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Vivian is a quiet child. Shy and easily overwhelmed, she is most often found at home studying quietly under her mother's approving eye. She does well enough in school that her parents start to talk about sending her to a fancy boarding school when she's older; St. Paul's, perhaps, or maybe Sevenoaks. Vivian doesn't object. She is always well behaved, and she never speaks unless spoken to. If her parents think she should go away to school, she's sure they know best. She doesn't need to talk to them about it. And she certainly doesn't need to mention the strange things that happen sometimes in her room, late at night when she's falling asleep. Her books can't actually float. The street lights don't actually make pretty moving shadow designs on the wall. It's just a pleasant fancy.
And then suddenly it isn't just a child's fancy anymore. There's an older couple showing up to Explain Things to her parents carrying a fancy letter on parchment- sealed with wax, even- and an entirely different kind of boarding school to attend. Her parents seem more confused and afraid than anything else, but the wizard couple is very insistently, politely persuasive. Vivian gets the feeling her parents don't quite know what to do with her. But having been presented with such a convenient answer, the arrangements are made.
She'll be attending Hogwarts in the fall.
It becomes obvious to Vivian very quickly that the helpful couple left a lot of things out. Until recently the school was, literally, a war zone. Perhaps they'd done it on purpose; they'd said something vague about fetching her "because the faculty were busy", but Vivian suspects belatedly that they really meant "because the faculty are recovering from an enormous magical battle, yes seriously." She doesn't tell her parents; they would worry, or pull her out of school, and she doesn't really think she'd be any safer if they did. She is, as always, quiet. The Sorting Hat puts her in Slytherin, and she gets quieter. She doesn't socialize, she doesn't answer questions about her home life, she spends as much time as she can in the library. Eventually the older students write her off as "one of those weird Asian witches", and she sees no need to correct them. She is a weird Asian witch. Better than a pureblooded snob, as far as she's concerned.
She does well in school. She's not inspiring awe and admiration in Ravenclaw hearts or anything like that, but when you do nothing but study you do well in school, and Vivian does little else. She likes the work, and doesn't feel the loss. She finishes year one, then year two. Her parents are pleased she's doing well, and don't otherwise ask questions; magic makes them uncomfortable. It certainly never occurs to them to ask if she's making friends. She's not, but she prefers it that way. She likes her cozy armchair in the library much more than the older Slytherins, that's for sure.
Her disinterest in socialization does not survive the onset of puberty.
Vivian isn't clear on when, exactly, she realizes that other witches are pretty. But other witches are definitely pretty. So Vivian starts attempting to meet some. Her studying starts moving closer and closer to other students' study groups. There's one group in particular, with a beautiful Ravenclaw witch her age... Vivian watches them. She's not the only one, this group is awfully famous so she doesn't stand out much, but she's still too shy. She tries not to stare as much. (She fails. She's so smart. And that smile.) She tries to at least stare at other girls. (More successful, but it's not a large student body; she only has so many options). And she worries and daydreams and panics that she'll say something and be crushed in the process. (She says nothing.)
But there's no one to talk to about this. Why can't she find any gay witches or wizards to talk to? She listens to gossip. She asks innocent questions when she dares. She only comes up with three names, in the whole school, and the two girls are dating each other. That's probably the only reason anyone knows about them at all, she decides glumly. This is just not talked about at Hogwarts. And it's not like she has friends to ask or compare notes with. She's "that quiet Asian witch" who doesn't make friends.
She decides that if no one is talking about it, she's going to make them.
She gets permission from the Headmistress. She talks Madame Hooch- on the principle that the flying instructor has the most free time- into acting as the faculty adviser. And she starts distributing flyers.
Queer/Straight Wix Alliance introductory meetup, Monday October 2 at 7pm in the Charms classroom. Cauldron cakes and chatting.
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slythervivian
slythervivian
"Okay, so I've been able to tell from context that's a big deal but Professor Reed hasn't really covered them, help?"
planetarium
"Dementors are soul-eating monsters who suck the happiness out of anyone who gets too close. And until Miranda killed one, they couldn't be destroyed."
planetarium
"They could be repelled, with a spell called the Patronus Charm, which is made of happy memories. Most people's looks like an animal made of silver light. Miranda's looks like a person, and instead of shooing Dementors away it chases them down and kills them. She saved our lives - we were looking for Jenny, me and her and Emma and Professor Fisher - and there was a Dementor that had Jenny cornered, and she'd morphed her mouth away so it couldn't take her soul, but she couldn't run away. Professor Fisher fainted. I couldn't do anything, Emma couldn't, but Miranda knew the spell and she'd never gotten it to work before but that time it worked and the Dementor was gone."
slythervivian
The whole school knows something happened, that night in the forest, but the stories got wilder in each telling. This is the first time Vivian's heard what's probably the actual story, and with any kind of context on how weird it is that Silverlight- and that nickname makes sense now, doesn't it- can actually kill something no one else can.
(She'd point out that Karen hasn't really answered her question about 'how' but from the sound of it no one, possibly including Miranda, can answer that, so she doesn't bother pressing.)
"No wonder she's famous," she says faintly.
(She'd point out that Karen hasn't really answered her question about 'how' but from the sound of it no one, possibly including Miranda, can answer that, so she doesn't bother pressing.)
"No wonder she's famous," she says faintly.
planetarium
"Yeah. And she keeps doing it! She goes out, summers, to places where there might be dementors, and she camps out and stalks them and kills them. She wants to drive them extinct."
slythervivian
Vivian frowns. "I'm not sure I like the idea of driving anything totally extinct," she admits, "but I am also used to the Muggle world, where all animals are just... animals. And usually necessary to a food chain or something like that. Dark creatures are probably different."
planetarium
"Well, you'd have to talk to her about keeping one in a menagerie, I guess, because she knocks down a couple dozen every summer. Left wild they do sometimes suck out random people's souls though."
slythervivian
Vivian shrugs. "I don't know anything about them," she reminds Karen. "Sharks kill people sometimes too, but I know they do- something. With fish. And eating fish. Keeping the oceans balanced?" She laughs. "They do something! I'm in magic school, not Muggle school, I missed the lectures on fish."
slythervivian
"You don't... go with her, right?" Vivian has a horrible vision of Karen's soul being sucked out, Karen who doesn't know how to kill a Dementor, and she suspects she's found her nightmare fodder for the next few months.
planetarium
"Oh no. I'd be completely useless. Gilderoy Lockhart used to escort her but now she has someone from the International Confederation of Wizards, I forget her name, some junior aide who apparates her places and finds more dementors for her to kill."
slythervivian
"Those- Gilderoy Lockhart? International Confederation of Wizards?" Vivian looks sheepish. "I'm sorry, usually I just smile and nod and pretend I know what's happening, but I can actually ask you. I can stop if it's annoying."
planetarium
"No, it's fine! Gilderoy Lockhart wrote a lot of books about fighting monsters, and he taught Defence one year, and then he had a memory charm accident and was in St. Mungo's for a long time but then he got mostly better, better enough to take Miranda dementor-hunting. Miranda didn't like him very much but no one else would do it at first so she put up with him. And the International Confederation of Wizards is a thing all the magical governments form together, sort of?"
planetarium
"Most of the things magic can't just fix are caused by magic to begin with. If you, I don't know, lose your arm because a rock fell on it, Madam Pomfrey will fix it up. If you have a potions accident she might not be able to. She probably could, mind, but she might not."
slythervivian
"I wonder how many Muggle problems magic could solve but no one's tried?" Vivian sighs. "I don't really understand the hiding, I guess."
slythervivian
"Muggles often misplace their brains," Vivian says. "But they're over that one. And lots of other horrible things we used to do... mostly." She looks at Karen seriously. "Besides. I saw what the school was like when we started. Two of the girls in Slytherin still wake us up every few months screaming with nightmares. One boy breaks down crying every so often and won't say why. Most of the older students are orphans. It's not like wizards don't struggle with this stuff."
planetarium
"I thought they got over it because we started hiding. And I'm not sure what there having been a war has to do with witch burnings."