The Friar's Tale
Sunlight filtered into the room and Ava, caught in that liminal space between sleep and waking, blurrily surmised that she must be at Beauxbatons. Soon she would go to her Prophecy class with Madame Meeuwissen, interpreting crystal balls, as they did, in the château's northernmost tower. She reached lazily for her bedside table, groping for a book; she longed to curl up in front of the fire in the Student Hall for a bit and bury herself in a tome before breakfast. But her hand met with nothing but air, like expecting a step and finding none, and the discomforting sensation pulled her swiftly into wakeful cognizance.
The bedside table was on the other side at Hogwarts, and, turning over to access it, she realised that the sunlight was not truly sunlight, but illuminated the dormitory through the greenish, muted filter of the lake. Gentle chatter came from the bed next to hers. A girl who had last night introduced herself as Pansy was her dormitory partner, and she and Daphne were sitting together on the bed and conversing in low voices. Daphne wore a dressing gown and was carefully unpinning her ethereal blonde hair, and Pansy sported a jumper over her satiny nightdress. They had spread out an array of photos on Pansy's bed, comparing them and giggling softly, and Ava took the opportunity to indulge in a little bit of people-watching before they registered that she was awake. Pansy wore her dark hair short, and Ava thought that her angular, stormy countenance contrasted strikingly with Daphne's prototypically feminine visage. Daphne bore all the tell-tale signs of a well-brought-up pureblood progeny, seeming to do everything with a kind of careful, aristocratic grace, yet when she was lost in thought, she had a habit of slipping into an expression that was decidedly cavalier. Despite their diametric appearances, she could see that they were fast friends.
"Ava!" Pansy raised an eyebrow from across the room. "Sleep well?"
"Yes, thank you – and you two?"
"It's not the Parkinson Manor," Pansy said dismissively, but a moment later, her face split into a playful grin. "It's always good to be back."
Now that they were both awake, she flicked her wand in the direction of the curtains, and they sprang all the way open to allow the sun-filled lake to fully illuminate the room.
"Pansy's showing me photos from her summer in Lisbon," said Daphne. "Want to see?"
Abandoning any thoughts of reading that morning, she pushed the covers off herself and joined them gratefully on Pansy's bed. Daphne produced an assortment of chocolate frogs and sugar quills that came seemingly from nowhere, and they charitably let Ava gossip and laugh and trade cards with them as though they had known her for years and not hours. Despite everything, she felt much better than last night, and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth at their solicitation of her friendship.
Soon, the temptation of real food became inescapable, and Daphne, Pansy, and Ava trooped together to the Great Hall, Ava in her mother's old tie and a fresh set of robes that had mysteriously ironed themselves overnight. None of them knowing what class they would have first, they resolved to bring all their textbooks, Pansy having bribed the more magically capable Rosier (whose first name, Ava realised, she still did not know) to bestow upon the three of them a Bag-Lightening Charm. Breakfast offered just as many options as the Feast had the night before, and Ava reached first for a boiled egg and toast soldiers, realising with delight that she had not had this very British meal since she was young and living in London. Pouring herself a mug of Earl Grey, she resolved that she could even tolerate the disappointing lack of pains au chocolat.
"Sorting Hat's branched out a bit this year, hasn't it?" Ava looked up to see Nott take the seat opposite her and smiled in greeting, which he didn't return. "How about all that sword stuff? Normally it sticks to explaining the houses, but it must've run out of things to say about them." His mouth was now full of kipper.
"Never fails to remind us of how cunning we are," Zabini put in darkly, taking a seat too. "Never forgets to tell everyone else what gits we are…"
"It indulged in a bit of Gryffindor-slagging this year too, though, I reckon." Nott leaned back and drummed his fingers on the table lazily. "'The bravery of Gryffindor did lead his hand astray', and all the rest. I knew they had a row, but I never realised it was with a bloody great sword."
"Only Gryffindor the Git had a sword," Pansy reminded him sourly. "Probably knew he was no match for Slytherin's wand work."
There was a ripple of assent and Ava hastened to nod as well, thinking privately that Slytherin's reputation as an accomplished sorcerer probably had more to do with Slytherin's aptitude for Dark magic, and perhaps the knowledge bestowed on him during his brief fling with Rowena Ravenclaw in 988 AD, as per Hogwarts: A History.
"You're right, Pan," Rosier said. "Those sort of Muggle duelling tactics are uncouth. Probably for the best the blasted sword went missing afterwards-"
"T'is a tale well know to Muggles," said a solemn voice behind Ava, and she turned around in surprise, only to experience the decidedly unpleasant sensation of plunging into icy water. The ghost, who was dressed in the likeness of a friar, looked affronted.
"Not you," Nott groaned at the ghost.
"Sorry," Ava said. "But to Muggles? How on Earth do you know?"
"It was I who penned the Annales Cambriae, child," the corpulent phantom replied, looking down on her augustly. "Therein I told of the Battle of Badon, where the Britons claimed their victory-"
"Yes, alright," she said impatiently. "How does the sword come into it, though?"
"Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England." He shook his head, somehow managing to look even more forlorn. "The sword won many a noble battle for the Britons, and should have been thrown into the enchanted lake in the king's final years. Such was his command."
Despite themselves, Ava's classmates had stopped what they were doing to listen in. "But it didn't?" said Nott in a hushed voice.
The friar let out a long, low sigh. "The jealous Giflet was tasked with throwing the sword into the lake, but his greed stayed his hand. He stole it away, whence it was stolen too by his spiteful brother, never to return to its rightful king."
Understanding dawned on her. "His brother's not…"
"Godric," the friar said, nodding profusely. "A more reckless warlock I never knew. Muggle lore tells that the sword was thrown into the lake, grasped from its depth by the enchanted hand of its Lady. Such is the sorry tale of Excalibur."
"Wait," Ava said suddenly. "The king you spoke of – do you mean King Arthur?"
The friar only bowed his head and, disconsolate and quaverying, gathered his robes and flew through the seated Slytherins towards the Hufflepuff table, letting out a low wail as he did so and leaving them to ponder his recount among themselves. Glancing around, though, she realised that the Arthurian connection inspired no recognition in her fellow witches and wizards, none of them having grown up listening to Muggle folk tales.
"I don't know why you're all so surprised," Daphne said after a beat. "Binns has talked about this loads of times in History of Magic."
They all turned their silent attention to her, incredulity painted on everyone's face. "What?" she said.
"You couldn't pay me twenty galleons to stay awake during History." Nott finally said aloud what everyone seemed to be thinking. "Thank Merlin I could finally drop it this year. None of you wankers signed up for it as an elective, did you?" He eyed them accusatorily.
"I did," Ava admitted, and Nott grimaced. "I'll keep you updated on any Excalibur developments."
True to his word, Snape soon appeared to prowl up and down the Slytherin table handing out timetables like a foreboding, overgrown bat. Though they still found it hard to look at each other without sharing memories of that August, Ava found that in the light of the day, he seemed less the malevolent Dark wizard of last night and more a sullen, austere professor. "Brilliant, look at this Monday schedule," Nott lamented, running a pale, lanky hand through his hair. Though Ava had not known him long, she mused already that he loved to complain. "Runes, Defence, Care of Magical Creatures – then Divination, and look at this: double Potions!" He groaned, looking across at Pansy in outrage, as though she had personally designed the timetable. "Snape's just what you need at the end of a long day…"
"Snape's not teaching Potions anymore, Slughorn is," Pansy reminded him coolly, scanning her own timetable. "Don't tell me you're still doing Divination with that old hag, Theo?"
"Easy NEWT," he shrugged.
Ava inspected her own timetable, finding that it was not dissimilar to Nott's. Where he had Care of Magical Creatures she had Astronomy, and she knew that most of her classmates had elected not to drudge through another year of History with her. Next to her, Pansy had begun to colour-code her classes, tapping her wand along the parchment and muttering the incantation.
Ava hastened to follow her lead, but no sooner had she drawn her wand and tapped on her own timetable that spiky cursive letters began to appear before her eyes.
My office Tuesday 6.30pm
SS
The letters disappeared as quickly as they had formed, almost quickly enough for Ava to pretend, for a blissful minute, that she hadn't seen them. Would that her timetable contained nothing more sinister than double Potions, as Nott's did. She sighed resolutely, making a mental note of the time and place, and returned to her toast.
There was a flurry of movement as her classmates turned to greet a friend who Ava had barely noticed arrive, but with a jolt, she realised the newcomer's eyes were on her and she looked up. The blond boy, she thought for the second time in the last two days, had the kind of brooding, quiet demeanour that made for an excellent wallflower, and she wondered how many times he had been at the meetings, unnoticed and watching from the sidelines. He looked her up and down, pale and pointed. He was clearly the Malfoys' son, but she realised she couldn't recall his name. Ought she to pretend they'd never met? Would it give away too much to greet him as an acquaintance? She could hardly explain to the others how they knew each other.
Luckily, the boy made the decision for her, and extended a pale hand.
"Draco Malfoy," he said. "I believe your father knows mine. Did some work for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures in the eighties, didn't he? I'm sure I've met you before."
He looked paler and leaner than she had ever see him, and dark rings circled his silvery eyes. Whenever she had seen him before, he had always worn a snide expression, like he was constantly on the brink of emitting some sardonic quip. He had just seemed so much more present – there was no other way to describe it. Did he seem effete than usual, or was she imagining things?
"Something like that," she replied, and they shared a meaningful look. "I've seen you around too, but we haven't been properly introduced."
"Indeed. I'll see you in class, Duclair." He offered his arm to Daphne, looking at the small blonde girl with what might have been affection. "Come on, Daph. I think we have Arithmancy together."
They walked off arm in arm, and Ava's eyes followed them all the way to the massive double doors that led to the Entrance Hall.
Runes passed quickly, with Professor Babbling prescribing the entire first chapter of their textbook as mandatory reading. Ava, whose command on English was native but who was nevertheless used to reading about magical theory in French, struggled through the new and unfamiliar lexicon in Chapter 1: Runic Semiotics with the aid of a dictionary. Pansy, who was also in Runes, escorted her through the maze of staircases in the tower adjacent to the Great Hall, through winding corridors and courtyards, and across a suspension bridge to their Defence classroom, where Snape presided over the arriving students like a malevolent hawk.
Non-verbal magic was first on the curriculum, and Ava inwardly groaned; she had broached this topic once or twice in her previous studies and had no illusions about its difficulty. The textbook was equally as dense as Adventures in Ancient Runes was, and she mentally groaned under the weight of all the homework she would have that night.
"Incantations," Snape told them, "are merely a convenient shortcut to the accession of a desired spell within the magical dimension. Non-verbal spells require that your mind, and not your words, enters into the ephemeral realm. The clarity of consciousness required to pass into the medial space between the somatic world and the arena of the metaphysical is substantial, so anyone who is not prepared to test his or her psychical limits in my class may take their leave." He looked around, as if daring them to stand up and walk out, but Ava guessed that her classmates were unlikely to have understood enough of what Snape was saying to take any action on it. She was still trying to unravel his meaning herself. "Pair up; wands out."
Having had no success with non-verbal spells by the end of the class, the Slytherins were instructed to plod through thirty pages of their textbook before their next class on Wednesday. Ava was glad for their break at 10.30, and happily traipsed into the courtyard with Pansy, Daphne, Zabini, and Nott.
The group of four seemed to have taken her in as one of their members, and, pushing aside questions about how much her parentage had to do with it, she was grateful that they'd warmed to her so quickly. She wondered if she should find it odd that they'd let her into their group so fast, but she supposed schoolyard friendships were like that – quickly broken and quickly made. Elsewhere, Crabbe, Goyle, Davis, and other Slytherins Ava didn't yet know also formed a band and sat talking nearby. It didn't escape her notice that Malfoy had skulked away in the after-class melee, presumably to go brood some more or do whatever morose teenage boys did.
Talk turned once again to their summers. "Peony and I visited Grandmother in Portugal," Pansy said, looking around as if hoping for a chance to pass around her photos again. "It was hot as anything cooped up in that dusty old mansion."
"Again?" Zabini frowned. "That's the third year now they've sent you abroad."
"Mother sent me and Astoria to Copenhagen again too," said Daphne. "I was glad to see you at the ball in Neuchâtel, Pan; I was bored stiff. I can't tell you how many hours I spent in the library."
"Careful," Nott said. "You might turn into the Mudblood. Agh, I can see your teeth growing already!"
"You lanky prat," Zabini said, but shared the laugh. Ava's mood had fallen, however, and she let the others chatter on while she became lost once again in her thoughts, all tinged with an acute discomfort. Truthfully, though she tried not to show it, the expletive had shocked her. She had heard the adults around her say Mudblood all her life, of course. But she had always conceived of Muggle hatred as something available only to grown-ups, much like things such as drugs and sex and alcohol were. It had always been there, but off-limits in a kind of distant way. Achille and Palamida always left their political leanings at work, and had never even entertained the thought of imparting their own ideology onto their daughters. Now that she thought of it, they had never so much as asked for her opinion on these matters. Perhaps that was why they'd been so distressed during those terrible events of her fourteenth year, when… No, the memories were too troubling to think about.
Even when they'd started bringing her along to the Death Eater meetings, it hadn't felt like it had anything to do with ethics. This was just what their family did, given their ancestors' long legacy of Dark allegiance, and it wasn't optional, so better for all of them to put their heads down and get on with it, no matter what the Dark Lord required nor what racial tenets came with it. After all, Voldemort's utopian vision of post-war society was a far-away but profoundly important goal.
No, she'd certainly never been encouraged towards any anti-Muggle sentiments, and she had always thought of them as something separate enough from herself to not really think about. Even at Beauxbatons, in the nation whose occupants loved to talk politics over dinner, such issues as had been discussed always had more to do with debating Ministry policies than racial ideology.
This was perhaps why the word Mudblood had had such a shocking effect on her in that moment. Of course she had heard it before. It was everywhere; in murmurs, in jokes… But coming from the mouth of a child, it sounded nothing short of indecent.
"Ava, are you alright?"
She wasn't sure who had spoken; her head was buzzing with thoughts that she tried desperately to organise. In her mind's eye, the murky world of Dark wizards was starting to become irreparably tangled with her school life, and it was an unwelcome new feeling.
"Yes, I just have a lot on my mind." She had just spotted the aforesaid Hermione, who was sitting with Ron across the courtyard. "I'll be back in a sec; there's someone I have to go see."
"Are you sure?"
"Third period's about to start."
"Will you be able to find your way to class?"
"I'll be fine," she said absently, too distracted to really appreciate their concern. The bell had just chimed, sweet and low, and everyone began to move towards the castle. "See you later in Charms."
They didn't press further, and Ava was glad when they, too, made to head towards their various electives so she could safely intercept Ron and Hermione without their supervision. "Hullo!"
"Ava!" Ron whirled around in surprise. "Gave me a bloody fright, you did."
"Sorry," she grinned. "I just wanted to say hi and see how you two were."
"Quite well, thank you," Hermione said, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. "How are you finding Slytherin?"
"Yeah, how've you managed to put up with the Prat Syndicate for more than three seconds?"
"Honestly, Ron, give her a break-"
"No, I'm dead serious. Whatever the secret is, tell us, because I've been trying to figure it out for years-"
"Leave off, Ronald-"
"Personally, you couldn't pay me to put up with their smug faces for more than-"
"They're not that bad, honestly," Ava interjected, and they both looked at her with a mix of incredulity and defeat. "When they're in their own common room and not trying to show off, I guess they're less…"
"Insipid?" Hermione offered.
"Yeah," she said. "Something like that."
"Well, I'm glad you've made friends, at any rate," said Hermione. Was Ava imagining things, or was there something cold about her tone? "Harry!"
She had called to someone over Ava's shoulder, and was beaming at him; Ava whirled around to look too and her heart hammered violently against her chest. The same feeling that she'd had so many times over these two days came over her once more; the feeling of being so prepared that she'd imagined this scene countless times that, during the real thing, she wasn't prepared at all.
She'd sat through so many conversations about the boy, as the Death Eaters plotted his downfall. Snape's chilly voice snaked its way into her head. Vapid, pestiferous boy… he's every bit as arrogant as his father. They'd all joked about being the one to take the Potter boy's life; thoughts which, she found, were so much easier to entertain when the boy she was picturing was as iniquitous as Snape described him. She had expected everything but the smiling, friendly-faced boy running towards them now, hair a mess and glasses askew, and as he skidded to a halt and turned to her with a mix of amicability and wonder, her heart sunk. There was no way she could possibly carry out her mission, requiring her as it did to wage war on him.
"You were sorted into Slytherin last night, yeah?"
"Honestly, Harry, how come that's the first thing you mention? Even a hello, I'm Harry would do." Hermione made to swot him around the head, and he ducked, affronted.
"Well, the green tie's a bit hard to miss," Harry mumbled.
"Might as well carry a big sign saying I am a dolt."
"They're not all dolts," Hermione said, but she didn't sound convinced. "What's your next class, Ava?"
"Astronomy," she said.
"Damn it, ours is Potions in the dungeons. If it wasn't so far away I'd walk you there, but I think we're going to be late as it is. Wait, I'll…" She shuffled through her bag and withdrew a quill and a scroll of parchment, and hastily began making neat shapes. Ava realised she was drawing a map.
"After you get onto the seventh floor, keep walking through this passageway until you get to the painting of Ælfweard of Wessex."
"You'll know him by the ugly great stab wound near his-"
"Oh, shut up," she snapped at Ron and Harry, who were suppressing smirks. "After that, it's up a flight of stairs – you can't miss it."
They parted ways, Ava calling out "Pleasure to meet you, Harry!" in a last-ditch attempt to save the Slytherin reputation, and trying not to laugh at his expression of utter surprise. She hurried up staircase after staircase, finally stopping at the seventh floor. Ælfweard's stab wound was indeed in an unfortunate place, and she grimaced as she passed him.
It turned out you could miss the Astronomy Tower. Hermione had neglected to advise her on which of the two possible staircases led to her classroom, and she deliberated between them for a moment, panic gripping her, before she resolved to try the one on her right. She arrived on a sun-filled landing that offered a choice of three corridors, and frantically looked between them as if the right classroom was suddenly going to reveal itself to her.
Defeated, she slumped onto a window seat, barely able to appreciate the wonderful view it offered. Tears pricked at her eyes. It was only her first day, and already she was hopelessly lost. Perhaps she ought to return to the Slytherin common room and ask a prefect – but it was so far away; it would probably take her twenty minutes to get to the dungeons and find the entrance. There was no one she could turn to, no one she could ask-
A smooth, clear voice startled her, seeming to come from nowhere, and her textbooks slipped from her pale, shaking hands onto the stone floor, where they caused an echoey thud.
"Lost, daughter of Palamida?"