Oral History

Every time she visits Cho's room, she is afraid someone will find out; someone will see. Will know. Will hear.

What they do during "History of Magic" study-sessions is far more intimate than sex, and the prospect of being discovered frightens Padma a great deal more than anyone finding out about her and Susan, or people suddenly realizing everything always says about the Weasely twins could apply to her and Parvati.

If people find out, they'll ask why, and then she'll have to tell them, and somehow she doesn't think she could stay at Hogwarts after that.

Mind you, it hasn't always been easy in the first place.

She had always thought of herself as basically English before Hogwarts. They had been born in England. So had their father, although their mother had only come to England (and Hogwarts) at sixteen, having taken and gotten five O's on her OWLS at the school in Delhi.

They lived in Fulham. They spoke English at home, except when visiting their relatives. Their mum wore expensive suits to work at Gringott's, and only broke out the saris for weddings or funerals. Their dad worked at the Ministry and followed both Quidditch and football almost obsessively. When both parents working late, which was often, they'd bring home carryout - sometimes Indian, but more often pizza or Chinese or frozen pies from the grocery.

They had a TV in their living room, and had the Daily Prophet delivered along with the Times and the Guardian, and beautiful women in saris and gold danced and clapped and sang in a wizard photo their dad had sneaked at a cousin's wedding.

Before Hogwarts, she and Parvati had gone to a comprehensive. No one had ever thought there was anything particularly unusual about their family. Occasionally, she'd pick up on nasty looks and smirking nudges from the other girls, and knew racism when she saw it, but most of the time it just hadn't been a factor.

At first, life at Hogwarts had seemed much the same. All that Slytherin ranting about pure-blooded wizarding families seemed comical, even farcical. It was even more demonstrably stupid than the usual Muggle cultural prejudices; people could always think up reasons to hate Asians or blacks or whomever, and with enough twisted sideways logic that they almost seemed reasonable if you weren't really paying attention.

When they'd called her a mud-blood, she'd rolled her eyes and taken it in stride. So their grandparents weren't wizards and hadn't gone to Hogwarts. So what?

She'd looked forward to History of Magic at first. It started off well enough, in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, before heading off to Egypt, then Greece and Rome with the occasional offhand mention of concurrent developments in China. A lot like World History back at their old school.

But then they'd hit the Middle Ages, and it was all about Europe. If she hadn't been taking Arithmancy, she'd never have realized that it was Moorish and Muslim wizards who were responsible for keeping most of the Art alive, let alone inventing most of it, aside from the few contributions of the Greeks - which weren't really all that spectacular to begin with. Her opinion of Bathilda Bagshot plummeted.

In third year, during a minor row over which House got to claim which tables at the library, a pasty, fetid-looking Slytherin had called her a mud-blood "in more ways than one".

It had taken three boys to pull her off him; she'd wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands and dance on his bones.

Professor Vector had smiled sadly and shook her head when she gave Padma and the boy detention, and made a well-meaning comment about pureblood wizardry never being a sure sign of intellect.

When she'd tried to explain to Penelope, through the rage and indignation, it felt like she was speaking some foreign tongue. Everyone in Ravenclaw (and Gryffindor) took her side, of course; but every comment about stuck-up Slytherins and purebloods and Muggles made her even more furious.

Not even Parvati, when she'd slipped into Padma's bed for the first time in over a year, had really understood; but when the tears came, finally, she was there, as she always had been. Padma fell asleep wondering about twins, and Fred and George Weasely, and the aspects of the Goddess, and whether they were really "identical" at all.

Over Christmas break, she'd explained haltingly to her mother, sitting at the kitchen table.

"He was wrong on both counts, you know."

She opened her mouth to explain about the technical definition of muggle-born and willful Slytherin misinterpretation of it, but her mother had frowned and shook her head.

"'Pure blood', Padi, is not like breeding a dog. Slytherins understand very little. There are magics and traditions and mysteries they do not know. Do you really think your grandmother is a 'Muggle'?"

The next day, they went to visit granny and Padma's favorite aunt. It was the best day she'd had in a very long time.

She got through the remainder of that year a day at a time, and through History of Magic by raiding the library for every single scrap of information on non-European magicians. A number of Arithmancy texts proved a gold-mine; surprisingly, so did a number of Potions books. Madam Pince had explained quite firmly that the volumes on Chinese Alchemy were the personal property of Professor Snape and only allowed to his Potions N.E.W.T. class; but when she'd worked up the nerve to ask him for permission to read them, he'd merely cocked an eyebrow, shrugged, and signed the slip without looking at it.

"If you are interested in the broader history of potion-making, Miss Patil, you might find a look at the N.E.W.T. class syllabus... instructional."

She'd borrowed a heavy-annoted copy off of a very confused Penelope. In the section on historical alchemy, the first thing listed was "Soma in the Vedas & Hindu contributions to the Art".

Padma immediately resolved to get an "O" on her Potions O.W.L.

Fourth year was no better than third, with all the Tri-Wizard malarkey. It rankled, watching this show of faux multi-culturalism. History of Magic proved even dryer, duller, and whiter than the year previous.

She took to studying in the common room. To a Ravenclaw, this was an unmistakable sign. As a House, they exceeded in academics not only because on the whole they enjoyed studying, but because they knew how to take care of each other when they didn't. Generally, if one wanted to study, one went to the library, or one's room; the common room was for socializing, which in Ravenclaw meant subdued discussion and debate and perpetual wizard's chess tournament.

Unless, of course, finding the motivation to study a subject was particularly... troublesome. Plonking down her copy of /A History of Magic/ right in front of everyone was a bit embarrassing, but it was also an open invitation to be offered help, brought tea, quietly encouraged, and gently questioned and nagged if she begged off back to her room too quickly.

Still, it was a bit surprising when Cho Chang pulled up the chair in front of her. Cho was undeniably beautiful and astonishingly good at Charms and Transfiguration, but also a bit of a Quidditch fanatic and undeniably straight, so she'd never much piqued Padma's interest.

Her nose wrinkled a bit as she eyed the massive tome. "Dry, isn't it?"

Padma paused, quill hovering over the pages of notes she'd been scribbling, dripping ink over John Dee and Paracelsus. "Amongst other things. Dull. Poorly written. Biased." She stopped a moment, blotted the quill carefully as she studied Cho across the monster text. "... narrow."

Did Cho's mouth twitch?

"Oh, very much so. It does get a bit better in fifth year - they branch out a bit, if only so they've lots of trivia to stump you with on the O.W.L.s, I suspect." She reached for the blotched page of Padma's notes. "Here, let me see that."

Padma handed the parchment over wordlessly. Cho plucked the quill from her fingers, dipped it in the ink pot, and holding it at a funny angle, drew a series of fluid, elegant lines and curves around the spot, extending a few from it, adding others. They formed a character around the blemish, making it look intentional - if Padma had been taking notes in Chinese.

Cho handed the page back with a smile. "I'd better let you get back to it. Good luck, though. Let me know if you want to study together some time, all right?"

That was how it started. Somehow, between Cedric and the Tri-Wizard Tournament and O.W.L.s and everything, Cho found time to tell her stories, and be told stories in return. At first weekly, then nightly.

They call it "studying", because that's really what it is, but no one really knows the truth. Not even Parvati.

A couple of Ravenclaws deciding to hare off on their own and study something not in the curriculum simply out of intellectual curiousity is nothing remarkable; but if they admitted that, they'd have to start talking about why it wasn't in the curriculum.

Only at Hogwarts, they joke, would history actually be taught by a dead white European man.