Professor Bathsheda Babbling had not become a Master of Practical Ancient Runes by accident. She had invested over a decade of intense, focused study, of honing her mind to pay attention to the most insignificant detail and being as mindnumbingly thorough in every single application of her craft as humanly possible. There was a reason that Practical Ancient Runes was one of the most understudied of all magical subjects – few people were brave enough to venture into a field that had a ninety-percent chance of killing you before you even made it to a Mastery. Because while Hogwarts claimed to teach Ancient Runes, at least as an elective, it had been over a century since the last practical Ancient Runes class had been held there – all classes now were purely theoretical.
When she noticed her eyes sliding over one of her students, dismissing them as entirely normal, she immediately did a double-take.
When she realized she was focusing on a different student instead, she pulled up her occlumency shields and made a knot into her handkerchief, allowing her eyes to wander again.
When she was sure her new students were all sweating profusely over the purposefully impossible test she’d given them – she would never be able to thank Septima enough for that little trick to weed out any idledoers right away – she tried to look again, her curiosity growing steadily at the fact that it took her this much effort to just see a student. Not to mention that she couldn’t think of a reason for anyone to go to such lengths to remain unseen – Runes weren’t a politically loaded subject, like Muggle Studies, were purebloods of certain families might get in trouble for taking it. Nor was it any kind of forbidden knowledge, or hard to access.
Her eyebrow invariably rose at the sight of a tiny kid working with full concentration on the test that some of her NEWT level students couldn’t answer by more than forty percent. Judging by the frown on the girl’s face, she found it as hard as could be expected – but she didn’t give up. Bathsheda found that it still took her a little effort to glance at the girl every now and then, but not nearly as much as the first time, so she watched her new batch of potential students sweat over their tests and pondered on what to do about the curious child. She could easily throw her out, of course. Hogwarts only offered Ancient Runes from third year onwards, and that kid looked barely old enough to be in second year. Maybe a late bloomer?
The initial test, as Septima had pointed out to her, served multiple purposes. First, it showed her where to place her students on an academic scale, and which basics she still needed to cover. Second, it was very effective in weeding out those few strays that just ticked Ancient Runes on their choice parchments because they had to tick something, as well as those thinking it an easy subject due to its lack of practical implementation. She could already pick out three of her current batch that she likely wouldn’t see again – students were allowed to switch over the first two weeks of term, with Runes being the exception this year due to her absence for those first weeks. She’d had to take it up with Minerva, but got it approved eventually.
That woman needs to figure out a way to hand down some of her workload or she’ll end up killing herself with work.
The third purpose of the test was to give Bathsheda an idea of how her new students reacted when faced with an impossible task. Because that’s what runes were, really. Impossible. You could interpret them, and learn how to read them, but with the current limitations on various old magical practices, it was close to impossible to actually work with runes. Not that it stopped everyone, but that’s where things tied back into the whole high likelihood of getting killed, really.
There’s one or two students every couple of years that have a knack for them, and the rest of them can be lucky to get a good grasp on understanding their written meaning. It’s enough for deciphering curses and old artefacts, I suppose.
Either way, knowing how her students reacted to pressure gave her a good idea of what to expect from them. Some got hectic, some gave up, some tried to find a solution that looked good at first glance even though they knew it wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, and some went through different stages one after the other. Very few just sat there, calmly going through the pages, and she didn’t care if it made her prejudiced, but those few were disproportionally often the ones that ended up succeeding in her classes.
The unknown child turned out to be one of two students in this batch to do the latter. She also kept scribbling notes onto a separate parchment, which made Bathsheda peg her as a Ravenclaw – she knew research notes when she saw them.
After that class, when she sat down to look through the tests, she saved the one from the unknown child for last. The girl hadn’t written down a name, not that Bathseba needed more proof that the kid Did Not Belong into her class.
Then she read the test, and silently corrected herself.
The kid might not be old enough or whatever to be allowed into her class officially, but she very much belonged there. Because… despite her score being pretty much average for a beginner’s class, the way she answered some of those questions was interesting. In fact, Bathsheda found herself pull out a separate parchment and jot down her own research notes, because never in a million years would she have considered things like that.
So Bathsheda didn’t call out the girl that wasn’t on her official list of students. She pretended that the girl’s magic, which in itself was curious enough, affected her the same way it seemed to affect the other students, and let her eyes slide over the child in class while wording her assignments for that class in a more open style than usual, curious to see if the initial test had been a lucky shot for the still unnamed child. She also kept an eye out in the evening, trying to discreetly find the lass among the hundreds of students in the hall. Her mind, used to dissect the intricate puzzles of ancient runic systems and find applications for them that she would eventually test in a safe chamber deep down in Hogwarts’ dungeons, put together the pieces she could observe to form a slightly confusing picture.
The girl was quite obviously not wealthy. Her clothes were all threadbare and worn, although well-kept. Which made her question her initial assumption of having a pureblood from perhaps a lesser known or foreign house in front of her, simply due to her incredible knowledge of runes, and pushed her more towards halfblood. If her wizarding parent had been kicked out for marrying a muggle or muggle-born, the lack of money might make sense, together with whatever her detection-avoiding magic was. It might be a kind of family secret that relies on skill and knowledge instead of family magic, which would allow a disowned witch or wizard to still access it after being kicked out. And a muggle parent might explain the interesting takes on some things, because that was the biggest strength of muggleborns in all subjects – they were generally speaking the most likely to bring innovation into magic. But then Bathsheda considered her handwriting, which was too good to be muggleborn but not effortless enough to be practiced for a longer period of time.
It was vexing, and kept her mind working on something else than runes every now and then. Bathsheda wondered briefly if this was what Septima meant when she’d ordered her to find a hobby.
By the time exams rolled around, she’d finally managed to pin the girl down to Slytherin table, although she hadn’t quite been able to put a name to the face yet. A face that had gone increasingly pale and exhausted over the year, and worried in a way that looked entirely wrong on such a young child. But Bathsheda had a very strong feeling that the moment she broke the illusion of not seeing the girl, the mysterious child would find a way to actually escape her notice. She didn’t doubt that there were ways for that, and didn’t want to risk not being able to break a stronger enchantment. It still irked her that she couldn’t seem to find out what kind of magic it actually was – it was fascinating, really.
Her summer was spent travelling with her wives, using the long days to the fullest. When she had originally taken on the teaching position at Hogwarts, it had been both for the money and the promise of complete freedom regarding her own research. What Dumbledore had neglected to mention, was the fact that the school’s faculty had shrunk down to only one teacher per subject, leaving everyone with twice if not thrice the amount of work it had been for Bathsheda’s professors in her time at Hogwarts. She wasn’t a big fan of Snape’s teaching style, but she could understand his frustration – the young man was a researcher through and through but she would eat her wife’s expensive racing broom if the poor sod managed to spare a single minute throughout the entire teaching year on actual research. Morgana’s tits, she herself barely managed, and her subject was both taught entirely theoretically, which meant she at least didn’t have to clean up after her students, and was an elective from third year onwards that wasn’t too popular. She honestly didn’t know how the teachers of main subjects – Filius, Minerva, Pomona, Septima – managed. Let alone those doubling as Head of House! She knew that Minerva spent most of her summer catching up with paperwork, much to Rolanda's chagrin.
So Bathsheda left the castle the moment she could, travelling by floo and then portkey to meet her wives in Barcelona where they would spend some time with family. Then followed a few weeks of travelling to places they hadn’t been before, until they couldn’t put off meeting her other wife’s family in India, which was indefinitely larger and more chaotic. Bathsheda’s own family had disowned her, thank Merlin, on the grounds of marrying not just one, no, but two muggleborn witches. Which meant that they didn’t have to visit a third family and could instead use the rest of the summer for lazing about, catching up with old friends and – in Bathsheda’s case – discuss her research with colleagues she mostly communicated with via letter during the academic year.
By the time September came to an end, her mind was full of fascinating discussions and new research ideas. Only when she walked into her fourth year class and felt her eyes slide over a completely normal and average student, did she remember the unsolved puzzle from the year before.
The little snake hadn’t grown much, but her cheeks weren’t quite as hollow as they had been at the beginning of the last year. She worked her way through the revision test with steadyd confidence, despite the fact that half of the questions were from upper years up to NEWT level. Her undefinable magic was stronger as well – it took more effort to glance at her. Or maybe that was because Bathsheda had had an entire summer to forget about it.
The year progressed the same as always. Winter cold rolled over the castle; students got sick, Bathsheda managed to catch something right over Samhain and couldn’t participate in the ritual her wives and a few friends held in secret. The new Defense teacher turned out awful and the new History teacher even worse – Bathsheda didn’t mind pink, per se, but that woman made her want to throw up whenever she caught sight of the colour. (Binns’ disappearance had largely passed her by unnoticed as she’d been too deep in one of her research throes at that time. In fact, it had been at family dinner in Barcelona that one of her wives had mentioned it, causing great amusement amongst everyone when they realized that Bathsheda had, quite literally, been in the midst of it and noticed nothing.)
The nameless Slytherin girl kept handing in fascinating essays, some of which contained ideas that might even be worth turning into articles. Bathsheda made copies of them all and carefully put them aside, underlining the best parts for when she could call the girl in for a talk. The upside of the girl being so young meant that Bathsheda still had time – she’d been disappointed not to see her in the official beginners Ancient Runes class, but she understood that the kid didn’t want to go through the same material again. (Later, exact a year later to be exact, she would feel a very strong desire to gently slap her younger self. But that revelation would still wait for twelve months.)
She noticed, sometime around Christmas, that some of her students were improving more than the rest, and steadily so. That alone would not have made her suspicious, but she remembered Filius mentioning a similar sentiment sometime during the last year, as well as Minerva. So she watched, and observed, and made an effort to go and see Septima more often for a cup of tea. The arithmancy professor smiled at Bathsheda’s clumsy attempts at subterfuge and told her that, yes, she’d noticed the same trend.
It took talking to Filius as well to get somewhat of an overview on which students were steadily pulling ahead of their peers. There was some overlap, although nowhere a hundred percent, and most of it seemed to concentrate on the second and first years, with third years close after and the effect petering out in the older years. Filius remarked that Severus seemed a lot calmer and was complaining less about classroom disruptions and general idiocy regarding the lower years, which might mean a similar pattern in Potions. All three agreed to keep quiet about it for the time being and merely observe, to see if the trend would continue or peter out with time. A few weeks later, Septima told Bathsheda that Pomona had mentioned something about study groups, led mostly by the second years. While study groups per se were obviously no novelty, she explained that these were apparently interhouse groups, with members from all four houses.
“According to Pomona, any house rivalry is shut down quickly and rigorously. Every student is supposed to contribute something, in one subject or another. If they can’t help in their own year, they tutor the younger ones.”
Her dark eyes sparkled as she leaned forward. “The study groups for Defense and History encompass the nearly all second and first years, as well as a majority of the thirds. They went through the records to find the last Defense teacher to hold the post for several years in a row, worked out which books they used and are now teaching themselves by using those.”
Bathsheda took a sip of her tea. Septima knew exactly how she liked it, probably due to the amount of years they’d been doing this for.
“They willingly learn more about History of Magic?”
Septima’s lips curled up mischievously. “My thought exactly. What do you say – should we take a closer look at this?”
Their chance came less than a fortnight later. Bathsheda was kept late by a frazzled Percy Weasley worrying about his OWLS and counted, not for the first time, the years the boy had left at Hogwarts, when the anxious redhead mentioned something that caught her attention: “… and of course I need to supervise the History of Magic group so Professor McGonagall doesn’t rescind her permission, and it’s fascinating, really, but also very much different to the questions Professor Umbridge will no doubt be asking at the exams, which means it’s twice the amount to learn…”
Bathsheda let him ramble while considering this, and then gently needled the required information out of the boy. He left a little less frazzled and completely unaware that he’d given her the meeting time and place for several study groups, which he apparantly participated in so the younger years had official supervision.
Both Septima and Filius were eager to come. Septima because she was a bloody snake and would never pass up information that might gain her something in time, and Filius because apparently his entire second year classes were markedly above average second year level by now. “And the first years are headed the same way!”, he beamed excitedly. “It’s remarkable! In all my years of teaching, I’ve never had such a consistent improvement across all houses! I’m happy to clear my calendar for an hour for this!”
They found the classroom Weasley had mentioned after a bit of a search. Only Bathsheda seemed to notice that Filius and Septima both consistently walked past the turns and hallways they had to take, as if they couldn’t see them. The issue disappeared as soon as Bathsheda pointed them out.
Almost like…
By the time they got there, the study group was quite obviously in full swing. Having put on a Notice-Me-Not as to not disturb the students, they observed the large room in stunned silence.
The tables and chairs had been rearranged to form a half circle, with students huddling together around single tables in small groups, discussing animatedly. There was paper and parchments on all tables, together with vibrantly coloured tiny sticks that Bathsheda knew from the Barcelona clan – children drew with those, didn’t they? Pals? No, pens. A variety of books, old newspapers, magazines and pictures was lying around as well, with some groups studying them intensely. A few children were huddled around the blackboard, pinning up a giant poster and straightening the photographs pinned to it. In one corner, Bathsheda found Percy Weasley listening intently to the bulky Slytherin quidditch captain, Flint. She did a double take when she identified the third boy in their small group as the Gryffindor quidditch captain, Wood.
Never would have thought those two would be able to be in such close proximity without trying to strangle the other. At least not when there are no teachers present, and no brooms.
The light tingle of a bell rang out, cutting off some discussions. The second tingle brought most of the room to silence, and the third finally succeeded. The small group at the blackboard shuffled around nervously, until one of them cleared her throat and stepped forward. “Okay, uh, hi? We, uh, we’ll be talking about magic on the British Isles in the, uh, sixteenth century?”
Her voice was a bit wobbly and unsure, but as the rest of the group shuffled closer to her, it grew stronger and steadier.
“Since we’ve got a few new people here, I’ll quickly go over the basics again. Our group”, she waved at the students behind and beside her, “chose this topic at the end of last year and did some research over the summer. We, uh, kinda had to change the name a bit, because we found so much more than just witchcraft and wizardry, which would have been the original title. Anyway, uh, we put together a short overview on the most important things, and there’s more detailed reports over there.” She pointed towards the big desk that would originally be used by the teacher and was laden with several neatly stacked heaps of simply bound paper.
“If you don’t have a topic yet, or are thinking about next year already, or just find something interesting and wanna know more, help yourself to a copy or talk to us afterwards. We’ll be talking for about forty minutes, then there’s time for questions. I don’t think Umbitch will ask anything about this in exams, which practically guarantees that it’s incredibly interesting and very useful for everyday life.”
A lot of the students snickered or laughed outright. Bathsheda felt her lips twitch.
“Alright, let’s get started. As you all hopefully know, Hogwarts is a school for wizardry and witchcraft. As everyone who’s been here for the presentation three weeks ago knows, it was originally called Hogwarts School for Magic.”
What?
“If you’re new and want to know more about that, go talk to Granger and Nott afterwards. They’re over there in the corner.”
A bushy haired girl sat up straight, while the thin boy next to her looked as if he’d like to slouch if his pureblood upbringing hadn’t prevented him from.
“The exact reasons and backgrounds for the renaming will be talked about in next week’s presentation. Today, we’ll talk about how bloody diverse and amazing magic was in the sixteenth century, which was coincidentally a century of global travelling and discovery for both the Muggles and the wixen community. There was witchcraft and witchery, wizardry and lore, runecraft and songmagic…”
Bathsheda listened, stunned, as the girl lost her nervousness and delved into a history of magic that hadn’t been taught at Hogwarts for… well, over a century, probably. Not since Binns started to teach, at least. The only reason she knew about parts of this was because of her Mastery in Ancient Runes. The girl then stepped aside to let another member of her group talk about witchcraft in particular, before the next explained about songmagic and lore and their ties to magical beings such as sirens and hags, before the last tapped his wand on one of the pictures on the board to enlargen it, and explained the ritual depicted on it and how masters of five different magical disciplines were needed for this, ending it with: “… so we have no idea what exactly magic users were capable of at that time, because most of the records were destroyed in the clearances, or when a certain practice was declared illegal. The official reason, if there is an official reason given, usually goes along the lines of wanting to avoid people trying to practice those forbidden kinds of magic. The fact that sometimes these things are just forbidden for a couple years, until a law is reversed or people realize that they actually really need this, is happily ignored. And by the time it’s no longer forbidden, there’s nothing left to learn from, because the records were destroyed and those practicing the magic either killed, stripped of their magic or had fled the country. Not to mention that most magic wasn’t written down, it was taught orally and by example.”
He shrugged, a little self-conscious, and stepped back. “That, uh, was our presentation. Any questions?”
Bathsheda had been to panel discussions before. While one of her wives had pursued a career in professional quidditch, the other had partly returned to the muggle world in order to search for cures to diseases in both worlds. Studying muggle medicine while simultaneously doing an apprenticeship as healer had been tough, incredibly so, but in the end it had paid off. When Bathsheda and her then-girlfriend had bumped into a stunningly beautiful, breathtakingly smart doctor, they hadn’t hesitated to snatch her up. And while one of them used conferences to catch up on sleep, the other two either attended as speakers or avid listeners. Bathsheda herself had given talks on runes, even though it was immensely difficult to replace her magical sources with muggle ones. She’d often thought that magical Britain would benefit from participating more in international panels and conferences, but there just weren’t enough people to make it worthwhile, at least not in Ancient Runes. Not that Bathsheda minded the travelling.
Her mind snapped back to the present as the first students began asking questions. Yes, she’d been to panel discussions before. They weren’t a muggle invention, or perhaps they were but wixen had copied them a long time ago. What she hadn’t been to was a panel discussion between lower year students. At least half of these kids weren’t even teenagers yet. And their questions… their questions were good.
Beside her, Septima looked thoughtful and Filius stunned. She knew that they could see what she saw as well: this was as much a political discussion as a historical one.
None of them had time to talk afterwards, as they were all busy trying not to fall behind with their work too much. Because of this, it was over a week later that they finally managed to meet up for a cup of tea, this time in Filius’ office. The discussion soon turned to the interhouse study groups.
“It’s not just the fact that there’s more than one house”, Septima said. “It’s the fact that they include Slytherins. Gryffs and Claws, and Puffs, you get often enough. Maybe not in every year, but it happens. Claws and Snakes, or Snakes and Puffs? Only every now and then, and not in recent years, but they usually hold until the end of their Hogwarts years. But a group with Gryffs, Claws and Puffs including us Snakes? Never seen it in my entire time here.”
Filius hummed thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on his cup. “There’s change in the castle. It’s quiet still, very quiet. Doesn’t want to draw attention, I think. But these groups are not just changing students’ grades.”
Septima leaned forward, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “You’re more correct than you might think, Filius. Did you notice the direction of the political debate, there?”
Bathsheda stared at her tea. “There was no fighting. Which is astonishing, considering that I’ve seen grown wixen in their eighties or nineties try to cast spells at each other in rage, just because they couldn’t agree whether a word should be translated to green or gray. Children fight over everything, and a few of them were definitely unhappy with some of the things that were said, but they did their best to stay factual.”
Septima nodded and shook her head at the same time, while somehow making it look elegant. “There were muggleborn students. Halfbloods. And a good portion of purebloods, including several heirs. Do you realize that what they were discussing was tradition? And culture? They were explaining the divide between muggleborn and pureblood, the cultural divide that has been turned political and gave ground for the last two wars, without a single person getting offended. Do you have any idea what this means?”
Bathsheda looked up and blinked.
I’ve never seen Septima so… alive.
They resolved to keep an eye on things, especially regarding the political aspect of those history discussions. Bathsheda had not been on the Isles for the last war; she’d already been disowned and had chosen her wives’ safety over trying to stop people’s stupidity. Nevertheless, she was intimately familiar with the disputes and conflicts people had fought over – it was hard not to, really. As excited as Septima was for the students’ apparent interest in politics, none of them wanted to risk a repeat of the last war. Bathsheda knew that Voldemort had started his campaign at school already, surrounding himself with the rich and powerful and building up his system of followers. As much as she’d enjoyed those twenty-odd years on the continent, she was happy enough at Hogwarts right now, thank you very much. Where else would she find abandoned rune chambers with indecipherable wards woven into their walls that meant she could dare to experiment with new runic arrangements?
The rest of the year passed in a blur of classes, correcting assignments, her own research and experiments. She was deep into one of the latter when both the new Defense and the History teacher met some kind of mishap or other, not that she’d mourn them. (She had, in fact, received a valentine’s card from one of the poor dwarves that Lockhart had ordered. It told her in no uncertain terms what to expect should she dare skip that night’s dinner with her wives, as well as a very explicit sketch of what to hope for if she managed to remember flowers and chocolates for her beloveds. Bathsheda had wordlessly put away her work and gone down to Hogsmeade. She loved her wives’ creativity.)
The summer was as enjoyable as any other. They followed their wife’s progress through her quidditch tournaments, happy to watch her play for hours on end. In return, there was no complaint when other days were spent discussing with colleagues or rivals, on experimental treatments or theories for runic arrangements. Bathsheda gave an enchanted earring that would turn into a decent enough broom to one wife and a gorgeous necklace made from rare crystals with strong healing properties to another, and received a bespoke set of runes carved into amethyst from a Norwegian Runes Master as well as a set of dragon scales.
“You’ve been going on about that translation for ages”, her wife said with an eyeroll. “How they shouldn’t dismiss the idea of runes carved into scales just because they’ve never heard of or seen it done before. Now you can give it a go and prove them wrong.”
Bathsheda was very much aware how lucky she’d gotten to find not just one, but two loves like these. In moments like these, however, the reminder still sent her reeling.
Returning to Hogwarts in autumn was a like stepping out into a cool, fresh drizzle after partying hard in a hot, loud room for days on end. With both wives for once having a few days off and intending to spend that time with her, her rooms welcomed them with a warm fire in the hearth and a tray of steaming tea and biscuits on the counter. Bathsheda sent a quiet Thank you to the house elves and settled into her teaching skin.
Her schedule held the intermediate runes classes, the OWL students who were taking her course for the third year in a row, before the new beginner third years. She nearly smiled to herself as she felt her eyes sliding over a now familiar face, wondering how the girl planned on doing her OWLs if she insisted on not being seen. Her brows jumped up a little later, back in her rooms, as she read over the girl’s test.
Someone spent their entire summer on runes. And probably in some less respectable areas of Diagon – I’ll eat that racing broom after all if this information doesn’t come from a hag.
She was more than aware of her craft’s limitation due to the British Ministry’s rules for not accepting sources from non-human magic users in research. Things were a lot less tightly controlled on the continent, let alone in other places – there was a reason her own work would never hold a candle to that of African or Scandinavian scholars.
She put the test down when she noticed the time – she’d have to get ready for her new beginner’s class if she didn’t want to run late. As tempting as it was, with one wife’s head in her lap and another one’s hands carding through her hair, she did not accept tardiness from her students and as such would not tolerate it from herself.
As Bathsheda swept into her classroom, she cast a quick glance over the gaggle of children that thought they wanted to take Ancient Runes. Fortunately for her, she’d nearly reached her desk by the time her eyes landed on the left hand corner in the back, because this way she could surreptuously catch herself on said desk as she stumbled, thus avoiding a face plant to the floor.
Morgana’s fucking tits.
There, in the corner, under her usual impressive and incredibly irritating magic, sat the little Slytherin girl whose test she’d just been going through. The girl she had last seen in her OWL classes, for Merlin’s sake!!
Bathsheda shook her head and took a deep breath, pulling up her occlumency shields. She straightened her back, clasped her hands behind her back and began her usual opening spiel. “Welcome to Ancient Runes. This class will teach you to recognize and interpret ancient runes, as well as teach you to read basic messages inscribed centuries ago. There will be no practical application of runic knowledge, but…”
After handing out the entry tests, she sat down behind her back and pulled out some essays which she would usually grade while observing her new students. This time, however, her attention was firmly occupied by a different document: her list of third year students electing Ancient Runes. She read through it several times, matching names to students the best she could, and debated if she should just call out everyone’s names.
Considering that Miss Slytherin has been in my classes for three years running now, it’s likely to tip her off. And I’ll get her name anyway, now that I have the list.
Unless she wasn’t on the list, like she hadn’t been two years ago. But the number of names matched the number of students in front of her.
So Bathsheda bade her time. She mentally crossed out every name that a student introduced themselves with to her, paying special attention to the girls. There was a slightly higher number of girls this year, which usually was only the case once she’d weeded out the first few classes. Then again, there seemed to be exceptionally few students present who needed weeding out – nearly everyone seemed determined to do their best and listened attentively. What was rather peculiar, was that only two students, both next to each other at one table, seemed to be taking notes. They regularly looked at their neighbour’s notes, silently comparing.
Curious.
By the end of the second week, she’d narrowed it down to two possible names, and finally one of them was eliminated.
Althea Ayela.
The little snake finally had a name.
And, funnily enough, had also held back immensely on her test. Her score was, in fact, significantly worse than it had been two years ago, when she’d done it the first time.
Seems like she’s very used to blending in with the mass of students. I wonder if any of her other teachers have noticed?
Bathsheda knew she probably wouldn’t have, if the girl hadn’t been attending her classes for some time already as well as handing in a consistent stream of truly exceptional essays and assignments. In fact, this new test was perfectly ordinary in terms of scope and score, and wouldn’t have made her look twice.
Truly exceptional.
And yet, it finally gave her the excuse she needed to pull Miss Slytherin aside.
“Miss Ayela”, she called out, eyes on the parchments she was sifting through as her students left the room. “If you could kindly spare a moment?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the girl freeze like a deer in headlights.
Gotcha.
She silently lamented the devious influence that her wife’s insidious slang had had on her own mental voice before turning to more pressing matters. Althea Ayela quietly padded up to her desk, fingers clenched around the straps of her bag. “Professor?”
Bathsheda put her entry test down in front of her. “Do you remember what I told you in your first lesson on Ancient Runes? About goofing around and not taking the topic serious?”
She didn’t exactly like doing this, especially not to a child of a mere thirteen years. Then again, said child had had the gall to sit in on her Ancient Runes classes since she’d been bloody eleven years old, a first year instead of the, admittedly not much better, second year she’d assumed.
She’ll live.
Ayela’s eyes flickered to the test, nervous. “Yes, Professor.”
Bathsheda raised an eyebrow, feeling an odd mixture of guilt and triumph at the sight.
I should not feel so proud for besting a teenager. Not even if said teenager has, inadvertly, led me on a merry chase for two entire years.
“According to this test, you’ve decided not to take them serious. Do you have another class right now?”
The girl stilled. “May I ask why, Professor?”
Bathsheda pulled out a clean test. “My rules are there for a reason. If you wish to study ancient runes, I expect you to give it your all. If you do not, feel free to leave. But if you want to return to this class next week, you will repeat this test and work through it with everything you have, instead of scraping by with what you correctly assumed was an average score for a beginners’ class.”
The girl stared. “I… apologies, Professor. Why would you assume…?”
Because I’ve seen you do this test at age eleven, and have read your theories that by now put the majority of my NEWT students to shame.
Bathsheda raised her brow even higher and held out the test.
Ayela hesitantly took the test and sat down at one of the desks.
Bathsheda took an educated guess on what went through the girl’s head. She’d spent the last week rapidly re-evaluating everything she knew about the child, as well as learning more about Miss Althea Ayela, a half-blood Slytherin student with perfectly average grades that went overlooked by most of Hogwarts’ population but was held in high regard by Filch and was, apparently, involved with all the different interhouse study groups.
“If you’re trying to calculate how much better you need to do, stop. I don’t want you to do better, I want you to do your best.”
Bathsheda put her head in her hands and studied the girl. “I’m not a Slytherin, but I’ve worked with many of them and hold several as very dear friends. I do not care for your reasons to remain unnoticed and overlooked”, only half a lie, she did care, but mostly because she was as nosy and curious as any good researcher, “and I am willing to keep quiet about your excellence in Ancient Runes. If you have to, I won’t stop you from getting perfectly average marks on your exams.”
At least not until her OWLS. Possibly her NEWTS, if she promises to stay on for those.
“But in your regular assignments, the ones nobody except me gets to see, I want you to do your best and only your best. Otherwise I’ll assume that you’re only taking this class to get out of working hard, and I refuse to teach someone like that.”
There was a chance of the girl storming out and just continuing to come to the older years’ classes. But Bathsheda was willing to take that chance, because now that she had a name, she was happy to call the girl out in her intermediate classes as well.
Ayela looked down at her desk, visibly pondering. When she finally picked up a quill, Bathsheda nearly sighed in relief.
Thank goodness.
Then the girl spoke. “I’m not exceptional.”
Bathsheda barely bit back a snort. “If you say so. Please start your test, I have another class to teach after this.”
She didn’t. But she had to incredibly gorgeous and wonderful women meeting her for dinner at Hogsmeade, and she did not want to make them wait.
Ayela started her test.