An Australian in Hogsmeade

Chapter 10: History 101

Draco, once again, recovered first. Like a cat, he managed to look as if his fur had never been ruffled in the first place. Hermione, however, spoke before he even had a chance to open his mouth.

"You can't be a Muggle, Muggles can't see Hogwarts, it says so in Hogw-"

"Yes, well, we'll just ask her to close her eyes while we figure out how, once again, the bumbling idiots that run this school have stuffed up, shall we? I should have guessed," Draco added, turning to face me "when you started defending her. Like calls to like, after all."

The "her" was obviously Hermione; the little gesture he made with his head left no doubt.

"Hermione's a better witch than you'll ever be, no matter how long your pedigree is."

"Seeing as how I have no desire to ever be a witch, that doesn't really say much, does it, Weasel?"

Ron's face had until then been returning to a more normal shade, but that was evidently only a temporary thing; he was rapidly turning red again.

"Is it true then?"

That was Harry, the first of them to say something sensible.

"Yes."

I stood facing the four of them. Harry, Ron and Hermione were in a group and Draco was off to one side, clearly defining a separation between him and them.

"Not even ashamed to admit it," he said, sounding quite thoroughly disgusted. "Uncultured, uncivilised barbarian -"

"Excuse me? Using torches -" I gestured to the sconce on the wall beside me " - is supposed to be civilised?"

"It's easy to put down what you don't know, Ferret, but be prepared to be lost for comebacks. I believe he was showing you to the front doors, Jenna? Come on, then."

Hermione took my elbow in one hand and grabbed Ron's arm with the other, apparently not trusting him not to start another fight. Given the current colour of his face, I thought that was a very wise decision on her part.

"Surprised to find the Muggles are human, Malfoy?"

I turned my head, catching a glimpse of the glare that Draco shot at Harry as Hermione forcibly dragged Ron down the hallway, pulling me along as well.

"Go run along with you little friends, Hero-boy, you couldn't be any more contaminated by association that you already are, given what your mother was."

"Hermione, let me go, did you hear what he just said to Harry?"

"Yes I did and a fight is not the answer!"

Wholeheartedly agreeing with her, I grabbed Ron's other arm to help her prevent another outbreak of violence. She gave me a grateful smile as between us we dragged Ron further away from Draco and Harry.

"If it's contamination by association, I be worried, Malfoy. Doubt your Slytherin cronies would be too impressed to find that you'd brought a Muggle into their midst. You seemed quite friendly from where I sat."

I didn't hear Draco's reply, if there was on, only two sets of footsteps; one lot crisply tapping away from us at a quick walk, the other coming towards us at a slow jog with the dull thud of old sneakers.

"So you really are a Muggle then?" Harry asked once he'd caught up with us.

"I said I was, didn't I? And it doesn't seem like something you'd admit to if you weren't, judging by Draco's reaction."

"I stuffed up again then, didn't I? Damn. Here I was thinking I'd managed to go a whole week without doing something wrong."

"Oh well, can't ruin your reputation now." Ron rubbed his arm where Hermione grabbed it. "Blimey, you've got a grip, Hermione. I'll have bruises tomorrow."

"Sorry."

Hermione's apology was somewhat ruined by her expression; she was frowning about something.

"I still don't get how you can see Hogwarts, you're only supposed to see a some ruins and a danger sign, I read it in -"

"- Hogwarts, a History," Harry and Ron interrupted in unison. "We've heard it before."

"Yes, but it's one of the fundamental wards on the school and if it's broken - did you just walk straight up here, Jenna?"

"Yeah, followed the path up from Hogsmeade. The first time I came up was the day after I got here."

Hermione mulled that over as we walked along. When Ron and Harry turned into another corridor, taking me along with them, Hermione continued in the direction we'd been going.

"Hermione? The doors are this way, remember?"

"What? Oh, you go on, I want to check something in the library.

"Of course," Ron murmured quietly. "When confident, go to the library. When in doubt, go to the library. When in a crisis -"

"I heard that." Ron hadn't been quiet enough, although I had the idea that that might have been intentional.

"Anyway, you can't go, new rules remember?"

"Oh for... Does that mean I have to be with one of you every time I want to go to the library? Madam Pince will never let me anywhere near it!"

Hermione swung back into step with us and shortly after we arrived at the foyer. Harry paused by the fountain.

"Why is there a coin in here?" he asked.

"I dropped it in." I said. "It seemed appropriate."

He nodded, a sudden jerk of the head, but didn't move away from the fountain.

"What happened?" I asked quietly, unsure whether or not the subject was taboo but wanting to know nonetheless. Ron drew in a sharp breath beside me, but didn't say anything.

"He died."

I waited.

"A bit more than a year ago now. The first student to die in a war. This war, anyway."

"We have something we write on all our war memorials." I offered. "'Lest we forget.' So we always remember that people died to keep us safe and that war isn't glorious. At least, that's how I think of it."

Harry turned.

"Yeah, something like that."

Ron spoke suddenly, breaking the tension.

"Harry, she can't go down to Hogsmeade alone. If it's not safe for us it's sure as hell not safe for her."

I blinked. I hadn't even thought of that. Neither had either of the others, judging by their expressions.

"Five points from Gryffindor, Mr Weasley, for language. Professor Dumbledore fortunately realised the situation and I will be escorting her back, so you will not be forced to break the rules yet again due to your misguided sense of nobility."

My first impression of the speaker was, to put it quite simply, black. Black hair, black eyes, black robes and a black cloak that billowed slightly in the convection currents from the torches and the draught from the door.

Harry scowled and looked like he was going to say something that in no way could be considered polite; Hermione noticed and hastily thanked Professor Snape, at the same time digging an elbow into Harry's ribs. She then started both boys moving out of foyer, saying a quick goodbye to me and something about the library still being open. The boys both said goodbye over their shoulders as they disappeared around one of the many bends.

"Finished you fond farewells?"

Without waiting for a reply, Professor Snape pushed open one of the heavy front doors and stepped outside. I quickly darted through before it swung to, not wanting to find out the hard way that I couldn't open them. Waiting at the bottom of the steps was one of the horseless carriages that I'd seen at the Hogsmeade station. I hurried down them as best I could; I've always been nervous about going down stairs quickly and Professor Snape, who evidently suffered no similar compunctions, was already halfway down.
Once inside the carriage, I sat near the door on one of the cushioned bench seats. The carriage jerked as it started to move and we headed down the drive at a swift walking pace. If I hadn't seen the lack of animal for myself I would have sworn that there was a horse out the front pulling us along.
Despite the deep cushioning on the seats, the ride was not at all comfortable. We had moved up to a steady trotting pace now and the carriage seemed to be finding the largest cobblestones to jolt over for our enjoyment. Feeling as though I were being watched, I looked up to find Professor Snape looking at me.
"Yes?" I asked, when he didn't say anything.
"You seem uncomfortable."
Give the man a prize for observation, I thought.
"I don't normally sit in a vehicle with wooden wheels going over cobblestone roads," I said rather shortly. The events that Peeves had set off hadn't exactly put me in the best of moods.
"But I had heard that your kind had an equivalent of these - was my information source incorrect?"
"We have cars, yes. But for one thing our roads are bitumen, not cobblestones. And cars are much lower to the ground, the wheels are smaller and wider and have tyres on them and the suspension is infinitely better."
He didn't say anything in reply, which was probably just as well; inwardly I was seething over the way he'd said "your kind" - as if I were a member of some inferior subhuman species. I leaned back against the seat and held my hands pressed between my knees to try and keep them warm. It was cold in the carriage; evidently heating had flown out the door with decent suspension. Wizards certainly didn't seem to care much for passenger comfort, something that contrasted oddly with the sumptuousness of the dinner I had just been to and, if I was to be honest with myself, with all of the wizarding world I had seen so far. Everything had a certain element of accustomed luxury to it, as if feasts for dinner and four-poster beds to sleep in were nothing special.

Through the small carriage window, I could see the clouds that not so long ago had been burnished by the setting sun and were now outlined in ghostly silver, illuminated by the half-moon that occasionally slipped out of hiding. A howl sounded through the night and I glanced uneasily towards where the forest would be, hidden behind castle walls. I shivered, and not just from cold.

After about a quarter of an hour I felt the carriage begin to slow down. The strange lights of Hogsmeade were passing by the window now, as we continued down the main street. I opened the door as the carriage stopped, picking up my bag with my other hand.

"Thankyou, Professor Snape."

For a moment there was silence. Then, as I was about to close the door -

"I would advise, Miss Curlew, that in future you are less defensive of Muggle devices. People may draw conclusions that could be hazardous to your health."

I paused.

"I'll think about it," I said, and finished shutting the door, deliberately not slamming it, much as I would have liked to.

The warmth of the Leaky Cauldron washed over me as I walked through the doorway. Madam Rosmerta waved at me from across the room where she was serving a couple of patrons. I waved back and made my way across the room; she was enroute to the staircase, so I stopped to say hello as I passed her.

"Hello dear, Albus told me you'd had dinner at the school. You look absolutely frozen, not used to the nights here yet. You go and sit in front of your fire and I'll send a drink up in a moment."

I escaped her mothering somewhat thankfully, although I did have to admit that it had been cold in the carriage. It was very nice to be able to flop in the chair in front of the fire in my room. The promised drink had been sitting on the table in my room when I got there; evidently teleportation was a normal enough occurrence when magic was involved. I opened Philosopher's Stone to where I had left off, occasionally sipping from the tankard on the table. The drink was fizzy with a taste reminiscent of butterscotch and it sent warmth tingling down to the very tips of my toes.

***

I finished both the Philosopher's Stone and the Chamber of Secrets that night, finally crashing asleep in the early hours of the morning. Give me a book that I like and I won't stop reading it once I get into it unless someone tries to drag me away from it with wild horses. Possibly not even then. I woke late the next morning with the sunlight streaming in through the window - someone had come in and opened the curtains while I slept. Or it was possible that they were on some sort of magical automatic timer, I supposed.

I showered and then started on Prisoner of Azkaban while eating the breakfast that had appeared while I was in the bathroom. Really, these books were quite good; I wasn't going to turn into a raving fanatic by any means, but I would definitely be pinching number four off my sister when I got home, if I didn't find a second hand copy before then. I ate downstairs at lunchtime to avoid being completely antisocial, but I quickly returned to my room and book afterwards. It had started raining sometime in the morning, so I felt no inclination to wander through the town.

By mid-afternoon I was wishing that I hadn't been so quick to send the Goblet of Fire off to my sister. I watched the rain run down the glass, feeling oddly philosophical. In some ways I regretted reading the books, because some of the things that had happened to me recently - or around me, at least - now had a bit of an explanation. It was very much like watching a magician - if you knew the sleight of hand involved, then you didn't see the magic, only the trickery. Food appearing on the table faster than I could walk up the stairs? Obviously the work of a house elf, perfectly normal.

Then I caught myself; since when did I consider a house elf normal? And what was so standard about a creature being able to teleport itself at will? Knowing the what of magic didn't really make it any less magical, only understanding the how might be able to do that.

Having pulled myself out of my somewhat down mood, I pulled out my sketchbook and photos to do some more work on Tom's sketch. I pulled out my CD player as well, to dispel the quiet that had become noticeable when I stopped reading, but I didn't turn the volume up so much that I couldn't hear the steady, soft beating of the rain against the window.

***

The sudden change in light was the first inkling I had that anyone else was in the room. I had been working by the window, using the pale grey daylight. The sudden yellowness of candlelight gave me a surprise - and then I saw the creature holding the candle. I jumped up as far as I could, given that I was siting at a heavy wooden table in a heavy wooden chair. The headphones were wrenched off my head and my pencils and eraser all went flying in different directions. I ended up abruptly sitting back down when my thighs connected painfully with the table.

Two large, bright green, mortified eyes were looking up at me.

"Bobbi is sorry Miss, Bobbi is know anyone was here, Bobbi is so sorry, is Miss all right?"

I took a slightly shaky breath and reassured Bobbi that yes, Miss was fine. Then I knelt down on the floor to gather my scattered pencils.

"No, Miss is not to be doing that, that is for Bobbi to do!"

The house elf - or so I assumed, as she bore more than a passing similarity to the descriptions of Dobby - swiftly picked up the fallen pencils and eraser, arranging them neatly on the desk while I looked on, still reeling a little from being face-to-face with something that, by all laws of nature, should not be able to do the things it did.

I stood and brushed the carpet fluff off the knees of my jeans. It was getting quite dark; I hadn't noticed the fading light as I sketched.

"Bobbi, I'm going down to have dinner now - could you just leave the table like it is, please?"

It took me a while to convince Bobbi that yes, I really did mean for her to do less work. During the course of that particular conversation, it emerged that she was somewhat offended because I made up my own bed each morning, rather than leaving it for her to do. I puzzled over that on my way downstairs, finally deciding that house-elves were very strange creatures indeed and that I'd never understand them. Entering the main room on the ground floor, I got my second shock for that night - although admittedly it paled significantly in comparison to the first.

The room was crowded and it was noisy. I'd grown used to having people scattered among the tables, leaving the outer ones empty. Tonight there was barely room to walk between the tables, although Madam Rosmerta managed it with a speed that didn't seem possible. She saw me standing in the doorway and nodded to let me that she'd send some dinner my way when she got a moment. I spotted an empty seat at the bar and started to work my way towards it. Halfway there, though, I was stopped by a tug on my arm; it was Albus. He was sitting at a table with Professor McGonagall and a few people I didn't know.

"Ah, Jenna, good to see you. Wonderful weather, isn't it?"

Albus smiled; I wondered if I should begin edging away. He'd spoken with the cheerful sincerity of someone who truly does like the rain.

"Yes, if you happen to like grey skies, grey road and grey in between."

I managed to pinch a chair from a nearby table. Albus began making introductions as I sat down. It was decidedly weird, meeting people I'd just been reading about in supposedly fictional books. Filius Flitwick was there, as short as he'd been described; some surreptitious checking on my part revealed that he was sitting on several cushions. Riemann Vector was a rather rotund man with greying brown hair. The final person at the table was Io Sinistra, who had startlingly large, dark eyes and thick black hair that fell well past her shoulders.

I was sitting between Io and Albus. Io, upon finding out that I essentially knew nothing about astronomy, first stared at me in utter astonishment - what dreadful school had I been to, not to know anything about one of the fundamental subjects for any body's education? - then proceeded to try and teach me the entire first years'

curriculum before dinner.

Fortunately, Madam Rosmerta was an expert in her field; despite the number of people, dinner arrived for all of us within twenty minutes, cutting short Io's attempts to further my education. For a while at our table there was that distinct absence of chatter that happens when everyone in a group has had a plate covered in good, hot food placed under their noses.

After we'd eaten, Riemann started asking me questions that I assume were related to Arithmancy, but I answered them with the small amount of maths and science that I remembered from high school. The other teachers joined in and it soon became, on my part at least, more a development of whacked-out theories using pseudo-science and convoluted logic than anything else. On the one hand, I had no idea what Arithmancy involved and very little clue about magic in general; on the other, none of the others at the table seemed to know even the most basic concepts of Newtonian physics.

At one point, I pulled out a biro that I'd left in the pocket of my jacket, intending to scribble some sums on one of the serviettes to demonstrate the fundamentals of

Pythagoras' theorem and vector addition. I thought Riemann and I were talking about the same thing, but we were both using completely different terminology, so it was hard to tell.

The biro, however, stopped all other lines of conversation. Almost no one at the table had seen one before and they were fascinated by the concept. Io and Riemann were taking turns writing on every serviette they could lay hands on, even getting some from other tables. Minerva looked as if she wasn't really that interested, but she kept shooting sidelong glances at the biro while Riemann and Io were using it.

"Jenna?"

"Mmm?" I responded as Albus distracted me from the two children disguised as rational adults at our table.

"I was thinking that it would be... beneficial for our students if you could come in on Monday and give a talk to some of the classes, perhaps during their Care of Magical Creatures classes? Hagrid will be indisposed for a while, one of his charges got a little enthusiastic this morning."

I blinked; this was not what I had expected, at all.

"You want me to come in on Monday and talk to some classes," I sad, testing the idea out and making sure I'd heard right.

Albus simply nodded.

"About what, exactly?" I asked.

"Are you aware of recent events here?"

"Umm, well, it depends on what you mean by recent - I've finished book three."

"Two years behind then..." He pushed his glasses up his nose a little. "I really should fill you in -"

"Albus, if we're talking about that, might I suggest we move somewhere more private? Jenna's room, perhaps?" Minerva murmured, sotto voce. She glanced at me questioningly.

"I don't mind," I said, rapidly trying to remember if I'd left anything embarrassing like underwear on the floor. I didn't think I had - besides, Bobbi would have probably picked it up. I hoped. "There's only one chair, though."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out."

***

I few hours later I shut the door as my impromptu guests left, feeling rather overwhelmed with information.

Albus, with helpful (and not so helpful) interruptions from the others, had just informed me of the major events in the wizarding world in the past two years. Everything he'd told me was important and I got the idea that there was a lot of stuff nearly as important that he'd had to ignore.

He then went on to explain that he wanted to keep the upcoming war confined to the wizarding world as much as possible, unlike the events preceding the death of Grindelwald in 1945. From the way he spoke, I gathered he wasn't motivated purely out of concern for us poor, supposedly defenceless Muggles; apparently far more wizard deaths during the Grindelwald war had been Muggle instigated and the magical population, never large to begin with, had taken a long time to recover. It wasn't that Muggles had aimed specifically for wizards, but that bombs and guns don't discriminate.

Events in the wizarding world, while by no means solely responsible, had helped trigger World War II; Albus wanted to do everything possible to prevent the same thing happening again.

The magical world had isolated itself from the mundane world centuries earlier in order to protect itself, but that had led to a self-induced ignorance, perpetuated by the wizards' belief in their own superiority. This had already caused a huge amount of damage fifty years earlier; a few had since recognised the danger and attempted to rectify it - the introduction of Muggle Studies into the school curriculum was one of the few things that had been done - but most had taken the tried and true path of achieving bliss through ignorance.

Albus wanted me to try and give the students some idea of the damage that Muggle weapons could inflict. Most of them had never heard of a machine gun, let alone an atom bomb. I agreed; I really don't like speaking in public, but for some reason I got the idea that I'd like war a whole lot less.

I hoped there was a library that would let me print stuff open on Sundays; I was going to have to give myself a crash course in the Muggle version of World War II.

Then I groaned; this meant using the floo again. I was beginning to wish that I'd never dozed off in the train station in the first place.