Hogwarts Storyteller

My life has been one filled with proverbs and tales of long ago. I have existed only partly in the current day, for it is the past that is my passion, the days gone by that rule my days. Thus it has been, thus I wish it to continue to be.

During my school days I was well known as the only student in all of Hogwarts who enjoyed the class of History of Magic. Those days seem to me to be of another age, and as they are now a part of my own personal history, I study those days with the same passion as I study the days of centuries past.

The images of my past at Hogwarts are not like those of other students, for with but few exceptions I did not mix with my fellow students. Why should I have? They had done no great deeds, they had yet to change the world. Understanding children, I thought then, could not help me to understand adults, and thereby the world, so I ignored them.

It would not be until my last year at Hogwarts that I would realize my error. But my story has not yet progressed to that point.

The images I cherish most from my school days are not those of other students and my interactions with them. No, instead I sought out the portraits, to hear their stories, anything they could tell me of times gone by. I listened to them with an eager ear and a mercurial mind. Each story they finished would lead me to ask about another, my thoughts were never just of the moment's story but instead I tried to weave each into other stories of that time in an effort to understood how they influenced each other. I was blessed with being able to recite, word for word, anything that had been said to me, and so it was years before I bothered to write any of the stories down.

Of course my understanding grew in scope as my age grew in years, and my questions grew in depth as my robes grew in length. Little things would change each September, a few of the portraits would disappear each year, to be replaced with new (but still quite old) paintings. Others would be moved and I would spend the first few free afternoons seeking out my old favorites and discovering new ones. I got used to changes, history was brimming of them, and though each year I would request of Professor Flitwick to make sure that one or two portraits were not removed these requests could not always be honored.

It was during those days that I learned to master the Lumos spell more completely than any of my classmates, for while if their attention wandered the light would flicker accordingly, my own, due to hours of practice sitting on cold stone floors with an eagerly upturned face, stayed strong and true through any event. This skill assisted me greatly when I grew older, as a storyteller is best attended when those listening can see her.

My interactions with my fellow students grew only during the last few years of my time at Hogwarts. My little sister entered when I was in my fourth year, and each evening before she went to sleep she would request a story from me. Sometimes one of intrigue and suspense, or of betrayal, of love or of hate. Other evenings she would simply ask for one of my favorites. She always claimed that I was able to weave a spell without magic when I told a story, and watching her face it became easy to believe.

By the end of the year the girls in her year were joining us each evening, and they in turn would add their requests to those of my sister's. Then they began inviting their friends, some older or younger, and soon we had to move down to the common room so the boys could join us. At the rate that our story group grew, it seems odd now that we did not have to leave our dormitory entirely so those of other houses could join us until my seventh and final year.

I knew things were changing. I could feel it in the air, see it in the growing apprehension in the faces of the portraits. Some of them had been watching us for centuries (possibly more) they could recognize the portents of change. There were rumors of odd goings-on in the world of Wizards, an no one knew what the future could bring.

I, however, knew what the past held, and so I went on telling stories as I always had. Each evening we would gather in the Great Hall, several dozen students crowding around one end of the Ravenclaw table, and I would tell exactly one story (never more than one) of the past, as it had been told to me by a portrait. I was often asked how much I embroidered them with my own imagination, and my reply was always the same: I didn't have to. I suppose I emphasized different parts of the story than the portrait it belonged to had, but I never changed or added any facts to the truth as I knew it.

I will admit, though, that toward the end of that year I had started ending the stories with a fanciful twist, saying, "So it was, so it continues to be." It delighted the hearts of the younger students and cheered the older ones who knew something was in the wind, so I saw no harm in it.

No harm, at least, until one of the last evenings of that year, one of my last nights of being know as the Hogwarts Storyteller. I had grown used to answering questions from the students about anything and everything having to do with the stories I told, and the only other comments I received were related to how much they liked (or occasionally didn't like) the evening's story. It wasn't until that evening, late in my career, that a student contributed something of their own. It wasn't until that evening that I learned something new from a fellow student, and one younger than me at that. It wasn't until that evening that I was flatly contradicted.

That night some of the more romantic girls had asked for a love story, and the boys had demanded suspense and excitement. In an unusual effort to compromise, I gave them both and told them one of the oldest tales I knew, that of a witch of Merlin's own day who fell in love with a Muggle and had to fight against her family and her world to stay with him. As most of the greatest stories do not, this one had a happy ending, for though her family never accepted the couple, other magic folk did, and they found their niche. Of course I finished the tale with my (by then customary) ending of, "So it was, so it continues to be," expecting to be asked a few questions and then being allowed to sleep.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I heard a student say, "No, it does not." I turned and looked at the boy who had made the statement, and awaited his explanation. He gave none, just gave a level stare with his dark blue eyes. Finally I asked for the explanation I sought, and he told another tale, haltingly at first, then with more vehemence. Similar in some ways to mine, but with a quite different ending, one of a young boy in an orphanage, abandoned and alone. His eyes told me the tale was true, his voice told me the tale was his own. I could do nothing but bow my head in agreement and apologize to him..

That was the evening I learned to not add my own fancy to stories. That was the evening I learned that the stories I told were not my own, but belonged to those in them. The next was the evening I made sure the story group would continue after I left by having students other than myself tell tales. Always true, and after the heartbreak in the eyes of that boy, never their own. Telling one's own tale is not fair to one's audience, whether one tells it outright, as he did, or via the story of another, as I had done.

That was the first lesson Tom Riddle ever taught me. It was also the last. That evening was both the first and the last that he spent in the story group. I never spoke with him again.