An Unkindness
Max woke up to Kate shaking her excitedly.
“Max! Max, come on! It’s the first day of school!”
She groaned, and burrowed her head in her pillows. “Five more min-”
“Never! The early bird catches the worm, Max!”
“It’s no use trying to resist,” she heard Brooke say in the close distance, sounding just as groggy as her. “She’s shockingly stubborn. You didn’t do this in third year, Kate.”
“I didn’t fall asleep in this dorm in third year! Come on, Max, get up!” Kate said again, shaking her.
She accepted that sleep was outside her grasp by now, and sat up.
Her head spun for a moment. She rushed to make sure that her time turner was still there, and out of sight.
It was.
A headache pounded in the back of her skull.
...Right. She shouldn’t’ve been hitting the anxiety right before bed.
“I feel your pain,” she heard Brooke say. “I’ll let you get the first pick from the sausages.”
“How about I get first cup of cof-”
“Nope.”
Max snorted reluctantly. “Alright. Okay, I’m up. Let’s go.”
She stumbled out of bed, and reached blindly for her trunk.
Kate reached out and steadied her, while Brooke handed her a white button-up shirt.
She smiled. “Thanks, guys.”
“Don’t mention it!” Kate chirped. “Anything for my bestie!”
“How about you let me sleep in next time?” Max muttered, slipping the shirt on. Brooke handed her a pair of pants before she could button it up.
“Nope!” Kate said with a grin. Max groaned.
“...Did you wake up Chloe, too?”
“She tried,” Brooke said - and suddenly, the grogginess faded from her face for the first time as she grinned from ear to ear. “It was amazing.”
Max blinked. “What happened?”
“Uh… well, turns out Rachel needs her beauty sleep,” Kate muttered. “Brooke undid the antlers, though! It was really amazing - I didn’t even know that curse had a counter!”
Max couldn’t help but grin. “Rachel gave you antlers?”
“Among other things.”
Max glanced up.
The humour had faded from Brooke’s voice shockingly quickly - and, instead, something sharp and dangerous glittered in her eye.
“We’ll have to get them back, of course. This slight cannot go unpunished.”
Max sighed.
“...That would start a war, you know.”
“Yes,” Brooke said, eyes glittering brighter. “I know.”
Kate, suddenly, grinned, rocking back and forth a little. “Ooh! Are we gonna start a prank war? I’ve always wanted to be a part of one of those!”
“You’ll be my commander in chief. I’ll be your one-man army. You make the plans, I cast the spells.”
Max blinked. “You know what a commander in chief is?”
“Of course,” Brooke said. “I’ve been a better Muggle Studies teacher than the hack they hired since I was seven years old.”
“Anyway! We have to go get our schedules!” Kate chirped. “Max, are you dressed yet?”
Max glanced down at herself. “...I need my blazer.”
Brooke stepped behind her, and slipped a blazer over her shoulders.
She smiled - and tried very hard to ignore the way Brooke’s fingers lingered slightly at the base of her neck.
“And your tie,” Brooke said, stepping back in front of her. “I don’t know where that is.”
“...Uhm… oh, right,” she muttered, reaching for the edge of her nightstand and getting her tie. She’d tossed it there last night.
It was still tied. She just slipped it over her head, tightened it, and buttoned her collar.
“What about showering?”
“You can shower after we get our schedules and breakfast!” Kate said, clearly ready for this argument.
Max walked to the door. Her headache pulsed hotly with every step. By the end, though, she was managing to stand without rocking back and forth.
Then came the stairs.
She sighed.
By the time they made it to the table - Gryffindor, this time - Max was cradling her head. Kate was still clearly distracted by the promise of their schedules, but Brooke was starting to peer at her, eyes softer and more concerned than usual.
“Max? Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she muttered, sitting down. “Where’s the sausage?”
Brooke, silently, leaned over and held the end of a fork in front of her. A slice of sausage was speared on it.
Max leaned over and, delicately, took it off with her teeth. The odd, salty, savoury flavour seemed to flood her mouth.
She swallowed it after just a single chew. It bit at her throat as it went down.
“Well if it isn’t my favorite cross-house brigade,” she heard - and was met with one of Hoida’s trademark soft smiles when she glanced up.
“I prefer ‘squad’!” Kate chirped, grinning right back at the professor.
“Gaggle,” Max offered, leaning over to get a biscuit and trying to ignore the pulsing in her skull.
“Unkindness.”
Max blinked.
When she glanced up, Kate and Hoida were already staring at Brooke.
“...A group of ravens,” the Ravenclaw clarified, giving Hoida in particular an unimpressed look.
“Oh,” Kate and Max said at the same time.
“It’s also called a conspiracy. Way better than a ‘murder,’ if you ask me.”
“Isn’t that also the name of a band?” Kate added. “An Unkindness?”
Max blinked. “What?”
“Yeah! They published an album just this year, I think - their music video for ‘Anything’ was really good!”
“Never heard of them,” Brooke said. “What are they, a folk group or something?”
“Indie rock.”
Max blinked, and threw up her eyebrows. “You listen to rock music?”
“Oh, yeah!” Kate chirped, grinning at her. Hoida was standing off to the side, silently watching them talk with that soft, sincere smile still on her face. “It’s really good! Like, uh - Green Day, Ruel, Rush, Boston, Judas Priest - oh, have you ever heard their song, ‘Painkiller’? It totally rocks!”
“I never had you pegged for a… heavy metal kinda gal,” Max said, leaning forward. Her headache was starting to subside a little.
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about heavy metal! Were we talking about heavy metal? I started with Iron Maiden after Chloe suggested it to me and totally went down the rabbithole from there - oh, shit, have I shown you guys my Lamb of God shirt-?”
“Not to interrupt,” Hoida said - Max was still reeling from the impact of Kate using a swear word, and Brooke was practically drooling. “But I have some schedules to give you?”
“Oh. Oh! Right!” Max took a moment to wonder how Kate could whiplash so quickly from being excited about music, to deflating after being interrupted, to being excited about school. “Yeah, do you have them?”
Hoida, with excessive quantities of gravitas, whipped out three schedules. “Boom. You know I do, gurl.”
Kate grinned. “You’re the best, Ms. Hoida.”
“You bet your Hufflepuff butt I am,” Hoida said, mirroring Kate’s grin. “You guys are lucky you always get up so early, or else I might have to get you all sitting at your own tables. I don’t have the time to search for the Ravenclaw in a group of Gryffindors.”
“It’s like Where’s Waldo!” Kate chirped.
“What is that,” Brooke said with a flat look, finally managing to stop giving her mushy eyes.
“It’s a comic! You look for this guy in a striped sweater in the middle of a drawing, in a massive group of other people.”
“...Sounds like a terrifying existence,” Brooke said, staring right through her plate. “Having beings a thousand times larger than you constantly searching for you within a crowd, while you can’t do anything but hide and pray.”
“...I just thought it was fun, actually,” Kate said. Her voice had a note that said her childhood had been changed forever by Brooke’s statement.
Hoida put a schedule in front of each of them, clearly tired of waiting for them to grab them from her.
“Enjoy your breakfast, girls!” Hoida said easily, walking away.
“You too, Ms. Hoida!” Kate called after her.
Max stared at her schedule.
“Well, I suppose Herbology is a decent class to have first thing in the morning,” Brooke said, shifting her schedule a little. “I’ve even got it with you, Max. And then I get a free block. How’s your morning looking, Katherine?”
“I get to do Care of Magical Creatures first!” Kate chirped - and then, suddenly, deflated a little. “With the Slytherins…”
“Oh, come on. Chin up now. I’m sure they aren’t that awful,” Brooke said, uncharacteristically optimistic.
“One of them threw a rotten tomato at my head in first year,” Kate said, eyes firmly on her plate. “...I just hope they don’t hurt animals.”
“Where did they even get a rotten tomato?” Max said. “The house elves don’t use any rotten ingredients.”
“...Actually, that’s a valid question,” Brooke said, leaning back in her chair. “Perhaps they knew where the kitchens were and asked for one? If so, I must start doing some interrogations-”
“Can we please stop talking about this?” Kate said morosely.
“Of course,” Max said, leaning over to give her a sympathetic pat on the head. Kate smiled softly at the display.
“What does your schedule look like, Max?” Brooke said. Luckily, she didn’t lean over to see for herself.
“Uh…”
Cramped, is what it was.
Max had a total of two free blocks all week. Considering the six she had had last year, that was quite awful. She knew that doing a proper amount of studying often took a lot of free blocks - but she had guessed that she would have to use the turner to redo free blocks for studying. She also knew that her weekend was going to be cramped with work.
What she hadn’t expected - especially considering that she was only taking four of the five electives - was just how often she would have to use the time turner just to attend all of her assigned classes. She had to do three extra hours a week just to attend classes.
Three hours a week… that meant that she would have 171 hours for every 168 she would’ve had without the turner. It meant twelve extra hours a month. It meant that, practically, every two months would have an extra day attached. Which meant she aged six extra days a year. Just to attend her classes.
And that was assuming she would only have this schedule this year. If she did what she wanted to, and attended those extra classes next year too…
And next year was OWL year. The year they took their big tests to decide which subjects they could keep. It meant more classes. It meant more studying. It meant more hours.
And then, if she passed all those OWLs - like she wanted to - she had to have another two years of that schedule. Another two years of an extra day tacked onto every two months. Another two years of what should’ve been impossible hours.
Taking a conservative estimate and guessing that, balancing out for the years she would have to overuse the turner slightly for studying and tests, she would use the turner… three times a day? Add three hours to every day, five days a week. That meant sixty extra hours every two weeks. That meant every month had an extra 120 hours - or extra five days. Which meant that every twelve months had an extra sixty days.
Every year she used this thing would take two months from her life.
And that was a conservative estimate.
...At least she’d hit growth spurt sooner.
Should she account for that for her birthday? Should every birthday party be meaningless from now on, because it hadn’t actually been a year?
Her life for the next three years had been irreversibly crippled. And sure, it meant she would have a ridiculously good resume and learn so much, but…
Was it really worth it?
“...I’ve got my first Arithmancy class at eleven,” Max said. “They really shouldn’t make you do math before two PM, if you ask me.”
They discussed schedules throughout the rest of breakfast, until Kate finally let Max go to take her shower.
Max - as per Hoida’s demands - wore her time turner when she took said shower.
It’s gentle weight would never leave her for the next eight months.
She felt sick.