There's a bit of murmuring about how long she spent under the hat but she weathers it.  Eventually everyone lines up in the Great Hall, and McGonagall and the hat progress through all the surnames very ceremonially until -

"Clover Evans-Potter."

"Slytherin!"

Well that was a big waste of time.

She takes her seat.

Evening proceeds, through sorting and dinner.  Dumbledore introduces himself as headmaster, and welcomes everybody to Hogwarts, and introduces the heads of houses (Gryffindor has McGonagall, Ravenclaw has Lupin, Hufflepuff has Morgan, Slytherin has Whitlock) and some of the faculty (Healer Pomfrey, Caretaker Filch, Groundskeeper Hagrid, Wardwizard Snape).  Then it's off to bed.

She emits appropriate pleasantries at her dormmates as they introduce themselves that evening.  Draco Malfoy is a little starstruck by her - perhaps Lucius is just as effusive about his family's debt to hers at home as he was when they met in Diagon Alley.  Pansy Parkinson, already with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle hanging off her, feels her out for sycophancy; Clover keeps an earnest smile on while she stonewalls her.  She keeps one eye on Parkinson as she probes Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis for potential minionhood too.  Greengrass sounds like she thinks of herself as all grown up and above schoolyard squabbles, now she has a wand; but Davis might just fall in with Parkinson.  Not yet, though.

Nobody likes Millicent Bulstrode.  Theodore Nott is friendly to everyone, and Clover's pretty sure he's doing it on purpose.  Blaise Zabini avoids everybody else.

Clover's pretty sure she can collect Bulstrode, and maybe also Zabini.  Davis wouldn't be an easy mark but she likes the idea of Parkinson floundering for minions; Clover's pretty sure she's not satisfied with Crabbe and Goyle, and she's on the lookout for girls in particular.  Malfoy would probably be a good relationship to cultivate.  Everyone else she could take or leave.

This is good, she thinks to herself as she lies in bed under the covers.  These are Maledict Gaunt thoughts.

Sleep.

Morning.  Breakfast.  And then her first class at Hogwarts: Defense Against the Dark Arts, with Professor Taggart Morgan, Head of Hufflepuff House.

Once everyone's seated he claps his hands twice.  Murmuring ceases.

"Welcome to defense," he says, not yelling but very much projecting his voice.  "I'm Professor Morgan.  I'm going to teach you to defend yourselves against dark creatures, dark wizards, people and things that want to hurt you.  That mans I'll be teaching you to run, and I'll be teaching you to fight.  If you're very very lucky, you'll never get a chance to use any of these skills, but the magical world is a dangerous place.  Lots of you will run into somebody or something dangerous at least once in your lives."

Hm.

Already, she's getting - an impression, of some sort - from this teacher.  Not one she can easily put into words.  But it's not something she expected of a schoolteacher, and it's not something she expected of a Hufflepuff.

"It's very rare that you get into a fight that you need to win.  Unless you fight in a war, it probably won't happen to you.  In almost every fight you ever have, your goal isn't to defeat your enemy, it's to get out.  But part of learning defense is learning to do violence.  I'll be teaching you violent and dangerous magic in this class.  I want you to be able to use that magic to defend yourself.  What I don't want is for you to use it to pick fights in the hallways.  There are plenty of harmless prank jinxes for kids to harass each other with.  But if you go around misusing the spells I teach you, it becomes less safe for me to teach you to defend yourself, and then you become less safe if you ever run into something scary."

(The bright, studious, serious girl who Clover is wearing as a face is taking this speech very seriously indeed.)

The speech doesn't actually go much longer!  In fact he's going to teach them their first dueling spell today.  On the blackboard, he writes "oppilo" and below that draws a shape a bit like a backwards letter α.

"Oppilo," he says, and bids the class repeat back to him.  The emphasis is on the second syllable.  "Sharp stroke down to the right, sharp stroke down to the left, nice loose swoosh connecting them.  Imagine you're drawing a fish in the air with your wand, like this one."  He taps the backwards alpha with the butt of his wand, indicatively.

Oppilo, he explains, is a simple "ballistic shield" spell, easily broken or bypassed by many serious hexes but especially good at stopping thrown objects.  He enlists everybody's help moving the desks out of the way, then lines everyone up so they've got space in front of them.

Clover moves her wand through the air, slowly, contemplatively, in the shape of a fish - then does a stroke, and a swoop, and a stroke, mechanically - then does the gesture smoothly all together once or twice - then, "oppilo," not a shout but a firm command.

A circle fizzles and sparks into the air in front of her, fills in with a pale gray translucent disk.  Points of light glimmer and glint in circles around the edge of the disk.

She's pleased with herself, and remembers to look it.

Her shield only stays in existence for a second, but Professor Morgan gives her an approving nod.  "Nicely done, Clover."  He turns his attention back to the others smart quick, though, spending more time with the kids having trouble than the ones who've clearly got a handle on it.

Brightly and studiously, she tries a few more times.  Tries to hold the spell steady, keep the shield in the air in front of her for more than a second - there is a detectable difference between being-sustaining and not-being-sustaining a spell, a subtle one, she can't describe it in terms of other experiences but she can focus on it, and sort of not lose it if she focuses properly - 

Professor Morgan does the two-claps again; shields fizzle out across the classroom.  "Nice work, everyone," he says.  "Point to Clover of Slytherin for being the first to get it; point to Hermione of Gryffindor for giving good casting advice to two other students."

(She turns a brief and perfunctory childsface towards Hermione of Gryffindor.)

"Next we'll see how it feels to really use a shield spell."  He turns away from the students, toward an open closet door at the back of the classroom, and whistles with his fingers.

A procession of multicolored beanbags, looking very like the muggle sort except for floating through the air under their own power, emerges from the closet.  They huddle up in an amorphous cloud next to him.

"Each of you will pair up with a beanbag.  It'll wait for you to cast a shield, then throw itself at it.  If the shield's good, it'll bounce off.  If it's okay, it'll break the shield but be slowed down.  If it's no good, it'll go right through it and hit you."

"They don't hurt to get hit by - go on, show 'em," he adds to the cloud of beanbags, and one shoots out to slap him in the face and fall to the ground.  There's a titter from the class.  "They'll hit harder if you tell them to, but never hard enough to do more than sting a little.  Everyone come on up and pick your favorite color."

She nabs a red one.

She casts the shield again, feeling that antsy state of not being able to tell what it is she's keeping still but trying very hard to keep it still anyway, and it's steady.

The beanbag thwaps itself at it.  There's a sparking, zapping sound, and the glimmery lights around the border of the shield flare in brightness, and there's some other sensation, a jolt at the part of her body or mind or whatever that corresponds to keeping the shield up; but it holds, and the bag bounces off it.

She lets go of the shield, rests her focus for a moment, casts another.

Bag hits, and this time she knows it's coming and braces for it, and the lights stay much steadier and the zapping noise isn't there at all, and the bag bounces off again.  Somehow the second time it looks a lot less like it's bouncing off a magical screen of energy and more like it's bouncing off a plain ordinary wall, which she's going to guess is a good sign.

"Harder," she says to the beanbag, and this time the noise is louder, the lights around the edge sparking and jittering with the impact.  "Harder" again, and the bag moves less like it's been gently tossed and more like it's been thrown, and there's a pop of electricity as the shield vanishes, the little glimmering lights skittering away into the air like dots in a bright blue sky, and the bag tumbles sadly through the air and lands on the ground, maybe six inches past where her shield had been.

"Don't take it up so fast," Morgan says to her.  "Stick with one level until you can keep the shield nice and steady when it hits."

Mrgh.  Okay childsface on bright studious nod.  She swirls her wand again to bring up a new shield.

To the beanbag: "Down a notch, go for it."

Thwap.  Shield breaks again.

Well that's not fair.

"Try casting it again.  Two strokes, remember, don't try to make it all one loop."