She is four years old when she remembers what a child is.  She knows she could lie, once, that she could put on faces like masks and identities like veils, and play her interlocutors like instruments, make them love her even as behind her veils and masks she hated them, and it was beautiful and vindicating, though what exactly she was vindicated of she does not remember yet.  So she stands in front of the bathroom mirror and practices an innocent smile, and points it at her mother, and her mother coos, and she relaxes, inside herself; she is beginning to rebuild what she was.

She is five years old when another child, a real child, pushes her to the ground and calls her things she does not understand; and she is angry and afraid, and she remembers what to do with anger and fear, and she springs to her feet and she knows her legs are too weak like this to sweep under her foe's so she drives her fist hard into the child's solar plexus instead, and the child doubles over, and they are pulled apart before she can escalate further.

Her mother is called to the school.  Clover tells her what happened, wearing the most piteous face she can conjure, doing her best to make her voice catch as though she wants to cry.  Her mother nods along firmly and pets her shoulders, and accompanies her to the principal's office.

There is a meeting there, comprising her and the girl she punched and their respective parents and the principal.  She is informed gravely that violence is unacceptable, that this school has a zero-tolerance policy for fighting, that she is going to have to learn better and more mature ways of solving her problems.

It is keenly familiar, and vile, and hateful.  Her past life had once contained people who made her feel like this.

She knows what to do with anger and fear, but she has no weapons in this place.

But then her mother speaks.

She speaks stridently, at great length, to the principal, to the other girl's parents.  She has heard all the rumors, she says, about the things the other girl says and does, and how her parents look the other way.  The principal informs her that all of the witnesses agree that Clover was unprovoked, and that Clover is a skillful and habitual liar.  Her mother says that all of the witnesses were the other girl's friends, that she can read between the lines, that she knows exactly how these things go.  The principle tells her that that "is enough," which doesn't mean anything, and sentences Clover to detention and lets the other girl off scot-free.

Her mother tells the principal that she is altogether more disappointed in him than in her daughter, and that she will seriously consider withdrawing her to be homeschooled.

Clover is quiet.

Later, as her mother drives her home from detention, she apologizes to Clover that she couldn't do more, and says that she was serious about homeschooling Clover if Clover wants, but that she can have as long as she wants to decide.

Clover says, "I will think about it," in the eerily level tone her voice naturally falls into when she is not trying to lie to anyone, and her mother tells her that's fine.

Then her mother says this:

"Now, I'm not accusing you of anything.  But, hypothetically, if in the future something else like this happens, and you want to tell me about it, you don't need to worry that I won't believe you because you don't sound upset in the right way, okay?"

She feels -

Something.  Unfamiliar.

She does not remember this from her past life.  She doesn't know what to do with it.

She's not sure if it's the adult who she remembers being, who wants to speak up now, or the child that that adult is trapped inside, or somehow both, or whether there's even really a difference, but she says - 

"I don't like it when you think I'm cute."

"All right," her mother says.  "I can... try to keep it to myself, if you'd like."

"Thank you," she says, because it's what you're supposed to say, but also for another reason she can't quite pin down.

She is six years old when she asks why she and her mother both talk differently than everyone else.

"Well," she says.  "It's a bit of a story.  You remember that technically I'm your aunt, right?"

Nod.  She remembers a conversation about this when she was younger, in which her mother assured her that even though Clover might not be her biological daughter, she loved her just as though she were, and she'd do her best to always treat her as her own child.  It struck her as the sort of thing she wouldn't have had to deal with in her past life, but she nodded along patiently enough.

"My sister is your biological mother.  Her name was Lily.  She was killed when you were very young."

Nod.

"We grew up across the Atlantic Ocean, in Britain.  When she was a little older than you, she got involved with - some people who would eventually put her in danger.  Not bad people, I don't think, but - people with bad enemies.  We grew up apart from each other.  I..." she sighs.  "I was jealous of her, and I was cruel to her because of it."

"Once we grew up I started dating a man named Vernon Dursley.  I liked him because - my sister was unusual, which was part of what had drawn her to the people she was tied up with, and Vernon Dursley hated unusual people, and it felt better to hate my sister than to be jealous of her.  That's not something I'm proud of, and not a very good way to handle being jealous of someone."

"But Vernon Dursley turned out to be a very unpleasant person.  He hit me, more than once, and did other things to try to make me afraid of him, and I didn't want to be with a person who made me afraid of him.  But all of our friends were his friends, which means that they all sided with him when I left him.  I had no options left to me except trying to reconcile with my sister."

"I did.  It was hard, and unpleasant, but it was worth it.  I was happier with her as my friend than with Vernon as my boyfriend.  I felt safer sharing my emotions with her, and dealing with upsetting things and problems in my life, and the reason that felt so safe was because we were trying so hard to do right by each other."

Another nod, even though she doesn't really understand this in the way that her past-life memories sometimes let her understand things.

"Unfortunately, even though me and my sister were reconciled, that didn't mean everything was better.  My sister still had enemies.  And shortly after we reconciled, she got into some trouble with them.  By then she was pregnant with you, and she knew that you were in danger from her enemies just like she was.  But I wasn't involved with any of these people, except that I was friends with my sister, and her enemies didn't know about me and wouldn't have paid any attention to me if they did.  She asked me if I would take you in if she couldn't keep you safe, and I said yes."

Nod.

"And eventually, on your first birthday, one of your mother's enemies came to her house.  There was a fight.  At the end of it, the woman who'd broken into the house - I never knew her name - was dead, and your mother was very badly injured.  She was able to get you to me, but she died on the way to the hospital."

...That's an odd order for those events to have happened in!  She just nods, though.

"Before that night, she'd told me that I had two choices, if I had to take you in, two possible ways I could keep you safe.  I could go into hiding, with my mother's friends, or I could leave the country."

"And you didn't want to go into hiding."

"No."  She sighs.  "I didn't want enemies.  I - didn't want any part of that world.  And I felt like... nothing really good had ever happened to me in Britain, except maybe a few things from when I was very young.  I wanted to start over somewhere new."

...She thinks that she felt like that, once, in her past life, as well.  She is not really sure what to do with this weird sensation of having had the same big complicated emotion as someone else, though.

"I think I understand."

Hug.

She tolerates hug.  It even seems like an okay thing to do about this big weird emotion, at least for a short moment.

Dehug.  "But to answer your original question," she says with a smile, "the reason you and I sound different from people in America is because we have British accents.  British people speak English the same as people in America, but Americans pronounce everything differently.  You might pick up a different accent, as you grow up, from listening to so many Americans talk, or you might not."

"Thank you."  She's gotten into the habit of saying this to her mother whenever it seems to make a vague kind of sense, as an easy vector for maintaining a usable relationship with her.  She stands up.  "I think I am done talking now."  She's gotten more comfortable speaking naturally around her mother, instead of modulating everything into a theatrical tone and padding out her sentences with phatic asides, ever since that day in the car a year or so ago.  She still prepends an "I think" to sentences like that one, though, because she thinks it makes her mother more comfortable, and it is useful to have your mother be comfortable with you.

"All right," she says.  "I think we had a good talk."

She nods in acknowledgment and departs for her room.

She is ten, coming up on eleven, when there is a knock at the door, and she puts on her childsface and answers it -

"Good day, young lady.  My name is Minerva McGonagall.  Is this the house of Petunia Evans and Clover Evans-Potter?"

Oh this is several kinds of interesting, because first of all this woman is very familiar to her somehow despite having never met her in her life, and second of all whoever it is very nearly perfectly concealed her startlement at something about Clover that she could glean just from looking at her face - and she has a very good childsface these days, she doesn't think most people see through it -

(And third of all thinking this flavor of thought, this quickly, feels so correct, like she's closer now to being the thing she once was than she has been in ten years - )

She does a little curtsy.  "Good day, Ms. McGonagall.  I'm Clover Evans-Potter, yes.  My mother Petunia is out running errands, she should be back shortly; but I don't think she'd appreciate me letting a stranger into the house on my own recognizance."  (Clover fancies she does a very good "precocious little girl who knows big words like recognizance.")

"That's quite reasonable.  Why don't I leave this letter with you - "

And she withdraws a thick parchment envelope from a sleeve of her robes.

" - and return in an hour, to meet your mother?"

"Thank you kindly."  She takes the letter and glances over it briefly.

Ms. McGonagall doffs her tall pointed hat to Clover, and departs with pleasantries.

Clover lets the smile fall from her face as the door swings shut, and opens the letter.

Dear Ms. Evans-Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.  Term begins 1 September.  A member of Hogwarts faculty will visit your home in order to assist you with beginning your transition into the magical world no later than 31 June.

Yours sincerely,

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall

Hm.

This should probably surprise her more than it does.

Next page.

UNIFORM

First year students will require:

(1.) Three sets of plain work robes, black, Sorting-compatible trim; (2.) One plain pointed hat, black, for day wear; (3.) One pair of protective gloves, dragon hide or similar; (4.) One winter cloak, black, with Sorting-compatible fastenings.

COURSE BOOKS

All students should have a copy of each of the following:

Introduction to Magical Theory and Practice, by Adalbert Waffling

Magical Europe: A History, by Bathilda Bagshot

A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, by Emeric Switch

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, by Miranda Goshawk

The Student's Compendium of Defensive Spells, by Quentin Trimble

Basic Potioneering and Other Witchcraft, by Phyllida Spore

Knowing One's Enemy: A Study of the Dark Arts as they are Practiced and Fought, edited by Quentin Trimble

OTHER EQUIPMENT

1 feather quill and plenty of ink; we recommend your child also bring their own supply of parchment

1 cauldron, pewter, standard size 2

1 set glass or crystal phials

1 set brass scales

1 telescope

1 wand

Students are permitted an owl, cat, toad, or other familiar (companion animal) of comparable size and demeanor.

First years are not permitted to fly their own broomsticks on the grounds of Hogwarts.

IT IS IN VIOLATION OF MINISTRY WAND USE REGULATIONS FOR ANY WIZARD UNDER THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN TO OWN MORE THAN ONE WAND.

She waits for her mother to return home with the groceries, and brings her up to speed; and her mother gets a very dark look on her face, and clams up.

Hm.

She's worried, now, that her mother is going to make herself her enemy on this - because she has every intention of transitioning into the magical world.

Minerva will return.

There will be a Conversation, to which Clover is Not Party.

She listens at the door, obviously.

Her mother doesn't want her to go.

Her mother is very angry at Ms. McGonagall.  Ms. McGonagall was not supposed to be able to find the Evanses, in America.  Her mother was told that Clover would be safe from all that nonsense, here.

Ms. McGonagall is of the opinion that it should not be Petunia's unilateral decision whether to cut Clover off from magical Britain, which is an important part of her heritage.

She likes Ms. McGonagall.

Can Ms. McGonagall guarantee Clover's safety?  She couldn't guarantee her sister's safety.

"The situation in magical Britain has changed drastically in the last ten years.  The Death Eaters are gone.  They are not prosecuting any wars.  Our country is stable and at peace.  Your daughter will be as safe or safer in magical Britain, among other wizards who understand the political situation, than hiding among nonmagi in North America who will necessarily have a very foggy idea of what magical power groups exist and what they are doing."

"My sister was under the impression that Clover and I would be much safer in America.  And not to put too fine a point on it, Ms. McGonagall, I think that impression has been rather well borne out."

"I don't mean to be insensitive," says McGonagall, somehow firmly.  "Ten years ago that was quite true.  Magical Britain was a dangerous place after Maledict Gaunt's demise.  I might have recommended that Ms. Evans-Potter be taken to America myself, or perhaps Australia.  But the Death Eaters have well and truly disintegrated now, and the Ministry of Magic has regained control of the country."

"I think the government has regained control of our country in the last ten years is less reassuring than you think, at least to - what is it you called us, nonmagi?  What's to stop you from losing control of it again?"

"A motivated and powerful Dark Wizard and their followers will necessarily be more of a threat to a small magical country than a similar-sized group of nonmagi could to a large mundane one, but that is equally true in America as in Britain.  If your daughter comes to Hogwarts, she will be among other wizards who can keep her safe in the event such a threat emerges.  And not wishing to be rude myself, I don't think your sister intended her daughter to be forever cut off from her world of origin."

"She's been quite happy in the world I've been able to raise her in."

"I have no doubt you've done a splendid job with her.  But I believe she has the right to make her own choices about what world or worlds to inhabit, just as your sister made hers, and you made yours ten years ago."

Silence, from her mother.

"Not every wizard chooses to leave behind the nonmagical world altogether as soon as they come of age."

"Just - let me talk to her, first."

Footsteps approach the door; Clover swiftly moves backwards into the chair she'd put in place and picks up the book she'd laid down spine-up so she can look like she's been reading.

She marks her place and sets the book on her lap, as McGonagall enters.

"Your mother would like to speak with you in private."

She nods and emits pleasantries and returns to the living room.

Petunia pats the place next to her on the couch.

She sits.

"I understand Ms. McGonagall has already given you your Hogwarts letter," her mother says.

"Yes," she says.  "Lily was a wizard?"

"Yes, she was."  She sighs.  "I... want you to be able to choose the life you want for yourself.  But I am never going to be - altogether comfortable - with my daughter going off where my sister went, into the world that killed her."

Clover begins to consider what to say to her mother to make her okay with it, or to at least agree - what levers to pull or vulnerabilities to poke on - 

 - something tugs at her chest, at the thought of - playing her mother, like she used to play people.

It's unpleasant.  She's fairly certain things did not unpleasantly tug at her chest in this way in her past life.

But all she says is:  "I'm sorry.  But I want to go."

Her mother takes a breath, and smiles at her.  "I suppose I'll have to make my peace with that."

"Thank you."

"May I hug you?"

"Yes."

Hug.

Solemn hug.  And dehug.

"I think I would like to speak to Ms. McGonagall about preparing for Hogwarts now."

"That's entirely reasonable but I would like to say a few things about magical Britain from my point of view first, is that okay?"

"All right."

"The story I told you is that Lily got involved with people with powerful enemies," said Petunia.  "I wasn't just talking about falling in with wizards.  When we were children there was a man at Hogwarts named Albus Dumbledore.  He - "

She hesitates.

"The magical world is more dangerous than our world.  It's less politically stable - a small group of people can make life very unsafe for everyone else, a lot more easily.  Ten years ago magical Britain was at war, that's why I left with you.  Albus Dumbledore fought in that war.  And Lily - didn't fight exactly, but she helped Dumbledore in ways that made her and her family a target."

She looks at the closed door behind which Ms. McGonagall is waiting.

"I think Dumbledore would've let Lily leave the war behind if she decided she wanted to.  But I think... she got swept up, in magic, a little, in the adventure of it."

"I won't tell you what to do.  Your life has to be yours to do with what you will.  I just want you to promise to be careful about being swept up in the adventure and excitement of the magical world, and remember that you can always come home to your mother.  And in exchange I'll promise to support you in whatever kind of relationship with the magical world you choose to have."

Why is this making her feel things.  She doesn't like people being able to make her feel things.  Makes her feel a bit ill-at-ease.

(But - )

"I promise."

Smile.

"All right.  Why don't we talk to Ms. McGonagall about your school shopping."

Talk they do: McGonagall tells Clover about Diagon Alley, in London, where most every young British wizard goes for their school supplies, and where Clover in particular can go to withdraw some of her parents' money from her Gringott's vault.  If Clover is to go to school at Hogwarts, the most sensible plan would probably to take a Muggle plane (here McGonagall introduces the term "Muggle" as a less-formal British term for nonmagus) to London, and stay in Diagon Alley in the days leading up to the start of term.

"An ordinary plane?" Clover says quizzically.

"Indeed.  Wizards have some ways of traveling long distances, but it's becoming more and more convenient to just use Muggle transportation, at least for particularly long trips."

She nods.  "Well, I do like the idea of spending some time in the magical world before the start of term, and I don't want to leave all my shopping to the last minute... but I think I should like at least a few days to pack, and say my goodbyes, before I go haring off to magical Britain."

"That's quite reasonable.  And I'm sure I've trespassed upon your hospitality quite enough for one day."

McGonagall gives them a telephone number where she can be reached.  Goodbyes are said.

Clover doesn't actually have very many goodbyes to say before haring off to magical Britain.  But she promises to write her mother regularly, and packs plenty of clothing (Muggle clothing, now, and it's suddenly so easy to think of perfectly ordinary things as Muggle things, as if she'd been waiting her whole life to be reminded of the difference).

It's only a few days, before she talks her mother into calling McGonagall back.

She's eager to be off.

An ocean is crossed.

McGonagall answers basic questions, and has some introductory pamphlets for Muggle-raised students.  Wizardry is wanded magic and witchcraft is wandless magic.  Core classes taught at Hogwarts are Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Herbology, Astronomy, and History of Magic.  Hogwarts is divided into four Houses and you're sorted into your House on your first day.  Quidditch.  Et cetera.

(She is going to be sorted into Slytherin, she decides.)

The plane lands, and they make swiftly if sleepily for a hidden magical pub in the heart of London called the Leaky Cauldron, where McGonagall buys dinner and rents a room for both of them.

Mmm; zzz.

Gringott's first, the next day.  Clover attempts to charm the goblins; the goblins are not charmed; McGonagall explains quietly that goblins often don't like wizards very much because of the ongoing legal and social persecution of goblins by wizards, and not to take it personally, which Clover hadn't been doing in any case.  Clover idly considers ways of convincing the goblins she meets that she's sympathetic to their plight, but something, maybe past-life experience, makes her suspect it's not the sort of thing she can do in a single conversation.

Her vault.  McGonagall hands her her vault key, tiny and fragile-looking, and she unlocks the incongruously heavy-duty lock built into the center of the circular door, and slowly, elaborately, the door breaks up into pieces and retreats into the wall.

Stacks and stacks of gold and silver and bronze coins, faceted gems and bars of metal, a few locked treasure-chests, and shelves full of coin-pouches.

She puts on her childhood-wonder face and steps in, slowly, as if transfixed.

(If she knows her adults, McGonagall's probably not going to let her withdraw as much as she wants.  She'll have to be delicate here.)

To her right, there are a number of elaborate stacks of silver coins, all different heights, each topped with a differently-colored faceted gem.  She reaches, slowly and visibly, toward the emerald on top of the highest stack.

McGonagall clears her throat.

She startles guiltily and turns around.  She does a very good startle-guiltily-and-turn-around.

In the process of turning, her left hand happens to spin out a little, and knock over seven of the elaborate stacks of coins.

Coins are scattered; gems clatter to the ground.  But in her left hand - the one that McGonagall's eyes weren't on - she's palmed one of the other gems, that was at about waist-height.

She can't blush on command, but she can look sheepishly between her still-outstretched right hand, and McGonagall's sardonic grin, and her own shoes.

"I think it would be wisest to start with perhaps one hundred galleons for school supplies," McGonagall says with pointed amusement.

She ducks her head a little and produces a sheepish grin.  (Stuffing her hand in her pocket would be too obvious, so she's keeping the other gem palmed - it's even easier than palming an ordinary coin.)

"Yes, all right," Clover says, putting a little playfulness into her own voice to match McGonagall's tone.  "May I borrow a coin purse?"

"You may, or you may take one of yours from the vault."

She takes one and jingles it, keeping her face childishly coy.  "Will this fit a hundred galleons?" she asks skeptically.

"Most Wizarding coinpurses are enchanted with some extra space on the inside."

She sticks her hand in, far enough for it to look like her left arm ends at the elbow, and giggles.  She roots around inside, scooping out the contents.  (The pilfered gemstone is, of course, left inside; she pulls the pouch off her arm with her other hand, and then holds it by the base, so it can't hang too heavily and reveal it's not empty.)

She keeps up a neutral-cheerful expression as she counts out the coins she pulled out, then starts adding more.  "What else can they do?"

"Many magical coinpurses will make it easy to find and take whatever object you're looking for, if you put your hand in with a clear idea of what that is, though they have trouble with objects very much larger than coins."

(She sticks her hand in with the intent of palming the gemstone again as she drops in another coin, pulls it out, puts it back in with the next coin.  Good.)

She finishes counting out her withdrawal, keeping up her face as she does so.  (She's gotten better at not letting expressions drop from her face when she's done talking, if that might clue her interlocutor in to her emotional reactions being faked - this being a skill which did not survive the mysterious transition from past to present lives wholly intact.  She's pretty sure her mother caught her out that way once or twice, when she was younger.)

Next stop is a magic trunk, to hold all her other shopping.  The really fancy ones are out of her price range, at least not counting her pilfered sapphire, but she does get one with more pull-out compartments on the sides than should fit - two to a side and each about half the depth of the entire trunk.  She makes a show of girlish glee testing out the drawers - if she gropes around inside them while they're half closed she can make it feel like her hands are passing through each other, and aside from keeping up appearances it is actually an interesting sensation.

They depart, and she discovers with some gratification that the trunk will also hover about a half-inch above the ground when pulled, as though on many smooth swiveling wheels.

Assorted schoolbooks and supplies are sought out, paid for, and sorted into side drawers of her new trunk without a hitch.  She declines McGonagall's offer to take her pet shopping.  Then it's Madam Malkin's, for robes.

"First set of Hogwarts robes?" Madam Malkin says.  "Up here on the stepstool, come on, need to take your measurements."  She draws her wand, jabs it toward a pile of tape measures and then flicks it in Clover's direction.  The tape measures spring to life and slither through the air toward her.  "Arms out, to your sides, like this - "

Madam Malkin hums under her breath, bobbing her wand gently left and right, as she directs the tape measures around Clover and jots down notes with her off hand.

Clover tolerates this with dignity.

"If you don't mind my asking, Madam Malkin," she says politely, "what does sorting-compatible mean?"

"Hogwarts robes have little charms on them to turn the trim and the coat clasp different colors depending on what House you're sorted into," Madam Malkin says.  "Red and gold for Gryffindor, green and silver for Slytherin, and so on."

"Which House were you in?"

'I was a Hufflepuff," Madam Malkin says.  "Fine old house, Hufflepuff, though of course they all have plenty to recommend them."

"I'm sure they do," says Clover, with evident but entirely false sincerity.  McGonagall's description of Hufflepuff had made its members sound utterly exhausting to live with.  Slytherin sounds like the Hat's obvious choice for her (McGonagall explained about the Hat on the plane ride), and it's probably not feasible to get sorted into some other House as a deliberate strategy even if she could bear to live with Hufflepuffs for seven years, so it's probably just as well to see what reaction this gets -

"I'm hoping for Slytherin, myself."

"Nothing wrong with Slytherin," Madam Malkin says.  "I've known plenty of fine Slytherins.  In my day it was the head of Slytherin house taught Defense, old Professor Riddle.  One of my favorite teachers."

Her heart skips a beat, at the name Riddle.  It's not easy keeping her childsface on.

"What was Professor Riddle like?"

"She was very strict," Madam Malkin says thoughtfully.  "No tolerance for playing silly beggars.  And she didn't always think highly of traditional educational methods, but she took her job seriously.  I learned a lot from her."

Is that what she'd be like, if she were a teacher?  Or is it a mask she could wear?  Childsface, childsface.  "I think I would've liked her.  I was homeschooled, before I found out about Hogwarts."

Madam Malkin chortles.  "You remind me a little bit of her.  You even look a little like she did, isn't that funny."  The tape measures coil up on the counter.  "That's your measurements done.  I'll be back in a few minutes with some robes we can charm into a perfect fit."  She departs.

The door creaks and the bell jingles as a new figure enters the shop.

"Professor McGonagall," he says, with understated joviality.

"Lord Malfoy," she says politely.

"And who is this?" he says brightly, turning his attention to Clover.

"One of our incoming first-years," McGonagall says.  "I'm supervising her school shopping."

"Clover Evans-Potter," she says brightly, sticking out a hand to shake.

He drops to one knee and bows his head.

What???

She figures an eleven-year old would probably be a little alarmed by this, so she tries to evince alarm!  Also, what???

"Oh please stand up, Lord Malfoy, Clover's new to all this."

"Of course, I apologize - " he gets to his feet and clasps Cover's hand in both of his, instead, shaking vigorously.  "My family owes yours a tremendous debt of gratitude - it is an honor to meet you, young scion.  Lucius Malfoy."

Okay face back on.  "Pleased to meet you too, Mr. Malfoy.  Ah - Lord Malfoy, did Professor McGonagall say?  I do apologize, I was raised among Muggles and only recently introduced to the magical world."

He desists shaking her hand.  "No, you needn't apologize.  I am in your family's debt, as I say.  I'm only pleased at the opportunity to shake your hand."

"Well, thank you kindly for your patience with me."

"It was an honor to be introduced, I'm sure.  We were just having Clover fitted for her school robes; she should return any minute and we can conclude our business."

"I don't mind waiting," Malfoy says, and takes a seat by the door.

Indeed Madam Malkin returns just a few moments later, with a robe for Clover to try on.  She adjusts the fit magically a bit.

"That should do," she says.  "I can have a few matching sets for you in a short while, or I can post them to your room at the Cauldron if you prefer."

"I think we'll take our leave here," McGonagall says.  "Thank you, Madam Malkin."

And they depart.

"I apologize, Miss Evans-Potter," McGonagall says.  "That was a little more excitement than I had intended for your first day in Diagon Alley."

"What was that about?"  She makes her voice quiet, earnest, a touch somber.

McGonagall will usher her somewhere a hair more private than the middle of the street to have this conversation.

"Ten years ago, a dark wizard - a wizard who uses dangerous and forbidden magic for evil ends - attacked your family.  Her name, or the name she used, was Maledict Gaunt.  In the battle that ensued, both your parents were killed, but Maledict Gaunt was also killed."

Nod.

"Before that night, Maledict Gaunt had been active in the - criminal underbelly of magical Britain.  She was gathering followers, and seeking out lost dark magic.  And she was so secretive that very few people even believed she existed.  But after that night, Lucius Malfoy came forward, saying that he'd been under - a powerful dark curse, cast by Maledict Gaunt, that forced him to do her bidding, called the Imperius Curse.  He was able to provide the Ministry with a great deal of information about Maledict Gaunt's activities and her erstwhile allies, which was instrumental in managing the chaos that followed."

"Magical British tradition holds that he owes your family a debt," she says, "because your mother is the one who broke that curse; since she has passed, that debt passes to you.  And Lucius Malfoy is a - very traditional man."

"I see," she says, still injecting that touch of solemnity into her voice.  "It's good that he's out, though."  This is not even so egregiously phatic an inanity as to be unpleasant to say!  "And - not to be mercenary - " an English teacher had called her thinking mercenary once, and she's gotten a lot of mileage since out of using the term to be self-effacting " - but it doesn't seem like unpleasant news for me to learn that someone is in my debt."

"Someone being indebted to you is still an entanglement in politics," McGonagall says, "and being entangled in politics can be dangerous no matter how advantaged you think you are, especially for someone as young as you.  I think your best course by far is to focus all your attention on Hogwarts for now."

"I suppose I can understand that," she says, in slow contemplative tones.  She probably doesn't need McGonagalls immediately-right-now verbal acquiescence to find a way to open lines of communication with Malfoy, if that ever seems like a good idea.

"I'm glad to hear it," McGonagall says.  "Now, we have one more piece of important shopping to do today."

Grin.  "My wand."  She's genuinely pretty excited about getting a wand, though she still does the childsface-reaction manually.

"Yes indeed."

And so, Ollivanders'.

The first step in getting a wand is apparently a personality quiz.  (She prefers incarnadine, she's partial to snakes but she'd prefer to be trapped in the body of some kind of primate with useful limbs, she'd rather an invisibility cloak than a broomstick though that might change as she grows up, she'd rather be a metamorphmagus, she continues answering honestly just in case it's genuinely important.)

He has her try some of the standard get-to-know-you wands.  Unicorn hair does not agree with her.

She keeps her face on; but this is not comfortable.  This process makes her feel far too percieved.

He tries a beech.  He tries an ebony.  He tries a hawthorn and a hornbeam, a reed and a red-oak, a sycamore and a walnut and a yew.

He gets a look on his face.  If you knew him, you'd recognize this look.

"Surely not..."

He tries a pine, paired with a very particular phoenix feather.

She can't help but let her face lapse, when her hand touches this wand.

She arcs it through the air, carefully, and lines of light trail and curve away from it, silver and green, coiling and slithering in the air like sea-snakes.

He chortles darkly to himself.

She examines the wand, rolling it and twirling it gently between her fingers.  Her eyes go to Ollivander's face.

"What is the significance of this wand, exactly?"

"That wand is sib to a wand once used by Maledict Gaunt," he says.  "It is the wand she used to kill your parents."

"What does it mean for wands to be siblings?"

"Sibling wands have cores given by, or taken from, the same creature," he says.  "As for what it says about the wielders - that can be hard to say.  Sometimes sister wands will recognize each other in battle, and in turn sometimes their wielders will recognize themselves in each other.  Sometimes their fates will be somehow entwined."

She clenches her fist, the one held casually at her side, to repress a shiver.  She had a past life active in the wizarding world - who was a figure of mystery and fear - and now she's getting the sister wand to Maledict Gaunt, a shadowy mysterious fearsome wizard criminal - it feels like being found out - 

 - she needs to react to this in some way Maledict Gaunt absolutely would not, but she doesn't know anything about Maledict Gaunt - 

"I don't want to be anything like Maledict Gaunt," she says.  "She's just some murderer."

It's a lie, of course.  A dark wizard-overlord, shrouded in mystery, so cloaked in secrecy that people wonder whether or not she's real - even having discovered a brand-new world full of magic it's the most enticing thing she's ever heard of.

( - but she killed Petuna Evans' sister - )

She keeps her face on.

He studies her face.

"Perhaps, then," he murmurs, "something is looking for a second chance."

McGonagall strides forward and clears her throat.  "I think that's quite enough.  Whatever reasons this wand had for choosing Clover, she's an eleven year old child, and quite frankly I find this line of speculation tasteless and irresponsible."

"My apologies," Ollivander says, and leans back.  Had he been leaning forward?  "Perhaps our business should conclude here."

Clover retrieves seven galleons and places them on the table.

"Thank you."

Departure.

She hurries down the street.  "It seems I owe you another apology, Miss Evans-Potter."

She doesn't really want to figure out how to play somber, or rattled or uncomfortable, in whatever way McGonagall will expect her to be.  So she does a little sigh and puts on a smile and says, "It's all right.  I still got my wand, in the end."

" - if you're quite sure, Miss Evans-Potter."

"I am," she says, and puts a little skip in her step.

And behind her face, she thinks.

That evening, alone in her room with the excuse of a wealth of new books to read, she lets her childsface drop.

She had a past life active in the wizarding world, who was a figure of mystery and fear; and now she's gotten the sister wand to Maledict Gaunt, a shadowy mysterious fearsome wizard criminal.

The obvious thought, which she tried to steer both McGonagall and Ollivander away from, is that Clover Evans-Potter is the reincarnation of Maledict Gaunt.  Ollivander - was hard to get a read on, for all that she's pretty sure everything he said was sincere.  But McGonagall, unless she's as good at faces as Clover is, was probably genuinely outraged when she interrupted Ollivander's speculations, at the suggestion that the poor innocent bright young girl that Clover has been pretending to be might be connected to Maledict.

So she's safe, in the near term; but having the sister wand to a dead dark wizard is probably going to continue to prompt speculation.  If it becomes known, that is.  McGonagall probably won't spread it around, if her outburst was sincere; she pretty clearly wants Clover to be treated normally, screened off from the effects of her complicated history.  But she doesn't know how much of a gossip Ollivander is.

And is reincarnation a known phenomenon?  She still has only a vague idea of what magical tropes might have secretly corresponded to reality all along.  Ollivander didn't raise the possibility, but she doesn't know if she can bank on it not entering anyone's minds, if they notice the wand-siblinghood or other connections between her and Maledict.

But there's not much she can do about it either way, except not bring it up herself, and continue presenting herself as someone who holds Maledict Gaunt in contempt.

But leaving all that aside...

Is she the reincarnation of Maledict Gaunt?  It is the most obvious guess, considering the wand connection, and the parallels between how Clover remembers being and how everyone else remembers Maledict being.  But supposedly she was already one year old when Maledict came to her birth parents' house to kill them.  How can she be the reincarnation of someone who was still alive after she was born?  Could reincarnation go back in time like that?

And if she and Maledict are both the same person... it's an awfully big coincidence, Maledict dying right when she goes after Clover's family.  Did she know, when she was Maledict, what would happen?  Did she, Clover, kill her own mother?

If anyone knows why Maledict went after the Potters - or Potter-Evanses or Evans-Potters or whatever they'd been - there might be a hint, there.

She can't make much progress on any of these questions, tonight - except to see if any of her new schoolbooks contain references to reincarnation.  She's going to spend some time reading after all, then.

By the next morning she has found - nothing.  If wizards do ever reincarnate into other wizards, they don't want first-years to know about it.

In fact over the next few weeks she continues to find nothing on the subject!  McGonagall takes her exploring in Diagon Alley and doles out a few galleons of gold to try snacks and restaurants or purchase knickknacks for herself every so often.  After many days of appearing earnest, responsible, polite, and obedient, McGonagall even lets her out of her sight for a day or two.

She's not sure whether, since McGonagall is in charge of her vault, Gringott's will tell McGonagall if Clover shows up there to make change for a sapphire; so she finds a promisingly seedy little side street off Diagon Alley and pawns it.  It's probably conspicuous for an eleven-year-old to be pawning off a sapphire, but at least the owner probably doesn't have a line on any of her legal guardians.

She gets two hundred and fifty galleons for it.  Probably less than she could've gotten at Gringott's, but it's still nice to have a rainy-day fund that she can get to on short notice without going through any grownups.  A little tension eases inside her, that she hadn't realized she'd been carrying.

Little by little, she's starting to feel more like whoever she used to be.

She purchases an extension-charmed drawstring pouch, that she can pull open wide enough to fit larger objects than coins and gems into, and she purchases a wizarding first-aid kit, to keep inside it along with the rest of her rainy-day fund, and she keeps the pouch itself hidden discreetly up her sleeve.  (Wizard robes often have pockets sewn into the insides of their long flowing sleeves, enchanted to keep small items in place for easy retrieval.)

There is little else to do in Diagon Alley, in the leadup to the start of term.  Clover purchases a few extracurricular modern-history books, aiming to learn about Maledict Gaunt to the extent she can.  (McGonagall somberly notes her interest, and makes herself available to talk, and Clover manages to hit a nice sad-but-accepting note: she just wants to understand what happened, and why, and the world that she's coming into.  This seems to satisfy McGonagall.)

September first, she and McGonagall meet with Petunia at King's Cross.

"Promise you'll write?" her mother says, and she promises.

"I got you a late birthday present," she says, and she hands over two journals and a pencil box full of Muggle pens and mechanical pencils.  "You can of course use either or both of the journals for whatever you like, as much or as little as you like.  I know the one with the lock on it is a bit childish, but I thought the lock may make it easier to magic it shut, if you learn to magic things shut.  And the pens are just - well, your mother took to it fine, but I can't imagine always writing with quill feathers and ink bottles."

"Thank you," she says.  McGonagall left the two of them alone, so she has her childsface off, and it's strange to talk to someone without wearing a face, but she doesn't mind so much with her mother as she would with anyone else.

Her mother smiles, warm and - understanding.  "You're welcome.  Have a good term.  I love you, Clover."

"I love you too."

She doesn't completely know how to mean it, but - it's not a lie in quite the same way it'd be a lie to anyone else.

She puts her face back on as McGonagall takes her through the brick wall between platforms nine and ten, into platform nine-and-three-quarters.  They got there early; McGonagall leaves via one of the floo-fireplaces set into the opposite wall, to get to Hogwarts and help set things up for the first day of term.  There are stalls set up on the platform, selling newspapers and snacks; it reminds her a bit of a Muggle airport.  She purchases a few snacks, secures herself a compartment on the train, and waits.

Train departs.

She managed to get a miniature compartment at one end of one car, and keeps her trunk on the other seat; so she's not disturbed by other students looking for their own seats.  She reads her history books, waves off the candy lady.

Sky darkens, train arrives.  The face she's going to be wearing for the foreseeable future wouldn't be unfriendly, so she makes light, brief conversation with the other kids as they're led away from the station, down to and across the lake, into the entrance hall of Hogwarts.

McGonagall addresses the group.  They're each going to have a private conversation with the Sorting Hat, then stand in the Great Hall in a line while it ceremoniously announces everyone's houses.

She's read up on the Hat in advance.  The Hat is very well known for never betraying any secrets it learns in the Sorting ceremony, up to and including knowledge of or participation in actual crimes, without the permission of the students whose head it learned them from. More than once, enterprising Hogwarts faculty have tried to apply mind-reading magic to it to extract those secrets from it, with no success.

So she's probably safe.

Still, she's ill-at-ease, behind her face.

She places the hat on her head.

Hello, Miss Evans-Potter.

Hello.  It's exactly like talking except that her mouth doesn't move and her throat makes no sound.  Can you only perceive things I say like this?

No, in fact, I can hear your thoughts as well, and see some of your memories, and I have a broad sense of who you are as a person, the hat says.

She represses a shiver.

You want to go to Slytherin, it says.

Yes.

Why?

You know why.

I think it will be instructive to treat this as a dialogue.

Because I don't think like other people, she says, and Slytherin sounds like how I do think.

A quarter of Hogwarts students wind up in Slytherin, the hat says.  But it doesn't sound to me like you think a quarter of the people you meet think the way you do.

Are you trying to turn me off Slytherin?

I'm trying to give you a better idea of what to expect, the hat says.  If you go to Slytherin expecting everyone there to effortlessly make themselves understood to you in precisely the terms you find most intuitive and appealing, you will be just as disappointed with it as you would be with any of the other Houses, and it would hinder you from learning everything you could learn from it.

I think you're being a little unfair.

I'm not.  I'm reading your mind.

She sets her jaw.

You certainly do share some values in common with Slytherin and with its head of house! the hat says.  But if indeed you are going to be in Slytherin - and there's still plenty of discussion to be had on that point - you will not be well-served by anticipating a house full of Clovers Evans-Potter.

You don't want me to be in Slytherin?

I think there are certain ill ends toward which your fate could turn, and I think that internalizing the values of Slytherin House makes some of them more likely.

You don't want me to turn out like Maledict Gaunt.

I don't know terribly much more about Maledict Gaunt than you do, the hat says.  I'm sure she has many fine qualities -

She's actually a bit gobsmacked by the hat saying that - and of course she can't control whether the hat notices that because it's reading her mind -

Is that such a surprising sentiment?

You know it's a surprising sentiment!!

I do!  I know you find it inane and exasperating when people hesitate to speak well of bad people in case their interlocutor pounces on them and accuses them of sympathizing too much with evil.  I know you are enticed by some of what you know about Maledict Gaunt, that she shrouded herself expertly in secrecy and that she was ruthless in the pursuit of her goals.  And in fact I think a dash of ruthlessness can be quite a fine thing in the right circumstances.  I do not think the world would be a better place if there were no ruthless people in it, else I would never sort anybody into Slytherin.

But you don't want me to go to Slytherin.

Do you think you need to go to Slytherin to learn ruthlessness?

Presumably you know -

I am asking you because the predictable result of asking you the question is causing you to consciously consider the answer, and I think that consciously considering the answer would be good for you.

She doesn't like the sorting hat.

That's fine.  You never have to put me on again after I sort you.

No, I suppose I don't need Slytherin house to teach me ruthlessness.

You see, that's the thing new students often don't understand about the houses.  They're not just about who you are, they're about who you can learn to be.

I want to learn to be whatever I was in my past life, but you don't seem enthusiastic about that.

I think you can learn to be even more powerful than you were in your past life.  I think you can be someone who doesn't need to shroud herself in secrecy in order to be trusted or admired or loved, without giving up the capacity to do so if secrecy is a good idea.  I think there are ways of living your life that you regard as limiting, that you can learn to choose for your benefit and wield as tools that increase your capabilities, without sacrificing the particular ways you think and feel and move through the world.  I think there are emotions that you regard on some level as a form of harm that you can learn to embrace and use to empower and enrich yourself, and expand the range of ways you can interact with the world and the people in it.

Sounds like a load of waffle to me.

No it doesn't!  I'm reading your mind!

And you think if I go to Slytherin I won't get any of these amazing benefits of being a nicer person than Maledict Gaunt was.

Wrong again!  I think you are perfectly capable of getting all these amazing benefits no matter what house you go to.

Then will you put me in Slytherin?

Do you remember when you were very small, and you first began to remember your past life, and you remembered the feeling (though you didn't have the words to express it at the time) of being perfectly aligned within yourself toward a solitary purpose that burned bright and sharp like a star?

Yes.

Do you think Gryffindor, the house of determination and courage to do what you know you must, and Hufflepuff, the house of putting in the work no matter how difficult or exhausting, might have some interesting things to say to you about that state of mind?

Are you going to pitch me on Ravenclaw as well next?

Answer the question out loud, conscious consideration et cetera.

Yes I suppose I can see how the way Maledict Gaunt thought about her purpose is compatible with Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.

And as for Ravenclaw, well, power begins in knowledge even more in the wizarding world than it does in the Muggle one.

Are you going to ask me to pick from among the non-Slytherin houses now?

Actually I think I've done most of what I can reasonably do in the space of one conversation to encourage you to see the Hogwarts houses in a more useful way.  In my experience no one takes good advice the day they're given it anyway, they take it one or five or ten years later once the sting of admonishment has faded and the advice itself has had a few chances to have been counterfactually useful if only it'd been followed.  I'm not going to promise you any of the four houses just yet - I think it's good for them to be pretty evenly-balanced.  But my hope is that whichever house you end up in, you'll take to it a bit better than you would've before this conversation.

So we're finished.

That we are.  And the hat nods to McGonagall, who removes it.

She puts her face back on and returns to the crowd.

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."

Bright studious nod.  ...and she supposes she'd better actually take his advice.

Stroke swoop stroke "oppilo;" shield forms.

Thwap.

The shield holds!  She produced a self-satisfied smile, for Morgan's benefit, though she is actually feeling pretty self-satisfied.

"There you go," Morgan says.  "You've gotta be really precious about getting the gestures right, especially when you're just learning a new spell.  Go a few more rounds with it."  He indicates the beanbag, which has resumed floating attentively.

She nods, and turns her attention back to the beanbag.  And doesn't tell it to speed up quite so often, and is more careful with her gestures, and also tries to keep her face on more consistently as she's working.

After a little while of this he does the two claps again at the head of the classroom.  (All the beanbags desist their thwapping and sort of hover at attention.)

"All right," he says, "looks to me like everybody's got a pretty decent handle on it.  Good work, folks.  Now I'm gonna open the floor to questions - about oppilo, about defensive magic in general, about magic in general.  It's normal to have questions or doubts the first time you ever do intentional magic, so, shoot."

"I can sort of keep the shield going if I concentrate but I can't really - tell what I'm doing, to keep it going, if that makes sense - am I doing something wrong?"

"I've seen real duels between grownup wizards and they don't have to be careful with the gestures, why can't we just cast the spells that way?"

"What good is a shield that just stops beanbags, if dark wizards are going to be throwing hexes at us?"

"You're not doing anything wrong.  Part of learning to do magic is learning to feel your own magic, and understand what its doing inside you, and how to make it do other things.  It's like if you're trying to train a muscle you've never used before, except that making it stronger than it is now is the only way you'll be able to even tell it's there or what it's doing.  I can tell I'm doing something, but not what I'm doing or how I'm doing it is exactly what you're supposed to feel like the first time you cast a spell."

"When you're very very good at a particular spell, and very very good at casting spells in general, you can afford to be sloppy with your gestures, or even leave them out altogether - that's called stillcasting, and it's an important skill for defending yourself.  But the way you get good enough to stillcast a spell is by practicing casting it gesturewise, a lot and very carefully."

"Different enemies will attack different ways.  Some dark creatures attack in ways better blocked by ballistic shields; some attack spells create magical constructs that are more like physical objects then spellbolts.  And lots of good anti-hex shields are broken easily by physical objects, or just let them right through, so if you only use anti-hex shields your opponent will attack with projectiles instead.  And once you're stronger and better at casting oppilo then you are on your first day of lessons, it can block a lot more than a beanbag."

Hermione of Gryffindor raises her hand.

"Shoot."

"What makes dark magic dark?"

(Clover's outward persona wasn't going to ask this particular question on her very first day of classes in front of everybody, but now that someone else has she's very interested in Professor Morgan's answer.)

"Whoof," he says.  "That's a big question."  He sits down on his desk.

"Well, first of all - the class is called Defense Against the Dark Arts, but it's perfectly possible to use spells that aren't dark to hurt people, and you'll be learning to defend yourself agains those as well.  But dark magic..."

He muses.  "Well, to explain it properly I should say that different magics can be more or less similar to each other in lots of different ways, it's not just a matter of dark versus not dark.  A cutting hex and a puncturing hex are more similar to each other than either is to a bashing hex.  All three of them are more similar to each other than they are to the shield spell we learned today.  And cutting hexes and shield charms are more similar to each other than they are to a flame-freezing charm, and so on.  It works across different domains of magic, too - self-transfiguration with a wand and animagy and brewing polyjuice potion are in a meaningful sense more similar to each other than wanded self-transfiguration is to, say, a summoning or fetching charm."

"What it means for magics to be similar is complicated, but basically, if you get good at one spell, it makes it easier for you to get good at other spells and even potions and rituals that are similar to it.  You can't learn to be an animagus just by practicing brewing polyjuice, but someone who's brewed polyjuice before, and done a lot of other transfiguration besides, will have an easier time learning to do the things you need to do to become an animagus."

"Dark magic is essentially a broad set of spells and potions and rituals and other magics that are all similar to each other in this way, and tend to have other things in common.  They are very often primarily or solely useful for violence; they are very often harmful to the user, or require the user to cultivate self-destructive or dangerous mental states; they frequently distort their users' or targets' bodies in unpleasant or unsettling ways.  But even dark spells that don't do any of these can be dangerous to use, because they make you into more the sort of person who's good at dark magic, and that's not always a good kind of person to be, for you or for the people around you."

"There's more I could say on the subject than that, but I think that's a pretty good primer for your first day."

...Yeah this all sounds to her like dark magic is perfectly reasonable to use, and Professor Morgan is just repeating cliches.  What on earth is a "dangerous mental state", presumably if you are adopting a dangerous mental state it is because you endorse being dangerous at that moment.  Plenty of combat spells could be described as "primarily or solely useful for violence," and ordinary damage-to-a-body inflicted in the course of fending off an attacker is also "distorting the target's body in an unpleasant or unsettling way."  And it is her body and she may distort it how ever she likes in fact.  And being the sort of person who is good at dark magic seems strictly better than the alternative, because a person who is good at dark magic can simply elect not to use it if the situation does not call for it.  (This seems analogous to how an evil person may choose to be good when it advantages them, but a good person may not choose to be evil without ceasing to be good, evil people thus being strictly advantaged over good ones - this principle having always seemed self-evident to her.)

If she was feeling impressed with her defense professor at the beginning of the lesson, that does for that.  Oh well.

There are a few more questions asked that Clover does not find terribly interesting, and then the class ends.

*

Mother:

As of this writing it is September 6th and I have completed my first week at Hogwarts.  Hogwarts professors are generally of higher quality than teachers at Muggle schools.  Prof. McGonagall who you have met is more or less as she presented herself to you.  Also of note are:

Prof. Morgan, head of Hufflepuff and professor of defensive magic, who has had us mostly learn spells to summon shields but has also taught us "luminos", a spell to create a bright flash of light where it hits; its combat use is in obstructing the enemy's vision when aimed at the eyes but it also serves as a useful spell to practice shields with, as it is largely safe if it hits anywhere else on the body.  Prof. Morgan takes his students more seriously as people than any teacher I have met at a Muggle school but seems prejudiced against some types of magic.

Prof. Lupin, head of Ravenclaw and professor of "charms."  At our level this seems to be a home economics class though learning household magic is still learning magic and I find it gratifying.  Lupin took me aside after our first class to gravely inform me that he knew my parents and I was welcome to speak with him on the subject if I cared to.  I tolerated this with politeness.  It does occur to me as a result of our exchange though that you have not spoken much of my biological father.  I would be interested to hear your comments on him.

Prof. Whitlock, head of my own house Slytherin and professor of history.  Unbearably twee.  Too cheerful by half even when she is holding herself back, which I can tell she is.  She shares some of Morgan's prejudice - being the only other teacher so far whose lessons touched on the relevant branch/es of magic - though it seems tempered by a measure of cultural relativism.  This strikes me as more noncommittal of her than principled though perhaps you will tell me I am being uncharitable.

Aside from these I am studying potions, herbology, arithmancy, ancient runes, and once a week broomstick riding...

[...]

I have made overtures toward several other children my age.  Blaise Zabini and Millicent Bulstrode have been preliminary successes.  Both of them have a melancholy or perhaps just quietness about them that I find a welcome respite from other children, and I think they find some aspects of my manner symmetrically pleasant to tolerate.  Zabini I suspect of having an unpleasant home life, the ominous hints I have collected suggest to me neglect rather than abuse.  Bulstrode has no such compelling victimhood narrative, I suspect she is simply not interpersonally adroit and not pretty (though I find her interesting enough to look at) and so not having a pleasant time of her childhood....

[...]

Tomorrow there is to be an exhibition duel between Morgan and Lupin, as an illustration of what defensive magic looks like at different levels of skill, and also as a popular yearly folk holiday among the students of Hogwarts.  Aside from this I intend to spend the weekend exploring.  I suspect Hogwarts has much to discover outside the magisterium of schoolwork.

~Clover Evans-Potter

*

The show duel is to take place by the lake.  She's there bright and early, childsface on, while the arena is still being set up.  A few of the other students are milling about, and there's a buffet table of snacks off to one side.

Millicent's there too, holding hands with her and grinning a little grin.

They paint quite a sweet little picture together, Clover thinks, which is all to the good.

What is meant by "setting up the arena" is that little creatures that look, at a glance, like large upright sphinx cats, are moving heavy magical pylons into place, and the tall dark ominous-looking Wardwizard Severus Snape is giving them directions.  This one goes here, that one goes there, et cetera.

"Sir is maybe considering being a little less short with Binky, Master Snape," one of the little sphinx cat creatures murmurs to him.  "She is new."

"I rather understood," Snape says tightly, "that the point of House Elves was that one did not have to worry overmuch about being rude to them."

"Sir is very clever, Master Snape," the creature says dryly.  "The point of House Elves is that we is not going in for self-determination and so can be pointed at manual labor as needed and be plenty self-actualized.  Most of us is not liking confrontation but we is more than capable of finding you unpleasant, Master Snape.  You is in a bad mood these past few weeks and you is please not taking it out on my Elves, thank you kindly, Master Snape."  It is amazing how she can address a man as "master" and make it sound so reproving.

"You may convey my apologies to Binky," Snape says even more tightly.

"I will do that," she says, and bustles off into the crowd of creatures.  House Elves, presumably.

Wardwizard Snape resumes instructing.

She keeps her face on, and doesn't let her thoughts show on it, but she has the distinct impression that Wardwizard Snape is keeping one eye on her, moreso than any of the other students.

That impression is going to be borne out as the morning proceeds.

Hmm.  What would the bright young girl Clover Evans-Potter do about this?

Well, the bright young girl Clover Evans-Potter hasn't noticed.  ...The bright young precocious scrupulously ethical girl Clover Evans-Potter may have misgivings about that "House Elves don't go in for self-determination" line.  Ugh.

To Millicent: "Do you know much about House Elves?"

"Not much," Millicent says.  "My mum didn't have any.  I know they don't like being freed, and I think Dumbledore has been sort of - collecting freed ones, and giving them work?  They're supposed to like being given work."

"Hmm," she says.  "I think I'd like to ask one some questions.  Want to come along?"

"Okay.  I'm a bit curious myself."

So she approaches one of the House Elves, the one who'd spoken sharply with Snape, and says, "Excuse me?"

Batty turns swiftly and swishily to face her.

"I don't mean to interrupt - "

She waves off her apology.  "Miss is a bright young girl from a Muggle family, with a bright young girl's sense of right and wrong, who has not had much exposure to the magical world before this week, I am guessing," Batty says wryly with a grin to match.  "One moment please."

She turns back to the other Elves.  "Foible, one of the first years is needing House Elves explained to her, you is covering for me for a few minutes?"

Assent from Foible, and she turns back to the girl.  "Pleased to meet you, Miss.  My name is Batty."

Clover does her little bright-young-girl curtsy.  "Clover Evans-Potter."

Millicent glances at Clover, suddenly uncomfortably aware that she's not very good at curtsying.  "I'm Millicent.  - Bulstrode."

She nods respectfully at both of them.  "I is pleased to meet you both.  Every year there is at least one bright young Muggle-raised student who has misgivings about House Elves.  Not many of us is very comfortable having this sort of conversation but I is not minding so much.  Ask whatever questions you like.  I is not being offended if you ask after something that is not your business as long as you is not minding being told to mind your own business."

Millicent giggles.

Clover titters.  "That sounds fair."  She strokes her chin contemplatively.  "I overheard - I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you say to Wardwizard Snape that House Elves don't like self-determination...?"

"We is very anxious little creatures," Batty says, a bit playfully.  "I is unusual in being much less so.  Spending too much time deciding makes us nervous.  Most of us is happier if we knows what we is supposed to do because someone else tells us."

"That makes sense, I suppose," Clover says.  "It's just - it sounds very much like..."

"Like the sort of lies Muggles is telling each other to feel better about enslaving other Muggles?"

Another titter.  "Well.  Yes."

"With respect, Miss Evans-Potter, you is a human, and Muggles is also humans, including the ones that other Muggles enslave.  And there is many ways to be a human but there is even more ways to be something that is not human.  I is not human, and other House Elves is not human either.  You has a very well-developed sense of what it means to do right by other humans, but applying it to other types of person whose minds work in other types of ways can lead you astray.  ...You may also find it reassuring that I is not saying it is impossible to harm or abuse House Elves."

"It isn't?"

"Not at all!  We is not liking to express our preferences very much but we do have them.  Wizards has told plenty of lies to each other about House Elves too.  But the truth about House Elves is that we is happier when we has work to do, given to us by someone who understands House Elves and understands us, and when we knows how to do a good job, and when we is told we is doing a good job when it's true and are helped to improve when it isn't.  And of course when we has enough time off to eat and sleep and recuperate, and lots more of us than realize it enjoy leisure activities though it is a bit less important for us than for humans.  But it is more comfortable to be told to take a break than to ask, or at least not to have to ask every time."

She doesn't find this terribly interesting but she is pretty sure the outward Clover would not be quite convinced yet, so: "I think for humans, not being comfortable asking for things would be a problem to be fixed."

"Yes, I think so," Batty says.  In a low voice: "There is some well-meaning owners who is not really understanding, who try to encourage their House Elves to ask regularly.  And there is some House Elves who is better off if they can ask.  But they don't often match up.  Most of the time it is - hard, and keeps getting harder, to have that hanging over their head.  It burns them out.  Some of the Elves at Hogwarts had that happen to them, Miss.  It is not a good thing."

She produces a sober nod.

"I should get back," Batty says.  "Foible is not as good at being in charge as I am.  But you is both welcome in the kitchens if you has any other questions.  Students is not strictly supposed to be down there but you both seems like good sorts.  There is a painting of a pear with a big toothy grin - " and she gives directions.

"Thank you kindly, Miss Batty," Clover says.  Another curtsy would probably be overselling it.

"Oh, no miss necessary," she says, waving her hand.  "I am sure I am seeing you around, Miss Clover Evans-Potter."  And she returns to the other Elves.

Okay, appearances kept up.  Now she can pivot to trying to figure out what Snape's story is...

"I guess I never really thought about House Elves that much," Millicent says, after Batty's departed.  "Mum always talked about them as just a fact of life..."

Oh they are still doing this, okay.  Sober face back on.  Most people who think of themselves as good are actually just stupid unreflective hypocrites, this has always been pretty obvious to her, but what would the bright earnest young girl Clover Evans-Potter say about it.

...What would mother say about it, it occurs to her to wonder.

All these thoughts flicker by wordlessly in a fraction of a second, which is a skill she's pretty sure is left over from Maledict Gaunt - but she does not have time to turn this new idea over in her head, before she starts having paused conspicuously long, so she charges ahead with operation what-would-Petunia-Evans-do.  "I think it must be easy not to wonder if you've been doing something wrong your whole life, or overlooking something awful your whole life, even if you're otherwise trying hard to be a good person.  A realization like that is probably painful."

Ugh.  Something about that makes her feel sick in her chest.  Not a Maledict Gaunt thought, she supposes.  Not what she is supposed to be.

"I guess."

Uh oh she's sad.  Give her an earnest young girl's earnest grin and say something bracing, it'll cheer her up and foster positive associations with you.  "Besides, Batty made it sound like most House Elves are okay where they are.  If your mum's not worried it's probably because she knows that."  She has no reason to believe this but hopefully it'll make Millicent feel better.

Little smile.  "Yeah."

She bumps shoulders with Millicent playfully.  This is something she saw on TV, she can't remember where, but it's the sort of cute affectionate thing she's pretty sure kids do.  "Looks like more people are showing up.  Wanna go meet some?"

Ugh, she sounds like Whitlock.  But Maledict Gaunt could inhabit any identity she wanted, for as long as she wanted, and so can Clover.

"Sure."

She sounds a bit like Whitlock too, but not in a completely insufferable way.

As the morning softens, more kids show up.  She spies a cluster of vaguely familiar redheads, two twins and a younger boy in her year, clustered together.

She leans a bit toward Millicent.  "Can you tell me about the Weasleys?  I have the feeling I'd've heard of them if I were from magical Britain instead of Muggle America, you know?"

She shrugs one shoulder, the one who's hand isn't holding Clover's.  "They're nice?  They're a really big really old family... I think they used to have a Wizengamot seat generations ago but they don't now.  They're mostly in Gryffindor but Fred, one of the twins, is in Slytherin with us."

"Sounds like as good an excuse as any to go say hello!"  And off she marches with her Bulstrode in tow.

"...nicer to Scabbers," one of the twins is saying playfully to the other.

Her eyes flick between their faces and badges.  "You must be Fred," she says to the beSlytherined one.  She turns to George and taps her chin.  "You - now I've seen your face somewhere but I can't quite place it I'm afraid."

(The bright young girl Clover Evans-Potter has a sense of humor, sometimes.)

"Well, that's not the most common one we've ever heard, at any rate."

"That's actually our little brother Ron," Fred says.  "We made him take Polyjuice."  He claps the real Ron on the back.  "This is a House Elf."

"Hello Ron!" she says to the real Ron, and without breaking her sunny tone, "I'm your insufferable older brother's housemate Clover!"

Both the twins

cackle delightedly.

He shakes her hand.  "Just don't encourage them any more than you already have and you're all right in my book."

To trick someone into liking you, get them talking.  She asks the group at large, "So who's Scabbers?"

"My rat."

"Ron's rat!"

"Our House Elf's rat."

(Ron pulls his long-suffering straight man face again.)

She titters.  "Is Ron not nice enough to him?"

"They reckon he's smarter than he looks," Ron says.  "All he does is sleep most days."

"We've wanted to pull some experiments on him forever," says Fred.

"Put him in mazes with little triangles of bright yellow cheese and such," says George.

"Little Ron won't go for it, for some reason," says Fred.

"Rats don't even like cheese," Ron says.  "That's a Muggle myth, like rabbits and carrots.  Scabbers' favorite is peanut butter."

"We tried him on some circus peanut butter from Honeydukes once but Scabbers didn't go for that either."

"I don't blame him, that sounds gross!"

"Revolting!" Fred agrees.

Millicent giggles.  She looks very proud to have Contributed To The Banter!