had come to realise that there were better hairstyles than pigtails.

So, here I sat on a Saturday morning, braiding my minion’s hair. Sitting on a rock was slightly undignified, but the Scottish Highland was a beautifully alien enough environment for me to cope. (I was still adjusting to the default colour of the land being heather green, rather than sand yellow.)

“Anyway,” I huffed dramatically – to more giggles, “we’ve been here for a month. What do you guys think of the other Houses? I only learned about them from books before this, but are they different to what you expected?”

I felt Hannah’s hum through my fingers, weaving her hair quickly and her devout loyalty much slower. “Well, we’re the best house, of course.”

Susan laughed. “Oh, but Gryffindor has Harry Potter, didn’t you know?”

“Really! No I didn’t hear everyone in red boasting about that every third word!” Hannah shifted in her mock surprise, so I tugged slightly on the braids. “Oi!”

“Do you want me to work my magic or not?”

She grumbled again. I patted her on the shoulder; even if she was just making a fuss. (Hair magic didn’t seem to exist, but the UK had enough stories of witches using hair and blood that I had collected insurance from the pillows of my minions in the first week.)

Megan was looking at me. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Hannah’s right. The Gryffindors boast about things. Parties, casting spells – even if they get them wrong, having Harry Potter.” She frowned. “Quidditch. It's weird how I can tell which Houses a bunch of adults were in now.”

“Oh my god,” Hannah burst out, “Susan! Remember the guess the house game?” (I chose not to tug her hair this time.)

Susan blinked, then groaned at some memory. “Oh, those Ministry events were so boring. At least no one told us off for ‘homework’.”

“Do tell?” I asked, with the slightest quaver in my voice so Megan wouldn’t feel like only she felt excluded from tales of childhood antics.

Hannah obeyed. “So, before we really knew about the sides in the war” – Susan flinched – “my parents and her aunt kept trying to tell us which noble family was in which House, or the House they mainly went in, to ‘see the movements of society’.” Hannah put on a posh voice. Which, seeing as her normal pronunciation was already on the highbrow side, ended up sounding remarkably like the Queen.

“We tried to match families to the animals of the houses,” Susan smiled bashfully, but actually explained. “Like… Dumbledore had a beard or mane like a lion, Goldstein looked at shiny things like a raven, Weasley red hair isn’t like a Lion but obviously Gryffindor, and… oh! Mad-Eye Moody is secretly half-vulture.” Her eyes went distant for a moment, but it passed, and a grin spread across her face.

“Okay okay, let me try.” Megan gazed into the distance for a moment. “My aunt’s team is a mix of the Houses because its girls only. I mean, all the teams trade players, but there are a few that are mostly from one House. I’m pretty sure.” Her bold attempt at joining in on something shared faltered.

“Do the Gryffindors just roar at everyone?” I joked, giving my poor minion some slack.

Susan chuckled and Hannah gave some kind of half-snort.

“Yes!” Megan said, excitement back up. “And they chase people like they’re trying to bite them!”

“I bet the Slytherins make the most fouls.” Susan said.

Megan pretended to think, then nodded sagely. “Only when the ref isn’t looking.”

“Venomous gits.” The humour in Susan’s voice was papered over real hurt. Similar to how she reacted to mentions of the recent war. (Good to know.)

But my minions would not linger in negative feelings today. Or any other day, unless I required it.

“Ow!”

“Hannah, I can’t braid your hair if you keep...” I waved my free hand around.

“Fineeeeee!”

Megan ducked her head at the antics. Smiling, but withdrawing a little in case her social success wasn’t as successful as she thought.

I was far too competent to sigh at how unsubtle it all was. I knew they were children, but did they all have to act like it?

<{   ҉   }>

Several days week later, we sat down for lunch after a charms double with the Gryffindors. A bit late, because Professor Flitwick was so very willing to point a young student towards some general knowledge spell tomes – especially when said initiative-showing student wasn't even one of his Ravenclaws! (His bias towards muggleborn was less obvious, but rumour had him as half-goblin, and I would bet he held enough hidden resentment towards wizarding society for me to work with if I needed.)

Despite my tardiness, there was plenty of space at the table for us first year girls. Hufflepuff seating arrangements tended to mix more than the other Houses, who (consciously or not) divided themselves mostly by school year.

While Hannah appeased her rumbling stomach and Susan appreciated a goblet of water, I waited. It felt like I was doing a lot of waiting at Hogwarts. Nothing like the marathons of patience from earlier in this current childhood, since I was now in magic school. But I’d mastered magic before, and all my social plans were still in early enough stages that they didn’t adequately satisfy my urge to do something.

I wanted to make a move on the metaphorical chess board – if only to see how the other players reacted.

Still, waiting at mealtimes tested my patience the least. The food here was a pleasant return to quality (though Mum’s chickpea curry still held first place). And there were so many wonderful opportunities to observe. Which really was the best (of the very few) benefits one got from playing the innocent girl.

I could watch the head table, assessing the professors' relationships with each other and the different year levels, and be seen only as an awestruck little girl. I could watch the older Hufflepuffs to pick up gossip about people and assignments, and simply be inquisitive. I could watch the other tables, gleaning social norms and dynamics of the other Houses, and be the curious but scared muggleborn that Malfoy had...

Well, no one was really sure if Malfoy had done anything to me. I don’t know if anyone really suspected me doing something to him. But everybody knew what had happened to him.

Some older Slytherins tried to meet my gaze as I absently swept it elsewhere along their table. If I had taken a different route to rule – one closer to the grand gamble of my first life – I would have met their eyes.

But in this life, I needed to be a non-entity. Or appear so until I had already won. And despite what I did now to pass time, personal observation was something best done briefly to confirm the reports of one’s intelligence network – I estimated my network to be workable in a month or two.

Though every network needed contacts. To keep abreast of the shifting sands of Hogwarts, I needed links in every House.

“I’ve been wondering,” I started. Susan looked up from her first bite, Hannah looked up but kept eating, and Megan noticed I’d not yet put anything on my plate. She handed me the lamb tongs and I gave her a lovely warm smile. (I’d long accepted that I would never have servants in this world, magical or muggle. But it always paid to encourage good behaviour.)

“Have any of you thought about talking to people from other Houses?” My minions shared a moment of confusion, which showed how alien the idea already was to them. I went on. “Susan and Hannah, you talked about knowing all these other kids, and I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t make friends or keep friendships with people from other Houses.”

“Huh.” Hannah was thinking.

“I mean we can,” Susan said, but didn’t manage to articulate the social pressures which encouraged tribalism and conformity in Wizarding society. I didn’t expect her to, because she was eleven and had grown up in it.

“We’re Hufflepuffs, we’re supposed to work hard and be kind to everybody.” I gave my figurative boulder another push, to get it rolling down the ideological hill. “Besides, if we make friends with some Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, maybe one day we’ll get to see their common rooms!”

Susan smiled, Hannah laughed and didn’t choke on her food, and Megan watched me for a moment.

“You should meet Lavender Brown. She’s already trying to know everything about everyone.” She commented.

I pretended to think about that for a second, then smiled and passed her back the lamb tongs. “Look out girls, Megan’s going to rule the world one day. She’s already establishing her spy network!”

Megan flushed, but I put my arm around her waist and drew her close. “Will you let me command your armies, my queen?”

The others laughed, so I turned to them and adopted an exaggeratedly imperious tone. “Well? Who should we reach out to in these foreign countries to win more followers to Megan’s throne?”

(Had the other Houses actually been rival nations, my actions would be less ‘reaching out’ and more ‘spinning a web around the leadership while lighting a few fires to distract’. But wizarding society believed in Good, and had the accompanying pointless principle of self-restraint.)

“Goldstein has made friends with Boot and Michael Corner,” Susan mused, “they’re boys, but I remember Boot being smart.”

“Corner’s okay.” Megan confirmed.

I found the interplay of pure-bloods and half-bloods – even amongst these tolerant Hufflepuff children – to be fascinating insights into Wizarding society. Susan and Hannah had simply met different people as children to Megan when they were younger. But they all at least vaguely recognised some of the names. Friends of friends explained some of it, and a societal obsession with lineage explained more, but I kept getting these little hints that there just weren’t that many children my age.

“Patil!” Hannah triumphantly finished her mouthful. “And Morag MacDougal, though we’ve only met her twice.”

Susan nodded, then pointed the two girls out to Megan. I had already mentally noted the Patil twins, split across Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Houses. If I wanted a following, to gather and fold Hogwarts around me like a caterpillar weaving a chrysalis, the few inter-House connections that already existed would be a good starting point.

(I would also need to know the extent to which conflicts in muggle society were reflected in the Wizarding world. If the Troubles and World War II were as closely mirrored as it seemed, then that would create another opportunity to shape events to suit my needs.)

“Excellent,” I praised my minions, “Queen Megan shall soon add Gryffindor and Ravenclaw to the mighty hold of Hufflepuff!”

(Now time for the whole point of this conversation.)

“But one domain is left. Are any of the snakes worth talking to?”

“No.” Susan broke the leg of our conversation and dropped the body in the Black Lake. Fortunately, I’d resurrected both conversations and corpses in far worse states.

“Well, who’s the least worst person there? And don’t be funny and say Malfoy.”

Hannah chuckled, then glanced at Susan and stopped. It hadn’t been said – not explicitly – but it was rather obvious that Susan lived with her aunt because the Dark Lord’s followers had left her an orphan.

Not that Slytherin was the only source of support for Potter’s Rival, just… enough of a majority that I suspected some kind of inter-generational manipulation. Which was exactly why I needed to have at least one line of communication into the proverbial snake pit.

(Though I would like to literally throw young master Malfoy into a hole with a Northern Steppe Viper. And a devil or two, so the snake of my homeland could face something that would fight back.)

Megan had gathered her social courage while I smiled encouragingly and thought of blond ponces dying in blood sports. “Tracey Davis is a halfblood.”

Susan’s frown shifted from resentment to mild confusion.

Hannah glanced at her friend again, then trusted in me as she ought. “She hangs around Greengrass, I think.”

“So is Greengrass actually neutral?” Megan questioned. “Like, I thought they were, but there’s a lot of… you know.” She trailed off, too young to easily speak of concepts like blackmail, propaganda, and injustice. (So many years behind Praesi children in too many critical skills.)

Hannah hummed, then shrugged. “I mean they’re definitely the ‘least worst’ of the noble Houses who go to Slytherin.”

“My aunt would say they’re defensive, not conservative.” Susan was visibly compartmentalising the minor complication in her view of evil Slytherins. That she could even try raised my opinion of her Aunt’s parenting.

“Which means… I don’t know.” Susan looked down at her plate for an answer, then glanced back up. “Just… Akua, don’t try to talk with Slytherins.”

“Of course not,” I reassured, “for Queen Megan’s queendom has more than enough fine people to befriend already!”

(I would not try to talk to Slytherins, but at some point I would win one Daphne Greengrass’s participation in my schemes. Trying was for the incompetent and impulsive.)

<{   ҉   }>

I had spent enough time in my breaks going to the library for various books that my minions were now happy to let me go alone. Not that they’d been worried for my safety, no; these children didn’t comprehend danger greater than pranks. It was simple social engineering. I was the centrepiece, and they wanted to bask in my presence. Everyone was always subconsciously drawn to confidence.

So, I told them I was off to the library and left them to ask a second year about their homework. Hufflepuff encouraged group work, and I was more than willing to let the three children build ties to the group beyond just myself.

Many times, I did actually go to the library. There was so much history to learn. The broad themes, the details, the unstated bias of the periods and authors. All painting such a fascinating picture of a society so unready for someone like me.

Unfortunately, I still wasn’t sure how much was known about the magic of stories and historical patterns. I knew it existed, even if I couldn’t consciously wield it. But whether that was me being self-controlled enough to consciously manifest so-called ‘accidental magic’ or whether Fate was a less active force in this world was a question that would shape my plans drastically.

Even more unfortunately, I was fairly sure dimensions of Hell didn’t exist in this world. Which meant that the ever-useful backup plan of summoning and leashing an army of devils to my will was not on the table. I would have to find a replacement force, because armies were essential to conquering anything with any sense of expediency.

(Still, with even a small legion of imps, I would be ruling this place in less than a day. With all my old resources? Maybe half an hour. Depending on how competent Dumbledore really was.)

Idle thoughts such as these occupied me fairly regularly when I avoided the library and went somewhere completely different, as I was doing now.

Hogwarts, while not as big as the extra-dimensional complexes of my ancestral home back in Wolof, was large. More interestingly than that, it was magical. Every stone enchanted and steeped in spells over centuries, which in this world meant the castle gained some abstract level of animation (if not life).

So, I explored it. Wandered its halls and appreciated its history. Talked to its animated portraits and peeked behind its pillars.

Hogwarts was to be my chessboard and battleground for the next seven years. My mustering field and arsenal. My lair and laboratory. I had to know the place. Learn its secrets. Treat it with respect.

The feeling was some unreliable mix of hypothesis and instinct that wasn’t worth making plans on if you had time to be rational. Still, the stories of muggle society and the weight given to Hogwarts in Wizarding books made me suspect that the castle could – if only very subtly – pick sides.

Thus, I showed my respect to the castle. I examined every corridor before walking down one, and had even gotten into the habit of trying to get lost. Once or twice, because overcoming my own memory was both a challenge and antithetical to common sense.

I wandered on.

I was used to planning in a room, warded and locked and dimensionally isolated for good measure. Now that I lived in a dorm, had not yet mastered wizarding magic, and was biologically and legally eleven years old, planning in my room was not very viable.

Scheming while strolling through this storied stone school was a surprisingly satisfying substitute.

(I was also used to magic having distinct flavours of Good or Evil. Even though eleven years had passed, it was still strange to reach out and not be able to tell whether this building would welcome any fiendish legions I did summon, or flood them with holy light.)

An hour later, I had ambled my way around the divination tower and accidentally found my way back to the main staircase that would take me down to the Hufflepuff common room.

I rested a hand on the stone wall, just off this main thoroughfare, and focused inwards on the wellspring of magic that enabled me to rewrite reality with a few simple wand motions.

Nothing happened.

I patted the stone, said goodbye to the portraits, and went down the stairs.

Time for my first flying lesson. I wonder how using a broom differed from self-levitation.

<{   ҉   }>

Wednesday dinner was spent enduring the enjoyment of my minions, who were delighted to find one thing in which I did not immediately excel. I shouldn’t have been expecting to do well – I had no prior experience with brooms. (There had to be some other form of flight, and if there wasn’t then I would make one.)

Fortunately for everyone testing my patience, Friday came with the rumour that firstly, Draco Malfoy had ducked out of a midnight wizards duel with Harry ‘Hero’ Potter. Secondly, Harry Potter had gotten back to Gryffindor Tower in the early hours – which meant some kind of adventure was already underway. Thirdly, Hermione Granger was already solidly first in class for the year of 1991.

Added all together, it made perfect sense for a group of first year Hufflepuff girls to seek out Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil to confirm the latest gossip.

Chapter 10: Bleeding in the Library

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”

• Mary Jo Godwin, winner of an intellectual freedom award back when publicly resigning in protest meant something.

 

My minions didn’t tend to study in the library, because they didn’t tend to study quietly. A few distractions were inevitable, them being eleven, so it was really best for all if we monopolised a patch of the common room and loosely studied at a reasonable volume.

The approach made sense. But even so, I had been raised in Praes, where ambitious children were used in schemes until they schemed their way out of it. Distractions, studying casually, and other soft things felt a bit alien.

I was used to some softness from my childhood in the muggle world, but Aissata and Jamaldine weren’t shy about showing life’s hardships on the news. And the muggle UK’s economic system shared enough principles with Praesi society to keep my mind plotting and following the latest developments.

The wizarding world’s economy was pointless. I hated it.

Oh, money changed hands and was banked by Goblins and taxed by the Ministry. But all that money didn’t go anywhere. It was like a feudal society, but instead of some lord there was a monolithic bureaucracy that was also the largest employer. And all of the actual wizarding nobles ran their own monopolistic corners of the economy – like Praesi Great Houses or the USA’s old steel barons but without a whit of innovation.

Additionally, and unlike my dimensionally-distant home or the superficially glorious United States of America, the wizarding world had no competition. There was no social mobility – no great gain, no risk! Individual family members could rise or fall, but families as a whole held the same social position as that their ancestors had for the previous three generations. Which, given wizarding ages, translated into a few hundred years.

Occasionally, an enterprising parent or child elevated themselves in one great leap – but this seemed to be because the economy was so impotent that any innovation was marvellous. (And, after such an orgasmic event, the economy went right back to sleep.)

It made me want to laugh maniacally and conquer it all already.

Shame I was eleven.

Shame that everyone having magic meant that economic competition was only relevant for one’s pride.

Shame that this society coddled its voting majority in the softest of blindfolds.

These things were such a shame, because they made. Me. Bored.

I was trying not to be bored. Hence my delving into economic analysis and a brief (disappointing) perusal of current wizarding warfare tactics – the best I found were texts describing ‘group duels’.

Now, in a previous life, my being bored would rather quickly resolve itself in the creation or refinement of some grand spell that may or may not have been relevant to my former grand plans but definitely involved some blood sacrifices.

The problem was that I was learning here. And that wizarding magic didn’t operate mathematically. No, it was all intent and wand movements and channelling your power.

Learning this loose and whimsical magic required me to re-learn two decades of mental muscle memory and ignore the ten-thousand years of sorcerous theory I had mastered.

(Some days it felt more pain than challenge.)

Because I did not have the resources that I’d enjoyed in Praes, being bored in Hogwarts meant I had to seek things out. Shift approaches from idly exploring and ingratiating myself with the castle to actively questioning it as I hunted for things to occupy myself.

My minions didn’t tend to study in the library, and I didn’t attempt to remedy that.

They would wonder why I was skimming through primers on magical theory, and no one needed to wonder why I did anything.

No one at all.

Not yet, anyway.

<{   ҉   }>

Books could not save me.

I stalked through the library stacks, alone and weakened.

In my boredom, I had sought distractions. Personal power, control over the world around me, and manipulation of loyal followers – all things any young Villain needs to make their Name!

It was all going so well…

…all working as I intended…

But only because this wizarding world had been coddling me!

I, Akua Sahelian, the Diabolist and Heiress to Praes’ ancient and terrible wonders, had – in gradually increasing increments – been dulled!

This morning, I had woken up with the wonderful notion that everything was falling perfectly into place.

It had taken until lunch for that thought to send alarm bells blaring through my head.

Because while everything fell perfectly into place for the Villain, the Hero was out there struggling. Growing. Bonding with their precious friends. Maybe finding a love interest that was secretly ensnared in the Villain’s perfectly falling into place plans.

Villains who basked in their own genius died. Unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Villains who avoided self-delusion made sure other people died instead. And Villains who fought for every scrap and sliver of power, outmanoeuvred every rival, and clawed their way to the top? Well, they became the evils in children’s tales. The curses uttered in darkness. The yard stick to which lesser people were measured.

Those Villains changed the world, even with their inevitable death. (I knew this from personal experience, having stolen the ancestral ghosts of a nation to power a permanent portal to the Hells.)

So, to realise that I had been content with myself?

I may as well off myself and animate my worthless corpse with instructions to bury itself in an unmarked grave. Just to save the historians the trouble.

Contentedness was merely the first step on the path to failure and irrelevance.

There could be no more distractions. No more adjustment of overarching plans that would, regardless, encounter variables I could not predict. I would master the year’s curriculum by the end of the month, since I was mostly finished with already. But what I needed was some disruption. Something to test myself against that wasn’t so... static.

In Praes, we had – we still have, for my home and its Black Tower will stand as long as ambition draws breath – a saying. Iron sharpens iron.

Alone, you could reach high.

Underlings bore you higher.

But once someone got high enough, they tended to think they’d reached the top.

Us Praesi climbed the Black Tower with the dream of building a new throne-room on the floor above our deposed predecessor. (Also inventing a new terrible representation of might to transform said predecessor’s former throne-room into.)

The Black Tower was a symbol. A dare. And a reminder.

Reach, reach as high as you can, because everyone else will use your bones like a ladder.

Iron sharpens iron.

The problem I’d realised was that my iron was surrounded by wool. I could cut as many soft wizards as I wanted, but eventually my blade would lose its edge. It had already been dulled by simply living so long alongside the Good values of muggle society, despite their thrilling inventiveness with weapons and technology.

There was no metaphorical iron available to me here. None that would treat an eleven year old seriously, even if that was only my physical age. No, what I needed was a grindstone.

Not a Hero, because I was not getting myself a rival I wasn’t worthy of.

(Villains who got accidentally stuck in rivalries were fools who couldn’t murder their way out of a paper bag.)

Maybe I could find another Villain and grind them into the dust. I was not entirely sure how – or to what extent – Fate shaped this world, but the Boy Who Lived was definitely playing into some past patterns. (Whether or not the Dark Lord appeared would be the first real test of my hypotheses, but I was confident.) There had to be other Villains among wizarding society, I was sure. The Dark Lord had had followers, after all. Something would come up. If only because I was here. A supposedly ordinary child, ‘discovering’ magic just as I started being able to comprehend the world; a truly overdone beginning, but holding narrative weight nonetheless.

My main two (and only) points of evidence for Fate still playing some role in this world that the Boy Who Lived had defeated the Dark Lord as an infant, along with the greatest war of European wizarding society being decided by a duel between two figureheads. If stories shaped this world, then those were two prominent examples of rivalries between Named individuals who decided the course of history.

Assuming that Fate was following a narrative, the Dark Lord and the Boy Who Lived would meet. One would win, then they’d meet again and draw, then finally meet one last time – where only one would walk away. Rivalries had a few patterns, but that structure was common enough to plan around.

If I was correct, then the current (still mediocre) greatest evil and the young hero were going to start playing off each other.

Iron sharpens iron.

Books would not help. Not these ones, anyway.

There was an absolute trove of knowledge in these soaring shelves and winding passageways – all under this grand arching ceiling. The knowledge in this library would help me decipher such things as how the books levitated back to their shelves.

(I knew how to make such a thing happen three different ways with Praesi sorcery – and only one involved librarian-blood ink.)

But while such parlour tricks were useful tests of technique or skill – and the source of surprisingly untraceable assassinations – they were not enough to sharpen myself against. And I could not spend all my time learning theory.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, planning and preparation was just an efficient use of waiting. A Villain’s plan never survived contact with a Hero. Or another Villain, if they were halfway decent. (My old rival, Catherine, had taught me that sufficient chaos could counter even my countless contingencies.)

I had gotten complacent.

Content.

Comfortable.

My goals were so distant, and the other players so absent, that bringing them to fruition was simply not challenging.

“Iron sharpens iron.”

My whisper would’ve sounded reverent – religious even – if anyone had heard it among the library stacks. I had been wandering through the twisting shelves for over twenty minutes, avoiding any nooks and crannies people were studying in. I was quite thoroughly – deliberately – alone.

Books could not save me. Especially not if my suspicions about Harry Potter’s soon-to-start Heroic growth were true. But, just as Heroes were guided by Fate – helped enough for it to really feel like cheating – Villains weren’t left entirely to their own devices.

The Gods Below didn’t intervene, or grant power, or… really do anything useful when you desperately needed them to. Yet we paid homage because – apart from the demonic legions – their hands off approach was proof that we Villains did it all ourselves.

I had no evidence for or against any God or Gods existing above, below, or perpendicular to this world. Not that I needed them, which was a central tenet of most Evil philosophies in the first place.

Still, when some instinct woke me from my horrific dulling, I listened. When that instinct drew me to the library, I went. When the winding passages called, I made my way through the stacks towards the back of the room.

The Gods Below didn’t help. They didn’t even have a centralised church or creed. Worshipping them was personal, because they only seemed to care about you if you managed to get what you cared about. Or if you were trying.

They weren’t about morality. You had no obligations to anyone but you. If you had power, individual strength, then you could use it until defeated. The Gods Below wanted you to choose, then commit. But they only stared caring if you won.

I didn’t need them. I wasn’t sure they could hear me, even if I could reach them. Further, my instincts had always felt different from Fate-and-story-influenced urges to monologue over my bound enemies. Or to have a therapeutically maniacal laugh.

It didn’t matter. I was a daughter of Praes. A Villain through and through. An Evil so evil that the other Villains decided I needed ending. Yet here I stood again.

Once I’d finished my current loop of the passages, confirming my isolation, I whipped out a knife and slashed the blade across my palm.

Pain flashed up my arm. My breath shook as it collected in my lungs.

“I’m not dead.” Was the whisper that started my first prayer to the Gods Below in this new world. “Whether one or all of you are responsible for me being here, know that I. Am. Not. Dead.”

I raised my hand, fist clenched tight, out in front of me. Opened my red stained fingers.

Blood dripped onto the carpet of Hogwarts Library. My eyes closed.

“I know I gambled last time. I know I lost. But the real Villain never dies. So – whatever power you have here – give me a challenge. Let me show these wizards, this Dark Lord, just how high it is possible to reach.”

My hand hurt. The very air across the cut felt like a scourge. I had not built up a pain tolerance in this life. Maybe I was offering more than I needed to. Maybe I should go bandage my hand. Maybe no one was listening.

Then again, I was a Villain. I had nearly become the Villain. No one cared about us.

I still dedicated myself to Praes and to proving wrong those who dared claim our wonders were past.

I was the Heiress of Praes in its entirety.

The Gods would heed me, because I had already earned it.

They would turn their heads and listen, because I was going to make this world tremble.

A grin tugged at my lips, but a library was no place for even a quiet cackle. I slowly exhaled and opened my eyes.

And realised it in a flash.

There was something deeper in the library. Past all the winding of the stacks and weaving of the shelves, revealing how Hogwarts Library had two incompatible roles. For the school was meant for children. But the castle was one of the oldest and greatest repositories of magical knowledge in Britain.

This library would have books that young eleven year olds – or most adult wizards – would not be allowed to touch.

My hand ached. The gash had stopped bleeding. My fingers were the usual colour of rich earth. There was no blood in the carpet.

Something tugged me deeper into the library. I walked on, trusting in sheer ambition. And Fate, because what the Villains needed was never readily accessible. Honestly, the more hidden a thing was, the more useful one would find it.

A minute of mounting – and carefully moderated – anticipation later, I walked into open space. Multiple corridors had wound their way to open into a empty semicircle, which had only one narrower passage on the flat side I was now facing. Above the narrow passage was a plaque which read: ‘Restricted Section’.

I noticed three other oddities immediately. First, that the flat side of the semicircle was a wall – no bookshelves. Second, that an older boy with blue highlights on his uniform and a Prefect’s badge on his chest had not looked up from his book. Third, the rope blocking entrance to the intriguing passage.

A superficially straightforward scene, but the details sparked questions. Ones that my intellect immediately answered.

There was one table with one chair because people were not meant to study here, but the Prefect on duty – guard duty – needed some comfort. A Ravenclaw being absorbed in a book was normal, but a Prefect not noticing someone approaching their guard post indicated long shifts. A guard was required in a library because there were books that required… separation.

Only one question couldn’t be thought through so quickly. Why was that rope strung so low that even an eleven-year-old (tall though I already was) could step over it?

I marshalled my curiosity and my expression.

(The cut on my hand twinged.)

“Excuse me?” I ventured.

“…Yes?” The Prefect didn’t look up.

“I… think I’m lost. I was looking for something for herbology and got turned around. And I tried to keep turning left but then I ended up here so–”

“There are signs at the ends of the stacks.” The Prefect cut in, obviously attempting to multitask by still not looking up. “But if you take the third corridor from the right – the straightest one – and don’t turn off anywhere, you’ll end up back at entrance.”

I waited there for a minute.

Two.

Sure enough, when reaching for a quill to make some sort of note, he realised I was still there. And saw how I was ‘holding back my anxiety’.

“Did you need anything else?” Oh, he wasn’t that unsociable after all. Though it was satisfying to, once again, apply the barest amount of emotion to wind someone so proud of their intellect around my finger.

“I, uh, bumped into a shelf and it had a splinter, so I got cut. Uh, I wiped it all up, but I don’t want Madam Pince to get mad at me so can you help?” I rushed my words out ‘nervously’.

The Prefect frowned, but took pity on a poor innocent firstie who was at least trying to engage with her studies. Because he was helping, I ignored how obvious his low estimation of my grades was, watching carefully instead of plotting a minor humiliation.

“Something like this doesn’t need Madam Pompfrey in the Infirmary, but that should be the first place you go in future. Luckily, this isn’t very big.”

To my eye, my hand definitely had a knife wound – though one an hour old. As much as the softness of the wizarding world was causing me… personal problems… it did leave all the normal children trusting as lambs.

“This may feel strange,” the Prefect warned before a tan wand was waved with a muttered: “Episkey.”

My palm experienced the dual sensations of hot wax and ice cubes. I didn’t flinch. Nor did I blink as the flesh and skin grew and knitted back together.

“Oh,” I said.

The Prefect looked proud. I thanked them profusely, then started winding my way out of the library.

I remembered that narrow passage and its low-slung rope barrier. The Restricted Section. There was my challenge. Villains took ambition and forged our very being into a knife to carve the world in our image. My knife was forged long ago, but now I had found a grindstone to sharpen myself again.

I would sculpt this soft society like butter.

Chapter 11: Celebrating Nightmares

Notes:

This chapter was so much fun to write you have no idea

“Hahahahaha. Ha. You can’t beat me now, this is the first part of my plan!”

• Dread Emperor Irritant I, the Oddly Successful. Often referenced by Praesi scholars when debating patterns in the Fate of Villains.

 

The 31^st of October was a day I looked forward to in this life. Before I’d learnt that magic was not unique to me, it was a day to construct ‘costumes’ and ‘act like a sorceress’. My current parents had engaged eagerly with my enthusiasm despite the Americanisation of the holiday.

I’d never told them the dresses and robes I constructed so carefully were not from imagination, but from memory. Because, really, if there was one day in the year where I was going to honour my Praesi ancestry, it would be when a good chunk of the global population was celebrating monsters. 

Now that I was a witch, however, Halloween became the opportunity for something a little more.

Hogwarts didn’t allow costumes, which did rankle me slightly. Until I realised that there were many other ways to celebrate my original culture. The Dread Empire of Praes had not been without its own holidays and festivals – even some that didn’t involve mass sacrifice to fertilise the desert.

Halloween had arrived, and the main celebration at Hogwarts appeared to be a grand evening feast. Fortunately, this breakfast had already gotten interesting without me needing to do anything, thanks to Hannah striding back from an even-more-boisterous-than-usual Gryffindor table to declare, “Potter doesn’t want to celebrate.”

Jaws dropped. (I was not so gauche, simply raising an eyebrow.)

Eleven years ago – to the day – a virtual infant had not died when struck by the Unforgivable Killing Curse. The Wizarding World celebrated the demise of the Dark Lord with jubilation and an apparent abandonment of law enforcement funding.

Harry Potter then disappeared from all public life until turning up – small, badly dressed, and daringly hopeful – on the Hogwarts Express. (Wizards appeared to have much lower standard for Heroism than even the muggle world.)

“Potter doesn’t want to celebrate?” Zacharias Smith – a noble-born childhood playmate of Hannah’s and now my most self-important House-mate – sounded baffled. “He killed the Dark Lord!”

“He lost his parents too.” Susan said flatly.

Smith shut his mouth.

(The double standards between Heroes and Villains really was unjust. Potter simply had to lose his parents and – rumour had it – grow up in the muggle world. To gain his level of fame, I would have to put in far more effort than just ‘not dying’.)

Someone asked something about where Harry Potter grew up. I ignored them and looked up at the main table to see Professor McGonagall watching the Gryffindor hubbub sadly. Professor Dumbledore’s expression was also appropriately sombre, but utterly impenetrable under that. If they’d known Harry Potter’s specific whereabouts before he came to Hogwarts, they hadn’t informed the world.

So, despite my not being able to recreate some Praesi fashion, the conjunction of Halloween, the anniversary of the Dark Lord’s demise, and Potter’s burgeoning Hero’s Journey was sure to make today… eventful.

<{   ҉   }>

Professor Sprout’s attitude to teaching Herbology was largely similar to her manner as Head of Hufflepuff House. Physically, she looked and acted the same, except for how her hands and tan robes became accessorised by earth and soil and the occasional plant clippings while in the greenhouses. I held a private suspicion that the patches on her hat came from the more… aggressive plants wanting a snack.

The greenhouses were the only place in the castle that had more plants than our common room, but Sprout’s method of delegating equipment storage meant a generally bustling start to lessons and a low-pressure social atmosphere throughout the class – regardless of whatever humidity and temperature levels were required by the day’s plants.

(Today’s fungus required quite a warm environment, and was doing its best to advertise the fact that fungi were neither plant nor animal by trying to subsume everything we placed under its violet caps.)

Mostly, she was welcoming. Warm. More focused on teaching than administration, unlike McGonagall.

Which was very useful for the rest of my classmates. Less so for me, because my questions received answers far simpler than I appreciated. Answers that assumed I didn’t even understand soil regulation.

The solution to this appeared to be partnering with Neville Longbottom, who understood plants on an instinctive level. You could occasionally find such people – born with some level of genius relating to often-specific topics. My first family had bred for magical genius over millennia, so I recognised the benefits of cultivating such talent. (Ideally in a way that builds both personal loyalty and financial debt.)

Hannah and Susan both knew Neville from childhood, which had smoothed over the minor scandal of partnering with someone from another House. It helped that Professor Sprout liked that members of her House were embodying Hufflepuff values. She especially liked Hufflepuff values being applied to support a lover of her subject.

The small shift of partnering with Neville was an act I was intensely satisfied with. Best practice for any Villain of sufficient intelligence was to progress three plans (at a minimum) with any given action.

I was going to build loyalty in Gryffindor House, advance ahead of curriculum, weaken the divides between Houses (in favour of me, of course), and – most importantly – provide evidence to my Head of House that I was a lovely and wholesome child.

Professor Sprout was the second most likely authority in the school to become suspicious of me. My fellow classmates were eleven – unlikely to think past the persona I presented to them. But a teacher might indeed wonder why I was always perfect.

Still, a private confession of anxiety or requests for help with homework should be enough to convince Sprout that I was simply an example of what hard work could do for someone. (I was, of course, but I was also quite simply better to begin with.)

I doubted any other faculty members would spend enough time around me – much less have the care – to think too deeply about me.

Except Professor Snape.

I would be among the bubbling cauldrons and sinisterly preserved specimens of his classroom after lunch. Nothing felt quite as dangerous as drawing his attention. So, despite the daily urge to challenge the only Villainous presence in the castle, I acted scared of Potions – rather than fascinated.

(It would be the mark of stupidity to challenge Snape without a variety of cures and antidotes on my person anyway.)

<{   ҉   }>

A low roar filled the Great Hall. The entire student body was in their formal school robes and having conversations with the people around them. Sometimes with people quite far from them as well.

My minions and I had been early to the feast. Not the earliest – that went to the neurotic half of Ravenclaw – but early enough to pick a central place among the other Hufflepuffs and some assorted Prefects who had already sat down.

It let me watch how the rest of the school clumped into social groups or waved out at others on their way to the tables. People kept to their Houses, as a rule. Not out of dislike – except where Slytherin was involved – but more out of inertia. It was simply easier to belong to the group everyone said you belonged to. After all, we did so love to draw little lines in the sand.

(A core part of true Villainy was seeing those thin lines for the flimsy pretences they were. Then showing society that your footprint – crushing the aforementioned sand line – was so much more relevant to people’s day to day.)

Once the school was seated, Dumbledore stood and gestured. All the floating candles in their floating pumpkins flared, from various heights across the hall. The Headmaster then said something utterly unbefitting the leader of an institution as acclaimed as Hogwarts. But a flood of bats chittered and flapped through the arches of the Great Hall’s ceiling like a very squeaky – very distracting – storm. And, before anyone could question anything, food appeared in such volume that the tables bowed in the middle.

My minions managed to perform their (limited, eleven year old) duties, despite the rather fantastic feast before us. Thus, I learned from Hannah that the Gryffindor Granger girl had been crying in the girls bathrooms all afternoon.

“She’s not at the Gryffindor table.” Megan noted. (She was getting sharper. It was refreshing.)

Irritatingly, Hannah needed a prompt to reveal why Granger was so upset. “Oh, it was something Ron Weasley said. And Harry Potter, maybe – but Potter’s too nice to make a girl cry.”

Oh yes. Of course, the Hero is free of fault.

I tucked into my food to provide any pleased expressions with an immediate explanation. But really, this was a lovely opportunity. Smart-but-discriminated-against individuals who get slighted by Heroes are a rare but extremely valuable commodity for the likes of me.

Hermione Granger, bookish and bullied, would be my next minion. The question now was whether to make her feel appreciated by missing part of the feat to ‘check on her’ or to let that loneliness stew overnight.

My reflecting on Granger’s behaviour earlier that day in Herbology did not last long enough to give any insights. And I didn’t get the chance to sift through my mental phonebook, because Professor Quirrel burst through the huge doors connecting the Great Hall to the rest of the castle. He was dashing – in the horribly inefficient way that implied desperation – to the head table, barely managing to keep his turban on to reach the staff table. The entire student body had fallen into baffled silence, so his gasp of “Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know” was heard by all.

Pandemonium ensued.

My blood rushed and my skin buzzed. I wanted to laugh. Magical Halloween did not disappoint.

The Headmaster restored order, then ordered the students back to our dorms. It was harder to slip away from my minions than it was to dodge the prefects. But only relatively harder, like slicing through cold butter instead of warm.

Soon enough I was approaching the lower level girl’s bathrooms, jogging down torch-lit stone corridors. Wand out, checking my corners. It had been a decade since I’d actually had to fight, but it was only my heart that had been torn out, not my muscle memory.

The actual issue was that I didn’t know trolls in this world. One could assume a level of similarity, given how trolls are presented in historical and modern tales across muggle Britain. Still, there is a surprising amount of variability to ‘big’ and ‘tough’.

Best to assume some level of cunning. Safe to consider troll hide both physically protective and magical resistant. Very safe to assume trolls had no citizenship rights in this society.

Could I kill it?

(Should I kill it? It would be grand, but I couldn’t murder anonymously with the resources I currently held.)

Even with only the first year curriculum, I believed I could kill it. I could kill many things, given preparation and accurate information. But even if the lamentable severing charm we were taught could cut troll hide, it didn’t seem worth it.

Killing the troll was the job of the Boy Who Lived, after all. Getting involved in the Hero’s journey never resulted in the Villain achieving their goals. It was death, capture, or – worse – redemption.

I entered the bathroom to find Hermione Granger sniffling and splashing water on her face at the sink.

“Hermione!” I gasped. “Oh you’re okay, I’m so glad!”

The girl – a slightly bucktoothed and frizzy haired slip of potential – jumped. Her eyes were still a little red, and widened as I rushed towards her.

“Come on, you missed the feast but Quirrel said there was a troll in the dungeons and I came to get you.” I clasped her hands and looked her over, as if worried. She leant forwards unconsciously Her behaviour in class may as well have been a neon sign saying: ‘only child with busy parents’. Well, here I was to be the big sister and address that minor touch starvation. 

Hermione spluttered a bit, but managed to shove a single sentence past her shock. “You helped me with Neville’s toad on the train.”

“No time!” I declared. “The dungeons aren’t far, and we need to get you back to Gryffindor tower before the troll moves anywhere.” A pause, where I looked slightly crestfallen. “I was supposed to go back to the Hufflepuff dorms, but I heard how awful the boys were to you and no one deserves that.”

Add in a fierce look of determination, a squeeze of the hands, and…

“Oh, uh, thank you,” Hermione looked near tears again, “I…”

“Let’s go. Tell me on the way.” I smiled and tugged her towards the door. Time was limited after all.

(At least, it was limited now I had succeeded with the first step of my plan. Villains always succeed in the first step, with the Hero thwarting them at the end. I was now in the middle ground where variables came into play; rather than Fate.)

We ran to the door and out into the corridor. Of course, when we were halfway down, the troll turned the corner.

It looked like a granite boulder had been stretched out a bit, then grown arms and legs – but forgot which limbs were meant to be the longer ones halfway through the growing. The head – also rather rock-like – was relatively very small, but probably twice the size of mine. Fortunately, by the way the troll was unhurriedly ambling forwards and dragging its club over the floor, I doubted it had even a tenth of my brain capacity.

Now, if I were a Hero, I would truly believe I had to protect the young girl beside me and do battle with the beast, winning with a surge of strength or creative idea. But I preferred to act with a bit more… rational self-determination.

The troll was very big.

“Diffindo.” I sliced my wand at the troll. Its throat did not get cut open.

“Back to the bathroom!” I called, stepping backwards. “Let’s block the door and wait for the teachers to help!”

Given a logical, reasonable plan, Hermione acted logically. Which meant she didn’t notice me muttering another severing charm, a wingardium leviosa, and then an incendio. Then another incendio, because we had a deadline. No, all she saw when she turned was me running after her and the troll’s head wrapped in a flaming tapestry.

I was not a Hero. Attacking head was only a good strategy when the story on your side – and barely even then.

We got back to the bathroom door. Hermione dashed inside and looked about frantically. “There’s nothing to brace the door with!”

I glanced around, saw she was right, and stayed with Plan A. “Sorry,” I said, “I’ll hold it off.”

Then I slipped back out into the corridor, closed the door after me, and locked it with a loud “colloportus!”

Hmm, shouting the spell seemed to make it more powerful. How could these spells be based on mathematics and yet do that?

(Furthermore, who left a key stuck in the lock for a girl’s bathroom? Especially on the outside?)

The troll roared, helpfully reminding me of more pressing concerns. I stepped forwards. It slammed its club into the wall. The wall was absolutely fine, but my skeleton wouldn’t be.

“Yes. What to do with you?”

There were no suits of armour nearby, rather unfortunately. But another flaming tapestry could be made. The troll raised its arm in front of its face, so I let the burning fabric drop down from above.

A torch got levitated out of its sconce, then dropped at my feet where it was promptly hit with several severing charms and my shoe heel. Once I had a few good shards the size of my finger, the troll had managed to claw the tapestry remnants away from its neck (I had tied it like a hood). I was very fortunate that the great towering creature hadn’t come up with the idea of dropping its club and using two hands. That or it simply hadn’t evolved with fine motor skills.

(I started transfiguring the wood shards to large steel needles.)

What the troll had received from nature was an utterly putrid stench. An awfully refined ‘parfum de halitosis’ that spread down the entire corridor when the creature roared. One can only maintain so much composure in the face of that.

Despite the assault on my senses, I clearly pronounced “wingardium leviosa” and sent a needle as long as my finger into its open mouth.

The roar cut off in a strangely yelping grunt. I couldn’t fire the needles off, only get them going at roughly my jogging pace. Still, I had a lot of experience with instruments of bloodletting – my needles were very sharp.

I stepped forwards. The troll decided that my challenge was more important than its pain. It roared. “Wingardium Leviosa.” It yelped.

I stepped forwards.

After five feet of corridor, I was grinning.

After ten feet, I had only one needle left. The troll now glared at me with hate, not just hunger. I doubt I had actually hurt it. It was possible the creature could digest metal – or simply absorb the magic.

Regardless, step one of my distraction plan had been a great success. Now was when it got real.

With my last needle, I pricked each of my fingers. (Then pocketed the needle, because one never left their blood lying around.)

I drew myself up, hands clasped in a formal posture. The troll sneered. I smirked, bowed, then whisked my cloak off my shoulders. I spun it before me in the air, partly for the flamboyance, partly to get lots of bloody fingerprints all over it.

A final flap my cloak folded the black wool over my arm. The troll hefted its club, nostrils flaring.

“Beast.” I declared.

Said beast roared in rage, cementing its role in our little dance.

My leg swung back, my back stayed straight, and my cloak flicked out, flaring to the side. In my peripheral vision, I saw red spread across the fabric.

I flapped my cape and taunted: “Olé!” The iron tang of blood filled the corridor.

The troll roared and stomped forwards.

I threw the cape-cloak upwards, and quickly levitated it to dance to one side as I ducked to the other wall of the corridor.

The troll – my bull – charged into the cape, which flicked aside of its own accord.

I sprung back into the middle of the corridor, rolled between the troll’s legs, and spent about ten seconds ducking and weaving between leathery legs and the back-swing of the club.

“Help!” I heard Hermione cry through the still-locked bathroom door.

Ah.

I leaped backwards. Away from the troll, away from the girl’s bathroom, and towards the rest of the castle.

The damsel had called for help. Harry Potter would now inevitably turn up – just in time. My brief stint as a matador was over.

I dusted my hands off to cancel my blood-spell, stepping backwards without the dancing and prancing.

The troll managed to grab my cloak and – apparently possessing fewer brain cells than most of the animal kingdom – ate the cloak that no longer reeked of my freshly spilled innards. Then it belched.

Hermione screamed something shrill.

I turned and jogged away. What a delightful Halloween.

Chapter 12: Brooms and Heroes

Notes:

Another chapter! A chat with Hermione and then Quidditch

Akua’s thought process is explained in a bit more detail within the chapter here, but my author-reasons include things like: Akua is actually quite evil, and: this eval gal cares more about staying away from the Hero than she does about the life of some (atm) nobody

Thanks for everyone being honest about their thoughts - and on with the show!

“We are so accustomed these days to the fact that every wizarding household in Britain owns at least one flying broomstick that we rarely stop to ask ourselves why. Why should the humble broom have become the one object legally allowed as a means of wizarding transport? Why did we in the West not adopt the carpet so beloved of our Eastern brethren? Why didn’t we choose to produce flying barrels, flying armchairs, flying bathtubs – why brooms?”

• Kennilworthy Whisp, Quidditch Through The Ages

 

My minions were still less than impressed a week after my dodging them at Halloween.

I wasn’t worried. Their youthful fear was steadily resolving, currently at the stages of slight upset and conflicted vindication at the House points that I’d lost. All I had to do was simply to be a little more attentive to each of them, and to recoup more points in class.

Such academic proactivity had the added benefit of making Hermione Granger keep remembering me. It was very interesting to see how the latent social isolation and separation of Hogwarts Houses kept her from approaching me in the corridors or after class.

Again, I wasn’t worried. If she wanted to become the Hero’s sidekick, then I would happily let that little bond cement itself. Always good to have an in with the Hero’s band.

Besides, my minions were the first priority.

Hannah was the first to forgive me, asking about what the troll looked and smelt like with slightly rebellious excitement. As expected – she was a rich girl and, while not sheltered per say, definitely pampered.

Megan waged an internal war between general anxiety and suspicion of my motives that night. So, halfway through the school week, I took her aside and showed her how to levitate a school cloak into someone’s face. (The fire could come later, when she grew up a little.)

Susan actually surprised me, the lovely girl. After a day of impassive judgement, she gathered everyone in the dorm room and declared: “No one goes alone. We stick together, and if someone needs to do something, they tell everyone and go with someone else.”

(The hard inflection of her tone made me wonder if some prompted hobbies might land me a halfway decent general down the line.)

But a week had passed since the troll, and after showing them some of the secret passages I found –getting them excited about having ‘adventures’ as a group – my minions were once again in a loyal equilibrium.

I hadn’t been worried. I was treating them well. Betrayal would only be a factor if one of them started dating someone connected to the Hero or if I was openly bloodthirsty and conquering. An issue for after graduation.

Immediate issues resolved, I owed Granger a check-in.

<{   ҉   }>

November’s chill winds had driven more people to study in the cosy library. Still, the excitement of Halloween meant a roughly equal amount of people would rather gossip than study, and gossiping above a whisper drastically limited your time among the stacks. Thus, the library ended up quiet and much the same. Untouched by events inside and outside the castle.

No surprise that Hermione Granger treated it like a sanctuary. It was also no surprise to find her in the magical creatures section. Except she wasn’t looking at trolls.

“I’m just going to ask how she is,” I whispered to my minions, “I don’t need everyone to crowd around her, she’s shy.”

Susan gave me a flat look, but Megan compromised with “we’ll sit nearby.” I gave them both a broad smile, but only Megan got the grateful arm squeeze.

I left my book bag and homework with my minions, except for the Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1. That, I set gently on Hermione’s table, open to the Unlocking Charm.

Hermione – bushy hair and fierce focus – only spotted me when she reached over for another compendium. I knew she hadn’t noticed me for at least a minute, because when she did, she squeaked.

“You!” She hissed quietly.

“Hi Hermione, my name is Akua Sahelian.” I smiled, let a little mischief quirk my mouth up at the side. “Also a muggleborn – it feels like we should at least know of each other.”

“Yes, well,” the poor dear paused – then visibly remembered why we were a bit past ‘at least knowing of each other’.

“It's very good to meet you, Akua,” she said properly, “but…”

“The Sorting Hat didn’t put me in Gryffindor – I’m not brave,” my monologue began, “I can’t face a troll. But the Professors can – or maybe a seventh year could – anyway, we both needed to stay safe. I am sorry about locking the door on you, but I did running in PE – in primary school – so I thought I could distract it and sprint past. There was probably a way to get us both away, but the Hat didn’t put me in Ravenclaw either.”

I gave a self-deprecating shrug.

“Oh. I… I hadn’t thought of it like that. I was actually worried that you got hurt.” Hermione looked me over, brown eyes wide. (Ah, sweet success.)

I pushed up my sleeves to show smooth and unblemished ebony skin. (As if I would get hurt from a challenge so… paltry.) Still, Granger seemed relieved, but awkwardness quick filled the gap that worry had abdicated.

No matter, I’d fully expected to carry the initial conversation (and the whole scheme). “I still don’t feel good about locking that door on you, so” – I slid the Standard Book of Spells forward and pointed – “here is the Unlocking Charm.”

Hermione’s yearning for knowledge warred with her attachment to rules – likely formed because people were so much less reliable.

“Professor Flitwick hasn’t covered that in class yet.” She stalled.

My sigh was real. My next words, pure fiction.

“I can’t get spells straight away in class like you can. I always practice after class to make sure I do it right. I guess I just started practicing from what the book said when I looked ahead one day.”

(Flattery, common ground, a logical justification, and…)

Hermione’s eyes gleamed – her curiosity promptly devouring my justification and winning its internal war. “Alohomora.” She whispered.

(…Got her.)

Ten minutes later, and after a surprisingly enjoyable conversation about rudimentary magical theory, I returned to my minions. They’d started on their homework, which I praised them for. But to their surface questions on what I’d said to Hermione, I answered only in my new ‘friend’s’ final words. (The ones I’d planted in her head.)

“Maybe muggleborn should stick together.”

<{   ҉   }>

Quidditch, analysed for its insights and reflection of Wizarding society, highlighted how the culture venerated specific individuals who could do things that others could not.

This was a trait I could point out in many muggle cultures in this world, but there was a subtle difference. Capitalism celebrated those who became something greater (richer), because everyone started out the same (in theory). Wizards seemed to separate people into different categories of innate ability – probably due to the reality of having magic while other humans didn’t.

This meant that racism was largely non-existent – assuming Hogwarts was an accurate sample of the broader population. Ironically, the only (minor) racism I’d seen, was in the unconscious behaviour of muggleborn students, who were too busy being discriminated against by the Purebloods to argue that skin colour mattered a whit.

That aside, quidditch.

Quidditch had teams of seven. Three chasers and one keeper who closely resembled football players – ignoring the flying brooms. There were also two beaters, whose only role was to direct violence towards the other team – which was a tame enough thrill when broken bones could healed in less time than one needed to naturally recover from a nasty scratch. Lastly, the seeker was the only player with the ability to end the game, and that was their only official duty.

As I watched this school game between Gryffindor and Slytherin, amid screaming and hollering from all around the stands, I wondered at the kind of narcissistic personality that could invent this game. And then convince a society to get fanatic about it.

Sure, there were tactics. Sure, there was drama. Occasionally, some blood. But the teams would have to be very imbalanced for the seeker’s one-hundred-and-fifty-point game ending catch of the snitch to not also be what decided the winner.

The better the chasers, seekers, and beaters were, the more the seeker mattered. And if the rest of the team was awful, then the seeker had to win quickly. It just...

But then again, an awfully large percentage of wizards apparently equated muggles with animals. And the entire society held a near mythical belief in their most accomplished.

Example A: Merlin.

Example B: Dumbledore and the Dark Lord.

If there was a category of people below normal wizards, then it was not that much of a stretch to see the greats and the geniuses as fundamentally above the rest of society. For – as far as I could tell – Dumbledore held so many seats of office and influence that only his own (apparent) reticence prevented him reigning as Dictator. And, well, titling one’s self ‘The Dark Lord’ was just a smart thing to do. Evil lords were treated much better than evil kings.

“Akua!” Megan yelled in my ear. “You missed the score!”

I didn’t sigh. That would hurt her feelings, and I didn’t want the associated work.

“I heard the score,” I grumbled, but let my minions be the priority for now.

Megan was exhibiting a rare fierceness. Insults on strategy, demands for better plays, and impressively loud hoots whenever something happened. She didn’t appear to be cheering for a particular side, but the insults hurled at the Gryffindors tended to have more advice hidden in there.

I suspected Hannah was just getting swept up in the energy of the crowd, extrovert that she was.

Susan cheered for Gryffindor’s goals, but only put real energy into condemning fouls.

After I established the patterns of my minions, I observed the rest of my year. Finch-Fletchley, my much richer fellow muggleborn, was fascinated. Smith, next to him, was taking it upon himself to know more than he actually did and explain what was happening. (Megan shot him a dual glare-scoff when he talked about something that evidently wasn’t the Dragon Wing formation.)

More broadly, the school was simply into the game. Maybe this competition was symbolic of the general competition between Houses. It was more immediate than the end-of-year House Cup. Although, on second thought, the Quidditch Cup was separate – could sport be a House’s point of pride if the House wasn’t Ravenclaw?

(I didn’t see much point in not giving all rewards to the winner, but that was the Praesi in me. All struggle, all strife, and all competition led to – and up – the Tower.)

The rest of the match passed idly. I noted the speed of the players and made a note to try again in flying class, no matter how ridiculous brooms were as vehicles – always better to be capable of arial combat than not. At one point I spotted some older students with magical binoculars and instructed Megan to get me some for Christmas, which resulted in a “I knew you’d get into it Akua!”

Eventually, I went back to planning my pathway into the Restricted Section.

Which of course, was when the interesting thing happened.

“That’s not...” Megan frowned up at the jerking figure of Potter. “Why is he having trouble flying now?”

Speculation ran rampant, even if the quidditch team kept playing as normal. At some point, someone in the school said something about faulty brooms. Which started a rumour that was inevitably misheard as the broom being cursed. At least, that was the only reason I could think of as to why a majority of students were suddenly convinced Harry Potter was being attacked.

I turned to the professors.

“Smith, give me your binoculars.” He did, then visibly wondered why I reminded him of his mother scolding him.

I scanned the professors’ seats to find…

Oh. Wasn’t this fun?

Professors Snape and Quirrel, furiously muttering and staring up into the air – in Potter’s direction.

I immediately discarded the prospect of them working together. Too much evidence against that.

So, who was the Villain here? Who was more likely to curse the Boy Who Lived?

Snape was the obvious choice. He practically paraded around, engaging in petty evil. And Potter was an obvious Hero – orphaned, poor, hopeful and all that.

But, what kind of story was playing out? The innocent child struggling against the evil adult? Or the young Hero learning about the world?

I would have to find out. Which was always harder when it wasn’t your story. Keeping that connection open with Granger would help thankfully.

“He’s not going to die,” I reassured those around me, “we know the levitation spell and I’m sure the Professors have even more powerful magic.”

(Of course, it was also too early in the story for anyone to die – Hero or Villain. And I didn’t trust any Villain in the wizarding world to know that it being ‘too early’ meant this was exactly the time when you had to throw everything at the Hero to clear the board – and give yourself enough time to prepare for the next fool who comes along to interrupt your plans.)

I gave Smith back his magical binoculars and thought about the ‘coincidence’ of Dumbledore being absent.

The Hero didn’t die today. In fact, he won the game. Because the Hero wouldn’t be playing any role other than seeker.

Predictable.

<{   ҉   }>

The following day, Hermione hesitantly welcomed me to her library table. Fortunately, it didn’t take much for her to frustratedly whisper that there wasn’t a book dedicated to broom curses.

Ten minutes later, we moved on to homework. In that time, I’d learnt that Ronald Weasley hated homework as much as he loved both Quidditch and Chess. Further, Harry Potter hated Snape.

(Potter wasn’t innocent enough to believe the best in authority figures. Snape had been here for years, working under Dumbledore.)

I placed my bets on Quirrel.

Chapter 13: Polished Silver Shines a Lie

Notes:

Slight shame that the christmas chapter falls early, but the schedule is the schedule!

“Love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.”

• Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol 2: The Doll’s House.

 

Leading up to the Christmas break, Hogwarts grew closer and closer to resembling a disturbed beehive. Students flitting about, furiously focusing and studying – or skiving off completely – while teachers marked previous work and handed out more homework.

The older years were far more relaxed about things, but the Gryffindor first years proved themselves truly brave; in testing the lower bounds of academic acceptability, that is. The Ravenclaws acted like their House’s animal and cooped themselves up in the warm dry places – except with books instead of shiny things. Hufflepuffs simply threw scarves around their necks and politely badgered the upper years for heating charms.

Lastly (not in House points, unfortunately), the Slytherins just got grumpy. I wasn’t sure whether that was a greater indicator of excitement for ‘loving’ pureblood parenting behaviour or that the dungeons didn’t have heating.

Interestingly, Harry Potter was regularly following Hermione into the Library. Even the youngest Weasley went with them – possibly for his first exploration of the stacks.

My minions, satisfyingly consistent in their general effort and productivity, picked my brain for tips on the newly handed out assignments. For I would be the only Hufflepuff remaining in the castle over this Christmas break.

(Usually, between my House’s two traits of loyalty and hard work, the opportunity to leave school and see family let loyalty win out. Thus, the members of our homely House thought me a bit odd for staying at school to practice magic. I lied through my teeth about my parents taking a trip back to Morocco, because I couldn’t appear too odd. Not just yet.)

I did write home in November about staying at Hogwarts. Three pages, one of my usual enthusiasm and light-hearted updates of classes and friends, then two pages of detailed explanation regarding both quidditch and superficial wizarding anthropology, because my parents were the type of academics who researched because “the details are fascinating!”

Actual content aside, the core message of my letter home read: I’m not coming home for Christmas because I can’t practice magic at home. Love, Akua.

(I had buried the ridiculous tight-chest feeling I got when reading their reply letter under plans to get into the Restricted Section.)

<{   ҉   }>

When the break actually arrived, there were less than twenty people in the entire castle – including the professors. Said professors, with their burdens of care cut to barely anything, spent some time turning main thoroughfares and Great Hall into a veritable winter wonderland.

Observing their magic was fascinating, and Professor Flitwick was all too happy to describe the types of charms he used to create all the tiny illusions and temperature-stable snow, as well as the charms used to keep the several feet of snow that had buried the grounds a week before the break outside the castle.

(I had too many memories of sand and dry, dry heat for snow to feel anything but alien.)

Less immediately useful, but worth storing in my ever-growing mental phonebook of blackmail and emotional levers, was who else decided to stay over Christmas.

Everyone knew that the Boy Who Lived had stayed, thanks to Malfoy’s insinuations about Potter not being wanted at home. Which, given how Potter went still when it was said, probably wasn’t far off the mark.

(No gruff-but-warm relative to tutor our Hero in the ways of the world, apparently.)

The Weasleys were staying too – their parents’ holiday had ‘inspired’ my excuse. Quite a few Ravenclaws and some older Gryffindors stayed over the break (there were at least two couples among them.) Not a single Slytherin remained in the castle. Somehow, I still managed to hear Potter and the youngest Weasley complaining about Snape.

They were still going to the library too.

(Unfortunately, there was no point interrupting the hero’s quest for knowledge unless you already knew everything about the situation or wanted to learn what they sought at the cost of revealing you were looking for it too.)

In the face of such population demographics, I set out to learn how to navigate as much of the castle’s dungeons as possible. The self-styled queen bee of my year, Pansy Parkinson, would self-destruct with a few little nudges, but Daphne Greengrass felt like someone to have more than two contingency plans about.

(Besides, if my slow plan to gather a following across all Hogwarts Houses ended up needing a common enemy in the Slytherins, then all the better to know where the enemy lived and licked their wounds.)

<{   ҉   }>

Two days before Christmas, I discovered a secret passage that took me from the dungeons to Gryffindor Tower, with half the stairs that the trip usually took. Emblazoned on the walls inside each entrance to the passage were peace signs, and what I can only describe as tie-dye tapestries hung regularly, as if some muggleborn from the early 70s had really believed in John Lennon and Hogwarts itself thought ‘Imagine’ was a neat tune.

While Praes would roll over the wizarding world in its sleep, there wasn’t quite anything like this castle in the Dread Empire. Hogwarts was... exemplary. Likely unique, across both the worlds I’d lived in.

In my first life, the thought of a building even approaching sentience was laughable. One needed a soul to perform magic, and my ancestors had conducted enough experiments to be well and truly certain of who and what did or didn’t have souls.

Here, the nature of magic was fundamentally different. Instead of imposing your will upon Creation and having Creation give, the magic of this world felt like its own force. It certainly wasn’t coming from ambient dimensional bleed seeding sparks in the genes of various peoples. The magic I cast through my wand – and blood – was stable. Casting a spell wrong now would not result in my magic sparking out or spurting out in a minor disruption of reality, merely sinking back to wherever I’d drawn it from. (I suspected it was my soul, but it wasn’t like I could look without inventing the equipment myself.)

It was possible that magic possessed as much of an awareness as Hogwarts did, no matter how I wasn’t yet sure of the source of its power. I couldn’t rely on my previous knowledge regarding the properties and progression of souls. Thus, the fancies I’d had about the castle being ever so slightly awake during my first explorations had some credence. They certainly couldn’t be ruled out, and something had me thinking they were more correct than not.

I was following my instincts on the matter. (My instincts said to respect this place.)

What I did not have to respect was the Weasley Twins.

“You want to buy some dungbombs? You?”

“She’s looking very serious Fred. I think she wants to buy some dungbombs.”

“But she’s a Hufflepuff George! A first year Hufflepuff!”

Two fiery red heads bent together and whispered, occasionally raising in volume for the occasional word like ‘price’, ‘fee’, and ‘professor’. It was a bit too deliberate.

I waited them out.

“She’s still looking serious Fred.” George – apparently – leant away from his twin and straightened his robes. Did they perform every action as if acting on a stage?

“Well, I guess all that’s left is for us to make a deal then!” Fred grinned, so mischievous and youthfully handsome.

I shook their hands and mentally orientated myself in the castle in case the local premises needed vacating.

“Just up here is where we keep our supplies, funnily enough!”

They’d... swapped places behind my back. I’d heard their footsteps and hesitated enough to feel the brush of robes, but anyone who was actually eleven never would have noticed. They were identical. (At what point did it end? Hmm, I really needed to invent some soul-viewing methods.)

I wasn’t that well versed with the corridors around Gryffindor tower, preferring to leave the Hero’s domain to said Hero. But even so, I could tell that this corridor we’d turned down was quite out of the way.

“Down here, then…”

“Have you forgotten the door, Fred?”

“Not at all dear George, just testing you!”

One of them – I mentally consolidated the two pages in my mental phonebook of politics and blackmail – tapped a random door with their wand and muttered a string of not-quite-Latin. (I really needed to find a compendium of magical Latin, since it was apparently a different dialect to what Christianity maintained.) Still, I thought one of the words was related to smelling.

“Ladies first!” One of them opened the door into an empty, dusty, thoroughly unused room. The other, with a hand on my back, ‘guided’ me inside.

I pulled out my wand. With slow, eleven-year-old reflexes instead of the speed I’d practiced to achieve.

Something sailed past, further into the room. The door shut. The thrown object landed and gently exploded with a great ripping fart noise that must have been magically modified.

A whoosh of gas. Or enchantment.

I wasn’t quite sure how wizarding dungbombs worked.

And, in this moment, I didn’t particularly care.

When I opened the door and walked from the room, I did so with the bearing of Professor McGonagall. Straight back, stern-but-not-angry, and generally-too-busy-for-this-shit.

The Weasley Twins were peeking round the corridor. I flicked my wand and muttered the levitation charm. The door swung shut behind me (most of the smell suddenly vanished) as I strode down the hall.

The twins ducked back.

“Weasleys!” I called. “I’m buying two dungbombs. Now!”

When I turned the corner, they were waiting. (Gryffindors, the courage of lions and the attention-spans of kittens.)

“You…” The left-hand twin started.

“…want to buy two?” Finished the right.

I raised an eyebrow.

They looked at each other, shrugged, then held out their palms.

I did nothing.

They looked at each other, frowned, then said in unison. “Five sickles.”

“Oh, I thought I’d just paid you. Isn’t laughter the most precious thing in the world?”

(Objectively, the most valuable thing was knowledge. And the knowledge of whether their intestines would look identical if I split open their stomachs was currently quite valuable to me.)

I smiled. Not one of my innocent-Hufflepuff smiles.

They blinked simultaneously. Looked at each other in the same moment, with the same movement.

“Suuuuuuurrreeeee.” One said while the other nodded slowly. “We reckon that’s fair, don’t we?”

“Very fair.”

“Fair indeed.”

“Call it square?” They both pulled a dungbomb from a pocket hidden somewhere.

“I say agreed.” I replied, continuing their little rhyme.

They paused, two red headed pranksters who were increasing unsure of where I fit in their worldview. I let them stew, then carefully took the dungbombs.

“Well!”

“Pleasure doing business with you!”

“You know where to come if you need anything else, doesn’t she George?”

“Yes she does! And she’ll get the insider rates too!”

I turned and left them to their own amusement. An eye for an eye just wasn’t good maths in almost any society. The Praesi calculation put one eye as equal to three half-hearted assassination attempts, one serious one, a trade freeze, and the brutal murder or blinding of a valued underling.

Fortunately, this wasn’t public – and I could get to a shower without running into anyone – so active and physical revenge against the Weasley Twins wasn’t mandated.

Better to subtly guilt them for the next several years anyway.

<{   ҉   }>

On Christmas morning I woke to a small but respectable pile of presents at the foot of my bed. I had not noticed their appearance during the night.

So, after picking apart the dorm for hidden entrances and generally processing the rather major concern I had with anyone or anything getting so close to me while I slept, I levitated and shook slightly each of my presents.

Wingardium Leviosa let me open each package from a distance. Eleven years of living in the – largely Good – muggle world had not broken the habits installed by my first mother and the rest of Praesi society.

(From age five, any card had been coated in a tactile poison – rotating through six different non-lethal effects; because a new heir would set my mother’s plans back years.)

(Once I was ten, my birthday cakes were poisoned too. Which had actually eliminated a rival at the time, helpfully.)

But this world was far removed from the Dread Empire.

Earth and Britain and Hogwarts meant that the envelope from Mum had a ticket to a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream (dated for the Easter break, which was pleasantly conniving) and a card talking about how my status as her daughter was more magical than anything else she could imagine. Baba sent me an anthology of Celtic pagan myths – adding to my collection of other ancient stories.

I’d sent them gifts that I would indirectly benefit from as well: a collection of wizarding children’s tales from one Beedle the Bard to Mum, and an archaeology journal issue for Baba about Australian First Nations’ tool use originating tens of thousands of years earlier than previously suspected. My first upbringing, distant and faintly diluted, had been thorough enough that gifting still didn’t quite make sense to me. The social utility was logical, of course, but that was rooted in my conception of bribery.

Still, there were many things I didn’t completely understand about the world, like aerodynamics. I could still very well appreciate aeroplanes, however.

(I read the card from Mum and Baba three times, then spent another few minutes lying on my bed, holding it to my chest. Reminding myself that my plans were more important than being able to run to their room and wake them up in increasingly elaborate ways.)

And there were more presents! I’d chosen attentive minions, Susan sending me a personalised quill (enchanted to only write when held by my hands) and a pot of colour-changing ink. Hannah had given me two books; one describing the twenty-one natural magical wonders of the world, and a slightly-used copy of a wizarding genealogy tome.

(Which was effectively an instruction guide to the wizarding political factions, given the feudal class system they treated like a government.)

Megan had followed orders and got me some omnioculars. With a Holyhead Harpies logo, which was pleasantly aggressive.

In giving my gifts to my minions, I had sourced a wizarding tailor of appropriate quality and price to commission some Hufflepuff themed scarves. One for each of us, including myself. An acronym of our names – M.A.S.H. – as monogrammed in a way that put the ‘A’ on top of a four-spoked wheel, embroidered onto both ends of the scarves.

I was quite proud of the gifts. Showing effort, being cost effective, and clearly marking us as a group.

The other first year Hufflepuffs sent me sweets. I’d sent them – and my minions too – better sweets, introduced to me by Baba. Shebakia, fried dough shaped like flowers, glazed with honey and sesame seeds. Even better than the candied scorpion tails I’d loved in Wolof.

Hermione didn’t get any shebakia, since her parents were dentists, but I did send a nice enough leather journal. (I didn’t receive a present from her today – something I expected, and most of the reason why I’d sent her something in the first place.)

I organised my gifts with more applications of levitation, then dressed in multiple layers and my own MASH scarf. Fine wool and evidence of successful social manipulation kept me feeling warm on the way to breakfast.

It was still strange that no meal was going to intentionally poison me.

<{   ҉   }>

I had spent half of Christmas day outside – begging Professor Sprout for a warming charm, then ‘remembering’ to give her a gift (an overview of innovative agricultural practices across Africa).

The snow had been... strange. Wonderful and magical, in a friendlier way than a dessert. After eleven years in Britain, I was used to rain not being a seasonal or ritually summoned affair. But having a season where the rain froze in the atmosphere?

It was a rather insignificant oddity. But... diverting.

Now though? Now, dinner was done and students sleeping. Supposedly.

I was very awake, dressed in darker neutral tones, and walking softly towards the library. Wand in hand, notebook in pocket. (Knife in other pocket.)

Cold air entered my nose, exited my mouth. Regular, calm. I was full of roast ham and intent. Briefly, I entertained the idea of creeping down the stone halls like one of the competent heist movie leads that enraptured my mother. Shame they always had something to justify their actions – I’d always felt more affinity for the antagonists, orchestrating some grand betrayal.

It would be amusing to regale my mother with some tale of my own at the end of the year. Frame it as a story I read about Hogwarts’ very own library; a long-ago thief who dared steal from the stacks.

The library door opening was louder than my footsteps, but I was slender and slipped inside. I saw darkness, smelt paper and dust. My smile grew wider, a whispered “lumos” set the tip of my wand aglow, and I set off.

Once at the half-clearing of the Restricted Section, now empty of its prefect sentry, I took a moment to bask in the anticipation of – slowly, steadily, unstoppably – grasping my glorious future. (Ever since I’d gotten my wand, and especially since arriving in this castle, my soul had not hungered for magic. But that did not negate the other hungers of my being.)

Across the clearing was knowledge. Knowledge deemed restricted. I would have it.

I raised my new omnioculars to my eyes and adjusted the focus. Extinguished my wand, and activated ‘astrology’ mode. The first title I read made my lips purse. Conjurations of a bloody chalice sounded far from practical.

In fact, over the next half an hour of noting down book titles (most in Latin or an older English), locations, and cover descriptions from all the different angles that I could see into the restricted section from, I had come to the conclusion that the most recent Dark Lord might be tasteful after all. In comparison to whoever had written My Malevolence Unleashed, at least.

Deaths Most Dreadful looked promising though. But tonight had been solely about reconnaissance. To learn what was in the proverbial vault, before you went to all the trouble of opening it.

It was very considerate of whoever had just opened the library door to do so after I’d gotten all I could. I peeked down the book-lined hall that led to the library entrance with my omnioculars. The new interloper wasn’t using any light.

Best be off then.

<{   ҉   }>

My path back to the Hufflepuff dorms was interrupted by a small tinkling. The statistically likely options of what that was ran through my head and quickly settled on ‘cat bell’.

The caretaker’s pet.

I turned around and walked faster in the other direction.

“Too many get away, aye?” Drifted bitterly through the cold, branching corridors in front of me.

The caretaker.

I turned back and dashed to a secret passage. The mangy cat’s meow was louder than my footsteps. Not louder than the sudden running a ways behind me.

But I made it in front of the tapestry of a night sky and firmly said: “curiosity.”

The tapestry split in half like a curtain and I dashed up the suddenly-there staircase. Once the entrance behind me sealed closed, the staircase was illuminated by many tiny floating lights. Flecks of silvery brightness, peppering the air as I climbed. The first time I saw two boasting Ravenclaws enter this passage, I’d followed and walked for ten minutes before touching a light and having a doorway open to a new place in the castle. The second time, I’d touched a fleck immediately and ended up in a forgotten room on the same floor.

I stared up at the lights, walked back down two steps, then looked for the brightest one. There. I went to poke it, but it moved away, just like the last time I’d tried this experiment. The feeling of intent I’d gotten on the way to the library returned with a sweet rush that only intrigue, fencing, and advanced magic lit in me.

If the brightest light represented something that someone didn’t want people going near, then that supported my theory of these lights corresponding to individual magical things or places in the castle. I poked a dimmer light that was right next to the bright one. The stairs suddenly levelled off into a landing, a door on my right.

The door cracked open to face a tall suit of armour standing in a corridor. I glanced around without stepping forwards. A... normal corridor. Hopefully with something secret rather close, if my assumptions regarding the curiosity corridor’s magic were correct.

If the suit of armour that the door had opened to face was the dim light, then the –

A door to the left, already ajar, was pushed open further by something I couldn’t see. Footsteps ran down the corridor. I watched the stone floor as echoes sounded from nothing, then mentally added invisibility to my research list.

I waited a beat longer, then stepped lightly across the hall and into the room where invisible people looked at secret things the curiosity corridor didn’t want to show me.

The room was a classroom. Disused, chairs and desks stacked at the sides of the rooms and faintly dusty. Anything being dusty in Hogwarts was a sign of rare neglect, but I suspected that this room wasn’t being cleaned because of the giant magical artifact in the middle of it.

A mirror. A magnificent mirror. Ornate gold frame, two great clawed feet – also gold. It nearly reached the ceiling and must have been manoeuvred through the door behind me with great care.

I would have happily chosen it for my room, back in the palaces of my first life. The urge to possess (and outright hoard) magic artifacts was something all but bred into my blood from the ancestors of my first life. And this mirror was clearly magical. More than that though, there were two things had my instincts screaming danger.

The mirror was not dusty.

The mirror was facing slightly away from the entrance, requiring someone to consciously step in front of it.

This was a trap. Either the invisible person running out of the room had looked in it – and, well, not immediately died – or said person had organised the trap then run away very quickly.

I stepped sideways, away from the angle that would show my reflection.

“Lumos,” I muttered. Shadows stretched up the walls from chair legs. The mirror cast its own shadow on the back wall, looming. I could see the back corner of the room in the mirror. Nothing was revealed, nothing moved, and the mirror’s surface didn’t ripple ominously.

I didn’t trust it an inch.

Circling round further, I examined the frame. Real gold. Old. The high and scrolling arch held an inscription; not runes, but...

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafry oyt on wohsi.

I froze.

A riddle. The simplest of riddles. Only intended to make the reader curious about the inscription. Because once they read it, well...

Wouldn’t anyone want to see their heart’s desire?

My face prickled. Hairs raised on my arms. My ribcage was tight, seizing my heart where it burned in my chest. Would I see my greatest triumph? Glean the secrets needed to reshape history altogether? What knowledge and power could I gain, even from just a peek?

(Would I see my first father, alive again and meeting my new parents?)

I squeezed my wand so hard there would be fingernail dents in my palm come morning.

I knew what happening here. The Villain, advancing their plans in secret efficiency, faces some small disruption that pushes them in a seemingly innocuous direction. Turning left instead of right. Stumbling over someone else’s plan. Fate didn’t like stories happening in isolation, and if you weren’t planning on making an enemy or other big moves, you had better recognise when you ended up in someone else’s path by ‘accident’.

In Praes, the other person was often a bigger, badder Villain – the moral of those stories being that there was always a bigger fish and that fish simply eating you was one of the kinder Fates.

But this was Britain and Hogwarts, and, by process of elimination, I’d just stumbled into the Hero’s story. The most dangerous place in this castle for me to be. Because I was a Villain. A Villain three small steps away from learning my heart’s deepest desire.

I could discover the secret object I would need for victory, and then the Boy Who Lived would take me down and step on my imprisoned back as he grew in power on his way to face the Dark Lord. Maybe I would break out, but it would only be to fight the Dark Lord and weaken us both or due to Potter making some deal that I would try to betray, only to accidentally die due to the narrative equivalent of a loose pebble.

And that, that insult to everything I worked for across both of my quite short lifetimes? That wasn’t even the worst option.

Because if I looked in that mirror and didn’t see my grand triumph? We who were versed in the stories of history called that ‘foreshadowing a redemption arc’.

(I was aware enough of the kind of Villain that I was – the things I had already done – to know that any redemption arc forced upon me by the uncaring whim of Fate would involve me causing my own personal tragedy, months or years of emotional agony, then a final sacrifice that made the Hero think well of me after all. And that would be it, a second of inner peace before I died, with the Hero half-heartedly defending me to all their friends and supporters until I was forgotten.)

I glared at the inscription and thought about destroying this perfect temptation.

After five minutes of imagining innovative uses of the first year spell curriculum, I let out a long breath and cursed in Praesi. (One of the vicious ones.)

This was a very good trap, but it hadn’t been for me. I’d simply wandered into Potter’s story, and the story had tried to make me fit.

I stepped sideways, further away from the mirror’s glass, then turned to circle back to the door.

It took another minute to take the first step away, towards the door. I was three steps in when the urge to turn and look raised its slimy head. A deep breath, and another step away.

“Twenty points to Hufflepuff, Miss Sahelian.”

My head snapped sideways, wand flicking out to levitate whoever this was into the ceiling.

Professor Dumbledore was lifted an inch off his feet before he coughed apologetically. My spell disappeared, and he bounced on his toes.

“Headmaster.” I let my fear show, because that was certainly appropriate for a new student to be feeling, out after curfew.

“I apologise for startling you, my dear.” He was smiling through his long white beard. I refused to look directly at him, because I was ‘nervous’ (looking for objects to levitate into the back of his head).

“It shows a tremendous quality of character to resist looking into the Mirror of Erised,” the Headmaster continued. Like he was a kind old grandfather and not obviously the person who laid this trap in the first place.

(Which meant that Harry Potter had some method of invisibility. At least it wasn’t a magic sword, ugh.)

“Though, I must ask my dear, what has you up and about at this time of–”

“Can we talk outside?” I cut him off. “Away from...” I pointed, not turning my head an inch.

His head tilted up, and weight settled on his shoulders.

“Another five points to Hufflepuff, I think. But of course, after you.”

He followed me out the room. I ‘bravely’ let myself actually look at him now – though no higher than his chin.

“I do have to ask why you were enjoying the night air my dear. At this time, I’m afraid we’re all better off warm and in bed.”

(Gods Below, he was good at this.)

“I stayed up because I wanted to practice magic, to get better, but my room was so quiet so I decided to go out because I saw some Ravenclaws go up this staircase behind a tapestry earlier in the year so I wanted to try it – and you have to say ‘curiosity’ to get in – and the staircase was filled with stars so I tried to grab the biggest one to see it but–”

“Ah, breathe. All is well, Miss Sahelian. Curiosity is a quality that all should appreciate. But there is a time and place for exploration, and these cold nights are best spent in bed. With an extra blanket.” Professor Dumbledore winked in my peripheral vision.

I let out a nervous laugh.

“Thank you, sir.”

He nodded genially, and I hastily walked away.

I kept up the nervous child act (not that it was an act) until I was back in my dorm. Hopefully the omnioculars still around my neck made him think I was originally planning on stargazing.

Sleep eluded me for another hour, as I thought about how closely involved in Harry Potter’s story Headmaster Dumbledore might be.

I definitely didn’t want to be on his radar. The grandfather act was well done, but I knew someone who moved pieces on the board when I saw them. Maybe, after playing it safe, I would look more closely at the game he was playing. From a distance, of course.

(I fell asleep thinking about the golden frame of that mirror.)

Notes:

Lots of things happening now - what fun!

Chapter 14: Having Minions is Easier

Notes:

The first interaction between Harry and Akua

Such fun

“Oh, I get by with a little help from my…”

• The Beatles, with a little help from my friends. (They had obviously never had good minions.)

 

The Christmas break had passed, even if snow still smothered the castle grounds. I was no longer alone, my roaming restricted once more. But life was much more interesting when other people were around. If society was a game of chess (or go, bridge, or other more suitable metaphors), then isolation was checkers. Interesting games were possible, but there were simply less of them and the victor was determined far too early.

Hogwarts castle was enjoyably vibrant with its population returned. Enough that I would need to check whether the ambient magic fluctuated with the size of the student’s population. But that was for the future.

Right now, my minions needed some attention.

After a reasonably grand dinner, the school term resumed like the second wave of plague upon the less-than-academic. Fortunately, most students had – at varying speeds – fallen back into routines over the past week.

(I suspected a few were choosing to succumb to said illness, of which the main symptoms appeared to be a doltish thickheadedness and fatal lack of ambition.)

I, of course, practiced the arcane art of ‘planning ahead’ that so rare amongst eleven-year-olds. And adults. And Heroes.

My minions had returned to Hogwarts exuberantly. Similar enthusiasm was given to ‘catching up’ and diving back into four of our seven classes. (Hannah actually slept through History and Astronomy, her new short haircut flattened between her cheek and the textbook.) The first conversations – after numerous hugs were exchanged – had predictably focused on everybody’s Christmas presents.

I was rather satisfied to see yellow and black scarves wrapped around the necks of my minions. Their teasing about the M.A.S.H. acronym was acceptable, because, really, I now claimed them in a visible way. We had gone from friend group to clique and only Megan had any realisation of it. A few words and natural human longing to be part of the in-group meant she quickly became the proudest of our new scarves.

What I hadn’t quite expected was any minions of mine to be honest when saying they put care into my gifts. Great effort I was used to (the balance between flattering me and showing off had been very thin, back in Praes), but earnest care and affection was... new.

Nice.

I made sure to use the quill Susan got me and talk to Hannah about future holidays to other magical societies – there were apparently a number hidden around the world. Megan’s omnioculars were used for peeking into the Forbidden Forest, because why waste such an excellent tool by only bringing it out for Quidditch.

My new habit of carrying omnioculars everywhere, combined with being labelled the best Christmas sweet giver, meant that all of Hufflepuff House was treating me like the new Cedric Diggory.

(Of course, Mr Diggory would be staring up at my grandeur with the rest of wizarding Britain, once a mere quarter of my plans were done.)

The Christmas break seemed to disrupt a little of the House divide, as well. The combination of fancy parties of the elite and general shared merriment amongst the rest of wizarding society seemed to make friendship just that bit more engaging than some annual House Cup. For this first week back to classes, anyway.

Granger had come over and thanked me for her gift. I’d taken the opportunity to walk her back to her table and say hello to the rest of her cohort – giving an extra word to Hannah and Susan’s childhood friends, making a football joke with Finnegan, and ignoring The Boy Who Lived. Then telling Hermione about an interesting history book I’d found over the break.

It was amusing how immediately that made Potter and Weasley start discussing the research topic they’d been on about the previous term.

Oh, the wonders of planning ahead.

<{   ҉   }>

“Class is over now Akua, show us the new spell!” Hannah demanded in the corridor outside Mr Binn’s travesty of a history class.

I’d continued creating my own curriculum for the class, covering a range of topics far more relevant to understanding the current state of the wizarding world. (The dark wizards Binns had spent the year droning about seemed to all come from before the Statute of Secrecy, which meant that learning about them was a bit like learning about British monarchy before the Magna Carta; niche knowledge best summarised to map out the stories and patterns of Fate.)

One fascinating book I’d picked up this week was a guide for upholding the Statute of Secrecy, written when said Statute was first introduced. Aside from illuminating the arguments for hiding magic from the rest of the world, it instructed spells that one could use ‘to safely contain muggles until secrecy squads can arrive.’

“Akua!” Hannah huffed.

I spun around, wand circling and magic flowing through my arm to contain her.

“Enbublio.” I stated. The world bent to my will.

Hannah, still stepping towards me, ran into the wall of a bubble that encapsulated her entire body. She bounced off onto her back foot, blinking. I examined how the magic shell interacted with the ground, then reached out and poked it. It felt like wet rubber. Elastic. But the harder I pushed with my finger, the more resistance I felt.

“Akua.” Susan’s eyebrow was raised.

“What? She managed to wake up just when I told you two the spell name, and she wanted to know what it did!” I widened my eyes, but also let a small smile shift the innocent expression into cheekiness.

Megan chuckled. Susan turned to see Hannah poking and prodding the bubble from the inside, even kicking it. Hannah said something muffled, then glanced around herself as if she’d had an idea. Her wand came out, and as soon as it touched the bubble, my magical shell fell apart like smoke.

I could almost feel the structural integrity of the spell being disrupted, my magic fading without a frame to hold my intent.

“Hah, I knew Granduncle Austin told me about that one!”

I gave Hannah a smile – always good to reward problem solving among the people you keep around to solve problems.

“Makes sense why they recommend using this on muggles.” Megan said, which also got her a smile.

“Excuse me,” said Hermione Granger from behind me, “what was that spell?”

“The bubble jinx.” I turned and replied, because my minions were only eleven and not quite sure how they were supposed to handle someone they weren’t friends with even if I was. “I found it in an instruction manual of how to uphold the Statute of Secrecy – I think its meant to be a harmless way to keep people or animals contained and safe if some magic got loose.”

Hermione nodded absently, another question already percolating in her head, when –

“My father says that’s what our dungeons are for.” Malfoy, who shared History with us Hufflepuffs, had his nose all the way in the air. I stared him dead in the eyes and imagined peeling open his skull and ribcage to find out if there were biological differences between wizards and muggles.

He turned around and left.

Megan snorted. Susan shook her head, and then Hannah stuck out her tongue at Malfoy’s back, which made Susan shake her head more.

I turned back to Hermione, expression once again welcoming. She was staring at Malfoy’s retreat, trying not to scowl.

“Hermione?” I asked calmly.

“Oh! Yes, Akua, thank you for explaining the spell, but I actually wanted to ask whether you could help me with something.” Her eyes flickered between the scarves around my and my minion’s necks.

“Of course,” I said, “do we need to go to the library?”

She blinked, then grabbed the opportunity I gave her with both hands. “Yes!”

I turned back to my minions, told them I’d meet up at dinner, bumped shoulders with Megan, thanked Hannah for testing my spell, and waved at Susan. They let me go without fuss.

As soon as we’d turned the corner, I bumped Hermione’s shoulder too. “So, you want more help researching Flamel? Or do you want me to hex Malfoy for you? Or punch him?”

Hermione closed her mouth and shook her head, smiling. “No, he’s focusing on Harry, with the upcoming Quidditch game.”

I blinked. My House was against Gryffindor this time, which meant that all the petty (and, even worse, ineffective) nastiness between teams was absent. Potter wasn’t the anxious type of Hero, so what was happening here?

“Well, I can keep looking for Flamel, but if you won’t tell me what you need to know about him or why, then I can’t help more than checking some French or other European histories.”

Hermione stopped in the middle of the corridor. “That would have worked! Ugh!”

I waited for her brain to organise its extensive archives. After thirty seconds, she remembered where she was.

“Um, thank you, but we found out that he partnered with Dumbledore from a chocolate frog card.” She sounded particularly grumpy at that method of discovering whatever she’d needed to know. “No, I, uh, need your help talking to Harry.”

Oh. Oh, this would be good.

“You see,” Hermione continued, “Snape is refereeing the Quidditch match, and Harry is freaking out that he’s going to try and curse his broom again, or…” She threw up her hands in a huff. “Snape is a professor. Maybe not a good one, but still a professor. He’s not going to try to kill a student!”

This was even better than I’d hoped. A chance to influence the Hero, to stoke suspicion higher, or plant a little seed of doubt. Because I was even more sure now than I was before the Christmas break; Snape was not Potter’s Villain. Antagonist, yes. But someone to continually struggle against, rather than someone to overcome and defeat.

Snape’s vendetta against the Boy Who Lived was personal – more about him than any Heroic status, though that didn’t help.

“I’ll talk to Harry,” I said. Hermione’s hair visibly lost some of its static electricity as her shoulders relaxed. “But, can you tell me why you were looking for Flamel? You were treating it as more important than homework, and I couldn’t find anything – as you know – and I get like a Ravenclaw when I can’t figure out something.”

Hermione chewed her lip. We were still standing in the middle of the corridor, all other students already passed to put their books away before dinner.

“If it’s actually a secret, you don’t have to tell me. Like, if it’s dangerous.”

It was a bit of a gamble, trying to set off her Gryffindor bravery. But when she looked up and straightened her spine, I knew the bait had been taken.

“Come on, I’ll tell you on the way to the common room.”

<{   ҉   }>

I hadn’t spent much time learning the castle around Gryffindor Tower. Straying too near the Hero was how Villains ended up snagged in their stories. This – the providing of multi-layered advice – was as close as I was comfortable getting to the Boy Who Lived.

The only reason I was comfortable with this was because there were already enough roles filled in the story. Snape, the distraction antagonist, and Quirrel, the secret Villain. Secret to the students, anyway (myself excluded).

Even if I wasn’t comfortable, this was still worth the risk. To learn that there was a Philosopher’s Stone in the castle? That there was a Cerberus guarding a secret passage in the third floor corridor? That Potter was convinced a minion of the Dark Lord was trying to steal said stone?

It was like a playground. So many schemes I could orchestrate.

“Fortem fortis.” Hermione said to a painting of a portly lady bedecked in finery. The painted lady hummed something that might have been off key but still communicated curious acceptance, before swinging open slightly.

Walking through the portal, I mused at the strength of the noise cancellation magic. Because the Gryffindor common room was raucous. The only bits of the furniture and walls that weren’t covered in red were covered in gold. Great windows looked out over the castle grounds and Forbidden Forest. Stuffed armchairs and couches littered the room, only slightly less haphazardly organised than the students lounging every which way across them.

I stood tall and smiled at the stares. An oddity, I was. Yellow on my school tie and robe hems instead of red. But because of the yellow, everyone near-instantly deemed me harmless. Not completely invisible like whatever magical artifact Potter had, but I’d always preferred subtler forms of camouflage.

Hermione strode impatiently over to a cluster of smaller armchairs arrayed around a small round table. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley came into view, sunk into the plush seats and playing a game of chess. Well, Weasley was playing. Potter was brooding – and losing.

“Harry.” Hermione stopped next to the Hero’s armchair.

Weasley moved a pawn that cried out for blood and waved its spear, then sighed. “He’s been like this the entire game. Harry! Its your turn.” Potter blinked, returning to the present. “And Hermio…” Weasley had finally looked up to notice that Hermione was not alone. “Uh, hi?”

I smiled, then sat (sank) down in an empty chair.

“This is Akua,” Hermione introduced me, “she was helping me look for Flamel.”

Harry Potter suddenly sat up straight, alarmed eyes flicking between Hermione and I.

I held up a hand. “Relax. Hermione just asked me to help her with and extra credit history essay. I do have the third best marks, so any leg up to compete with Hermione is one I’ll take.” I shot my ‘competitor’ a smile, then opened my posture to the Hero and his sidekick.

The Boy Who Lived relaxed, and Hermione pressed forwards. “I actually asked her to talk to you about Snape.” And Potter was tense again. “He’s not trying to kill you, Harry.”

Potter stared at her, then stared at me. I shrugged. His jaw clenched. “We’re playing against his House this time.”

Hells give me strength. Of course the child Heroes were even more incapable of nuance than their grown counterparts.

“Look,” I said, “the whole school knows that Snape hates you.”

Potter blinked. Weasley snorted. “I told you so mate.”

“And I don’t care about the quidditch game.” I continued.

I would have continued further, but Weasley seemed incapable of understanding that school sports did not belong on a proper set of priorities. He also seemed incapable of verbalising that in full sentences.

“Actually, do you mind if we play while I talk?” I asked the short-circuiting red head, who blinked, then stammered an agreement and reset the chess board.

“So, everyone knows that Snape hates you,” I repeated. Let it marinate in Harry’s heroic little head. “You know how the police always look around for suspects whenever someone gets murdered?”

Potter nodded slowly. I looked down at the polished white chess pieces staring up at me with suspicion. I placed a finger on the corner of the board and focused my intent to bind them to my will. My chess pieces – from pawn to king – straightened their backs and saluted, all at once.

Weasley muttered something under his breath. I kept my finger on the edge of the board, and one of my pawns marched forwards. He muttered something quieter.

“Since everyone knows that Snape hates you, if he tries anything at the game, then everyone is going to think that he’s the one that did something.”

Another pawn. A knight to pre-empt any movement from Weasley’s bishop.

“Snape is very smart – even if he’s awful at teaching. He knows that he’ll be the prime suspect if anything happens to you again.”

The board opened up.

“Also, he’s the referee, which means that he’s in a prominent place. Everyone can see him, and everyone can see you.”

Weasley scowled. The pace of the game slowed.

“So, if something happens to you, everyone will think its Snape. And everyone can see Snape during the game. He’s not going to try to kill you.”

“See, Harry?” Hermione asked exasperatedly. Potter was thinking about what I’d said – a new direction to his brooding – but he hadn’t relaxed.

I kept playing. Weasley kept scowling, staring harder and harder as his traps were subverted and bait left untaken.

Another ten minutes passed. Potter had spent the whole time internally struggling with the idea that someone might be obviously evil and not do anything worse than petty bullying.

“Hmm, I’ve got to head back to my dorms before dinner, so I might call the game here. Draw?”

Weasley broke his furious staring match with my pieces. I lifted my finger off the edge of the board. My pieces immediately lost their iron focus and shrugged guiltily at the boy who owned them. Said boy looked up and shook his head, bewildered. “I’ll take a draw, but you were definitely winning that. Blimey.”

Hermione looked up from her homework with a hiss. “You weren’t winning?” She glared at Weasley.

“Oh ho!”

“Ronnekins was losing?”

“A game of chess?”

“No! Couldn’t be.”

“Who is the new…”

I turned around to look at Fred and George, who shut up and returned to their own friends like good (guilty) little boys.

“What the hell?” Ron breathed out, awed and confused.

Hermione and Harry Potter were also looking at me with a mix of surprise and new respect.

“Weasley, you keep tracing your strategy with your eyes. Potter, stop worrying, Dumbledore is attending this time. Hermione, let me know when you’re free to study next, I’d like to find some more new spells.” I smiled at all three of them, who looked gobsmacked, suddenly relieved, and academically enthused, respectively.

I walked back to Hufflepuff House with my head held high and satisfaction burning in my gut, filing observations into their places within my mental phonebook. Hermione trusted me, but her friendship with Potter and Weasley didn’t have space for a fourth. Weasley was good at chess and resentful of his brothers. And Potter was ruled by his heart far more than his head.

Such a Hero, ugh.

<{   ҉   }>

For the Easter holidays, I joined my minions in returning home.

There another Quidditch game, after the Gryffindor vs Slytherin one that lasted five fucking minutes and was a general waste of the time it took to walk to the pitch and back. The other game, between my House and Ravenclaw, was much more illuminating in terms of just how invested the Hogwarts population was in this ridiculous sport.

I’d wondered whether I should join the team, before remembering that the only position worth playing is seeker, and that I was already taller than a few of the second years. Besides, what were minions for?

My minions were current debating which position they would play on a Quidditch team. Megan was leading most of the discussion, since I was reading the journal article my father had sent me for Christmas. (I wasn’t guilty about leaving it so long, because guilt was a useless emotion and I was in a magic castle.)

The conversation quietened. I went over the last minute, then spoke up:

“I bet you’re an excellent chaser already Megan. You should definitely try for the team next year.”

Hannah immediately brightened. “Chaser Jones, player of the year!” She mock cheered until Megan gave her a double high five.

“What position would you play, Akua?” Susan asked the question quietly, but Megan and Hannah still looked over with interest.

“Well,” I paused, “Hufflepuff already has Chaser Jones and Chaser Abbott–”

“Wait!” Hannah interjected, thinking. “No never mind, seeker is still too boring.”

“–Chaser Abbott,” I repeated, “and Keeper Bones.”

Susan nodded steadily.

If I – the smart but innocuous Hufflepuff girl that everyone perceived me to be – had to play Quidditch, what position would I play?

“I think Beater.” I said.

My minions absorbed that.

“Huh.” Hannah noted.

“I kinda see it,” Megan mused. “But like the beaters who are all about breaking up formations and coordinating shots, not the ones who just hit it as hard as possible at whoever is holding the quaffle.”

I nodded, pleased at the intuition Megan had gained under my indirect tutelage.

The rest of the train back to London was broadly the same. I finished a book Baba had sent me in reply to his Christmas present, then thought about how Harry Potter had – a few days after the quidditch game he’d won out of pure luck – resumed his hate/fear relationship with Professor Snape with even greater intensity. Possibilities danced through my mind, but soon it was time to change out of school robes and show affection to my minions as we separated on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

My trunk and I passed through the barrier, into the muggle world, with a sensory ripple.

I blinked.

Took a deep breath and kept my face still.

Another breath.

My parents – Mum, Baba – were talking to each other a ways back, muttering over a piece of thick paper that was almost certainly delivered by owl.

I started pushing my cart towards them.

Halfway there, they looked up. It became suddenly harder to look calm. Then I remembered that I was supposed (allowed) to look excited.

I wasn’t sure what my face looked like when they reached me, but Mum said “Oh” very caringly and then I was enfolded into a hug.

My breathing sped up, and then I could smell them. Smell the small-but-not-small house with its sage green couch and walls of bookshelves.

Baba joined us, his hand brushing down my hair. “She’s gotten taller.” He hissed.

I laughed. It was a laugh.

Just in case it wasn’t a laugh, I hugged both of them back. Very tightly.

I felt warm and secure and…

“I have so much to talk about.” I said into Aissata’s hip.

They drew back, smiled at me, then both gave me one last squeeze.

(This was okay. I could have it.)

Notes:

Emotions (sniff) what are those, we don't have those in this house

Chapter 15: Monsters and Myth

Notes:

We return to our regularly scheduled programming to find... plot!

“Cerberus, in Greek mythology, the monstrous watchdog of the underworld. He was usually said to have three heads […]. He devoured anyone who tried to escape the kingdom of Hades, the lord of the underworld, and he refused entrance to living humans, though the mythic hero Orpheus gained passage by charming him with music.”

• The Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cerberus, Greek Mythology

 

Easter was a short affair, when you were with people who tried to cram half a year of physical affection into the break.

Before I left for Hogwarts, I would have resisted some of it. Maintained boundaries and expanded the proverbial no-man’s land. Teenage rebellion coming early and all that. If I’d come home for Christmas, that would have still been my plan. But I’d been at Hogwarts for Christmas and I’d seen a mirror that could have ruined me.

Even now, in the back seat of our car, driving back from seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would’ve seen reflected in glass and silver. Which was the awful draw of the thing. Desire. Like a virus, it infected and self-replicated. Despite all temptation, I was never going to look in the Mirror of Erised. But I didn’t need to look to ruminate on what I might see.

With all that in the back of my head, I had been welcoming, reciprocating, even asking for Aissata and Jamaldine’s affection. Because I was pretty certain that I would have seen them in the mirror. Alive and approving of me. And that desire was torturous, because I was utterly certain that they would not approve of me conquering the wizarding world. Unless I did it like Dumbledore, but the problem there was that Dumbledore was already filing his role in the societal narrative, and I was about a hundred years too young.

Starting a war – as another route to gain power – would be equivalent to rejecting my parents too. Even secretly murdering my opponents would mean living a double life, which was all but begging Fate to reveal my darkest secrets at the worst possible time. My future plans seemed broadly incompatible with my present, and the draw of seeing an image that reconciled it all was… effective .

But I still had the present, so I hugged my mother and tugged on Baba’s arms until he talked me through the references he was compiling for a new journal article. Their reactions to my presence, and the affection I performed, fed a flame inside me. Joy, temporary but not tarnished. One day I would not have this, so the now was precious.

My studies and the magical curriculum in general were just as effective a discussion piece face to face as it was in my letters. Both Assaita and Jamaldine were fully capable of rationally understanding the difference between charms and transfiguration – and interested enough to make the discussion enjoyable. But there little good for me in just explaining magic I could not demonstrate. The subject they connected with the most was history, because it was all and only of the mind, and potions, because I had smuggled a vial of anti-swelling solution to help with Baba’s stiff knee.

It was a little sad to think that apart from the original unveiling and Diagon Alley, this little vial of viscous cream was the only exposure to real magic my parents would have all year. Maybe they would never see Hogwarts, and if they did, they wouldn’t feel magic in the stones.

Still, I managed to inspire a suitable amount of shock, ridicule, and concern by bringing up how the rules about underage magic had been last updated in 1923 and that those changes were considered recent law! That conversation occurred the day after we saw one of Shakespeare’s gloriously influential stories, and sparked a small debate about how much the past influences the present. (My parents were rather surprised to find themselves on the less influential side of things – but they truly believed in free will despite being historians.)

But what all three of us could repeatedly discuss and engage with fully was difference between Hogwarts and normal schools; between magical and ‘muggle’ society. Those conversations revolved around the lackadaisical approach to organising society my parents had observed in Diagon Alley and the petty competitiveness between Hogwarts Houses I was observing (and trying to manipulate for myself).

The conversation ended with my parents wondering about the wizarding legal system, and whether there might be a lawyer question when we got my supplies for the next schooling year. My book budget was also doubled, delightfully. But I did my best not to think too much on the last days and hours I was… home. Fortunately, it took enough effort to keep my parents from lingering on the fact it would be more months until I came home for summer.

(The thing we all agreed to but never said was that I was never spending another break at the castle. If my plans required that, then I hadn’t planned well enough.)

<{   ҉   }>

The trip back on the Hogwarts Express had, in comparison to two weeks of condensed emotional expression, been quick and uninteresting. I barely remembered it – only enough to confirm that the gathering ritual energy I’d felt on the train at the start of the year did not repeat for every holiday.

(The memory of my parents holding me close and quietly repeating how proud they were was vivid enough to make arriving back at the castle – at returning to magic – seem a little pale.)

Spring term had made the Hufflepuff common room was emptier than I’d ever seen it. Older years had switched into ‘hard work’ mode and were off in the library – or other individually discovered study spaces – either checking over or frantically finishing homework. It seemed that the cozy, plant-filled environment of the common room had become the place where one relaxed, rather than focused. An unspoken rule originating in someone with enough self-awareness to improve their habits and enough niceness to encourage the same in others. (I was not entirely certain whether they’d used cunning or simple appeals to emotion to convince the other Hufflepuffs.)

(I would use both, of course.)

Today my minions and I had sat down to study on the plushest of beanbags. Not that they thought this was proper study.

“Flitwick did get us practicing animation charms before the break.” Megan said, humming in thought.

“And he focused on the theory of spell words straight after Christmas.” Susan noted.

“Thats two things we should definitely brush up on then,” I gave them both a smile and wrote down both points, “now for the hard one – potions.”

Hannah groaned. I had to guide her a bit in subjects other than herbology and astronomy, but Susan and Megan had picked up the point of this exercise nicely.

I suspected that Megan knew about the list of exam topics I’d been updating throughout the year. I was subtly encouraging all of my minions to be observant of others, but Megan was the only one applying my guidance to her interactions with me – satisfyingly ahead of schedule.

(I let her get away with it, reinforcing benevolence for those in my favour.)

Of course, my exam preparation list also served as a useful piece of evidence to prove to my parents that I was staying on top of my studies. And that my studies did have some sort of coherent curriculum – having lecturers for parents meant discussions about school had often got abstract and inevitably either philosophical or pedagogical. And the MASH scarf, shown proudly over easter, was proof of the friendships I’d written of at the start of the year. Not that my parents had ever needed to worry about my social position being anything but what I wanted it to be.

(They still did, which had started being... another strangely nice thing I resolved to simply accept while I had it.)

<{   ҉   }>

A week later, I put softness aside and returned to making gradual progress on all of my various schemes. My minions and I were studying in the library, having talked to a number of Ravenclaws about methods they used to study for exams. Boringly, most were going for memorisation.

As was Hermione Granger, who approached my table to talk about something other than study. Which made my minions look up in surprise.

“Akua?” Granger ventured, then: “Oh, uh, hi Susan, Hannah, and Megan. Do you mind if I talk to Akua for a bit?”

Hannah smiled and nodded. Megan smiled more wryly, more aware that I let my minions do things, not the other way around.

“Alright girls, we’ll get to writing when I get back – keep comparing the books for different points. Three sources should be enough, but let’s make sure they’re good ones!”

I stepped only a few feet away, keeping Hermione and I fully visible to my table – partly to soothe eleven-year-old egos, partly to make sure Hermione got used to me being some sort of package deal.

“Thank you for that book on essay standards,” Hermione started, “it makes so much sense, I don’t know why no one ever just said that’s how we should write.”

I smiled and patted her shoulder in gratitude. And didn’t say that, as a rule, teachers needed to get their students to write more detail in their arguments, not consolidate evidence into key points.

“But are you sure about only three sources? I can fit five per foot of parchment if I structure paragraphs properly, and anything less seems–”

Ugh.

“Hermione.”

She blinked. Glanced over her shoulder in fear of Ms Pince, then hesitated when it became clear she’d made a misstep.

I shook my head, smiled ruefully. “It’s okay, but not everyone is as dedicated as you. My friends are getting good grades. But what did you want to talk about?”

Hermione fidgeted, then grasped my forgiveness and the change in subject like a lifeline.

“Harry overheard Professor Snape talking with someone in the Forbidden Forest and now he’s convinced Snape is out to get him again.” She whispered this so quietly that Ms Pince would have actually approved of the noise level. “And he’s convinced that someone is going to break into the third-floor corridor and find whatever Dumbledore has guarded there.”

I stared at her.

“The third-floor corridor?”

“Yes, all the teachers added defences to keep the Philosopher’s Stone safe–” The bushy-haired girl cut herself off, realising that she’d said too much. But I was already reeling.

The third-floor corridor. Mentioned at the start of the year, in such an obvious bit of reverse psychology that I should have immediately connected it to whatever narrative the Boy Who Lived was following.

But I… hadn’t.

“That’s, um,” I actually said ‘um’, “sorry Hermione, that sounds tricky, give me a day to think and then maybe I can talk to Harry then?”

She nodded and I blinked my way through a goodbye, mouth on autopilot.

I think I stumbled when I turned back to my minions. They looked increasingly worried as I returned and sat down, breath coming sharp.

Susan was the bravest one. “Akua, what did Hermione want to talk about?”

I looked up from the table, where my now-neat handwriting was swimming between assignments. “The third-floor corridor.”

My minions glanced between each other. “What about it?” Susan continued as the nominated sacrificial spokesperson.

“I forgot about it.” My voice was flat. I was too focused on trying to figure out where I’d been tripped up, how the story had got me, to care about sounding anything other than thwarted.

Hannah frowned. “No, I remember you asked if anyone had gone to explore it at the start of the year.”

I blinked at her. I had done that.

“No one found anything weird – everyone decided it was just Dumbledore pulling a prank.” Megan answered my unspoken question, looking far more nervous than the other two.

“A prank...”

“Akua?” Megan again.

“Maybe it was a prank.” I mused, feeling a rising fury as the picture filled in from the outside. “But the Boy Who Lived found a Cerberus in that corridor.”

Susan coughed. Hannah blinked. Megan looked suddenly relieved, then worried again.

“What would make everyone miss a Cerberus cooped up in a single room?” I enquired, rasping like a sharp knife sliding smoothly between ribs.

No one answered me. Then Susan committed herself to the role of sacrifice. “If no one found it, then maybe Dumbledore cast an advanced Notice Me Not or some other enchantment.”

Click went the missing piece of the puzzle.

My sigh of relief was so strong that I leant back in my chair. Thank the Gods Below that I hadn’t unknowingly been following a story this entire time. I was still fucking furious (at myself, with Dumbledore) for failing to realise I’d been affected by mind magic. But mind magic was one-and-done. Active or thwarted. And forgetting about the third-floor corridor was something I could do something about, now that I did remember. I could investigate personally, leave myself notes, start listing and reviewing my daily goals (in code, of course). It had been a long time since I’d had to deal with altered perceptions, but I still remembered how to get around it and leave the arrogant fool responsible with a stopped – or missing – heart.

Mind magic was better than all my actions over the past year actually being orchestrated by Fate, instead of deliberately planned. Mind magic I could plan around and know my plans would work. One could make all sorts of contingencies in a story, could make twenty back-up plans all orchestrated by competent underlings, and the story would twist things until the Heroes had one desperate last hope. And, as everyone knew, as soon as the Hero had one last chance at stopping you, it was a foregone conclusion.

So, I would much rather deal with mind magic merely making me forget about a key narrative detail, rather than Fate itself nudging me to ignore something.

(Because the Heroes were Fated to win.)

<{   ҉   }>

After five days of researching as much as I possibly could while maintaining a smile for the world, I had rationalised enough to actually calm down.

The use of mind magics may not be as hard to learn as learning to defend against them, but this society was lazy and mind magic was only legally allowed by a specialist arm of not-quite-police. Still absolutely unsafe and the kind of thing that, in Praes, had let someone rise to Dread Emperor (and then be torn apart by his victims), but something that wasn’t a danger during school. Not if I was careful.

And I could prepare defences regardless.

(Susan was going to ask her Aunt. I was going to start meditating.)

Additionally, after a truly fruitless talk with Potter, I was certain that the Dark Lord was alive and definitely haunting. Unicorn blood sounded like a useful Plan C for immortality, but I saw much more use for it in cursing your opponents.

The final thing of note as exams crept up was that Malfoy was increasingly ignored. To the point where him inevitably threatening whoever was repeating rumours about whatever scandal I’d made up that month wasn’t even fun anymore. His recent participation in the Boy Who Lived’s Forbidden Forest detention seemed to finally convince the rest of the school that the blonde scion was about as scary as a chihuahua.

(Like a chihuahua, he was a darling of elite society through no doing of his own, and instead of playing along, biding his time, or even putting up a cute act, he yapped at everyone. And the small, irritating, little shit had a very powerful and very influential parent who cared too deeply about something so overactive. So, a chihuahua.)

(My disdain was directed equally between both Mr Malfoys; the younger, for acting like restraint was a dirty word, and the older, for caring enough to dote but not enough to train.)

<{   ҉   }>

It was the night before exams, and half the castle was cramming in last minute preparation. A good chunk of the upper years already started on their own exams, and the teachers more lenient in this final moment before the storm.

In this atmosphere of distraction, I walked with quiet purpose.

Measured steps. Quiet shoes. Even breath.

If anyone ran into me, they would see me. But no one would run into me. Because I was walking towards the story, a villain with a plan.

The third-floor corridor was empty. The innocuous door was...

“Alohomora.”

...now unlocked. And possibly only locked in the first place by Hermione Granger. Hmm, if Dumbledore or another professor had properly locked and warded it, then it never would have hidden in plain sight.

I took a deep breath. Not that I wasn’t already committed, just that it was nice to enjoy the feeling of standing at the precipice when the stakes were this low. And they were low indeed. For I was no Dark Lord, seeking to return to life, and neither was I some impulsive Hero, desperate to stop the danger. Though there may be a Philosopher’s Stone at the end of this little trial, I was here as an observer. Passive.

I sought not the Stone, but the stage. Both the Dark Lord and Harry Potter would make it to the end. Doing the same myself was merely a safe way to judge my abilities. And glean some insights into how their existing rivalry could play out.

The door opened under my hand, my wand already flicking out the spell I’d talked out of Flitwick for ‘extra credit’.

A song that once swum through my head now spilled forth hauntingly from my wand. Stringed instruments that resembled cellos and ouds, but that made a sound I had not heard in over eleven years.

Three heads, each the size of my torso, did not immediately drift off to sleep. But the Cerberus did not rise in anger, did not shake the room with a warning bark. I knew this world’s myths, and I’d double checked regardless.

But I was, in many ways, but a child. A child did not hold power over monsters, even if those monsters were children too. The thing about power though? You could take it.

The melody repeated and my voice joined the eerie strings.

There was a girl without a name,

There was a tower no one could claim

No one remembers why she has climbed,

Or all those she must have left behind.

The song of the Black Tower, and the girl who once (first?) climbed it. The song all who came close to genuinely aspiring to sit on Praes’ Dread Throne heard. Everyone put a different beat to the words.

(I remembered knowing more verses, before I’d had my heart torn out – but the Black Tower was barred to me by death and at least a few dimensional barriers.)

With each line, I’d stepped forward. The Cerberus had shuffled back, sinking into the sort of doze that would leave one restless and tense come waking.

Even if Praes was a home to which I would never return, it was still a part of me. The birthplace of my dark and prideful soul.

Again, I let my fragment of song serenade the shadows of the room. One final step let me heave open the trap door that the Cerberus backed away from. A coil of rope came out of my book-bag, repacked earlier this evening. I also drew out a transfigured stick, and –

“Incendio.”

– dropped my makeshift torch into the black.

In the flicker, vines writhed and recoiled. As I tied the rope to the underside ring of the trapdoor, the fire slowly faded. The slithering sounds of active plant matter grew louder as the light died.

My song – my one short verse – ended. I took a deep breath, just to enjoy the moment. Shouldered my bag, held rope and wand tight.

I hummed to myself. “There was a girl without a name. Once she died, but never again.”

The darkness below was no stranger. I jumped with a smile.

Notes:

I have so much fun writing this story, you guys have no idea

Chapter 16: The Not-Hero's Journey

Notes:

Akua is too cool for school, and way too cool for these traps

She's just so much smarter than everyone else, you know?

Oz, left to himself, smiled to think of his success in giving the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Lion exactly what they thought they wanted. “How can I help being a humbug,” he said, “when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can’t be done? It was easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they imagined I could do anything. But it will take more than imagination to carry Dorothy back to Kansas, and I’m sure I don’t know how it can be done.”

• Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

 

I stared into black flames, idly reflecting how I’d approached the evening. I had well and truly invaded the Boy Who Lived’s little narrative.

As safely as one could, anyway.

Part of the ease with which I’d got here was that I was a Villain at heart, and Villains always got to the end of a trial or set of challenges before the Hero. Usually because we were the ones to put in the research and effort to understand what might be at the end of a trial; there was always something, in some form. We were also the ones to prepare for what might be faced, as opposed to a Hero’s rushed dashing and stumbling through whichever defences we left or reactivated behind us.

I hadn’t ever gone down that route in my first life. Catherine had been my rival, competing to represent the new generation of Evil and thus symbolic direction of the Dread Empire of Praes. Plus, Catherine tore out my heart and broke my grandest working before I was anywhere near the position of needing to hunt down the rest of Dread Empress Triumphant’s lost treasures (may she never return). Beyond the treasures I’d already recovered, of course.

The role was somewhat new to me. But I had been flirting with Harry Potter’s narrative on and off throughout the year, doing my best to remain narratively relevant without sinking myself into a groove of a role that might become disadvantageous when he grew up. So, I had very deliberately not made careful exploration over multiple days. No scouting and or analysing of obstacles before I purposefully strolled to the final prize like this trial was my personal red carpet. And – most importantly – I had no grand plan for tonight.

These things were what I hoped would prevent my Villain-hood from getting attached to Potter’s Fate. Which is why I hadn’t asked my teachers various innocent questions, such as:

“Professor Sprout, is there any option of extra credit for exam questions? Like, if we had a question about Devil’s snare, cause I remember that fire can be used against it, but does anything else work?”

“Professor Flitwick, are there any other locking spells I should research to understand the theory behind Alohomora?”

“Professor McGonagall, I was thinking about wizards' chess sets. I remember you saying that transfiguration can be used to animate objects, but how do the chess sets stay enchanted?”

“Professor Quirrel, can you tell us anything about trolls for the exam?”

“Professor Snape, can you recommend any books about poisons to study?”

No. None of that. Even if it would amuse me.

I wanted to exist independently, and retain my full autonomy, thank you very much. The teachers heard nothing from me – reinforcing the above-average-but-within-bounds image I wanted them to perceive.

To make especially sure I would get out of here, I’d gone through this – honestly simplistic – set of trials with no prior planning. It had been discomfortingly heroic of me, not pre-emptively eliminating risks. Still, it had been a useful practice of my improvisation.

It was... fun... in a way, to pretend to have a different role in Fate. Not that I would have suited being any sort of Genteel Thief, not when a legion of devils was just as effective in stealing whatever the heart desires.

But diversions aside, if I hadn’t been able to get through challenges as simplistic as these, then I would have an honest need for the Philosopher’s Stone. To resurrect me from my shame.

I swallowed Professor Snape’s icy tincture, then walked through the wall of black flames.

They tickled.

<{   ҉   }>

Less than an hour ago…

Falling into the first trial, I felt the air rush past and adrenaline curl through my veins. To strive was to dare, and to dare was to risk. It had been a long time since I felt the thrill of taking a risk.

The vines were soft. Absorbing my momentum, letting me sink into the mat of shifting plant life. I didn’t know what I would face down here, but I knew that the Boy Who Lived was supposed to survive it. Such a pleasant surprise that studying for exams helped me here too.

Devil’s Snare was the kind of carnivorous plant that captured its prey, let scavengers tear into the soon-to-be-corpse, captured some of the scavengers as a bonus, and let the scraps fertilise its ground. I was certain it had been created by someone who had gotten fed up with manually disposing of bodies, because its dislike of light meant that the vines needed some source of magic to simulate photosynthesis.

What I wasn’t sure of was whether the weakness to fire was inherent or borne from some tragic story where someone burnt away the vines to find the bones of their loved one or child. Regardless, Devil’s Snare recoiled from the fire streaming from my wand in a flash.

I kept up the incendio as I got to my feet, enjoying how the flow of magic followed the adrenaline rushing through my veins. My wand enjoyed it too, which was a strange but quite delightful feeling. Like the resonation of a ritual, or the connection a conductor might feel when the orchestra gets it right.

(I was sorely tempted to turn that stream of flame on the Devil’s Snare, to add the thrill of destruction to the adrenaline in my veins.)

The door to the next room danced with shadows from my fire. It wasn’t locked. I slipped through and let my spell fade. While magical theory may differ in this world, every effect required energy of some sort. Best not to expend without payoff, since this was a more meaningful test for me than any of the school exams I’d carefully almost-aced so far.

In the darkness of this protected passage, I drew air in and out of my lungs until the rush of adrenaline was no longer pushing me to find the next thing and beat the next challenge. For all I was currently acting the Hero to avoid stumbling into a story I didn’t want, I wasn’t actually going to make any decisions that I hadn’t thought through.

Hmm, I suppose that I was filling an entirely different role tonight. Taking the role of Thief – the somewhat benevolent kind – was a good middle ground for what I wanted.

With a “lumos” I could see the corridor sloping down. In situations like these, when one had committed, all there was to do was go on. Best to skip the agonising over whether or not to proceed and use the mental energy to plan an effective approach.

Thus, I held my wand low so I wasn’t staring into the light, along with the partially-charred torch I’d originally dropped down the trapdoor. While part of me longed for a sabre, or at least a pouch of metal needles, this was a child’s challenge. And children in this world weren’t taught to start with the lethal surprise attack, so a stick would do.

(Besides, the more dangerous a Villain was, the more dangerous their opposition became. I didn’t need a second Cerberus.)

The sounds of trickling water faded into some buzzing sound as the passage opened into a sun-bright cylindrical chamber. The ceiling soared high above, where I could glimpse some kind of mural through the cloud of insects. Metal insects?

I stepped into the open. The buzzing of the swarm above changed in pitch, then settled once more. Across the way, there was another door, with a big silver lock I could see even from here.

There were brooms leant against a simple wooden rack.

I squinted upwards. The swarm was not made of metal insects, but winged keys. I stared at the brooms.

“No.”

I stalked towards the silver-locked door.

“Dumbledore – or whoever designed this room – this is going too far. Did you redesign this obstacle after Potter played his first Quidditch match? Because if you didn’t do that, then Fate must be real, and none of you act like it is, so...”

I snapped my torch over my knee, let the charred bit drop to the floor, then stomped it to fragments under my heel.

“So, get stuffed and see how futile your obstacles really are.” I pulled a purloined dinner knife out of my re-purposed school bag. Stained it red from my palm.

“As branches break and cinders cede, as hunger eats and flesh bleeds,” I transfigured the blackened fragments on the floor, my eager wand held in a bloody palm, “as magic bars this door, I claim the keys.”

Where a moment before I held half a torch, there was now exactly what I needed. A key. Large and silver.

I’d used a small ritual my ancestors had developed, one that had led to the next two hundred years of defensive innovation focusing purely on traps. Until someone had invented a lock that changed the required key specifically when that ritual was cast. (Adapting it so the magic guided my transfiguration instead of enchanting a severed finger hadn’t been hard – magic here was looser, guided by intent far more than equation.)

My new key fit into the lock perfectly.

Maybe I’d revealed a bit too much, assuming that someone was watching – or could detect what I’d done. But today I was merely a Thief. Potter could catch as many of the buzzing keys as he damn well wanted.

I glared at the brooms as I walked through the door. That Harry Potter was going to use his broom skills against the Dark Lord and half a dozen other dangers was already so obvious I felt a bit insulted that it was signposted this early.

<{   ҉   }>

The chess room only cemented my belief that these trials had been designed for Potter and his friends. I was still uncertain whether that was a conscious decision by Hogwart’s Professors, or whether they’d been (massively) influenced by Fate.

In the end, it didn’t particularly matter. I personally found it harder to play chess against a machine than a person, but I’d tried it a few times in the past few years for the pure novelty. Apparently, the current best chess programs were getting close to Grandmaster level. But the ones I’d been able to play against were a decade or so behind that.

The principle behind beating a machine that made the most optimal move, was simply to make its most optimal move the one that helped your longer strategy.

Maybe I would have been challenged if there had been a timer.

But McGonagall hadn’t tried to rush things.

Oh, maybe the whole point of this obstacle was to take up time. Present the Villain with a test they could blast their way through, but instead chose to beat properly as a way of proving their own intelligence.

That would be canny.

There was a good chance I would’ve fallen for it too, if I was actually here to take the Stone and not... scouting. But I rather doubted that anyone in this castle – with the possible exception of Dumbledore – was well-versed in the tricks and pitfalls one could lay out for anyone filling one of Fate’s roles. And, given that, it seemed farfetched for Professor McGonagall to be aware that Fate even had roles one could harness.

I stalked across the chessboard, weaving between the pieces I’d left standing. Cautious of me, I knew, but after a pawn had been ‘transfigured’ to rubble through the magical power of a two-metre marble rook slamming into it at high speeds, I’d decided to employ the concept of stealth.

The next door opened, and I debated employing the concept of permanently plugging my nostrils.

I shut the door, very quickly, before a troll even bigger and meaner than the one that had entertained me on Halloween could notice. This was an issue. A very obvious issue, with a very obvious solution. Defeat the troll.

Having a lock that opened only when a guardian creature died was a well-known method of preventing the subtle sort of thief from getting very far. It was also a method for turning those thieves into paste – or barbeque. This would be…

Possibly the simplest thing in the world.

Life-bound locks were common in Praes, but – as I bemoaned on a daily basis – this wasn’t Praes. This was the wizarding world, where magic was used to make life easier. Rather than do anything particularly grand.

Also, trolls here were magically resistant. Therefore, any life-bound lock would have to be so heavily modified that I could simply bring a mouse into the room and slaughter it to get past the door.

I was taking a risk here. A big risk.

One might call it a gamble.

The odds I was betting… huh… I was actually betting my life on Qurriel’s arrogance. How quaint.

Of course, I wasn’t being impulsive. The Villain would get to the prize first, naturally. So the question became whether Quirrel was the type of Villain who, when asked to defend the treasure he most wanted, set up something he could rush past or set up something that would stymie anyone following him.

So, a gamble, yes. But one of character.

Anyone who followed a Dark Lord that lost as much power as Potter’s rival had for a decade, well… To put it politely, the Boy Who Lived was eleven. The Dark Lord had been defeated by a special baby, and, because Fate, Potter’s current foe must be beatable by a special eleven-year-old.

I pulled open the door and immediately suffered a severe blow to my olfactory system. Instead of retching, I charged straight into the awfulness.

This troll was massive and mean and blinking in realisation of ‘hey, a snack’ as I sprinted towards it. A shouted “lumos” encouraged the troll to keep blinking. I also thew the remaining half of my torch at its face, just to give those hard-working neurons even more of a backlog to slog through.

I rolled under a hand, slipped between its legs, set fire to its loincloth from behind, and then dashed to the remaining door. Which was not locked. I darted through and dragged in a breath of sweet, sweet, stale underground air.

It took a few minutes for my breath to settle. Not that the troll had rattled me, although that stench was potent enough to bottle, but because I’d failed to anticipate an obvious possibility. I’d just straight up failed to link that Quirrel, who had announced the troll on Halloween, had also set up a defence for the Stone.

Now that I was past said defence, the implication that I’d missed a clue was hitting me. Mistakes like that were how Villains doomed themselves. Tiny mistakes, small things that were so understandably forgotten. Except those mistakes grew into the stepping stones Heroes used to scrabble their way into the Villain’s blind spot.

The last time I’d made a mistake like that – assuming that I’d captured someone and not an undead doppelganger, then monologuing instead of immediately killing them – things had ended with my heart ripped from my chest. And my father a corpse, riddled with crossbow bolts.

The morale of the story was to always immediately execute your prisoners. Gloating was to be done over the raw skulls of your enemies, not while they still had brain activity.

Still, if Harry Potter was meant to get through this, then I would be fine. And if I actually got interrupted, or – Hells forbid – halted, by an obstacle? Well, I may as well go live out my life of shame in Himalayan hut, eating snow and… yak. Or something.

Several deep breaths brought me back to my centre. I’d missed something yes, but I’d also caught it before it turned into a problem. Everything was going according to plan.

<{   ҉   }>

Now

Professor Snape’s challenge had been rather pleasant. The riddle was… insultingly easy, but I’d poured the two vials of poison into a stoppered jar of my own. (I’d originally resolved to gather my poison from the muggle world, but having something of wizard make couldn’t hurt.)

Poison was always useful after all. My plans would make me enemies – at some point. Or the plans of others would make me their enemy. Either way, poison was useful.

Besides, it wasn’t like I was here to take the Philosopher’s Stone from whatever trapped pedestal it stood on. No, I was here on reconnaissance. Gathering insights. Details like how Potter’s flying would be critical in future and how the Dark Lord’s followers had the kind of arrogance that makes one forget basic security precautions.

So, I may as well pocket a little poison. For the future. An investment.

I may be here as a Thief, but the only real treasure I was picking up was knowledge. And, really, this place was not a treasure hall, but a museum. Not that the museums I’d been to in this life held much interest for me. There had been enough multiple-thousand-year-old artefacts in my home, the first time I’d grown up, that only old magical objects interested me now. Fortunately, Hogwarts was full of magical things. Even so, I was not here to take from any proverbial exhibits. (Snape’s poison was like a plushie from the gift shop.)

So, hello Fate, I know you have plans for me, but right here I’m harmless, aren’t I?

These idle thoughts occupied me as I walked out of the black flames and down the stairs into a lower-ceilinged but large room, with –

Oh…

Fuck.

I’d stopped myself on the stairs, but it was still too late. I’d come here a thief of knowledge, and now I was going to discover something I really didn’t want to.

I just had to tease Fate, didn’t I?

My eyesight had always been strong, and even though the mirror was in the middle of the room and I was standing paused – shocked, stuck, sabotaged – on the entrance stairs, I could see the feet of other people reflected in the Mirror of Erised.

Somehow, I recognised the shoes – various boots, some loafers, a pair of sneakers.

(Or maybe my eyes weren’t that good, and this was simply my subconscious filling in what I most wanted to see. Or who.)

(It didn’t matter, the trap was sprung.)

I descended the stairs, and in the mirror, my legs walked down black steps to stand with the other occupants of this accursed artefact.

Mirror-me had descended from a throne. A throne that I somehow knew to be the ancient seat of Dread Empress Triumphant (may she never return), something I’d found as I returned Praes to its once-glory of ruling the continent in an iron grip, blood dripping from the maws of my legions.

I recognised the Black Tower. I recognised the absolute might and majesty that oozed from my reflected older form – the me I had been before Catherine ripped out my heart. Mirror-me was holding a staff, and I (somehow) knew that the crystalised heart that topped it was Catherine’s – and that her soul was bound to my weapon, a conduit for other souls that would power my workings and deepen my magic.

It was…

I was…

All I could do was stare.

Mirror-me stared back, recognition in her eyes. She did not laugh at me, or gaze encouragingly, or…

No, she was so secure in her power that she did the one thing I had never been able to. She reached out and took my father’s hand. My original father. Mirror-me lent against his shoulder, publicly indulging in affection, and… no one started plotting to overthrow her.

The crowd of Praesi Highborn looked at my self-reflection as if she was something beyond a mere person. They plotted against each other to be second to me, because I had so firmly claimed the throne that second was all they could ever think to achieve.

My heartbeat was very loud in my ears.

Jamaldine and Aissata were standing at the front of the crowd. Awed, impressed, shocked. Proud.

Hairs on end. A body so filled with fucking everything that I couldn’t even feel the temperature anymore.

Pain.

It was painful.

I couldn’t look away.

“This is impossible.” I told myself. “Unfeasible. You would never accept this part of me,” I told my fake-parents, who gently shook their heads, still half awed of mirror-me.

“And... and you’re dead.” My first father turned away from my mirror-self and smiled. At me, not the glorious and terrible me in the mirror. The same way he’d always smiled at me, regardless of whether I’d figured out the magical puzzle he was testing me with or not.

“You’re dead.” I repeated – burning.

(Helpless.)

He nodded gently, then turned and walked over to engage Jamaldine in some theoretical discussion. Aissata stepped closer to my mirror self, then reached up to cup my mirror-cheek and said something teasing about my height.

I swore. In Praesi. In English. (Wiped my eyes.)

“Incongruent. Irrational. Impossible.”

But reminding myself that the vision before me was something I could never have didn’t make the vision change. It didn’t matter that my first father was dead, that the Black Tower in a different form of creation, and that my current parents were pacifists.

This, my deepest desire, was unattainable.

I still fucking wanted it.

Notes:

She jinxed it so hard you guys

(Not quite the climax of this book, but that's cause our gal's not following traditional narrative structures - also final chapter number is updated because 2025 is the year I learn to count apparently)

Chapter 17: A Bomb for a Book

Notes:

She's fine. There's no underlying emotional damage at all.

“And so Subira of the Sahelians slew Maleficent and said: ‘Emperor I am now, Sinister of name and deed. Let this be the truth of our empire, that iron ever sharpens iron till the last cut is made.”

• Extract from the Scroll of Thrones, second of the Secret Histories of Praes

 

I don’t remember walking back to my dorm. I barely remember navigating my way out of the trials – running past the troll, laughing bitterly at the replaced chess pieces, locking the key-room door, resisting the urge to burn the Devil’s Snare. The Cerberus had taken one look at me and known its fucking place.

The thief had been caught in a trap, and it had left me volatile.

I came back to myself, standing in the middle of my dorm room – four plush four-poster beds; three girls sleeping in them.

My wand twitched in my hand. It was in tune with me, at least enough to recognise how much I wanted to unleash the storm inside. The me I’d seen in the mirror wouldn’t have hesitated to pelt anything (and anyone) with fire and lightning and blood curses until the tears were dried from my face and everyone else too traumatised to ever remember I’d cried.

But that wasn’t me. That couldn’t be me. Unless I rebuilt the Black Tower and found an unprecedented way to breach dimensions and resurrect someone I’d already left behind.

There might still be spells – grand rituals, soaked in blood – that I could perform to do that. But magic here operated on different laws, and I didn’t have the might to brute force my way though theory I didn’t know.

I breathed in – shakily.

The breath out was smooth, elongated.

Compartmentalisation was a skill I’d mastered early. A conscious, aware state that was still idly similar to the disassociation I’d been in on my way back to the dorm. I drifted around the room, gathering pyjamas, washing the residual scent of troll away.

I came to a stop in front of my bed – or my body did, the rest of me catching up after a second or two. The bed felt a lot smaller than it had at the start of the year. My wand was in my hand.

Options. My options.

I could set the yellow curtains on fire. Watch them feed red flames and blacken, flake away into cinders.

I could use my eager wand and walk through the dorms of every child here, fire, cutting charms, and levitated spikes expressing my… displeasure?

I could… I could keep acting exactly as I had been.

But despite the grand and well-ordered halls of my mind, my bones felt sharp. Like I needed to cut something (or face being cut myself).

I stood there for a while. Until my legs ached and my fingers felt cold. Climbing into bed, I took my knife from under my pillow. Placed the tip over my pillow and… held it there. Yes, that was a good representation of my mental state.

It’s always better to externalise these things. Find an outlet, a symbol. Use it to focus.

Here I was, a knife. Pressed intimately close to something so soft and defenceless. I could stab down. I could slash open. There were so many metaphors spinning around my head. Spinning around the Black Tower, and that cursed (miraculous) image of something I would never have.

(I wanted to destroy that mirror. Shatter it, grind the glass to dust, then melt the golden frame. But I was not so blind to pretend that I wouldn’t be caught by that reflection, starving for something that… will never be.)

The knife pushed down, made a tiny incision. A feather poked its way out, but didn’t fall. The pillow casing had a weak point, but still held. (Always better to externalise these things.)

I leaned over my bed, and rifled through my trunk until I found a spare potion vial. It held three strands of hair: blonde, red, and light brown. I tipped them into my palm, then pulled out a few of my own hairs – more than three, black as night. I tied my hairs around those of my minions, then wove the whole thing into a miniature rope in the almost-darkness of the Hufflepuff dorm rooms.

My knife made a small gash in my palm. I held the tiny rope of hair tight, until it was soaked red with my life.

(My minions hadn’t been in the mirror. That might have been because  they were just tools for my greater desire, but it might have meant that them staying in my future was possible.)

“You are three, chosen, shaped, and guided. You were three, orphan, noble, innocent. You will be three, general, lady, spy.”

I brought my palm to my mouth and forced myself to swallow the iron-tanged rope.

“You are three, and you are mine.”

There was no rush of magic. The cut on my hand didn’t close. My lungs contracted and expanded. It felt like the oxygen was going to someone else.

<{   ҉   }>

“Akua?”

I raised my eyes from the still-healing cut on my hand. The one from last night.

“Yes?” I counter-questioned, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

Megan was walking beside me on the way to the library. She’d said she needed another reference book and claimed to need help navigating the shelves. I should have seen through her request immediately, when we were back at the dorms with the others. My minions should all be capable of navigating reference material themselves by now, but I’d been… preoccupied.

(I was better than this.)

“Well, I just...” She trailed off, which fed my irritation, but kept walking, which proved she knew at least some of the real me. “You’ve been...”

“Megan.”

“You’ve been distracted, or keeping to yourself more, or, well, we’ve just noticed that something’s up.” She got halfway through a breath before rambling on. “Not that something is up, but we – or I, mainly – just noticed – a-and I know you want to do well on the exams today and this week, but it’s been getting stressful and you really helped me feel less stressed about this week so if I can help you or...” The oxygen ran out. Or maybe British social norms suddenly returned.

We kept walking to the end of the corridor. Waited at the edge of Hogwart’s central tower of rotating staircases. There were no other students nearby, everyone either in an exam or studying for one that was coming all too soon.

“You’re not making this easy,” she whispered (not quietly enough) then cleared her throat. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s the end of the year and its okay if you don’t get a perfect grade. There’s a lot of pressure and...”

Megan had faltered as soon as she glanced over at me. I didn’t change a thing about whatever expression was on my face. She took a step back; the girl was smart. She’d learnt the basics I’d been teaching well.

(She still had no idea who I truly was.)

I imagined saying it. Whispering but one of the dark deeds I would do without hesitation. Pulling out my wand, while she blinked in shock and casting a body-bind, then just… gently tipping her over the edge of this little platform.

Megan tried to meet my eyes again. Failed to hold my stare for even three seconds. Ugh, killing her would be detrimental. Inefficient. A wasteful self-sabotage.

The cold pit in my gut was still cold. Unfortunately, manually warming it would require the very specific blood sacrifice of a victim who hadn’t splattered against a stone floor or gotten smacked in midair by a rotating staircase.

I closed my eyes.

Felt the anger drain into that cold pit until all I felt was a tired tolerance at Megan’s insolence and my situation in general.

“Megan.” I did my best to inject emotion into the words (even if it took three pokes to find the metaphorical vein). “I appreciate you taking the time to… ask me those questions, but you didn’t need to bring me out here to do it.”

A staircase finally started shifting to meet our landing.

“I thought you’d rather talk away from the others. Or just have a break. Or something.” She was quiet. A little hurt.

I closed my eyes again. If she developed some kind of insecurity from this, then I was going to have to find someone to torture.

“No, Megan, I do appreciate you trying to check in. Getting away from studying is good, I don’t think I was taking anything in just before anyway.” Why did I have to pander to children? “Getting away from the group is nice too. That excuse you used was good too, keep that one in mind for if you need to tell me something in private again.”

We were halfway down the stairs when whatever courage or loyalty or guilt that was bubbling away in Megan’s head boiled up enough to spill out her mouth. “Well, if something is distracting you, you can always talk about it with me. Maybe we can set up a code or something, to be able to go for a walk without alerting the others.” She was very obviously not glancing at me for approval. “If that’s what you want.”

I sighed. “That’s a good idea, but maybe tomorrow. I’m…”

Ugh. I had to give her something. Pretending friendships with my minions meant so much more work – they wouldn’t just be happy with some simple praise, no, they needed connection and emotional intimacy.

“I’m homesick.” Was what I settled on. The truth, but omitting so much context you could fill half a library with what was missing. “Its nothing about the castle, and its nothing you or the others have done. Things are – were – quicker back home. There was always something happening, something to deal with or figure out. Hogwarts is… slow. Peaceful. I’m not used to that.”

Back home in Praes, a school like Hogwarts wouldn’t have existed. The closest thing was the War College, and that held war games with live munitions and expected casualty rates. Even further removed, the highborn upbringing I’d received had involved poisoning competitions.

So what I’d said was true enough. Enough that, now rationalisation had tempered my rage, I could gather the willpower to control myself once again. Because Megan was still out of sorts.

I paused halfway through the next corridor. Grabbed Megan’s hands and looked appropriately regretful. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you. You were just looking out for me and I…”

“What?” Megan asked compassionately.

“Well homesickness is part of it. But the other part is that the exams – the whole end of the year – is so uneventful. Normal, even. We’re just doing our exams and then the House Cup gets awarded and we go home. I guess I expected something different to school in the muggle world. Like the troll, except maybe something nicer than a troll this time. Why can’t we have a unicorn break into the castle?”

Megan blinked at me, thoughts buzzing around her head like a snitch in a quidditch pitch. “Akua, are you saying that the exams are too easy? Do you want more pressure, not less?”

It was my turn to blink. (Would you look at that, she had caught the proverbial snitch.)

I let myself blink some more. Even dropped my mouth open in ‘surprise’. “Oh. Well.” I gripped Megan’s hands tighter and gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Want to see if I can beat Granger for best marks?”

Megan laughed once. Then her smile faltered. “But it is okay if you don’t get a perfect grade, you know that right?”

“I do,” I said, smiling at her and then starting a conversation to keep her occupied about what we could do to ‘study harder’.

I wasn’t going to get a perfect grade, I knew that already. Had planned for it. But really, what was the different between second and third? So long as Hermione Granger kept her place at the top, I could put in as much effort as I liked.

Not that the end of year exams were what lacked pressure. No, I had been unconsciously waiting for something to happen following my excursion last night. A consequence for getting caught in the Mirror’s trap.

But I hadn’t been called to the Headmaster’s office at breakfast – nor lunch. Professor Sprout had not pulled me aside. Even Snape, who seemed competent enough to place his own monitoring wards, hadn’t given me a second glance – or even a first sneer.

Had the story been truly that strong? The thief slipping past all defences but caught in the final trap due to sheer hubris?

I would have expected any player of the game worth their salt to exploit that opening in the narrative. But either the players in the wizarding world weren’t aware of how story and reality were intertwined, or Headmaster Dumbledore was a Heroic Chessmaster. Of some variation. The old man played up his image and airs, and definitely played the game, but was I on his radar or not?

If he was heroic, there would have been a sign. If he wasn’t? Well, it would be time for me to start playing more overtly.

(Even as I thought through the possibilities, it all still felt hollow. Because the pressure that I was missing was not pressure from behind, or above, or even below. No, what I was now lacking was a pull from the future. Last night had forced me to see my subconscious dream for the falsehood it was. There would be no Dread Throne or Black Tower for me. And if I sat on any seat of similar theme, what I currently held close to my chest would be ash.)

(I had no goal. My burning vision of the future had been replaced with a crumbling internal conflict of wants. And the ambition I had forged and sharpened, my will of iron? It now had nothing to cut.)

I spent the walk back to the Hufflepuff common room focused on the lowly goal of ensuring the established egos – and powers that be – would be upset when the first year rankings were revealed. To have two muggleborn witches as best in class, followed by Hufflepuffs of all people? Feathers would be ruffled.

A lowly goal yes, but one with long term benefits. Much better to have social discontent simmer openly. Fuel to feed the inevitable conflict. Maybe my next lowly goal could be shaping that conflict. Orchestrating the revolts and restructuring of wizarding society to… make life as a muggleborn easier? Become Minister for Magic?

(It didn’t feel fulfilling, but it held the existential crisis at bay.)

<{   ҉   }>

Despite my lack of sleep and morning of self-recrimination, Megan had given me enough of a push to care (once again) about the yearly assessments of educational progress known colloquially as exams.

I thought standardised examinations to be a… poor system. Not only was it based upon flawed assumptions, the methods were also ill-suited for assessing the skills the school system claimed to want to impart. Of course, this was all due to the entire education system being slapped together to meet various needs over centuries, with partial reforms enacted by committee at the whims of elected officials who sometimes lost power before their reforms even began implementation.

Really, most of the societal structures and institutions around me could do with a conquering tyrant. Civilisation was an ecology like any other, and without a good burning down, growth would become tangled and choked. The only difference was that instead of plants, what tangled and choked societal growth was the competing purposes of conflicting moral systems.

In short, I walked out of my first exam trying not to sneer.

Why did all magical children need to understand herbology? Could the practical applications not be folded into other curriculums? Could classes not be actually tailored to general knowledge before specialising into career pathways? Honestly, which smart mind had done away with the historical apprenticeship method and simply duplicated the education model of the early 20^th century without taking into consideration that magic was as physical as it was theoretical?

I was half-considering researching that in the library, because whoever was responsible for making my grade dependent on me getting dirt under my fingernails deserved to have their bones desecrated.

Fortunately, the next exam was for a subject that could be accurately called a category of magic. It was also rather interesting to observe the entire first year cohort lined up in the corridor outside of the Charms classroom. Students were being called in one by one, to – by the looks on their faces – be drained of enough blood until everything tingled and then hung upside down to be whipped. At least it kept Malfoy quiet.

Hermione Granger managed to walk out of the classroom more stressed than when she went in. Though, considering the looks of relief on most of the students before her, Professor Flitwick was covering something well within curriculum and Granger was merely an obsessive perfectionist. I did wonder which year – or, rather, which adventure she was inevitably dragged into by Potter – would provide a harsh enough lesson to temper that neuroticism.

When Flitwick called me inside the class and asked me to make a pineapple tap-dance, I did so. I even held back my sneer enough to make the pineapple waltz. (It was only after I had walked out that I realised I should have transfigured a tiny sword and made the damn fruit fence.)

McGonagall’s instruction for her Transfiguration exam was to turn a mouse into a snuff box. It gave me the impression that she had simply woken up, looked seen an unused gift her family had sent her decades ago, then picked a small animal at random. That, or the old Scottish woman had a well-hidden weak spot for nasal pick-me-ups.

My thought process had me recreating one of the gifts my family got me when I was younger. A lovely onyx and ivory container with a little skull-catch holding it closed. I hadn’t managed to recreate the poison dust the original version had held when I was first given it, but McGonagall had complimented my artistry regardless.

I spent the astronomy exam idly wondering about whether the Big Dipper or Ursa Minor influenced the narrative I experienced when traipsing through the hidden gauntlet under the Cerberus, as well as thinking through my understanding of Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. If poison escaped the exclusion food was under, then I could have some fun in the future.

(Poison was intended to be digested but wasn’t intended to provide nutritional value. Alcohol could be conjured, if only at poor quality, so there was a reasonable chance for liquid poisons.)

Defence Against the Dark Arts was pitiful. I could only conclude that Quirrel was far more focused on the Philosopher’s Stone than the Boy Who Lived. Besides, Potter was doing everything to keep an eye on Snape – short of stalking him – that I was surprised he had time to sleep.

Professor Snape’s exam was delightful. A true treat. Brewing a forgetfulness potion from memory? That was the sign of someone who enjoyed the subtler tortures. If only the man had taught in Praes – I could see him forcing everyone to drink their creations then telling the class to brew something entirely different while declaring that the real exam had only just begun.

But this was the United Kingdom. Boringly.

I was still proud of the length of time for which Snape very carefully did not react for when he spotted a general-purpose antidote set on my desk – off to the side, sitting on a piece of parchment that read ‘if you can’t remember what this is, DRINK IT’.

(The History of Magic exam covered the invention of self-stirring cauldrons. Once I conquered this castle, I was going to dictate that the first year history exam be on the invention of my ghost-fuelled garbage incinerator.)

<{   ҉   }>

One thing I’d noticed, throughout the week of exams, had been Potter rubbing his forehead.

It stung, dully, that I had not noticed what exactly he was massaging until everyone was walking out onto the grounds in relief – and either celebration, denial, or despair. The Boy Who Lived, with his two friends and the Weasley Twins, was sitting on the grass and rubbing his scar.

Whether the damn Hero suffered from academic anguish or not, this was a – fascinating – signal that Fate was winding up for an event.

(I was still too adrift, lost in the memories of that torturous mirror, to really care that I hadn’t immediately picked up on this detail. Sometimes Fate plays its own games, and sometimes it slaps you in the face while tying a blindfold.)

As Hannah led Susan, Megan, and I along the lake, I wondered. Were Potter and the Dark Lord connected so directly as rivals? It did make sense that such a prominent identifier as Potter’s scar would have some greater Fateful meaning, but were wizards really so blind that they needed something so obvious to realise the… well, the incredibly and readily apparent?

Just as Hannah found an acceptable spot to recline and engage in exam-based speculation or rumour-mongering, the Boy Who Lived jumped up and ran… towards the groundskeeper’s hut.

Hmm.

“Hey, sit down!” Hannah. “Exams are done, and that means no more thinking, its time to be happy!”

I shared a glance with Megan, who didn’t quite chuckle, then sat next to Susan and asked my minions what they thought they did best on. Which was apparently close enough to gossip to meet Hannah’s criteria of ‘no more thinking’.

A few minutes later, Potter, Weasley, and Hermione all ran back up towards the Castle.

Hannah had no gossip related to that, but Megan did say that they’d been distracted ever since losing so many points and serving detention in the Forbidden Forest. Not that it mattered all that much. If the Boy Who Lived was running around in any sort of urgency, then something was going to happen. Given the time of year, I’d bet on a narrative climax between Potter and Quirrel – with all the typical reinforcement of friendship and sudden revelations of hidden power.

I sat with my minions and advanced no grand plans of domination. (And tried not to get lost in the memory of that fucking mirror.)

<{   ҉   }>

Two days later, the rumours were rife. Potter was in the hospital wing, his two friends visiting multiple times a day. The Hero hadn’t woken up, but everyone was quite sure he had something suitably heroic.

I really should have cared more.

Really, really should have.

But I simply had more memory fighting villains than anything or anyone Good.

And, for better or worse, my mild depression had finally crystalised into anger. Rather vengeful anger. Spiteful fury. (I was not going to slump despondently until Fate decided I needed a direction that started with ‘R’ and ended with ‘edpemtion’. Fuck that, I was and always would be myself.)

Right now, my anger was the kind of flame that casts everything in a higher definition and flickered red and yellow and sharp – reaching for more to burn.

The Weasley Twins were following me into the library.

“If the favour you want is about help finding a book, then you might have wanted to ask us before the exams, you know?”

I didn’t answer.

“Maybe it’s a matter of hindsight – after all, its hard to know what you need to know before you know it!”

“True, very true Fred.” Said the one who’d been called Fred when I first asked them for a favour. “But I’m finding myself in the position of wanting a bit more fore in my sight. Dear customer, might you enlighten us generous salesmen as to your needs?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Smiled, instead of giving into the urge to stare at them until they blinked. (They glanced at each other in apprehension anyway.)

“I want to take a book.”

For a few moments, they let me lead them further into the library.

“Take, you say?”

“That sounds different to borrowing, George.”

“We’re always willing to support a fellow troublemaker–”

“–but we do need to be informed to appropriately render aid. Got to know how best to help a fellow, you know?”

“I know, and I know you know George, but methinks she might be a little new to the plotting business.”

They continued like that for another minute, trying to rile me up and poking at the insecurities that any ordinary first year student would have. Hearing it all in library-appropriate whisper was amusing. But eventually:

“Look.”

“You’ve got to give us something.”

“A place, a genre, a… Fred, which section are we even in?”

I stopped. We were close enough to where I wanted to be. “Okay, I’ll tell you.”

Turning around to face their innocent smiles, I started rummaging in my pocket.

“The secret to this plan, and the reason that I asked you for a favour, is because I was lying.”

Their expressions shuttered a little. Then the one on the right tilted his head. “You are a Hufflepuff, right? We haven’t suddenly gone colourblind and missed that you’re a snake, surely?”

I pretended to act offended. “What? No, my friends all helped to come up with the best way to prank you back!”

The Weasley twins glanced at each other, and I used that moment to pull out the two dungbombs they’d originally ‘sold’ to me.

“George, I think we might be facing a spot of vengeance.”

“Indeed Fred, though I cannot help but respect the plan. Pinning a dastardly deed on such dastardly fellows as us?”

“No one will ever suspect her.”

“And no one will ever believe us.”

They bowed. And then spun on their heels and sprinted away.

I crushed the dungbombs against my stomach, then turned and sprinted in the other direction. Towards the Restricted Section.

It wasn’t hard to act distressed. My eyes were tearing up from the stink regardless – and running while having to inhale something only slightly easier on the nose than troll was akin to a hazing ritual – one of the mild ones, with only physical pain.

Maybe I needn’t have bothered, since no prefect was guarding the Restricted Section today. I had bothered though, because mitigating risk and heading off other countermeasures was how Villains lived.

I stepped over the rope barrier of the Restricted Section and pulled it behind me as an alarm blared.

There had been a part of me that wanted to run after Potter and his friends, to get involved with the existing plot. It was the part of me that had longed for relevance ever since I realised that I didn’t automatically have it, here in this world (muggle or magical). The lost feeling I’d been plagued with then didn’t help, but the (repeated) realisation that I meant nothing to the broader fabric of society – that me not following Potter changed nothing for Fate – had been the catalyst that turned my despondency to anger.

Thus fuelled, I struck while the Hero was occupied (with unconsciousness) and all the other players of the game focused on that occupation.

The tactic was common enough back home – Villains engaging nefarious plans while other Villain’s or lieutenants distracted the Hero. Sometimes, it was the only way to guarantee that you’d finish the preparation for the real plan. Instead of having the Hero burst in when you were one-to-three steps away from everything falling into place, resulting in a fight that inevitably made your plan backfire in such a way that caused minimal damage but took you out so the Hero didn’t feel like your blood was on their hands.

I surveyed the Restricted Section and all its screaming books. It was a good aesthetic, one I might borrow as an alarm system for my own library.

(The memory of that mirror returned and my rage burned darker at the mere thought that I might not one day have a library of my own to alarm).

I shoved my thoughts aside – time was limited – and pulled out a knife.

A tingle ran through me as I closed my eyes, something ink-black flowing in my veins.

“Send me the books that want to be free,” I intoned. The knife pricked each finger pad on my right hand.

Five drops of blood were pressed into my forehead, then each finger swept over both my eyelids. “Show me the book that will help me see.”

The shelves of the Restricted Section groaned in response, ancient wood creaking and the books held upon them screaming louder. I watched in satisfaction as several volumes quivered in place, their bindings loosening. One by one, they began to topple toward me. I dodged them easily, letting them crash to the floor with satisfying thuds.

I looked them over, but didn’t reach out. Didn’t move. Just let my eyes close as red mixed with my tears.

Silence fell over the Restricted Section for a heartbeat. Then, from one of the higher shelves, a book began to hum – a low, insistent vibration that drew my attention like a beacon. My eyes snapped open, and there it was, hovering just out of reach. Ancient, bound in cracked leather, the title written in faded red ink I couldn’t read with my eyes still streaming due to the dungbombs. But I didn’t need to.

The promise radiating from it was unmistakable.

I reached up, feeling the weight of the book settle into my hands as the hum subsided. This was what I needed. My knife went away and the wonderful, terrible tome got tucked securely into my robes, pressing against my side like a warm, pulsing heart.

The rest of the books resumed their screaming.

I turned on my heel, preparing to leave the way I came, but before I could take two steps, I heard the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps. My heart skipped a beat as I recognized the hurried gait of Madam Pince, her shoes tapping against the stone floor with barely contained fury.

No time to hide. Not that I’d planned to.

The rope protecting the area was still stretched on the floor where I’d pulled it, so I dove to the floor and wound the rope once around my ankle. Then curled into a foetal position and let the satisfaction war against the stench overwhelming my senses until I was hiccupping and coughing.

Madam Pince found me like that, sprawled in the forbidden entrance.

“What on earth are you doing in here?” Her voice was impressively sharp, despite the fingers pinched over her nose.

I let out a small, pitiful sob. “I’m so sorry, Madam Pince!” I gasped. “The Weasleys, they were doing something, and and – and I wasn’t looking but I bumped them and and and they had – h-had dung bombs!”

More sobbing.

“It was an acci-d-dent, but I panicked! I didn’t know where to go, and then I ended up in here… and everything was screaming! And the books started flying off the shelves! I didn’t mean to–”

I broke off, because my pride could only suffer so much. Even in the name of forbidden magic.

Madam Pince glared down at me. She pursed her lips, muttering something about “those blasted twins” before grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet.

“The Restricted Section is off-limits to students!” she scolded, then shut her mouth to avoid breathing in more than necessary. “If I catch you in here again–”

“I’m so sorry!” I whimpered again, lowering my eyes to the floor as I shuffled behind her.

She guided me out of the Restricted Section, her grip tight but not unkind. I got shoved out the library with haste, stares and pinched noses following me the whole way.

The book stayed between my arm and ribs, feeling a little too warm, scratching a little too much.

It was all I could do to hurry back to the Hufflepuff basement without laughing.

Notes:

Megan is fine too. The library? eh, just needs some airing out

Chapter 18: The Hero Always Wins

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world devastated by evil lunatics, or your honour trampled in the sewer of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn.”

• H. White, The Once and Future King

 

Harry Potter woke up in the hospital wing three days after I saw him running in panic back to the castle. This was known by all and sundry, because Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger had been seen coming out of said hospital wing smiling from ear to ear and clutching at each other excitedly.

I found Hermione in the library.

Which I had no qualms about being in, even if Madam Pince had given me a side eye and slight sniff – possibly to confirm that I no longer smelled rank enough to damage parchment with my mere presence. (My minions had demanded I take three separate showers before they were willing to let me sleep in the dorm last night.)

The table Hermione was sitting at was too crowded by books for me to join her. In fact, the only free space was the parchment she was scribbling notes on – and even that was cramping the girl’s elbows in.

The book I had stolen from the Restricted Section lay wrapped in my clothes in the rough middle of my mostly-packed trunk, above and under my school books. There was no real way for me to hide or smuggle it anywhere, not if Dumbledore or any other professor in the castle really wanted to find it. I simply had to trust that the Gods Below had nudged me correctly. Because, really, the book I now possessed was meant for me. 

Nothing titled The Ancient Arts of Blood and Binding should stay so… tragically unused on some warded shelves in the back corner of a library, even if that library was Hogwart’s.

Waiting to open the tome was mildly torturous, but hasty Villains met hasty ends.

I huffed air out my nose, then walked up to Hermione Granger. Knocked lightly on one of the tomes before her. Smiled gently when she jerked up.

“Oh, Akua, I didn’t notice you!” Hermione suddenly remembered that we were both in a library and switched to a whisper. “…sorry.”

I lifted a chair around to be able to face her without books obscuring up to our chins. “Busy? Everyone else is acting like exams are over.”

“Well yes, but summer homework has been issued, and its not like I’m going to have all this reference material back home, will I?” Bushy hair quivered, as if offended on the girl’s behalf.

“Wise,” I praised. Then picked up a book she wasn’t using and flicked through… huh, a compendium of theoretical advancements in Transfiguration.

I was ten pages into a summary of how Transfiguration became defined as a modern discipline and category of magic when Hermione finally realised that sending me furtive looks wasn’t going to do anything.

“You can ask if you want to.” She huffed.

I straightened up. “Oh, I didn’t want to break your focus if you were on a roll, but okay.” I took a breath just to wind her up further. “What’s your address? At home, that is, because I don’t have an owl that can deliver letters straight to a person based on just their name. Which is convenient but also fascinating as an enchantment – but also beside the point.”

I took a pause just to let her process my imitation of her usual ramble. “I’d like to keep in touch over the summer, because the only other muggleborns in Hufflepuff are older. Or boys, which just isn’t the same.”

Hermione stared at me. I gave her an innocent, smiling shrug, and then smiled wider when she gave me an oh-so-tentative grin.

“I’m… gosh, I was a bit rude, wasn’t I?” She shook her head, then put her quill down. “Everyone’s been pestering me and Ron about what happened with Harry, and I assumed that you were… well.”

I grimaced in commiseration, but stayed bright because if she hadn’t told anyone else, then the secret was inevitably going to bubble out of her at someone.

“Is Harry feeling okay?” Is what I did ask. “Everyone knows he woke up, but is he feeling better?”

Hermione smiled. “Yes. The sheer mountain of chocolate is going to give him cavities, but he was feeling fine.”

“Good.” I laid a hand on her forearm, then went back to my book.

Five seconds later, I looked back up to find Hermione’s eyebrows raised. “You can ask if you want to.”

I raised my eyebrows in return. “I know everything was about the Stone, and I assume there were more protections behind the Cerberus, so–”

“–you knew about Fluffy!?” She cut in. I blinked at her. Fluffy? What in the hells was… oh. The groundskeeper had devised a trial too. (Dumbledore was ridiculous.)

“I did not know the Cerberus was named Fluffy, but yes, I assumed that Harry did something heroic and saved the day. Oh, and I assume you were right about Professor Snape not being evil, because he’s still here.”

Hermione was smug for a second, then clearly remembered something about the now-missing Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts.

“Well done,” I reached over and set my hand back on her arm, “whatever you did with Harry, well done. I can only imagine what it felt like, but I’m sure he couldn’t have done it without you.”

Hermione blushed at the praise, but the successful manipulation didn’t feel as satisfying as it had a week ago. (Before that damn mirror.) Still, I wasn’t about to let a lack of dopamine hinder my rational goals.

“Anyway. Hermione, what’s your address?”

<{   ҉   }>

The Great Hall was alight with warmth and celebration with the End of Year Feast. Voices blending into a chaotic, joyful hum around me on the Hufflepuff table. The ceiling-sun was still shining a little despite the time, and it was hard to tell whether more people wanted to go home or stay at the castle through the summer break.

I was starting to long for some time for myself. Myself and my glorious book of secrets – that was just waiting for me to open it.

Plates and goblets crowded the table in front of me, and the table was effectively hidden under all the food. My attention drifted in and out of the conversation at my end of the Hufflepuff table, my thoughts idly reflecting on the year now gone and the plans I’d laid down for my summer.

Hannah was talking about her family, the usual fluff about trips to Diagon Alley, a small slew of cousins, and afternoons in the Abbott gardens. Megan chimed in with something about quidditch and her Aunt’s team, enthusiasm sharp and bright. Susan was quieter, but hadn’t stopped smiling since we sat down.

My summer was going to be about advancing my understanding of magic. The theoretical underpinnings of this world were, on one hand, completely different to what I had originally mastered. But on the other hand, energy was energy and intent was intent. The technique and any mathematical understanding of theory was something I could learn again.

And experiment with, of course.

(My wand always felt so eager.)

“We should meet up over the summer,” Megan suggested hopefully, drawing me back to the present. “Maybe at one of your houses? Or do our school shopping together and go to Fortescue's for ice cream?”

I shot Megan a smile. “It would be fun to practice spells together, I’ve got lots of things I want to try about combining charms. And practicing defence – no trolls next year, but its still good to know!”

My minions didn’t smile back and launch into ideas like they should have.

Instead, they glanced at each other. Then Susan leaned in, her voice quiet and… hesitant. “You know we can't actually use magic over the summer, right? It's illegal.”

I blinked. Laughed. Turning to face her front on. “How could magic be illegal? Come on.”

Another pause. The mood shifted. I tried not to let my expression freeze.

“I assume this is something I’ve missed as a muggleborn, but surely they can’t stop us from casting spells?” Such a binding would all but give its caster full control of wizarding society. And I would be able to feel something that invasive having hooks in me.

“Outside of school, we’re not allowed to perform any spells. The Ministry of Magic tracks underage magic. They’ll know if you cast anything.” Susan looked down. “Sorry. We thought everyone was told before coming to Hogwarts.”

They were. Professor McGonagall had mentioned this to my parents, but I had… I had assumed that it was a ‘before basic skills are taught’ precaution. Not… not…

(Inhale.)

“Oh,” I ventured, “well, how does that even work? That must be a big enchantment.”

(Exhale.)

Hannah giggled, because she was subconsciously relieved I’d reacted with typical curiosity rather than taking a knife, or even my bare nails, and bleeding corpses until I was FREE from ANY BINDING.

 “Well, I’m not sure whether it’s on our wands or on us, but the Trace – that’s what it’s called – goes off if magic happens near you.” Susan paused, winced, refused to meet my eyes. “And, well, they only really monitor students living in the… muggle world.”

Ah.

Cruelty.

The conscious cruelty of a class divide.

(I, consciously, put my knife back down on the table.)

I felt the muscles in my jaw tighten, my hand flexing (around the stem of my goblet, now). For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. The air in the hall seemed to close in on me, the slivers of sunlight now wan and fake.

Magic was… magic was me. Mine. A right my of birth, of a death that I’d ensured was temporary, and of being born a second time.

Who would dare to prohibit me from using the power that flowed in my veins? The mere excuse that I would be a danger to wizarding secrecy angered me enough that I contemplated breaking the entire damn Statute out of spite.

Which was going to happen sooner or later, really. Prejudice and arrogance lead in only one inevitable direction when not tempered by competency.

And there. Was. No. Visible. Governmental. Competency.

This was what happened when a society got too hells-damned Good. Too focused on the right way of living and being and imposing that upon anyone who started seeming wrong.

The Wizarding World needed some Evil.

Practical Evil.

But the funny thing was – not that anyone else at the table was laughing – the fact that none of that mattered. I needed no reason. I needed no right or wrong.

I wanted to use my magic, and so I would. The hells would weep at the pain suffered by anyone fool enough to try and stop me.

“You okay, Akua?” Megan was a brave, brave girl. “I know things aren’t fair, but all of us are on your side.”

(No, you’re eleven, you don’t fucking matter and won’t have an iota of power until you’ve grown up with enough propaganda forced down your throat to make you play along.)

I took a breath, forced the storm back into the depths of my being where it belonged.

“I’m fine,” I lied to their faces. Offered a smile perfected long, long ago. “Just thinking. I suppose I’ll have to find other ways to occupy my time this summer.”

Susan gave a small smile in return. “We can always write letters,” she suggested lightly, “and it would be nice to have you all visit. Though maybe not my house.”

I nodded. “That sounds lovely Susan.” Another polite smile, another lie.

Hannah volunteered her home. I imagined the steps required to burn it to the ground.

My previous plans for the summer stood like sand-blasted ruins in a barren wasteland. The injustice of it all cut deep, and it took every ounce of control to keep myself from doing something detrimental.

I took a sip of pumpkin juice – then decided, in that moment, that I hated pumpkin juice. I was never going to drink it again.

(Pretending to be what everyone expected of muggleborns had… worked. And while the dream and purpose that had guided my life in Praes was no longer accessible, I was still me.)

Flicks of my wand levitated the jug of symbolism over to me, then vanished the liquid. Another few flicks transfigured the jug into a block of wood. I then practiced the precision of my slicing charms.

Iron sharpens iron.

Ancestral words of a family and empire I had always lived by. The Wizarding World had just cut me. But I was already very, very sharp.

They couldn’t keep magic from me for seven summers. This would only be temporary. I would find a way, by blood and bone and all the blasphemy I required.

Conversation restarted among my minions, though I touched barely half of my food. Then Dumbledore stood up. Green banners unfurled and the Slytherins hollered.

Dumbledore stayed standing. Said something quaint. Then everyone cheered for Harry Potter, despite the boy being responsible for a quarter of Gryffindor’s lost points in the first place. Still he was a Hero, and so they cheered.

(I was going to be cut off from magic for months.)

Gryffindor won the House Cup through blatant manipulation.

(I was going to start a revolution – one with guillotines.)

Red spread across the banners hanging in the Great Hall.

(I was going to bathe the Ministry in blood.)

When we all walked out of the Great Hall, the small pieces of my wooden block turned back into neatly divided circular slivers of silver jug.

<{   ҉   }>

The Hogwarts staff room was filled with quiet relief, a meeting of the Heads of Houses before the full staff de-briefing. And before the subsequent private celebration of how final papers were marked and students off on the Express. Late afternoon sun fought past the clouds and streamed through the castle windows, casting warm light on time-polished tables. The relief was general, since the year was finally done, and very specific, because the topic of last minute points for the House Cup – and the unfortunately related topic of Harry Potter – was over. (It had taken forty minutes and two shouting matches, and would probably lead to another round of swearing if anyone brought it up ever again.)

Minerva McGonagall shuffled through a stack of parchment, thin spectacles balanced at the tip of her nose. “I do believe you’ve got an enterprising group of first years, Pomona.”

Professor Pomona Sprout beamed, chuckling. “Yes, indeed I do.”

Headmaster Dumbledore glanced down at the student rankings of the current crop of first years. “Seven of the top ten, hmm. Have we a new Cedric Diggory in Miss Sahelian? I rather suspect she would have gotten first place herself, if not for Miss Granger.”

At the mention of both names, Flitwick leaned forward, exclaiming. “Yes! Granger and Sahelian. Truly exceptional young girls, particularly in Charms! The grasp of theory, the attention to detail, both are going to go very far, wouldn’t you say Minerva?”

McGonagall nodded, though her expression was more measured. “Indeed. Both of their magical abilities are far beyond what we usually see in first year students, much less muggleborn. Miss Granger displays a remarkable grasp of Transfiguration.” McGonagall nodded at Sprout. “Your young badger’s technique is rather refined too.”

Professor Sprout’s beam got even wider, her hands folded neatly (smugly) in her lap. “Akua has made quite the impression in Hufflepuff. She and her friends – Abott, Bones, and Megan Jones – were leading a study group for the rest of their dorm. Warms my heart, those girls do.”

From his seat, Professor Snape’s lips curled into a faint sneer. No other part of his body made a movement, with the possible exception of his lungs.

“Yes yes,” Flitwick chimed in. “A true thirst for knowledge, that one. Shame she’s not in my House. And not just for the sake of grades. She seems to genuinely enjoy mastering new spells – particularly ones with broad applications. Not that she ever gets it wrong, so I suppose there’s no reason for her to be nervous. Granger too. I really did miss out this year. Apart from Goldstein and Patil, hmm, eleventh and, ah, ninth place – excellent.”

Dumbledore hummed. “Granger and Sahelian. Very different approaches to their peers. You all have a better understanding of that though, since I was so regrettably busy this year.”  

McGonagall pursed her lips. “Potter, Weasley, and Granger are firm friends. Sahelian has her group with the scarves, as everyone knows, but…”

Flitwick nodded thoughtfully. “A quieter confidence. Never boastful, only asks me questions after class. She doesn’t seem to seek attention, even with those scarves, but I think she’s aware of how many looks she gets all the same. But, no matter when I call on her, she always has the answer. Her and Granger both.”

There was a moment among the teachers, who had seen many looks at and between many students, to reflect on the kind of looks quiet-but-smart muggleborn girls tended to get over the years.

Pomona Sprout slapped her hands on her thighs. “Ah, there’s a subtlety to her, sure. But she’s always perfectly polite, and has conversations with people all over the Common Room. My Puffs are the type to focus on others over themselves, for better or worse.”

Dumbledore, listening absently in a way only the truly thoughtful or completely distracted can, finally spoke. “Ambition, when tempered with restraint, can be a powerful thing. Miss Sahelian is certainly ambitious, given her grades, but whether that ambition is focused on her friends or something greater... well, that remains to be seen.”

Sprout nodded, then reached for a scone. “That group of girls is close. We’ll see what boys do to it, but I do think we’ve another Cedric. Different, of course.”

Dumbledore turned to the fifth person in the room, “And what do you think, Severus? You’ve been unusually quiet on the matter.”

The room seemed to still as the attention shifted toward Snape. For a moment, he said nothing – eyes still dark from the tabled discussion on house points. Then, slowly, his lips curled into a humourless smirk.

“That girl,” he said, voice smooth as silk, “has remarkably precise knifework.”

Notes:

Hahahaha book 1, done!

I am 1/3 through the second and currently debating whether releasing a chapter a month or waiting till its all done will be better for my motivation. There will definitely be a break before any of book 2 is posted though, so follow/bookmark the series or however this website works - and thank you all for reading, please tell me your favourite parts and any wants/predictions for the rest of the series

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of A Heiress at Hogwarts