Magic magic magic magic mAGIC -

It's not that she didn't believe her best friend about it, obviously. It's just that kinda-sorta knowing is not quite the same experience as having a whole grownup Witch (TM) show up on your doorstep and explain to your parents that magic is real and whisk you off (best friend, who didn't get assigned her own Muggleborn Tour Guide but is currently Not Speaking to her one magical relative, in tow) to a magic tavern and then through the magic wall to the MAGIC SHOPS. 

Now that they've got their pounds changed for WIZARD MONEY they're going to get WANDS and BOOKS ABOUT MAGIC and MAGIC POTION INGREDIENTS and and and -

"Where to first, Miss Evans? I'm glad to see you're excited but we can't stand about staring all day."

It is a mark, perhaps, of how much she does love her best friend that, despite desperately wanting to see the bookstore, Lily glances at Ophelia's outfit and confidently answers, "Uniforms, please!"

"...Lily, I know you aren't that excited about uniforms.  And - I can wait.  You will also have an easier time wearing me down to accept the charity you no doubt intend if it's not literally the first place we shop.  May I instead suggest wands?"

She's not exactly eager for a fitting, either.  The delicate shudder she represses is only evident to a discerning eye.  Or her close friend, who Knows Things.

"Oh, all right, twist my arm why don't you," she giggles, with a supportive elbow nudge. "Wands! Let's get wands! Why wands and not a magic staff or a magic sword or magic spellbooks or, or a magic crystal ball."

Ophelia gives her a small, fond smile.

"I believe crystal balls are used in Divination, actually.  But - wands have finesse, is what I'm given to understand?"  She looks to Professor McGonagall, inquiringly.  "Such that - maybe Ollivander could make a staff, but that would only be useful for a few spells.  ...I think that's part of how broomsticks work, actually, if I remember that mention in one of Eileen's textbooks right..."

"There are many wizarding tools, but only one best suits the style of magic that has been taught at Hogwarts since its founding, yes," explains McGonagall, as she strides purposefully through the crowd. It parts before her as though she casts a shadow about ten times the size of her actual body. She gives Ophelia a considering, appraising look. "You're quite right that there are some similarities; Professor Flitwick, the Charms professor, can likely tell you more, if you're interested in the topic."

"I have a keen interest in everything, ma'am, though I believe that I will be investigating Transfiguration and Potions most strongly in the coming years.  Personal reasons, I'm sure you understand."  She dips her head slightly, as if in acknowledgement of something that actually remains unstated, and follows after McGonagall.  "...I do find myself wondering, actually, if these new Muggle micro-computers mean that there might someday be metal wands, speaking of magic swords.  ...They'd really be more of a magic dagger, given average wand length, but I can't imagine that it's not been considered.  ...If anyone's paying attention to the outside world, at least."

A particularly egregious clothing disaster passes by.

"...Given the abysmal fashion sense around here, though, I think I have some doubts."

Having been up til today under the impression that Eileen Prince had had a son, the Transfiguration professor has perhaps an inkling of the personal reasons.

McGonagall raises an eyebrow. "Metal wands, gracious. Miss Prince, while that is a fascinating thought and I begin to get an inkling that I will be very much looking forward to seeing you in my office hours, I must say I recommend that you say nothing of the sort to Garrick Ollivander. If he has considered the idea at all, I suspect it is with immense distaste."

Had had, indeed.

"...He is an artisan, isn't he.  I suppose I can, and should, refrain.  I'm really quite dreadfully curious how he does it, actually; there wasn't much on the how of wands, even though there was a little on the what.  A core, a wood, a length and flexibility...mmm, flexibility might - dare I say would - be the core problem with metallic wands, wouldn't it.  Too precise for human hands, and probably easily-shattered even if it's possible, if - well, if I have any idea what I'm talking about, which is unlikely.  Still, perhaps micro-scale magic circles, if wands with computer cores just aren't viable."

...Annnnd they have arrived at the shop while she was thinking and talking.

"...Hm."  Uh-oh.  Hopefully he wasn't lurking.

Ollivander was definitely lurking. He does that. But if he heard the phrase wands with computer cores, he doesn't comment on it.

He does, however, loom out from behind a pile of boxes, frowning very deeply at her. "Is that - hm - no, that can't be right," he murmurs. "Young Miss Prince, and - no, I certainly cannot have met you before, Miss - ?"

"Evans. Lily Evans. No, I've never been here before?"

Even more concerned squint. "No, of course you haven't. ... Well. Who's first, then?"

"Lily, would you like to?"

She wants her friend to have the maximally magical experience.  Waiting around isn't part of that!

Probably she should politely defer but actually she cannot bring herself to. "Yeah!"

When she waves (as instructed) the first wand she has been handed, an entirely different wand shoots out from under a shelf and burrows itself into her shirt sleeve.

"...um?"

"Well," repeats Ollivander, in a bemused tone, taking back the first one. "The wand certainly does choose the wizard, doesn't it, though I've not seen one do so quite that emphatically in many years. Ten and a quarter inches, willow and unicorn hair, swishy. Good for charm work, that one."

"...That is certainly not vaguely concerning whatsoever.  Ah...  I suppose it's my turn, then?"

That's another question for the big pile thereof she already has about this whole encounter, really.

Ollivander has his pride as an elderly wizard and he is absolutely not going to outright admit confusion to an eleven-year-old. He smiles mysteriously, does not comment on what degree of concern, vague or otherwise, Ophelia ought to have at this time, and agrees, "Indeed it is. Hm. Let us first try - ebony and dragon heartstring, fourteen inches, like your mother's, but perhaps a bit less... flexible, yes?"

"Mmh."  She feels as though Ollivander is throwing a bit of subtle shade at her mother with that comment, and avoids herself commenting upon how that very wand may or may not presently be in her possession.  "Perhaps."

"I'm curious how you determine these things, if you'd care to explain."  And if Ollivander has handed her the wand, she will give it a swish - she's definitely practiced enough with her mother's to have some idea of what it should feel like.

"I'm afraid there's very little to explain. After a few decades one simply begins to have an intuition for it." 

(The Ollivanders are, of course, seers, in a manner of speaking, but they don't actually know that.)

Ophelia can tell, by comparison, that this wand is absolutely incorrect. Her mother's wand likes her, in rather the way of a fondly indulgent elderly cat; this one does not, and for that matter is not interested in stepping on any ancient and experienced clawed toes, and expresses this by doing Absolutely Nothing, No Thank You.

"Interesting."

She figured he'd have no idea, honestly.  Artisans.  What happens when he dies will probably be a tragedy; where's his apprentice?

Regardless.  "...Not sitting right in my magic, like it's gone and closed off somehow...I - hm.  Maybe something a little more subtle?  I can't imagine something as hefty as this being proper for potion-work."

If she keeps talking like that she might end up invited to be his apprentice, judging from the appraising eyebrows and piercing silver stare. But his father Gervaise lived to be 256, and Garrick is only 97, so, you know, no rush.

He takes the mismatched wand back with creditable cheer. "Ah, so it doesn't. Worry not, it's quite normal to need to try several. Potions-work, you say? Hmm... I may have just the thing... I shan't have you thinking I've been combining woods, mind, makes for very unstable wands and I wouldn't stand for it, but a few years ago I came across the most curious hybrid plant, grew itself up right out of a patch of star-moss with the vines embedded in the branches... here we are! Vine-acacia and unicorn tail hair, nine and three-quarters inches, quite solid. Now don't feel concerned if that's not right either, they're picky little beasts, acacias, but - "

She swishes the wand through the air, does a couple brief flicks, some stirring motions.

It doesn't do anything so dramatic as sparkle, but it thrums in her hand like a missing limb, like a living thing, a softly-humming mirage evident especially in the latter tests, in case the wand needs to be particularly clear that this is its human now.  Not that it thinks it needs to; its human knows what she's doing.

This feels right.

...She files this away in the "concerning coincidence" pile for later, but she has to admit, whatever twist of fate is in play...

She likes her wand.

She smiles, and slips it into the pen-pocket of a scavenged purse.  "I believe I owe you seven Galleons, Mr. Ollivander?"

It's certain not the first time he's had A Feeling (TM) and pulled exactly the right wand out of the pile on the strength of that and only that.

Not even the hundredth.

And yet.

"Quite so, Miss Prince," he says, and takes his money, and shooes them both out the door before they can ask him any more questions he doesn't know the answers to.

Another Concerning Thing (tm)!  Will wonders never cease!

"That was...I know there's no concrete reason, but I can't help but have a bad feeling about the amount of 'coincidence'," she delicately air-quotes, "that piled up just then."

"Regardless; now that I have paid for my wand with the work of my own two hands, Lils, you are graciously permitted to offer me charity that I won't turn down out of stubbornness - though I insist on thrift.  To Madam Malkin's?"

"Right? Do you think I've got a, a wizard great-grandparent I look just like, or something? Looked like he'd seen a ghost - " pause. "Wait, are ghosts a real thing?"

"Yes."

"Huh. Anyway, yeah, Madam Malkin's, right on. I will reluctantly accept thrift, Mum and Dad didn't give me that much money."

"...He's used to seeing children of the people who've passed through his doors.  That's not it.  He hasn't seen you, but he knew you.  ...Erm.  Is my theory for how he got spooked.  Not an explanation of anything else, mind.  ...Professor McGonagall, do magical books have any enchantments that would prevent the utilization of a mundane copy machine upon them?  I believe my mother will not object to my borrowing her old books more permanently, but - I will admit that I haven't actually checked, yet, whether they're all the same editions.  One of those things that you mean to get around to, except that oh, reading a chapter won't cause any harm since I have it out, and then you wake up thirteen hours later with your face in a book and a frustrating crick in your neck and you forgot to actually mark the list.

"Also it might well come in handy to have copies of diagrams on their own sheets to reference, the non-animate ones at least."

Aww. Baby Ravenclaws are such a way. 

"Anti-copying enchantments will prevent the use of copying charms, but if you were to take it into your head to copy the entire text by quill I shouldn't think it would stop you any more than it stops you taking notes, and a Muggle machine is more the latter than the former." Considering pause. "If I recall correctly, and I usually do, all of your required textbooks should be the same as your mother's with the exception of the Standard Books of Spells, which are typically revised for new editions every five years, and Bagshot's new A History of Magic, which replaced Binns' Modern Magical History in the curriculum in 1955."

This had been about two hundred years after its original publication, but more to the point, about two years after Eileen Prince graduated.

"I see.  Thank you, Professor."  Her voice has been surprisingly soft this whole time.  "...Have they hired a new professor to go with the new History textbook?"

Oh, she should probably explain that.  She leans towards Lily and mutters "Professor Binns, who taught history when Eileen went there, is a ghost.  They aren't very...proactive about adapting to changing circumstances, or so I'm told."

As a professional who is formally representing Hogwarts at this time, Minerva McGonagall certainly has no opinions whatsoever on the suitability of Cuthbert Binns for his long-held post. "They have not."

"...Of course they haven't."  She shakes her head.  "Well, at least the class will be easy."

"Speak for yourself, I don't know any magical history, this is going to be like moving to the States and having to learn all their individual county mayors or whatever. Ooooooh," Lily is now looking at the myriad brightly colored outfits in the window of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.

"I'll share The Notes."  Ah; they've arrived.  What are these?

By 'all occasions,' whoever designed this storefront display apparently meant 'all occasions upon which it would be reasonable to wear at least three different colors, four different fabrics, and five or more garish accessories, plus hat, and no, they needn't or possibly shouldn't match.'

The height of fashion, it seems, as far as wizards are concerned, is layers: to array yourself in multiple articles of clothing, each somewhere between 'robe', 'tunic', and 'dress' in form factor, which vary in hem length (ankle to knee) and sleeve length (wrist to shoulder) and material (linens, silks, velvets, wools, weirder things...), so that multiple layer colors are visible. Then, of course, your outfit is not complete until you add on capes, scarves, wide belts, wand holsters, ostentatious jewelry, etcetera, etcetera. (After all, if you can't solve 'too much clothes' with a cooling charm, what kind of adult wizard are you?) 

"...Who even wears these gaudily bloated tripping hazards?"

"Probably mostly people who have room for at most one source of fun in their life and couldn't think of anything better? I however am capable of containing SEVERAL kinds of fun." She skips delightedly into the shop and points at a riotous array of jewel tones on a mannequin (which poses enthusiastically). "Good morning! We need measuring for uniforms and also I want that."

That is very cute of her.

Ophelia, contrariwise to wizarding fashion, has dressed herself in sober blues and blacks, with the silvered buckle of a belt stolen from her - sperm donor, she calls him, because that man is no father to her - after he was particularly quick to drink his latest earnings and pawnings away as perhaps the one accent to a piece that does, at least, include a white button-up shirt, as well as a navy-blue blazer - perhaps slightly too big even considering that wizards were fans of longcoats - that she'd sewn new buttons to since the old ones were missing.  She was honestly just glad she'd found a skirt that wasn't going to be absurdly short on her once she hit her first growth spurts in a couple years.  And her boots; she was really glad to have boots that would last, in a size that would fit her going forwards.

(She'd stuffed some spare socks in them for now.)

She'd also tried sewing herself a tie, because she at least sort of knew how they went together, but she hadn't been satisfied with the results, so her neck only bore the questionable adornment of a purse-strap - brown, fitted to a white purse in what was probably a crime against fashion somewhere, but she'd only gotten such a deal as to afford it beyond her daily clothes because the small not-quite-a-clutch handbag's strap was missing when it came into the store.  It was the perfect shape to carry books in, though, especially if she could work an Expanding Charm into it someday.

But that was a distraction from the present; she had shopping to do.

"...Lily - Keep in mind that what you spend on clothes, you can't spend on books and widgets and things.  And you'll grow out of clothes.  ...Probably; I can't imagine there's...quite that much power in the fitting enchantments?  ...but, yes, clothes.  I'm going to want to buy from the secondhand uniforms, and - I was wondering, actually, if you were able to lay the same sort of enchantments on other items - I have a few Muggle things that it would rather help to have spelled for - durability, and suchlike, though I didn't bring most of them with me today."

Well yeah but when you grow out of clothes your parents just buy you more.

... She just barely manages to catch herself before saying this out loud. Her parents do. Ophelia's don't. And she's right, about the amount of money that Lily literally has in her hands right now, since Mr. and Mrs. Evans are not, in fact, here. "Right. Yeah. Widgets and things," she repeats, only slightly mournfully. "Maybe just the green, with my uniforms, then."

Madam Malkin makes a puzzled face at Ophelia. "Well, you're certainly welcome to browse the rack, dear," she says, gesturing expansively. When you're a magical tailor who can manufacture custom-fit clothes with a turnaround time inside an hour, you don't pre-make items; everything in the building that's already assembled is secondhand. "But I make clothes durable the old-fashioned way, much more reliable. If you want enchantments you want to talk to Avalor Twilfit, down the street, he's got all sorts of ideas about that kind of thing."

"Ah, I see.  My apologies; while I don't have no knowledge of how things work...ah, there's a reason I'm visiting with Professor McGonagall, let's put it that way."

She'll just browse uniforms, then.

"I can sew a bit myself, are there - going to be any objections to my taking in a uniform that's big for me now, to save buying another later, Professor?"

"I can't speak for your classmates, of course, whoever they may be," says McGonagall carefully, in a tone suggesting that she is ongoingly very annoyed that she cannot stop eleven-year-olds from being mean to each other in creatively stupid ways while she's not looking directly at them simply by frowning sternly harder, especially the ones who are not under her own formal jurisdiction, "but certainly it is not against the rules."

"I see.  ...Thank you, ma'am, for the warning.  And for caring."

She'll go ahead with buying older student robes, then, and brace for impact later.

...Hogwarts uniforms are really surprisingly simple, when you get down to it.  They're black robes.  There's plenty of black robes to be had.  (Ophelia goes for woolen outer layers; they're fire-retardant.  She also picks up a few sets of black cotton undergarments - somewhat like pajamas - to ameliorate potential scratchiness issues.)

There are not plenty of black hats to be had that Ophelia would feel comfortable wearing for more than five seconds without some sort of alteration beforehand.  Especially when she considers how tall she already is, and how tall she could end up if that pattern continues, the classic pointy witch hat...just doesn't work.

"How...required, is the requirement for a pointy hat, Professor?  I - find that I disprefer at least the classic style."

McGonagall's expression softens, slightly, at the thanks, and she nods in brief, sharp acknowledgement. She's never been enormously good at being kind and supportive to young children, as Elphinstone keeps very gently reminding her while he's offering her increasingly silly amounts of money to come fight a war with MLE instead, but she does want them to feel loved and supported, and who else is going to try, for the ones that don't already know how to be kind to each other? Flitwick, though she loves him, who is constitutionally unable to focus on an interpersonal problem for more than six consecutive seconds if there could instead be an interesting academic question, or possibly an explosion? (Which, to be fair, is an overall strategy that does solve Ravenclaw interpersonal problems a remarkable fraction of the time, but.) Slughorn? 

And the alternative to someone trying is - well - no, we're not thinking about that today.

In any event, whatever House serious little Ophelia Prince turns out to belong to - and Minerva has been surprised before - she'll be a Hogwarts student, so she's Minerva's responsibility, just as surely as tiny ball of sunshine Lily Evans. 

So. Hats.

Minerva, is, of course, currently wearing the absolute most classic and traditional pointy hat that has possibly ever existed. She is tempted to say that of course they are required, but "You'll be expected to wear one for formal occasions," is the real answer. "The dress code does not require it on a daily basis, however, and Headmaster Dumbledore encourages students to be creative with their uniforms within reason."

"I see.  Thank you, Professor.  ...Really, my biggest concern is that it seems quite likely to fall off at the first sharp movement, just from how much hat there is.  ...Perhaps one could improvise a decorative strap of some sort..."

"...hmm, no, choking hazard.  Unless it buckles, but that seems likely to ruin the aesthetics...  Maybe silvered fastenings at the brim...

"...Anyway.  If it is for formal occasions, that's reasonable; I do not expect to be rushing to and fro at such times, and if rushing to and fro becomes necessary, there are presumably larger problems in evidence.  ...Though one supposes it might depend on the space of likely pranks.  Ah well.  If that happens, then it happens."

She will acquire one (1) pointy hat.

"...Might I suggest that we go visit a store that sells trunks first, ma'am?  We will need to carry all this around, and I imagine that this field is one where wizards have handily outdone Muggles."

McGonagall was totally planning to just magically carry all the stuff, which is not difficult (for her), but habits of practicality, rare among wizards, are to be cherished and nurtured. And Diagon Alley, of course, despite all apparent evidence in other media to the contrary, has a luggage store. There is no reason it wouldn't. 

"Certainly, if you intend to obtain your own rather than use your mother's?" she checks, with a very carefully neutral tone that makes no suggestion of one answer being more correct than the other. Children without siblings - or with only one sibling and two magical parents - often do inherit school luggage, as most wizards once they have graduated from boarding school rarely need to move things larger than fit in their pockets or perhaps a medium-sized bag, but it's unclear whether Ophelia has a relationship with her mother such that she'd be among them. She did, after all, come along on this expedition, and so far the only things she's mentioned expecting not to need to purchase have been books, notable in this case for their trait of being plausibly small enough to steal and hide.

And, well - Minerva is certainly not going to judge, if so. If there's anything she understands very personally, it's the ways your relationship with your parents might be less than maximally friendly when your mother is a witch living in a Muggle town, married to a Muggle man, aggressively pretending not to be magic.

"I imagine she'd notice that, as much as I'm sure she hasn't opened it in the last - while.  And Lily definitely needs one, too."

(Lily has for the duration of this conversation been people-watching with immense delight. So many bright colors, and cool magic effects she is itching to learn how to replicate, and people talking about the most interesting-sounding daily problems in the world, and creatures, and, and - )

"What? Oh, yeah, probably, good idea."

Another politely neutral nod.

(If anyone should unwisely ask why she knew a small child was stealing from her mother and did nothing about it, she will tell them with perfect seriousness that, technically, it's only against the Hogwarts rules to steal from your classmates, there's nothing in there about your parents. It's certainly not her job to meddle in family affairs, now is it?) 

As far as Ophelia's concerned, what she's doing is borrowing, anyway!

Well.  Her mother's textbooks, at least.  And somewhat the way she's been practicing with her mother's wand - though, she might take that with her to Hogwarts at which point the issue would become much more clear.  She's definitely stolen some things from her sperm donor, though, who does not need the money he's using on being an angry alcoholic.

Minerva might have some less friendly opinions about the wand, but fortunately she doesn't know about that.

To the luggage shop!

There they will find a variety of options, ranging from inexpensive secondhand trunks with variably functional minor quality-of-life enchantments to fantastical space-folding nonsense wildly outside of either of their budgets.

The wand was borrowed, replaced where it was found, and did not bite her face off; this is entirely legal, right?  Only if it comes to be in her sole possession (e.g. "at Hogwarts while her mother is not") in the future would there be any potential theft to object to!  She thinks!

...She is going to carefully inspect the trunks, running fingers - not her new wand, interestingly enough; she tried that but her hands seem to be a bit more sensitive the way she's been approaching this - over them, hovering gently, to get an idea of the enchantments' functionality and function.  Eventually, she'll probably settle on a scuffed but in very-good magical condition Featherweight trunk, and point Lily to a slightly more expensive trunk that can also follow her - or rather, her wand - automatically, unless someone has further opinions at her that she feels she should take into account.

Lily will cheerfully accept this recommendation and then spend at least five consecutive minutes running in circles watching the trunk trundle along. It is adorable and she loves it immediately.

While she is doing this she notices the coolest thing, which is a little box that unfolds into a normal-looking canvas tent that has a whole little cottage in it, complete with plumbing. It is wildly outside their collective budget, of course, even if they'd spent zero money yet, but she is absolutely putting a pin in her brain and coming back here in a couple years when she's saved up for it. They could go CAMPING in a MAGIC TENT in their FAVORITE MEADOW. It would be THE BEST.

The inevitable expression of that desire prompts Ophelia to fondly wrap an arm around Lily's shoulders.  "That sounds fun, Lily; I'd gladly join you."

She is so looking forward to it. 

In the meantime, for real this time: books!

Books!  ...Right, she needs the History book by Bagshott, and...Standard Book of Spells 1970 edition.

And she wants a few more, since she's read her mom's textbooks, to extend her potential knowledgebase.

She just hasn't quite figured out which ones, yet.

Flourish & Blotts has a truly staggering number of options to offer her! Most of them haphazardly stacked on tables or filed on towering rickety two-story bookshelves using a system which, while one hopes it exists, is certainly not transparent to the new customer!

Is she interested in any of these six hundred different language primers? The mathematics that underpin upper-level courses? Reference charts of elemental transfiguration properties? 1,001 Magical Flavor Charms For Spicing Up Your Home Cooking? The entire known history of a single creature called, apparently, the Hogwarts Giant Squid?

Lily is just staring stock-still and starry-eyed, which causes McGonagall to helpfully notify her that it is generally considered good practice to visit the Hogwarts library before you buy much more than textbooks. Flourish & Blotts, after all, will still be here next summer vacation and by then you'll have a dramatically better sense of what sort of thing you'd prefer to buy over borrow.

...Yeah, even Ophelia fronting maximal composure finds this appropriately awe-full to just stand there a moment and take it in.  She'll give Lily a nudge in a minute or so.

Regardless.

It's time to go book-hunting.

She doesn't suppose that the inconveniently un-apparent organizational system has produced a "Hogwarts textbooks" shelf, with or without some sort of "School Supplies" label?  (They absolutely could have done so much better than this, come on.  Are people supposed to just wave their wands and summon books that they might not even know exist?)

They indeed have shelves clearly labeled FIRST YEARS and SECOND YEARS and so on which contain precisely the assigned textbooks and nothing else. It's the rest of the store that's like that. Some of the other customers do seem to be finding what they're looking for by waving their wands about it; others are just browsing in a meandering fashion.

(In the arguable defense of the proprietors, wizarding society has such a small population that the concierge model, where if you don't know what you're looking for you ask the expert who runs the store and they give you an actually useful tailored recommendation, actually more or less works.)

...Surely even then the staff must find the -

Well, she's not actually having this conversation with anyone, so her continued objections to wizards' general inelegance can stay un-ranted-about.

"Are there supplemental materials you might recommend, Professor?  For, for example, self-study of things you wish you'd learned when you were a student here but were not taught?"

Hm. Usually when students ask Minerva McGonagall for recommended supplementary reading materials they are.... NEWT Transfiguration students. She cannot give the same things to this tiny determined child who has never been in a single introductory class. Accordingly, normally, under this circumstance, she'd just say, nothing in particular, the curriculum is very good and self-study is a matter of personal preference. But, well.

A war started last year, see. And she did, in fact, notice a particular glaring hole in the capabilities of the average Hogwarts graduate.

"Bearing in mind that this is a personal opinion and not a formal recommendation or advisory in my capacity as Deputy Headmistress," she says instead, carefully, "I would suggest that you might consider obtaining an introductory text on Healing. It is not at all an easy subject, I warn you, and many of your other subjects will be prerequisites to understanding even its basics, but you do not seem the type to be dissuaded by that." 

She'll recommend one. She won't mention she has a copy of it sitting, recently uncomfortably well-worn, on her desk.

"I see.  Thank you, Professor."  If there is one within findability range...she'll get it.

McGonagall was too...serious about that, too careful like the times someone's tried to broach a tough subject or hide a harsh truth, to not have very relevant reasons to recommend studying this.

"...I...hope I won't need to know as much of this as - the way you said it - has me thinking I might.  But you're right.  It won't stop me."

"...And I'll - do my best to - make sure you don't regret that, ma'am."

She doesn't know if that's going to help with whatever has Minerva McGonagall this worried.  But she has to try.

McGonagall has no further comment at this time, but she'll nod again, seriously, and very slightly misty-eyed.

If the war lasts long enough that these kids have to fight it too -

(pleaseno)

- well. She'll make sure they'll be ready. She owes them no less.

Any other books catch Ophelia's eye while she's picking that and the textbooks she needs off the shelves?

...She'll grab a Practical Self-Defense For Beginners book, as well.

...What is this...Muggle Studies...thing?  She's kind of curious what the wizarding perspective of Muggles is.

She'll...flip it open semirandomly.  Read a couple pages.  Blink.  Flip it to some new pages.  Squint at it.  Flip it to the back, read the index.  Close it.  Think.

Shove it back onto the shelf with a look of disgust evident upon her face.  "Someone really ought to update these in particular more than once every fifty years.  Dunno how fast wizards move, but - Muggles put men on the Moon in '69 and there's not even a mention of the US & Soviet rocketry programs in the index of Hogwarts' official Muggle Studies textbook?  Or computers?  Computers are amazing little calculation machines, these days - used to be that they were room-sized, but I've seen ads for a pocket calculator in the papers lately."

Is this eleven-year-old going to be responsible with the knowledge that it's like that partly on purpose to stop irresponsible wizard children from manifesting ambitions like "transfigure a rocket ship" and blowing up a city?

... Ophelia seems very clever but maybe not sufficiently lawful good.

Minerva makes a noncommittal shrugging motion. "Wizards do not, as a rule, move quickly."

"...but why not?  Pencils and pens write better than quills; even if wizards have plenty of ways of ensuring their own quality of life the traditional way there's still stuff that would be useful.  Quicker, more effective, less dangerous, more thorough.  Electrify the library's card catalogue, or maybe implement some sort of magical system on the same principle - actually, do wizards have any organization scheme for their books like muggles have the Dewey Decimal system?  Anti-theft devices probably have more ways to get around them magically but still deter the trivial shoplifter.  Computers could probably help with this Arithmancy thing, and then there's probably also the printing press - well, I imagine you have that already, actually; do you have to have someone go in and magic the pictures after, though?  And I'm looking at brooms and wondering if there's something you could do with the lessons of aerodynamics muggles have learned from planes.  ...Oh, and the safety equipment for not-falling-off-of-things Muggles invented for rock-climbers might be very helpful as far as preventing falling off a broom and going splat.  And I bet you could get a lot out of having a camera record of potions research.  It doesn't invent things that didn't actually happen, so - if and when the experimental product inevitably explodes, you can run the tape back and see what actually occurred.

"Which magical pictures, well, don't.

"...But I'm guessing that's not really it, because - you looked a bit too uncomfortable when you said that.  Is it because rockets are...well, barely-controlled explosions on their best days?  Because - yeah, I can get why you wouldn't mention that to people who can't understand clothing.  And I'm certainly not going to make anything like that without a much better understanding of rockets than I have.  But - you could have wizard spaceships so easily.  All for the presumably low, low price of having textbooks that aren't so...weirdly dismissive of Muggle achievements in making magicless things.  ...I don't know, maybe there's more than that - there often is, really.  But it feels like there's potential just - going to waste, a little bit."

McGonagall rattles off flatly, "Pencils and pens are much harder to enchant than quills, the Hogwarts library has a magical card catalogue, computers don't work around magic, copying charms predate the mechanical printing press by about five centuries, brooms operate on fundamentally different principles than planes and come standard with a variety of safety spells, a video camera would likely begin behaving like magical photographs if you made it magical enough to function at all in an experimental potions lab, and yes, Miss Prince, there is indeed a reason that introductory Muggle Studies textbooks deliberately omit mention of nonmagical things that explode, a fact which I'll ask you to spend a little bit more time at Hogwarts before you form determined opinions about."

It's probably a good thing Flitwick didn't draw muggleborn tour duty for Evans. He might have caught fire. 

"...Hmm.  Good to know; thank you.  Do mechanical typewriters work in magical environments?  And does anyone have any idea why electronics seem to not?  ...And, I just want to explicitly acknowledge, since I brought it up, that not having explosives as a readily available concept does make sense; there's a reason no-one publishes 'How To Make Bombs', and especially doesn't tell - well, me.  Or kids in general.  Somebody would probably get hurt."

Acknowledging nod for the last. "Quite so," and then back to the questions. (Lily is currently contentedly collecting textbooks into a shopping basket balanced on top of her new trunk and flipping interestedly through a book about bowtruckles.) "I'd expect a typewriter, as any mechanical device typically does, to work initially as you expected it to and then eventually develop unpredictable magical behavior. I am not a Charms master but my understanding is that all objects do this in the presence of sustained high magical field strength and mechanical devices have a wider array of physically possible behaviors; you will cover the phenomenon in detail in NEWT Charms."

"Huh.  That's really interesting; it also suggests that if you can create a magic-free zone, or even just a low-magic zone, within high-magic zones that you could have some interesting combinations of muggle and magic technology - which is to say, anything that involves manipulating devices with understood behavior.  But obviously I'm not a Charms Master yet, so who knows?  -- Lily, do be careful, I think these ones bite if you're not planning on buying them."

RIP to people who find minor injuries a behavior deterrent but Lily's different

"Right, right. See the library first, pick out more books later," she agrees, setting the non-textbook carefully back onto its shelf with an appreciative pat. "I'm good here if you're done?"

"I think I'm good here for now, yeah."

To the potions corner of the alley with them! 

McGonagall considers the nature of the specific children she has come here with briefly, and then steers them without further inquiry to Mulpepper's Apothecary, where everything is clearly labeled and organized into multiple meticulously defined nested categories. He doesn't sell a pre-packaged first-year potions kit but he can and will produce a tailored recommendations list on request, complete with references, that covers the same requirement and then some, for anyone who can cogently answer questions about what they might need extra practice at or what they're interested in personally.

(She doesn't have anything against Arsenius Jigger, in fact she likes him quite a lot - he's staggeringly brilliant and she's collaborated on several papers with him and his standardization of the early potions curriculum has markedly reduced the amount of complaining she has to listen to from Slughorn - but the man would sooner burn his own house down than have something recognizable by any other human as a filing system.)

"Good afternoon, Minerva!" says Mulpepper merrily from his desk. "And new bright young minds, I see! What can I do for you?"

"What is THAT oh my gosh it's beautiful oh lookit the little labels - "

Lily is looking at the ceiling-high, iridescent-petaled two-hundred-year-old vine bush climbing the back wall of the shop, each of its individual branches sprouting some different strange nut or fruit or leaf or berry, neatly marked with a little parchment slip saying what it is and what it is for. She will be bouncing on her toes reading each one of them in delight for at least the next ten minutes, and possibly envisioning which ones she wants to acquire and cultivate in a windowsill.

"Oh, my.  This place..."

Oh, she's been asked a question.

"...Teach other wizards the value of a legible system of organization, perhaps?  I am in awe of your work, here.  Especially in contrast to everything I've seen in the other shops, it's a refreshing balm of peace and legibility in a society that seems to be optimizing for chaos.

"That said, we're mostly here for first-year potions supplies.  I think I in particular am interested in getting supplies that could equally be used for Muggle chemistry; there are some things I don't know if wizardkind has bothered to invent and don't want to - leave to chance, to have available, because I'll definitely need them.  ...That, and I generally prefer to work precisely, when I can."

"Why, thank you, my dear!" beams Mulpepper. "Unfortunately many wizards, including certain other apothecaries who shall remain nameless," he here winks in the general direction of next-door, with an air of fond exasperation, "are, indeed, not simply undereducated but rather choosing on purpose to be like this. That second thing, though, I can certainly help you with. Now, first off, you'll of course need your cauldrons and scales and vials! For most students I'd recommend a basic pewter but if you want to mess about with nonmagical concoctions you really ought to have something low-reactivity, chemistry in a pewter cauldron is asking for a hole in your desk - copper, perhaps? Not the very best option but, begging your pardon, most first-years haven't the budget for gold."

"I was vaguely assuming I'd be procuring - probably glass, beakers of some sort, actually; you are, however, correct that I haven't much money.  ...How does potioneering avoid the issues of concocting something in pewter, anyway?"

"That's the principal function of the stirring steps in most recipes." He gestures at the shelf of variously sized corked glassware. "Most students only require the smallest sizes, for submitting samples of their classwork, but for personal use perhaps a medium-small?"

She investigates.  "That seems like it might be generally sufficient, though I'll admit that I don't off the top of my head recall the specific yields of things; I just know the syntheses in question exist."

"If you find later that you've picked the wrong size I'm always happy to do free exchanges on glassware," he offers, since she doesn't seem inclined to explain what it is that she wants to make and it is certainly therefore none of his business to try to guess what its yield might be. 

(Glassware is very easy to magically sterilize and quite difficult to curse, so unlike many things it is perfectly safe to resell as-new.)

"...Hmm.  Perhaps I'll just buy the glassware for that project later, when I've had a chance to figure that.  Thank you, though, that's good to know.  ...Out of curiosity, is there a reason people don't brew potions in glass?  I'd imagine that magic is actually particularly capable of solving the bit where glass doesn't heat evenly; I don't know if there's any magic-side problems...?"

"Oh, potions don't like to be looked at below the surface while they're brewing," he says. This does not appear to be a joke. "Though focusing on the necessary thermal balancing charms while also paying attention to your brewing sounds as though it would be rather fraught, too, I must say."

"I was imagining solving this at the 'make a lot of smaller flames' burner level, admittedly.  Or maybe the same principles as an electric stovetop - actually, that's definitely an idea.  Anyway, as a matter of equipment, rather than in-the-moment charmwork.  Potions...Don't like to be looked at below the surface?  Huh.  Well, you're the expert, presumably.  Wonder why that is.  Maybe when I have time and money to spare on experimenting...But not now, regardless."

"I'll still be here whenever you're ready," he agrees, as various tools are accordingly purchased and packed away into trunks.

Lily picks out a standard student cauldron, cheerfully telling Mulpepper that she fully intends to destroy it after finals and will come back and get a nicer one next summer after she has carefully planned and safely executed the experimental creation of something educationally explosive.

(McGonagall sighs something under her breath that sounds very like an extremely fond gryffindors!,.)

Mulpepper, chuckling, sells her that among her required supplies, and then starts in on his spiel about consumable ingredients, which goes on a while and includes various commentary in the vein of 1) telling Ophelia the very minimum necessary quantities she could make all the standard first-year homework assignments with if she is very precise and doesn't waste anything, with a warning that he usually recommends most students bring at least twice as much, 2) pointing Lily to a few interesting ground peppers that wouldn't normally go in the first-year kit but that given her plans for her first cauldron she might enjoy, 3) advising them both that he gets a lot of owl orders for refills on belladonna, which is one of the most common ingredients in simple potions and remedies many of which students find they like to brew for personal use, and it's cheaper to stock up in advance since that avoids the owl order fee, etcetera, etcetera.

Ophelia certainly doesn't plan to waste anything, but one never knows what the future holds; she'll take the recommended stock, this year at least.

(...Perhaps she'll brew some of those remedies for resale, if she's confident enough in her work.  And if that's allowed by the rules; she wouldn't wish to find herself in trouble thereby.)

How very responsible of her.

If they don't need anything else, Mulpepper will send them on their way, with a very sincere "Looking forward to talking to you again next year!"

Ophelia gives him a small, but assuredly sincere, smile.  "I'm looking forward to seeing you then as well.  Thank you!"

With their potions and books collected (and a brief detour back to Madam Malkin's to pick up Lily's newly assembled uniforms) all that remains is a trip to Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment for collapsible telescopes, which they're required to have for Astronomy class.

There will appear an additional detour when, on the way there, Lily discovers that there is an ice cream shop.

She rifles through her remaining budget - more than she'd have had without Ophelia's regular gentle reminders - asks McGonagall how much a telescope is usually - and declares with delight that they can totally afford to stop at Fortescue's for magic sundaes, and therefore, unless Ophelia has a good reason they shouldn't, they're totally doing it.

"...How about we stop there after we're done?  So we can take our time and enjoy it; celebrate a successful day."

"I don't want to take up too much of Professor McGonagall's time but if that's all right -?" (McGonagall nods.) "Okay, yeah, great plan."

To Wiseacre's!

The Wizarding Equipment shop is alive with inscrutable mechanisms, tiny clicking things, shiny polished surfaces, and so forth. They are reasonably well-labeled and categorized into groups by approximate use case - "Divination", "Home and Office", "Research", "Personal", and up front, "Hogwarts", which is entirely a shelf of little folding telescopes. There is a prominent sign by the door reading YOU TOUCH IT, YOU BUY IT. 

"...How enforceable is that sign...?"

She's going to...inspect the merchandise.  While carefully not touching it.

"I would not counsel you to test it."

"...Right."

She does still want to get a look at the telescopes, and hopefully determine that they aren't shoddy worksmanship.  She's not sure she trusts someone with that aggressive of a sales policy to make or procure quality goods, when they could make more money by selling cheap shite.

The telescopes do look well-made, at least to the eye of a nonprofessional with extremely good attention to detail: nothing is chipped or bent or askew, joints and edges are consistently fastened with bolts and screws rather than clips and nails, time has clearly been taken to render edges smooth and comfortable, and so on.

Wiseacre is frowning suspiciously at Lily while she carefully-doesn't-touch a shelf of gently ticking watches. He pays very little attention to McGonagall, who has glided past, murmuring, "ah, and while we're here...." and gone to peer at a shelf of inscrutable mechanisms under the 'Home and Office' sign.

"...I'm going to need to do math about this, I think - whether a Muggle scope is cheaper, considering the conversion rate..."

"...Mr. Wiseacre, I imagine you're not an Astronomy specialist, but do you have an idea of what sort of other telescopes the ones you're selling compare to?  I've done enough reading about astronomy as Muggles practice it to know that they mostly disprefer spyglass-style optical stuff, but I'm guessing that you can do magic to solve the, chromatic aberration, problem?  And I'm pretty sure these are enchanted in some way, though I couldn't guess with what just yet."

Wiseacre squints at her in a deeply crotchety manner, and then addresses their supervisory adult. "Miss McGonagall, what nonsense is this?"

McGonagall smiles thinly and sets a small copper device on his sales counter. It is apparently a humidity detector, for a reason she does not deign to explain. "Professor, if you please."

"Professor McGonagall," he corrects himself, rolling his eyes while he processes the transaction. "I'm three times your age."

The device disappears into McGonagall's sleeve. "I did not contest it. Do you have the answer to Miss Prince's question or not?" 

He huffs. "Of course they're enchanted, child, what kind of hack do you take me for? I suppose you might be able to find something of comparable performance in a Muggle shop, Thuraya tells me they've gotten quite good at it, but I'd expect it to be twice the cost and thrice the size, without the spells and with less precise glasswork. She buys all her lenses from me, you know."

"I cannot imagine how I could possibly have failed to know," McGonagall says dryly.

"I don't take you for any kind of hack, Mr. Wiseacre; I previously took you for the owner of a generalist supply store, which can sometimes fall flat when procuring specialist goods, but having become aware that you are in fact a craftsman, I will certainly be seeking to purchase miscellaneous devices from you in the future; I can trust you do good work in them if Hogwarts herself would trust you with its students."

And a telescope she gets!

At that, a small but genuine smile may, possibly, be detectable under the wizened harrumph. 

Lily, who has been watching this interaction with glee, obtains without additional fanfare a telescope and a tiny pocket quill-sharpening device; once they leave, she wants to know what's this about Hogwarts students?

"Hmm?"

"You said something about Hogwarts trusting him with its students?"

"Oh; that was metaphor.  Or metonymy, or possibly both.  If the castle can think, as far as I know it hasn't said anything about school supplies.  No, the thing is, Professor McGonagall brought us there, and I trust her integrity to not take us somewhere we'd be knowingly ripped off.  And since Wiseacre apparently makes all his own products, I could trust Hogwarts' trust in him to make good ones, regardless of how much Professor McGonagall might or might not know about telescopes in particular."

What an extremely Ophelia way to say that sometimes people don't suck, maybe, if you consider it from a certain angle, possibly.

"Oh. Sure, okay." 

Time for ice cream!

It is indeed. 

"...You should get yourself something nice as well," she murmurs to the Professor, as they approach Fortescue's.  "He was rude to you.  I'm three times less your age and you respect my preferred forms of address; he shouldn't get away with not doing that.  It's quite - impolite."

"He did not get away with it," she points out, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly. "But yes. Wiseacre is rather known for his prodigious ability to find some way to be rude to anyone who steps foot in his shop. I am, I assure you, neither surprised nor particularly personally offended."

She will nevertheless take this suggestion in the spirit it was clearly intended, and purchase for herself an ice-cream sundae (Earl Grey and lavender flavored).

...That actually sounds like it would be very good, come to think of it, but she's having quite a time finding anything that would sensibly pair with the lavender.

Maybe...

Hm, yes.

Earl-grey-and-lavender, hot chocolate (one of the more wizard flavors of ice cream available), and strawberry sorbet, topped with a thorough drizzle of caramel, whipped-cream-and-a-cherry-on-top, and waffle cone pieces.

"What're you getting, Lily?"

"Chocolate chili and orange marmalade!" is apparently an option. "Oooh, and cinnamon bun."

"...I'll trade you a spoonful of the marmalade for a spoonful of one of mine?"

"Sure!"

Om nom delicious magic nonsense. Wizards have apparently fully solved the 'when you try to have a warm food and a cold food together they rapidly become a single lukewarm food' problem and this is awesome.

It's very delicious.  And Lily having fun like this is so cute endearing good.

Ophelia delicately carves off a spoonful of the orange marmalade icecream and trades it for a spoonful of her hot-chocolate flavor, then tries a little bit of it in combination with each of hers.

"...Hm, I think I was right about the lavender being a bit odd to pair with orange.  This is delicious, though.  Thank you, Professor McGonagall.  You didn't have to bring us here."

"No, I didn't," she agrees. "But I am glad of it. I have had many worse afternoons."

(And what, after all, is the point of fighting a war, if not to protect moments like this, where children are safe and happy?)

Eventually, though, they must go. It's a moderate-length trip back to Spinner's End when your destination doesn't have Floo and your charges are too young to be safely Side-Alonged, but she moves through it briskly. Her pointy hat is temporarily transfigured into a slightly less pointy hat for the duration, which due to her fundamental nature doesn't really make her look detectably less witchy but does at least make her look minimally plausibly deniable enough to avoid actual comment by passers-by. Soon enough, she is depositing Lily and Ophelia back at the Evanses' house, with their Hogwarts Express tickets and a stern reminder that they are not allowed to use their wands until they get to school.

"...under what circumstances, ma'am, would it be permissible to do so despite the normal contraindication inherent in Secrecy?  I...don't want to stand by and watch as bad things happen."

"The law permits exceptions to the restrictions on underage sorcery only in case of clear and imment danger to your own person or to the Statute."

If Ophelia is still like this by the time she's thirteen or fourteen and has learned any spells, especially if at that point there's still a war on, Minerva may be forced to quietly suggest that, technically, the Misuse of Magic Office cannot really tell the difference between Eileen Prince doing magic and Ophelia Prince doing magic, if they're anywhere near each other. But this child, however clever and determined, is eleven. 

"And while I commend your desire to help others," she adds, because if Ophelia manages to die in the next three weeks of somehow locating Abraxas Malfoy to tell him his politics are objectively illogical or something she is going to feel personally responsible, "I have found that many problems are quickest solved by giving yourself time to be ready before you begin to solve them." 

And then, with a tip of her witchy hat, she's gone.

Well.  In a mixed blessing, she's already figured something similar out.

"I see.  Thank you, Professor, for - everything, and the advice.  ...I hope I needn't make use of that exception anytime soon."

And she, with a respectful nod back, heads...housewards.  It has been a long day.

...Unfortunately, because it has been a long day, she misses the step in her plan for this trip where she leaves her wizard things in Lily's house and changes back into boyish trousers.

Fortunately, it is at least the - alleged - mother of Severus Snape who encounters 'him' heading to 'his' room, a miserable little garret; Tobias won't be home for a while yet.

Unfortunately, her complete inability to process the mere existence of Ophelia enough to care about that whatsoever really doesn't help as much as one might think.

"Severus, what are you doing in that outfit!  Are you trying to dress like a wizard?!  You know your stupid brute of a father didn't give you the smarts to be as good a mage as I am, so stop putting on airs and go change already!"

To put it simply, Eileen Prince is...very obsessed with Slytherin-typical status-seeking, much to her detriment.

This is additionally comorbid with her constant experience of vast cognitive dissonance, by virtue of holding the viewpoint that she, herself, is inherently high-status by virtue of her magic, despite living in a Muggle house, paid for by a Muggle husband, that abuses her, as she refuses to do any magic whatsoever about this.

It's quite possible that she will later scream at Tobias to stop 'enabling' 'Severus' with fancy Muggle clothing, again, and cause bigger problems thereby - because she'll remember the skirt, even if she calls it a "stupid Muggle half-robe", and Tobias is strongly possessed of the belief that 'male' effeminacy is weakness of the mind that must be removed by all available means.  He's not exactly keen on female effeminacy, either, though he much more despises women "acting like" men.  (Ophelia brought up the topic of queerness, once.  The resulting stream of slurs and threats convinced her to never mention its personal relevance.)

Unfortunately, this is rather typical for her alleged mother.

Alleged.

She read that word in the newspaper, once, then found it in the library's dictionary.

It means that something has been presented as true, but yet to be confirmed.

Thus, Ophelia's inner monologue, insofar as she has one, refers to her alleged parents, almost constantly.

Speaking of which, she had best placate the one that's screaming at her while she stares directly into the middle distance, nothing on her face.

"I wore what fine clothes I could find because Hogwarts is a fine institution, mother, and I wouldn't wish to shame us in front of it by failing to live up to expectations I could meet, no matter how much I might fail later.  Doesn't that make sense?"

...Her acacia-vine wand thrums in her hand, from where she holds it ready to hopefully levitate her trunk to her room if her 'accidental' magic fails mid-process, and something bursts from her towards Eileen, a pressure she felt behind her eyes as she formulated her response vanishing, leaving her wishing to sag from her stance, but unable.

What Ophelia just did, with only the intent to please make her mother understand and shut up for once in her life, wasn't a compulsion-spell, or indeed any recognized spell at all.  It most strongly resembles the field of legilimency, albeit in a different, simultaneously more overt and more subtle, form.

She drew a connection with her words, and pressed it upon her mother's mind to incorporate or reject as it pleased, in a feat of stress, aptitude, and done-with-thisness that she will take quite a while to recapture with intent.

Nonetheless, Eileen Prince, for once in her life, mutters something conciliatory, though mostly unintelligible, and stops haranguing her child - because she realizes that that does in fact make sense, from within her contorted worldview.

From Ophelia's perspective, all that she can really think is '...That happened, apparently.'  She's still not out of the woods yet, though - because honestly, if she's impressed her mother, that's even more likely to make it to Tobias - 'improvised' robe-alikes from Muggle clothes and all.  So she's yet more screwed.

It is, perhaps, time to plan, so she makes her excuses and absconds upstairs.

She has a simple plan hashed out in minutes - play her sperm donor's misogyny off her mother's knowledge of wizardkind.  She'll go unnoticed beneath the argument about what masculinity is.  But...that's not really sufficient.  She has standards, and the less shouting there is, the better they're met.

Still, by the time she's fed the crows, she hasn't had any better ideas for how to dodge the blowback from this, and while she can always hope she thinks of something...

She doesn't really suspect she will come up with anything better than she already has.

And she's not going to lay her burdens on Lily.  She already does so much; it would be horrible to further impose upon her cheerfully given help, time, and kindness.

The crows are always happy to exchange shiny things and lost money (a surprisingly fruitful source of funds) for seeds, but are generally incapable of communicating how to solve complex social problems - in human, at least.

And Ophelia doesn't speak crow, so even if they knew of a good solution...she's pretty sure she couldn't understand them telling it.

Regardless...

That is a distraction from the shouting she can't find a way to avoid.  That a particularly concerned Professor could well witness, if she snuck back at the right wrong time.

She's not sure if she'd rather Professor McGonagall know.

It isn't like Severus has a choice in any of this, though - because between the shopping trip and the 1st September departure-date of the Express...

Tobias and Eileen blow up.

They always blow up.

It happens every single week.

These rows, though, are worse than usual - Eileen Prince's pride has been piqued against Tobias's disgust in magic, and neither will concede.

Ophelia can only suffer onwards, be quiet, unassuming, hidden in plain sight if she is even seen at her alleged home.  Her wand thrums softly in her clenched hand during the day; her mother's onetime wand hisses sparks of lurid green frustration as she practices late at night.  Her visits with Lily start sooner, last longer.  She buries herself in the local library often.

The crows watch, as the Seeds Person flees the Shouting People to its nest, then - starts doing something with the Stick that makes Glowy Things that it keeps in a special box, when the Shouting People are Shouting at random times.

The crows approve of the Seeds Person doing whatever the Seeds Person does with the Stick.  It means the Seeds Person is less skittish and more likely to give them seeds.  A couple of the braver members of the flock even start calling for the Seeds Person when they hear the Shouting, from near the Sometimes Wall, and that gets them seeds when the Seeds Person is done doing the thing with the Stick.  It gets them brushes, too, sometimes, which feel nice.  The crows like the Seeds Person.  The crows don't like the Shouty People.  The Shouty People aren't Shouting about anything, which is very rude of them.  They should know better.  And sometimes they throw things at crows!  That's horrible!  Really, they don't know why the Seeds Person is still nesting in this Big Hard Thing, instead of nesting in the Big Hard Thing with the Zoomy Person it seems to like.  Maybe the seeds are something it takes from the Shouty People?  The crows don't know.

The time spent with Lily, no matter that it's a desperate attempt to avoid unsolvable problems, seems to have dropped another one into her lap - and while she tries to resolve the veneer of resentment hiding Petunia Evans' deeply felt insecurity...there's not much she can do, either.  And Lily's sister already thinks Ophelia's "the worst sort of freak", for...reasons she finds inscrutable.

Why wouldn't she give her close friends pretty flowers she found?  Lily likes flowers!  She should get to have some!  And it's not like Ophelia doesn't already owe Lily a life-debt for the kindness she's shown!

Not to mention how Petunia dislikes the birds, and the birds dislike her right back.

Minerva McGonagall does not observably return to Spinner's End, but she learns some key facts over the summer all the same. There might, perhaps, have been a bespectacled cat slinking through once or twice, quiet as the grave, wearing enough stealth charms that even the crows don't notice.

She has several concerns. None of them she's willing to do crimes about, just yet, not while she's already spending a lot of her time very close to the edge of Amelia Bones' patience, but... several.

When Lily Evans is twenty, or so, she will look back on this last summer before Hogwarts and wish, desperately, that she had understood why her elder sister was so upset, and been gentler with her. 

But at this point in her life, the depth of her understanding is she's being awful because she's jealous, because we're cooler than her, so she can jump in a lake for all I care, and that's that. It's not her problem to deal with Petunia's feelings, not when she has so many more interesting things to think about. She has interesting magic textbooks and an interesting magic friend to hang out with as often as possible and a magic wand. Which, of course, she isn't using, she has plenty of time later to break the rules once she understands them better, but she carries it around with great enthusiasm, taps her fingers on it while she reads, sets it carefully on her bedside table when she sleeps, right next to the flowers. 

("That awful boy -" "You will shut up about my best friend, I'm going to learn how to put curses on you -") 

September 1st looms like a sunrise. 

Ophelia will rise to meet it, and for once dare to brave the rocks of public doubt of 'queers'; if now is not the time to bravely face the light that scours away the shadows of doubt as her true self, she does not know one better.  The clothes she selects are laid out with all the precision of her Sunday best, the night before - or, no, not just her Sunday best; she lays out her outfit, pressed crisply (thanks to focused effort and careful spellwork) and worn boldly, like a diplomat who is to deliver a long-awaited, dreadfully anticipated, declaration of war upon an enemy that outmasses her forces a hundred times or more - but that enemy will first face the project of finding her, and then a fight upon her own home ground, the land she knows as if it is herself (because it is), and she will not be found wanting in the combat that ensues.

The crows try to give her the wand that she's pretty sure is her mother's, as she sets out to Lily's place.  She tries to put it away.  They proceed to settle into a loose détente, because even as she doesn't take it, neither will the crows let her leave it, and they're smart enough to steal it from whosoever might try to make that happen.

Eileen is...

She spent the rest of the morning when she saw Severus come down the stairs in a "young girl heading to boarding school" outfit just sort of stunned, while Tobias - purpled, and then drew back at a wand - was that her wand?  Surely it couldn't be, it hasn't even been working for her for a long time now but she hasn't taken it in to get it looked over, that costs money they don't have - pointed at him, flaring a threatening light.

But if - her daughter - is brave enough to show what she's been hiding all this time, and cunning enough to prepare for the consequences, and keen enough to apparently learn how to cast even one of the simplest spells silently (because that was a Lumos, and not just wand-sparks, she's pretty sure) before she starts classes, and kind enough to inspire what little nature lives around here to loyalty, given the argument she heard her child having with the crows - then Eileen has vastly underestimated her child, and - oh, it hurts to think it, every time she even approaches the thought casting knives into her brain, and she was never one for the brave, but she's not going to drown this thought in drink and she saw someone that reminded her of her younger self, a little girl trying to face down the world, but - if this is how things are, she's hurt her child immensely in the cause of trying to give her child 'realistic expectations', and she needs to make amends.

So she'll meet the Evanses at King's Cross Station, driving five miles above the speed limit and wishing it were ten but she doesn't trust herself in Muggle cars like she would on a broom - you never forget brooms - hurriedly and harriedly wizard-dressed, and try, with all her Slytherin ambition, to be a person her daughter might someday like.

"...Daughter.  I first need to apologize, though I can't fit it in the time we have; there's too much.  I'll see if I can write.  Secondly, I'll show you where the platform is; I've been through here before and you haven't.  ...And, thirdly...  Keep - my old wand.  I - clearly need another, if it's working so eagerly for you when I can hardly make it spark.  You're -" she dabs at the corners of her eyes - "I know I've said a thousand things that aren't this, that are the opposite of this, but - you'll do great things, daughter mine, and I'm sorry I couldn't recognize how wrong I was til now."

The bird that's perched on Ophelia's shoulder preens happily as Seeds Friend takes the Make-Shouting-Go-Away stick.  She told Seeds Friend that it was hers and she should have it!  Seeds Friend shouldn't have been so stubborn!  On the other hand, now she can tell the others where Seeds Friend is going and they can all come, so maybe this is actually good?  Who knows.

Eileen Prince has been an obstacle to be avoided, like a patrolling bloodhound that a pair of clever little lady-foxes might dodge if they are very careful, for the entire time that Lily has known Ophelia. 

She is now - something else entirely, maybe.

"Oh, how nice-" begins Mr. Evans, about to step thataway and try to socialize like this is not obviously a private family moment. Lily, wincing, tugs both her parents towards platform nine, watching Eileen and Ophelia over her shoulder like a hawk. Is Ophelia okay? ... Is Eileen okay, this is a lower priority but Lily finds that suddenly she cares about that a little.

...It takes Ophelia a solid minute, to reboot, to process all that has happened in the past few minutes.

Her voice is quiet, but - sure, in a way that seems wise beyond her years.  "...I think - if the apology goes well - that - I could, can, still call you mom.  ...You should get a wand, any wand, before you go home if I can't get you to take, the ebony one, back, you know he'll be - as angry as he's ever been, possibly worse.  You need to be able to defend yourself.  So - you're coming up to the platform with me and Lily and the Evanses, okay?  And then you're going to the shops.  And if my explaining what actually happened this morning gets the Evanses to throw money at you you're taking it; I'm not going to let you choke on your pride any more than I let me do that and I don't anymore because that's stupid.  C'mon."

And now it is Ophelia tugging her adult to the group.

"Mr. and Mrs. Evans, my mother, Eileen Snape-Prince; mom," and - wow, it's a heady feeling, to be able to maybe mean that - "these are the Evanses, they've - helped me out a lot with the stuff you kind of couldn't.  And Lily's a really good friend and also a wizard, in case you hadn't guessed.  I...  Was it the breakfast table?"  She checks, Eileen nods.  "I - wasn't expecting her to show up, or be - supportive - but - now that she is - she probably needs help too, especially if she's really insisting I should keep the wand she grew up with.  Are you sure you're sure about that?"

Eileen is...still shaky, but it doesn't prevent her from trying, with muscles that almost feel like they should twinge from disuse, to smile at the people she's being introduced to.  "Yes, I'm sure -"

"Ophelia."

"Ophelia.  That's a pretty name, dear.  ...I - cannot thank you enough, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, for what you've done for her.  I...was not a responsible adult, and this morning...really drove home how badly I'd been failing, and - if she's right about you helping, I - owe you a lot.  And if there's one thing a witch like me cannot stand being, it's 'in debt'.  So - when the kids are off, we should...probably talk.  About how that could work."

She's hesitant, but...She's committed, by now, to her choice.  To trusting her daughter's choice, because somehow despite everything she's - her daughter's going to be brilliant.  She didn't take Divination, but - this thing, she knows, with the certainty of a prophecy behind it, if not the metaphysical oomph.

"But right now, we need to get the kids on the Hogwarts Express, before it fills up.  And it should be..."

She pokes her hand at the sides of a nearby pillar.  "Right through here.  Wizards-only, sorry."

The Evanses exchange somewhat awkward glances. They are at least ninety percent too English for this level of emotional vulnerability in public and also they don't actually know whether to address her as Ms. Prince or Mrs. Snape or some secret third thing.

"Erm," says Mr. Evans after a moment, "well, it's been our pleasure, of course. You're welcome to come over for tea on Sunday?"

"Oh, a hidden wall! What fun," enthuses Mrs. Evans, seizing upon the helpful distraction, "thank you for pointing us to it. I suppose you'll be going then, dear," she drapes an arm around Lily's shoulders, "you have fun at school, all right?"

"I will!!!" beams Lily. "Thanks mum thanks dad love you!" She darts between them to hug both, and then after a moment's hesitation hugs Eileen too, fleetingly. Then, before anyone can require her to explain this decision, she dashes through the wall, tugging her trunk (which can temporarily manifest wheels, when it is pretending not to be magic) behind her. 

Eileen is, frankly, also far too English for emotional vulnerability in public; it's just happening anyway, whether she likes it or not, so she's - carrying on, even if she can't keep calm about it, even if Lily choosing to trust her enough to hug her, after what must have been so much of her child's woes poured out in her ears, draws out another beading tear to dab away.

"Tea sounds like a splendid idea, Mr. Evans.  I...don't believe I know your address?  Ophelia, you'd best get going before she gets lost in there."  Her daughter is so responsible...

"You do have a point.  Thank you for the ride, Mr. and Ms. Evans."  And on to Platform Nine and Three Quarters she goes, after a polite nod to everyone that would look respectful on an adult but mostly comes off as cute on her.

Stepping through the wall is like stepping into a lake; the abrupt quiet is sharp enough to set one's ears to ringing.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, as ever, is full of children, and animals, and luggage. It is one of the few arguably public places in England where overt magic is not a crime. It should be a riot of laughter, and fireworks, and excitement. 

It's not.

It is, in a word, tense. No one is speaking above a whisper. Everyone is staying at least ten feet away from anyone they're not comfortable hugging. Stressed, grumbling children are being shepherded onto the train while their supervisory adults watch each other with strained, angry, frightened eyes and hands on their wands. The feeling of ambient magical hostility, of wizards wanting to do violence to each other and restraining themselves only narrowly, hangs heavy in the air. Even Lily, her enthusiasm dimming abruptly as she slows down and surveys her surroundings with concern, can tell. An untrained Legilimens like Ophelia can probably feel it nearly physically grinding against her skull like an array of hammered spikes.

No fights seem to have broken out, yet. This may perhaps be because there are several uniformed Aurors stalking the edges of the area, frowning balefully at people. Alternatively, it might be because Headmaster Albus Dumbledore himself, glowing ominously, is standing in the middle of the platform with a very grim expression on his face. Try something, it says, and find out what happened to Grindelwald.

"...Oh, gods, what, ugh...."

She can't.  She can't - there's so much she doesn't know what it is but it hurts even more than loudness -

A harsh caw! of alarm rings out from the bird perched on Ophelia's trunk, as she tries to solve this problem the only way she knows how.  Does the Stick make the problem go away?

No!  It does not!  Ophelia is hunched over, pulling her cap over her face, her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed shut as she tries to figure out what the hell is happening to her!

Focusing all her attention on the strange hostile feeling lets her sort of feel out the shape of it, like picking her way through a minefield instead of having a bomb go off right next to her head. Everyone here is scared, and angry, and they don't really know how to stop.

"Um! Bird shhhh! Not helping!" Lily reaches out to Ophelia, pats her shoulder and hand. "Hey, hey - what's the matter? Can I help?"

"So much angry and it's loud - talk to me, keep me focused on your voice or - oh, that works, just - contact, keep me focused - I'm - working on it."

And she is.  It's difficult.  But she's doing it.  Finding ways to twist through the space of possible motions of her mind to accomplish something useful is hard enough without the minefield, but - Lily's not scared.  Lily's not angry.  Lily's right there.  Focus on her.  It'll be alright.  She can handle this.  She can pick her way through the minefield, or build a wall, or a fence.  She just needs a little bit of time, and Lily to be there, to be safe and comforting and comfortable like she is.

She's at least stopped having the psychosomatic stop-everything reaction, so now she can do things like move, or pet and thank the bird for trying, even though her wand can't do miracles.

"It's.  I'm.  I can -- Let's...get on the train.  It won't be as loud on the train.  I hope.  I - really, really hope.  Because if it keeps being this much of a constant atmosphere of threats and violence barely restrained, and I keep - feeling every single punch not thrown, spell not cast...I don't know what's happening, but...

"There's Trouble in Wizard Britain, Lily.  I - had hoped I was wrong.  That I hadn't really been - feeling hints of violence, that the recommendation of Healing was just about doctors being scarce - but...there's so many people ready to cause harm...I don't know how to stop it..."

"Oh dear," says Lily, sympathetically, and continues with the supportive shoulderpats, which transition steadily to supportive handholding as Ophelia resumes something resembling normal Ophelia function. She nods seriously at the explanation, and then as they're headed onto the train, adds, quietly, "I bet how we stop it is like what Professor McGonagall said. We stop it by learning as much as we can, and fast."

The history books, written decades hence, will say that the war started a year ago. When they will report it ended - well. That remains to be seen, doesn't it.

Ophelia makes it onto the train, slowly and carefully picking her way through the subdued crowd like she's in a minefield.

She is, but it's not physical.

She really hopes there's open cars that aren't as full of pain and hatred somewhere.

There are empty cars! The Evanses, an enthusiastically punctual people, have gotten them here not too close to the deadline, and people are still arriving on the platform, so there are many compartments yet unclaimed.

It is considerably quieter, both literally and figuratively, on the train, even before the doors close. There's an undercurrent of anxiety and fear, among the embarking students, but most of the war is stored, at least right now, in the adults milling about outside. Things haven't gotten bad enough that teenagers are getting directly involved. Mostly. Yet.

"...it's better in here.  Thank goodness."  She's finally stopped curling inwards.  "Not good, but...We could theoretically stop holding hands if we wanted to.  I imagine that neither of us want to."

Lily is a generally pro-handholding person, constitutionally, and especially when it's her best friend. She squeezes the hand she's holding encouragingly. "Mm-hm. Eventually we'll want to read probably," a two-handed activity, especially with large textbooks and small hands, "but first I want to make sure you're okay."

"I...I think I'm better than I looked.  It was just - so much, from a - sense and direction I hadn't realized I had - that my reaction just...went very far.

"Also, we could totally..."

Ophelia gestures with the hand she's not holding as she mimes supporting a book in their laps,

"And then turn pages with,"

She squeezes Lily's hand, gently.

"Though it'd be pretty awkward, I think, so maybe we'll just have to lean against eachother as we read to keep up our human contact quota.  I've honestly been through most of the books already, you know how I get when I can't sleep...Maybe I'll look at some of the science worksheets I filched from the secondary's recycling bins last graduation season; I figure Hogwarts probably doesn't subscribe to science journals or have the usual textbooks, so - I'm trying to keep up.  ...I still don't know why people would throw away their hard-earned knowledge when they're done learning it, do they think they just won't need it ever again?  But their loss is my gain, I guess."

She's clearly still ramble-worthy nervous, but putting a brave face on.

"...I wonder if we're allowed to use our wands yet."

"Oh, of course you have." Giggle. "Well, that sounds like a good idea, science always makes you feel better."

Lily cheerfully fishes out her charms textbook - she hasn't even close to read all her books yet, she's been sleeping a normal amount and fighting with Petunia an abnormal amount - and then tucks her feet under herself in such a way that she can lean companionably while she reads.

"McGonagall said 'until we get to school' but it's not like you could possibly violate the Statute of Secrecy on the magic train, right?"

"This is the Hogwarts Express, after all.  It's school-branded.  Therefore it's reasonable to believe we are on school grounds, because this is clearly school property.  Which means we can use our wands."

Ophelia's been reading Hogwarts' books for, like, years, so she's probably read them cover-to-cover at least twice.  Except for the new ones.  Those she's just read one time.

"I'm very excited to actually get to do Transfiguration, and Potions.  Those are very don't try this at home sorts of subjects.  Like chemistry."

She'll just murmur Wingardium Leviosa at her trunk to open the lid, drawing her acacia-vine wand instead of the inherited ebony because she needs to get a feeling for how it handles - since she can, now, and magic is honestly pretty neat so she wants to do lots of it - and then grab a binder of someone's notes where it's barely wedged inside the chest.  Looks like - huh, they put physics and math in the same binder?  Physics with calculus?  Ooh, this might be interesting.  Now where'd she leave that pencil...

"Oh my gosh, yeah, it's going to be so cooool."

Companionable study hangout time!

They'll be interrupted not too long after they settle in, by a knock on the door and then the door sliding open.

"Good morning," says a pale, dark-haired boy, leaning into the compartment, and then by way of explanation, "sorry, everywhere else is full." He glances between Ophelia and Lily and the decidedly non-owl bird perched in the luggage rack, thoughtfully appraising. "Do you mind? I - " brief flash of hesitation " - haven't got, uh. Any friends to sit with." Half a smile. "Yet."

The bird is indeed thoughtfully appraising him; he has a good eye.

"I don't see why not; just...try to not - hm, no, that wouldn't...

"...Just...try to maintain a calm environment, please.  The station was painful."

Calm is. Not really his forte.

"R....ight. Yeah. 'Kay." He sits down and curls up against the window, knees to his chest, and tries to ignore the creeping sensation that something horrible is about to happen any second and be completely his fault. He taps his fingers against his foot, restlessly. "...Painful?" 

"The violence that was very specifically not happening.  Was very loud.  And unpleasant to experience."

She is being friendly and open, look at this, it's so good, do not say something rude to her, do not, you are fully capable of not -

Imperious smirk. "Oh, just that? Hogwarts is not kind to fragile people these days, you know."

WHY ARE WE LIKE THIS, OH MY GOD.

Shit.

" - I mean, uh. Um. That sounds like. It sucks? ......... hi I'm Sirius Black who are you."

Suspicious squint. "Lily Evans, possibly not very nice to meet you."

Ophelia, once she processes what the fuck just happened, is honestly concerned for this boy!  People don't just have a reflex to be haughtily superior and then trip over their own tongue backtracking for no reason!

"...Are you alright?  I don't...You said that, and I don't think you meant it.  So...are you possessed by an asshole ghost, or something?

"I'm Ophelia Prince.  And - your asshole ghost is right that normally merely nearly-impending violence shouldn't be that much of a problem, to give it the benefit of the doubt that it was - badly - warning me that people actually get into fights at Hogwarts, but it missed the implication that I could actually perceive the not-quite-impending violence."  She sighs.  "I don't think it'll be as much of a problem as the sheer surprise of finding out I can probably actually read minds, instead of being very good at guessing, by feeling how ready everyone was to - do violence to - eachother, ended up being, because now that I know something's happening, I can probably fix it."

He has never been all right in his life actually.

He giggles, and relaxes quite a bit. "An asshole ghost? Nah, if anything I've got a ghost what tells me to shut up when I've been an asshole. I ignore it usually on account of how everybody I know completely deserves to be insulted continously."

"I think the ghost that tells you to shut up when you have been an asshole is called 'your conscience'."

"Can't be, we don't have those in my family."

There we go, that's better.  Relaxed people are less likely to throw out insults they don't mean.

She stifles an urge to pet him.  He probably wouldn't like it, at least if it's unsolicited.

Now: bonding!

"...Wow, you might have a meaningfully worse home life than I do if you actually mean what you said.  Even if my dad's an abusive prick that I never want to see again, my mother found it in her to apologize for the shit she did once I gave her worldview a good shake, and it sounds like your folks wouldn't, even if you knew how to.  Which is bad.  People should care about other people.  ...Do you have siblings?  I don't, but maybe you and Lily could commiserate."

...This is totally bonding, right?

Sirius tries to imagine his mother apologizing for anything. The mental image is sort of fascinating in its absolute wrongness.

He blinks at Ophelia, and repeats back, bemused, "people should care about other people, huh? I mean, they sure don't, but yeah, I guess, that'd be nice, wouldn't it." The tone with which he says this suggests he thinks she's incredibly naive. "Maybe then there wouldn't be a war, eh?" 

but they do, they do, if you love them back, you know this, I know you do, please -

"Oh, yeah, I have a little brother. He's a dumb baby who thinks our parents are right about everything, it's terrible."

Lily considers this. "My big sister is also kind of dumb and terrible but she is still my sister."

"Heh. Wonder if Rex'll still think I'm his big brother if I don't go to Slytherin. All my family are, yours too?"

"....oh, she's not here, she's not magic, that's why she keeps being terrible is she's jealous."

"Oh, that's why I've never heard your name before! You're - "

Sirius is just barely aware enough that mudblood is a slur to not say it to Lily's face while trying to make friends with her, he's heard his cousin Bella say it and obviously mean target, victim, worthless, but he ... doesn't actually have a replacement vocabulary word to hand, and stalls out awkwardly in the middle of the sentence.

Ophelia knows that it's a naive belief, that people should care about people.  She just believes it anyway, because fuck people who try to tell her she shouldn't care.

"Both of her parents are Muggles, yeah.  ...I don't really know why that word exists, honestly, it sounds as bad as the way most people use queer."

"S'posed to sound bad, isn't it, that's the point."

"...The utter disdain wizards have for nonmagical workings is honestly rather bizarre, in my opinion.  I get that you broke off back in the Middle Ages, but - has anyone thought to poke their head out, since then?

"Probably not, you think you have everything.  You don't need jet planes, you can teleport.  You don't need - mail sorters - you have magic owls.  Somehow.  But - I can't help but think that there's places where wizards could benefit from lifting Muggles' notes and updating the things they use and make.  It's only Muggles that've been to the Moon, as far as I know."

There's actually a whole section of the International Confederation of Wizards' department of secrecy enforcement which is devoted to the regular retrieval of the dead bodies of wizards who figure out how to teleport to the Moon but do not figure out that a bubble-head charm is not remotely rated for hard vacuum. They hand out little frosted grey cupcakes to the roughly one in every hundred of these intrepid explorers who survives long enough to instead be retrieved alive and immediately arrested for gross violations of the Statute of Secrecy.

Sirius is blissfully unaware of this, due to being eleven, and also due to being the exact type of person that is the reason the whole thing is classified in the first place.

Ophelia, not having access to wizarding documentation, hardly knows either, and it's also not like that counts.

It does prove her point quite handily, though!

In any event, in reference to learning things from mundanes: "Oh, probably, yeah, but then they'd have to talk to them without committing secrecy crimes every twelve seconds and that's apparently really hard."

"Your fashions are a crime upon themselves, for sure," she quips.  "But really.  Send a wizard who can blend out to buy an encyclopedia sometime.  I'd do it myself but I'm broke."

Sirius stiffens instinctively and makes a spluttering offended how dare you noise, and opens his mouth -

nooo you like fashion!! talk about fashion!!! bonding!!!! please for the love of fuck

- and then remembers to look down at the actual clothes he's currently wearing, which is not the usual dozen layers of tailored, embroidered glittering-black-thread-on-black-silk that his father refuses to let him leave the house without. (That staggeringly expensive outfit is currently shoved haphazardly into his equally expensive trunk, tossed into the luggage rack in Andy's compartment before she cheerfully kicked him out so she could make out with her boyfriend.) He's instead draped in a variety of stolen, dyed, shredded, etc. shades of eye-searing mismatched neon, and also, for ironic contrast, his black uniform hat.

"In my defense," he says, grinning crookedly, "this objectively terrible outfit is specifically designed to annoy my dad. I waved at him through the window and he made such a face. ... What is an encyclopedia?"

(Wizards do have those, sort of, but Sirius is not an enormously library-inclined child. Even if he were otherwise inclined to be, the library in his house tends to contain Aunt Cassie.)

That gets Ophelia to grin.

"Your outfit honestly knows what it's doing, so it can stay; it's very punk.  I'm more talking about the way that in general Madam Malkin hasn't met a color she wouldn't pair with literally every other color ever.  You ought to at least consider the rules of fashion before you break them!

"Oh, and an encyclopedia's a collection of books that're basically supposed to tell you the basics of everything.  Science, math, history, culture, art...Kind of like a dictionary, but with a wider remit."

Huh. He was fully expecting to be insulted just there - at absolute best in a friendly ribbing way, Andy smiled at him while she was saying oh my god, sirius, what are you wearing but still - and instead: this.

Yeah maybe they can be friends actually? 

"Oh, you're so right," he giggles. "I think Madam Malkin might be color-blind, she's just, like, really good at making the fabric go into shapes. And of course also the Dumbledore school of color theory is in vogue now." He says Dumbledore with a sort of habitually derogatory tone and then visibly reconsiders it as soon as it's out of his mouth with a thoughtful tongue-click. "I mean, my parents hate him so probably he's a cool dude. But still! Why is he like that! If I was the most powerful wizard in the world I'd want to look awesome about it!"

And as something of an afterthought:

"Oh, that's a cool kind of book for there to be. We should see if Hogwarts has one and then you can check if the Muggle ones have extra things in them."

"That's the tall guy with the doom face and the super long beard? I thought he looked awesome," Lily interjects. "Very wizardy."

"He's - he's definitely very something.  I don't know why but - I think he's sad.  ...Why do I think he's sad, that's a weird thing to think about a guy who was very visibly emoting fury and threat - oh, he's in charge, isn't he, and he has to deal with all this...whatever that's happening, instead of - teachery stuff, which he appears to want to do.  Since he's working at Hogwarts and not, you know, anywhere else.  That makes more sense.  ...Probably shouldn't trust that guess further than I can throw it, though, it's not like I know him from Adam."

... huh.

"Yeah, he's the headmaster," nods Sirius. Catches Lily's puzzled and fascinated encouraging nod, and adds in her direction, helpfully, "famously rejects like a million galleons in job offers a year to keep being headmaster, even. Dunno how true it is that he's just doing it so he can sabotage all the Slytherins, Bella says that all the time but Andy says she's just mad she failed her transfig NEWT."

"...Are a lot of the...sides in this war, do a lot of them come up through whatever Slytherin is?  Like your asshole relatives?  'cause I kinda get why he wouldn't like your relatives, if he's anything like I think he is."

Squint. "Whatever - ? Oh damn you have been like zero invited to anything haven't you. Did your mom personally insult Phil Greengrass to his face. Oh wow. Okay." He runs a hand through his hair. This is both an anxiety fidget and a deeply practiced motion: it results in a nearly picturesque perfectly artful dishevelment. "Okay. So. So the way this works right now is like - Hogwarts has four Houses and supposedly you get sorted into them by personality or whatever and - yeah, basically? The war is Slytherin vs Gryffindor, the other two are kinda sorta neutral but not really, and Dumbledore's a Gryffindor and my whole family's Slytherins and your whole family's Slytherins and - " considering pause. "Not everybody is good people or Death Eaters, right, but - that's why I want - something else."

"Huh, I was supposed to be getting invited to things?  What am I, wizard famous?  ...Though just guessing on the - look of it, I bet mom marrying a Muggle, for reasons I don't understand - because he's a prick - didn't endear her to - whoever it is who makes the invite lists."

"Ah. Yeah that'd do it. Normally it's like - you're not on the sacred twenty-eight," he says this phrase while aggressively rolling his eyes, "but Princes would normally get invited to things still, like the Crabbe-and-Goyles and stuff, but not if - "

(what even should you do, actually, if you are stuck halfway, a pureblood name and a Muggle father, you cannot be Andromeda Tonks, you cannot be Lily Evans, you cannot be Gideon Prewett, how are we to know what Ophelia Prince could possibly have done, no wonder she - no wonder she - fuck- )

Andromeda fucking whomst, what -

" - yeah so I want to say that if I was you I'd put on my Muggle dad's name just to annoy the shit out of everyone and be really good at things anyway, just to prove the point, but if he sucks then like, valid not to do that? I guess?"

"Hmm.  You do have a point.  Well, I have the whole train ride to decide whether I feel like pissing off whoever the Death Eaters are!"  This said cheerily, without a hint of external concern.  "Though I imagine I'll need self-defense practice, if I do do that, in larger quantities than expected."  And there's the realism.

" ..... yeah. Probably." He glances at Lily, who is currently engaged in speedreading her Charms textbook while listening avidly to this conversation. "Some kinda defense, for sure." He pauses, and considers, and then pulls a deck of cards from his pocket. "Exploding Snap?"

This is not only a game. It is a reflex training exercise.

"That sounds like a good way to pass the time, if the ride's long enough.  How do you play that?"

It is a quite long ride, so he'll explain in detail. The goal of the game is primarily to detect patterns in the cards as they are dealt faster than your opponent, but not so fast that you detect them incorrectly, which causes the cards to explode at you.

Sirius is very good at it, almost entirely through sheer reflexes rather than pattern-matching ability.

Ophelia's pattern-matching is very good, although the first time there is the crack of an explosion --

She has to interrupt the game to soothe a bird.

She's also got lots of fine motor skill from nigh-obsessive wand practice, trying to determine the minimal requisite motions and push her speed up, but it's not quite the same thing, really.

Lily will shortly finish skimming her book and join in. She has a lot of enthusiasm, decent reflexes, and absolutely no fear of explosions, which results in a cheerful willingness to be repeatedly wrong to earn a few milliseconds more of reaction time.

They will pass, then, a very fun several hours at the game.

(The corvid doesn't find it particularly fun, but Ophelia can cast Quietus - probably on the deck of cards, that being the source of the unpleasantness.)

"Is that allowed?" he'll eventually ask, curiously, tilting his head at the crow. "S'not an owl."

"Heck if I know; she brought herself, I had nothing to do with it and couldn't stop her when I tried.  She's very persistent."

"Oh. Huh. Well hello then, extremely persistent magic bird," he says to the crow. "Probably if you do murder in the owlery they will kick you out but if not then maybe the owls will share, I wouldn't know."

The crow tilts her head curiously and warks back, peering at this strange new human.  Then she flutters to Ophelia's shoulder, keeping a wary eye on the Human With Things That Go Bang.

Someone has to, since Ophelia's busy being friendly - and clearly Ophelia's flockmate can't be trusted to do it; she made a lot of things go bang herself!

Ophelia bursts into giggles.

"You know, I don't know if she has a single spark of magic at all?  There's a whole flock of them that hang 'round my place; I feed them, they give me shiny things, it's a symbiotic relationship."

Blink, blink. "Some people say all animals are a little bit magic but maybe they have just only met magic animals."

"It's a good question!  We should do science to it."

"Yeah!!"

(In Lily's experience 'science' means 'try stuff while Ophelia takes notes', a fun and delightful activity.)

Cautious nod.

"How can you find out if an animal is magic?  I don't think the Care books actually went into that much, which is weird..."

"Same way you tell if people are magic, probably? You just have to see if does any magic. ... Although actually I think it might count as 'doing magic' to be able to see Hogwarts at all so maybe you will find out very soon."

"Huh.  Good to know.  Not very helpful to empirically test, though...especially for - subclinical?  Levels..."

Ophelia's going to spend the rest of the ride thinking.

Subclinically magical. What a phrase.

Sirius will spend the rest of the ride fidgeting with his Snap cards, staring out the window.

Lily goes back to shoulderlean-reading, watching Sirius out of the corner of her eye.

The arm Ophelia isn't using to write - in a muggle three-ring binder, with one of those corporate-sponsored cheap pens they give out at career days and so on - ends up making its way around Lily's shoulders, for 'some' 'unknowable' reason.

The Hogwarts Express stops at Hogsmeade Station with an abruptness that is much less jarring than it has any possible right to be, and throws all its doors open with a ringing clatter. Students, leaving their luggage behind, pour out in fits and starts; some are clinging together in nervous clumps, while others burst out like birds taking flight, chattering excitedly at each other. The open-air platform is breezy and warm, the wooden planks holding heat like sun-baked stone, and overhead the last rays of sunset give it a peculiar sense of unreality. As though the Hogwarts Express has exited the real world, where there is a war, and arrived at the borders of faerieland, where there are only rumours of same.

But borderlands are not the fortress, and the war could come here, if it so chose. It doesn't, because Dumbledore is here, as he was at King's Cross. By the stiffness of his statuesquely grim stance, it is tempting to imagine that he hasn't moved at all, and the Earth simply shifted around him.

Someone in a bright red scarf, fifteen or sixteen by the looks of it, shouts over the din, "HI PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE, IS IT TRUE YOU KILLED THR - "

"Please do not ask me to speak of the war here," murmurs the headmaster. His voice is so soft that it should not have been audible at more than five paces, and everyone on the platform hears it as clearly as if they they were standing right next to him.

...She is not going to speak of the war, here.

Not directly, at the very least.

But - something about him -

As the bustle of the train dies down, Ophelia, despite her normal intuitions that would not dare directly confront such a powerful authority as this, finds herself speaking to him, after she disembarks - though with some trepidation over leaving her trunk.  There is no reason to hurry here.

"Headmaster Dumbledore.  I realize that you have asked that the current troubles not follow us here, but - ask, and speak, I feel I must, for reasons strange and obscure even to me.  Given that - there is a war -

"I feel that it would be a blessing upon all her Houses, if the students of Hogwarts could learn the skill and art of healing, especially in these trying times.  If that is something you could arrange...

"It feels as though it is something that could help more than any number of slain Dark wizards could."

She pauses, and - carefully displays vulnerability, that is also sympathy, empathy.

"...I hate being helpless, too.  You - have much more power than I - but...power alone will not, cannot fix this.  It's an issue of mindset.  Proper and effective education, though, that - faces our shared pains, and teaches us better ways of mending them...That might just help.  It attacks the problem's source."

(Going carefully unmentioned, of course, is that it is likely possible to shock the less committed junior Death Eaters out of their shit by showing them the harms they would partake in.)

The bird on Ophelia's shoulder fixes the man that she definitely saw ominously glowing at the train station earlier with a vaguely suspicious wark.  Yes, her human flockmate is doing the 'carefully approach a new bird' thing right now, but if he wanted to show up here, he should have taken the train with everyone else.

Oh no.

She is so earnest and so small.

Oh no.

Dumbledore expels a great sigh, and peers down at Ophelia, eyes bright and blue and slightly damp. "Well met, Miss Prince," he says, quietly. These words are just for her, and not for the whole platform. "Were it possible to safely teach Healing without five to nine years of prerequisites I assure you that it would already be a required course for every Hogwarts student. As for the rest - all I can offer you is the reminder that powerful though I may be, I am not Merlin himself, to rewrite the law as I please. The Hogwarts curriculum is mine to control only so long as the Board of Directors cannot convince the Minister for Magic that it shouldn't be." 

(In the increasingly near distance, an absolutely enormous bearded man is shouting: "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!")

"Ah.  Politics.  The greatest curse of human organization."

"I'll have to think more about ways to teach the lesson I had in mind, then.  Thank you for your time and service, Headmaster."

She gives a polite little bow, and hurries off; she hardly wishes to get separated from Lily.

He inclines his head politely as she leaves, and does not move from his spot until they can no longer see him, as they separate from the upperclassmen and are shepherded to the edge of the lake. 

"No more'n four to a boat," Hagrid says, frowning suspiciously at the little flotilla.

Hogwarts usually provides, in its magical way, precisely the correct number of boats for the number of new students it is welcoming. But there are forty-eight students here, plus Hagrid, and fourteen boats.

...Well that look he's giving the boats they're expected to ride is totally not concerning.

"Is something the matter, Mr...?"

"Oh erm hello yes! Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of keys and grounds!" he introduces himself in a booming voice. "Nah, no, everything's fine, there's just - a weird number of 'em."

"...I see.  ...I think I see what you mean, as well.  It's exactly four to a boat, huh?  That's...concerning."

Her crow has already perched aboard one, which she is poised to follow it into.  "Lily, Sirius, would you prefer to mingle, or stay together?"

"Usually, yeah. Well, better get on it it, maybe Professor Dumbledore'll know." 

Hagrid takes up the whole of one of the boats himself, leaving thirteen for a group that needs only twelve.

Lily and Sirius glance at each other, decide apparently unanimously that it is probably not the ideal time to try to make new friends in the dark right before the Sorting with possible shenanigans afoot, and follow Ophelia.

They are joined eventually by a short, nervous-looking boy, who was slow to commit to a group while everyone was embarking and therefore found himself stuck on the shore with very few options that aren't the ominous crow girl that just had a whole secret conversation with Dumbledore or the still-empty Mysterious Extra Boat. "Sorry," he mumbles as he scurries aboard. 

"There's nothing to apologize for; welcome to our humble aboat.  Might I ask your name?"

Not her best effort at lightening the mood, but hopefully it will help.

"Oh! Oh. Um. Hello. Yes. I'm Peter, uh, Pettigrew."

It takes him long enough to get this sentence out that by the time he's managed it the boats have started moving. They do this with absolute smoothness, as though gliding on rails through the water, tugged by invisible ropes. Around them, other quiet conversations are mostly swallowed by the seemingly endless depths of the black lake.

The empty boat comes along, too.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Peter Pettigrew.

"You're nervous; it will help if you take a deep breath in, and out, like so.

"You're not in danger, not here.  Dumbledore wouldn't let that happen, I'm sure of it.  You can relax."

Peter obediently performs the breathing exercise, and does relax a little.

(He was arguably more afraid of nebulous social censure than of danger per se, but she's also being friendly, so.)

"Um. Thank you. What's, uh -" 

The boats pass under the bridge, and the castle rises in the distance, and Peter, like everyone else, falls quiet midsentence in breathless wonder.

Hogwarts Castle is old. (And brand new, unbowed, spotless, glittering stone and marble and brick in the light of stars and torches. Not a palace, not a town, but a fortress.) In another time, on another day, it would glow with warmth, with welcome, with the promise of home and hearth and safety. That warmth can still be felt, muted, under the water, in the air, waiting to be allowed home again. The thousand thousand mental imprints of their forebears, free to do magic without fear of their neighbors, huddle together still, giving life to the stones, whispering of the community they are supposed to have.

But they know - Hogwarts knows, in its ancient moving bones - that war has come to its shores.

So Hogwarts does not speak of safety to its children, now. Not when it can promise no such thing.

I love you, it says only, softly, instead, wordless concepts floating on the breeze off the lakeshore. Come home.

...Ophelia is torn between the choice of which tears to cry, as she finds herself so dramatically drawn to the castle's glow -

The tears that she is home, here, has found, can find, can forge, can make a place for herself beyond that dismal, distant garret, that she will have unquestioning support from this place's very bones -

and the tears that even the sanctity of that promise, that home, has been marred by strife and suffering untold and immeasurable; that within even these sacred walls a fight is fought over childrens' hearts and minds, and some are lost to it.

She cannot do much, dear Hogwarts.  But Ophelia Severus Prince will do everything she can, for you, and the promise you dearly wish to give.

When they have all caught their breath, and dried their tears, Hagrid shepherds them quietly up the path, and up the stairs, where they will meet, at the doors, a witch with long silver hair, who gives off the strong and discomfiting impression of being somehow both approximtely forty and approximately three hundred. 

"Good evening," she says, in a voice like a gravity well. "My name is Thuraya Shafiq. I am the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and its Professor of Astronomy. The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses..."

The explanatory speech about the Houses has been the same for Hogwarts' history. It only sometimes has a coda.

"...I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours. Additionally," and here she frowns around at everyone, levelly. "I remind you that, whatever your housemates may have to say about irreconcilable differences and/or war, the House Cup is a game. Students found to be taking it entirely too seriously will be severely punished."

Ophelia raises her hand.

"Ah, Deputy Headmistress Shafiq, ma'am, how seriously may we take the - the war - as a matter separate entirely from the matters of Hogwarts Houses?"

Faint frown. "Underspecified question. Certainly it is not within the purview of the Hogwarts administration to rule upon that which takes place outside its walls. Certainly it is within the purview of the Hogwarts administration to require that you do not perform acts of war upon your classmates in the hallways. In the case of more ambiguous middle grounds... I should say simply, I think, that anyone considering whether they can break the rules in spirit by obeying them in letter -" she is here making a sweeping statement to the whole room again, not making any particular accusations of Ophelia, who she doesn't yet know - "will be best advised to remember that it is I, not the abstract concept of clever technicalities, who will be making a judgment call."

Normally, at this juncture, she would step away for the ghosts to put on their regularly scheduled performance of bursting in complaining about Peeves to see which of the kids flinch in which ways and then taking bets among themselves for the Sorting. This activity has been cancelled by Dumbledore on grounds that under the circumstances the risk of startling an eleven-year-old into a dangerous accidental magic incident is currently unacceptably high.

"The Sorting Ceremony will begin now. Follow me."

"Thank you, ma'am," she murmurs, walking up next to Deputy Headmistress Shafiq.  She shows no fear.  "I...don't want to see anyone else get hurt.  Especially not here."

The bird that has perched on her shoulder once again gently butts its head against hers, earning a quiet, slightly amused noise and a scritch from Ophelia.

The Great Hall, as its ceiling opens up above them - despite the fact that, as they could see from the outside approaching, it definitely, one hundred percent, has a closed roof - is a riot of candles and twinkling stars. The constellations hang overhead as clear and precise as if there were not a single light source for a hundred miles. Each of the four long House tables is easily identifiable, not because they are labeled but because so many of the students are wearing color-coded accessories along with their black uniforms that one gets almost the impression of a colored camera filter being applied over each quarter of the room.

The low rumble of conversation quiets, as the Deputy Headmistress strides up to the front, where sits an ancient, patched pointy hat. Once the first-years have been shepherded into place in front of the head table, it opens its absence of mouth and sings a song. 

Most years it sings a funny little jingle about its job. This year it sings a ballad, which echoes through the hall with a faint and wizardly ambient sense of some sort of singular large aquatic creature lurking supportively below the floor.

Though often I am cheery, I shall not be tonight;
for today I tell you of an ancient Founders' fight -
Dear Godric and dear Salazar, who dealt me such a fright,
when this very evening, there was no snake in sight.

These memories are ancient, now, but listen if you will;
The Hogwarts of today has much ink on them spilled.
No Muggleborn nor pureblood dealt this castle ill;
'twas fear of persecution whose echoes haunt her still.

Dear Salazar the canny, in the deep dark night,
saw he flames a-burning, witches set to light.
Is it any wonder, then, that he feared Muggles might,
Tear down his works, set wizardry to flight?

A brave man, Godric Gryffindor, but quick to draw his steel;
He had no patience for wheels within wheels.
A threat he made, upon the day he found Hogwarts' gates seal'd;
Demanded he they open be, for either wound or weal.

Dear Rowena and Helga, despite their own fair might,
could not themselves yet settle the snakes' and lions' plight.
Keen intellect agreed that threats lurked in the night,
but kindness, caring, counsel'd that rejection wasn't right.

I find it sits upon me, to tell you, if I might:
Be kind to those unlike you, and from them take no fright,
For when you're judg'd and heav'n calls your true accounts to light -
Would hatred earn you mercy, in the darkest night?

Dumbledore, sitting directly behind it, may possibly be crying.

Professor Shafiq, her steady tone unmoved, unfurls the classlist and intones, "Avery, Philip," pulling the first student to be Sorted from the crowd.

Ophelia waits, patiently, and may possibly have cried as well, as the ballad wore on.

She refused to lose composure, however, dabbing at her eyes with a black handkerchief she produces from her blazer's pocket.

When it's Lily's turn to go, she whispers "good luck."

(Avery is a Slytherin, of course.)

Sirius is kind of expecting to have to argue with the Hat.

He doesn't, though.

Oh, this is going to be the interesting kind of war, isn't it. Terrible.

Far be it from me to stop you, little lion.

He gets exactly as many intensely concerned and suspicious frowns as he expected, though, which is all of them: as soon as he sits down at the Gryffindor table, there is no one within about six feet of him.

It's fine. He'll show them.

Lily is so ready. Magic hat magic hat what am I, huh.

Oh, come now.

You think I'm going to pick for you, like you don't already know?

I know what you thought of the song, dear.

She is aware that the point of the song was that Godric and Salazar breaking up was a tragedy and they were supposed to figure out how to reconcile their differences and live happily ever after teaching children to the end of their days or whatever.

She kind of thinks Salazar deserved to be threatened with a sword, though. So.

She's - sorry?

No, she's not sorry.

That's all right. I'm not offended. I'm just a hat, you know.

And I'm a Gryffindor.

Yes, you are.

She sits down right next to Sirius, in the wide empty space that's been cleared for it. If someone wants to explain to her why she shouldn't she's sure they'll get around to it.

Peter Pettigrew, who they met briefly on the boat ride over, sits under the hat for a full five minutes before scurrying, flushed with embarrassment, to the Gryffindor table. He sits on the other side from Sirius, close enough to listen in curiously but not close enough to be seen to definitely have taken a side just yet, until he figures out what's going on.

And then next: "Prince, Ophelia."

She strides up to the hat, then tenderly places it upon her head.

...After getting a bird out of her hair.

The Hat is used to that sort of thing. Students come up to it with frogs in their hair on a disturbingly regular basis.

Good heavens, the ambition on you. I could smell it from twenty paces.

But you are not the kind of student who is best served by a quick Sorting, even so, are you. Let's see, then, shall we. What else is there in this lovely deadly sharp maze of yours. Meticulous studiousness, a thirst for knowledge, quite so. Loyalty, narrow and deep as the northern pines. Unbending righteous fury, oh yes.

I think I must ask you this:

Do you want to be where you belong, little Prince, or where you will be best placed to win the war?

I think, I think, that I care not so much about winning the war, as I do being in a place where I can end it.

Leave the glory for those who need their ego.  If I find myself face to face with an angry dark wizard, something has already gone horribly wrong.

But to answer your question...

I hardly imagine there's a difference, now is there?

I cannot be myself, if I do not give my utmost try to this one cause, the cause of peace in the home that has welcomed me, the cause of fearlessness in the face of that which would oppress.

And a hat that wasn't reading my mind as I thought this might think I wish to be in Gryffindor...

But you and I both know that if I want to change the pattern this school's stuck in, I'll need to change it from...

From the outside perspective, there is a faint note of surprise upon Ophelia's face, not upon the moment the hat hits her head, no - but several seconds after.

Then, her head drifts a bit, looking up and to the right in a pose that certainly Lily would recognize as an Ophelia in more intense thought than usual.

And as her thought finishes, Ophelia fixes her gaze firmly down the center of the hall once more, despite her close-lidded eyes, and speaks the same word the Sorting Hat does:

"Slytherin."

The Hat doesn't quite answer Ophelia's thought, not enough to interrupt it once she's gotten started - wouldn't be what's best for her, right then, and that's it's job - but she'll find after she's been issued her ruling, and set it back on the stool, that she has an extra sentence lingering in memory, as though it had left a very polite mental sticky note for her to collect at her leisure.

Salazar would say, I think, that no war can be righteous enough that ending it does not constitute winning it.

I suspect you will win yours with his fondest blessing, little snake. Or hope, at least.

She murmurs a polite "Thank you; I hope so as well," to the hat, and gives it a surprisingly fond little smile-and-nod, before she finds her way to the Slytherin table.

Is there, perchance, a prefect not engaged in conversation with anyone?  She has a question to ask of them, you see.

Well, nobody is supposed to be having a conversation at all, the Sorting isn't over yet, but of the six Slytherin prefects currently extant, two (clearly sisters, they're nearly identical) are currently engaged in the loudest vicious argument that has ever been perfectly silent, two more are watching this with abject fascination, and a fifth is already nose-deep in a textbook, so that leaves her exactly one option, a squat and smiling girl who in complete contravention of the ongoing color-coding situation has her prefect badge pinned to a bright pink scarf.

"Excuse me," she murmurs, "but is it a requirement that we sit at House tables either tonight or in the general case?  I wouldn't want to end up neglecting friends and allies."

"Yes-it's-the-rules-sit-down-shhhhhh," hisses the prefect, glancing at the head table. She manages to do this without ceasing to smile but it's clearly an effort to do so.

That is honestly somewhat unnerving.

To Ophelia, who is generally not readily unnerved!

"I see."  She'll be checking that later.

Nonetheless, for now, she will find a seat with a good view of the hall, insofar as such a thing is possible - she wants the fewest possible threats at her back - and pull out her pocket notebook, a little spiral-bound pad with a golf pencil.  She's got a note to pass to Lily, she thinks.

There also, speaking of things that might or might not be rules, continues to be a corvid near or on Ophelia!

Due to the fundamental nature of Gryffindors and Slytherins, those are the tables that have been placed nearest the walls, so Ophelia can indeed sit such that no one is behind her.

Nobody has commented on the corvid yet, although she's getting some curious glances. It may be clear why, once she sits: it fits right in. There are a few owls about, although the majority of the ones that were about at King's Cross don't seem to have followed their respective persons all the way here and are instead in the owlery. At least a dozen cats are ambiently underfoot, and Ophelia may catch a glimpse of a fox curled around someone's ankle. Various people are ornamented with frogs, toads, lizards, and in several cases at the Slytherin table in particular, snakes. 

If Ophelia's particular creature would normally have an opinion about this, it is likely to instead find that it mysteriously doesn't: Hogwarts, which plays host to an annual average of a hundred or so miscellaneous student familiars at any given time plus resident and visiting owls, gently discourages all such creatures from inconvenient behaviors such as "yelling" and "trying to eat each other" and so forth, in order that literally anything ever gets done on its grounds.

Hogwarts kind of wishes it could do this with the students too, but alas,

Such a thing might or might not be vaguely disorienting, honestly, but - flockmate is here.  Flockmate may be a bit too cavalier about danger to self, but not about danger to flock.

And those cats do not look like stalking cats, anyway.

Ooh, a fox, they're pretty!  Would the fox like scritches, if they're close enough to have an opinion on this New Human?

(She's very careful, gently offering her hand to sniff first, if this seems at all in the offing.)

...If Ophelia knew what Hogwarts was thinking, she'd second it.  (Not, to be clear, that she endorses nonconsensual mind control - but that she wishes that everyone would stop fighting.)

The fox does not desire to make new friends at this time but its owner, a girl a couple years Ophelia's senior, seems mildly charmed. She doesn't say anything, since they aren't supposed to be talking yet, but raises her eyebrows in a sort of sorry, maybe another time way while the fox hides behind her leg.

Ophelia returns a small, but real, smile.  Maybe this won't suck as badly as she thinks it might.

And she does need allies, she thinks, to - fix this - so the first step is to gather friends.

Soon enough the Sorting is over, and Professor Shafiq puts the Hat away and sits down in her place at the high table next to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore stands from his enormous oak chair. "I am sure you are all very hungry," he says, "and so I will save most of my remarks for later. Welcome to Hogwarts," and then sits back down. 

Abruptly, the tables are no longer empty, but laden with a magnificent feast the likes of which only the very wealthiest of the students present will have seen before anywhere but here. Served in quantities arguably somewhat excessive for the number of students actually present, it is very much the classic cuisine of the Isles: centered primarily around savory roasted meats, pastries, and root vegetables. (Notably including pumpkins, which apparently wizards consider to be just as much a Core Root Vegetable as a potato or a carrot or a parsnip.) And also peppermints, for some reason.

As soon as Dumbledore sits down, conversations start up everywhere at once like a roaring social engine.

Ophelia, on the other hand, goes immediately for the food like a child who's growing up with chronic food insecurity.

Ah, bloody hell, the food's native.  Well, at least it knows spices exist.  Good food should be an experience.

"Who cooked this?  Or is it just - Hogwarts?", she asks of the girl with the pretty fox.

The corvid on her shoulder warks at Ophelia inquiringly,

, and she sets about preparing it a little plate with some food she knows is bird-safe, before she asks a favor.  "Can you take this to Lily?", she says, proffering a folded-up pieced of lined paper.

...Sure, in exchange for the food you're giving me, the bird doesn't say.

Lily gets a note delivered by post-corvid!

Slytherin's a rotten House, it seems, and the Hat agrees, but - I don't want you thinking to immediately rescue me.  Someone needs to be here to change it.  And - I'm more resilient to pressure, as much as I regret how I developed that skill.

Keep in touch, though, please.  I will need you help with this.

 

Missing you already,

--Ophelia

Aww, postal corvid.

She doesn't attempt to write a note back, because she is currently enthusiastically engaged in like three conversations at the same time, but she carefully folds up and pockets the note, shares some bacon off her plate with the bird if it stays put long enough to be offered any, and in its wake shoots a bright, supportive smile in Ophelia's general direction before going back to having a surprisingly friendly argument with a very concerned Alice Fortescue about (judging from how they keep gesturing at him) whether Sirius Black should be presumed to be evil.

The fox-owning third year shrugs unconcernedly. "I dunno, elves, probably?"

Mmm, bacon.

"...'Elves, probably'?  I don't recall any particular mention of elves when I was doing my reading..."

This comment gets her the immediate attention of several nearby people, all of them frowning. "Surely," says the pink-scarfed prefect, with wide-eyed sugary disbelief, "you cannot possibly mean to imply that your parents never taught you what a house-elf is?"

Ophelia probably has the social acumen to detect that this question actually means 'convince us immediately that you have wizard parents or you're about to have several problems.'

"My mother, the only parent I have that's worth the title, was inattentive enough to her own heritage that I currently hold the wand Ollivander gave her," she rejoins.  "I trust you can see why I wouldn't know what I couldn't find in her books."

(Or, in translation, "My mother was (an idiot/neglectful/oblivious/unambitious) enough, and I cunning enough, that her wand is now my wand; do you want me to show you what I've learned with it?")

There's a brief awkward silence while they process this and glance at each other, hoping for someone to manifest a relevant genealogical fact.

"That'll be Eileen Prince," volunteers Narcissa Black, helpfully. She apparently got out about two and a half actual words at Andromeda before the latter erected some sort of shimmering barrier of floating knives around herself and began grumpily eating her dinner and ignoring everyone, leaving the other prefects to pay attention to the rest of the universe again. "My uncle Alphard was in her class, nothing nice to say. It's not like she'd be in any history books for someone to pull the name out of." Implied: so probably Ophelia is not lying.

Everyone relaxes considerably. 

(Ophelia is 100% going to find Andromeda later, having seen this.)

"That is she, yes.

"I find myself curious why it is the house of personal ambition that cares this much who one's parents are."

It is a statement as carefully devoid of suggestion that she does or does not care about blood heritage as she can possibly make it.

" ... s'that what you were talking to Dumbledore about," wonders Philip Avery, wrinkling his nose.

The answer to the question of why the identity of your parents matters so much is so obvious as to not need stating for most people here, and a number of them look at her like she's grown several new heads amidst various other introductory chatter, but eventually one of Ophelia's soon to be new roommates, a severe-looking dark-haired girl who has just introduced herself on request as Karina Dolohov, suggests, frowning, "Well, first of all it's a useful predictor of future performance but it's not just the house of personal ambition. Legacy matters."

So Slytherin manages to dislike even the man that theoretically is involved in keeping them safe from dark wizards deciding to kill them.

On the one hand, she's almost certain that the people holding that opinion are nigh-universally relatives of those wizards themselves.

On the other hand...they're idiots.

"I spoke to him because I abhor the tragedy that is death, and wished that a bit of wisdom regarding the utility of learning Healing, especially when there is a war on, be thusly put forward to the gentlemen in charge of the curriculum, in the hopes that it might result in Hogwarts teaching any, perhaps as a later-year intensive.  Unfortunately, whoever that may be, it is not Albus Dumbledore - and what a fool I was for thinking so - so I shall have to find the correct person or persons to pitch."

This sounds like a chore, when she says it.  Something routine.  It isn't, and won't be, but it sounds like it, nonetheless.  Perhaps it will get her introductions, though she dares not hope.

Karina Dolohov gets a considering noise.  "Interesting.  I suppose it would tend to measure the probability that you've had opportunities to excel in the past.  Isn't there an adage in investment, though, that past performance is not indicative of future results?  One must always consider the market, or so I've heard."

"Pitch Malfoy," suggests Avery, tossing his head in the general direction of the tall blond Head Boy, "his dad's the head of the board."

Next to him, a second-year by the name of Travers snorts. "Get at least a term of good grades first or Malfoy won't hear a word you say." 

Dolohov shrugs, unconvinced. "Pretty sure it's that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. 'Not a guarantee' isn't at all the same thing as 'not at all predictive'."

She politely inclines her head at Avery and Travers.  "The information is appreciated."

As for Dolohov, she nods.  "That is true.  Sometimes I wonder, though, what companies would turn out to be household names if we gave them equal materials, and equal tools, then went behind a veil of ignorance before picking between the resulting products.  Regardless, that's merely a thought.  And we're eating dinner, not performing thought experiments."

So they are! Dinner, thus, proceeds apace, with a moderate amount more of people asking each other Arguably Polite Questions Which Are Definitely Not Secretly Insults. (They aren't only doing this at Ophelia or anything. Slytherins are just sort of fundamentally like that.)

She might be good at this social maneuvering, but she is going to haaaaaate it here.

Oh well.  Needs must.

Eventually, the food is replaced by dessert, and dessert is replaced by steadily quieting chatter as everyone gets full and contented and sleepy, and then Dumbledore stands up again.

"Now that we are all fed and watered, I have a few more words to share with you," he says, warmly. His voice is noticeably softer than it was on the platform, warmer, like a very heavy weight has temporarily left his shoulders. "For those of you who do not know me, I am Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and it is my immense honor to welcome each and every one of you to Hogwarts. I know that in the past year there has been a great deal of upheaval in our community, and it may seem difficult to focus your attention on classwork, but I implore you to remember that education is more, not less, important in uncertain times. Very few long-term goals are accomplished without it."

He pauses to let this sink in, and then continues.

"Now, a few announcements. First, after many decades of loyal service, our castle caretaker Apollyon Pringle has begun his well-deserved retirement, and I ask you to join me in welcoming his successor, Mr. Argus Filch." He gestures to a middle-aged man with a deep frown and an enormous yellow-eyed cat wrapped around his shoulders like a scarf. There's a smattering of dubious applause. "Second, all students should be aware that a new Whomping Willow has been planted at the edge of the Forbidden Forest for research purposes, and approaching it without an approved NEWT research proposal and the direct supervision of Professor Sprout is both forbidden and extremely ill-advised. I also remind you, of course, that the Forbidden Forest remains exactly as Forbidden as its name implies. Third, if you have any problems, of any kind, caused by the chaos currently ongoing outside our walls, do not hesitate to ask any of your professors for help or advice. We may not be able to solve everything, but we're here to help. In particular, your Head of House will have office hours, marked on the schedule you will receive tomorrow morning at breakfast." 

Normally, at this juncture, it would be time to sing a song.

Dumbledore does not feel it is tonally appropriate. Regretfully, he closes his speech: "And that is all I have for you this evening. Good night."

Ophelia applauds the caretaker politely.  He has an important job, moreso because it's an overlooked one.

And then it is time to leave, it seems.

She finds herself wondering where they are actually going, however.