Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous
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The young wizard was as bored as he could ever remember being in his not quite six years of life. If this was Hogwarts, he rather thought he wanted to get behind his father's on-and-off campaign to wear his mother down on the subject of Durmstrang.

I could learn the Dark Arts properly, there, and I'd be away from both of them for most of the year. That would have to be worth however cold it gets there, and having to learn other languages to talk to most of my schoolmates!

To be fair, though, he'd only seen one room at Hogwarts so far, and it was hardly awe-inspiring. The chill and damp made him suspect it was in the dungeons (they'd Flooed directly here so he couldn't be certain), while the walls lined with jars of strange substances and pickled creatures (or parts of creatures) gave him the creeps. As for the room's inhabitant, a dark-haired, sour-faced wizard with whom his father had been having a low-voiced argument for several minutes now…

I've seen him before. He's come to the Manor a few times, usually something about potions or ingredients. And he always looks at me funny, like he doesn't like me. Safely out of the line of sight of both wizards, the boy stuck out his tongue. Well, I don't like you either. So there.

"…told you, I have nothing definite," the wizard was saying now, his deep voice exasperated. "Only a disgustingly smug look on the Headmaster's face whenever the subject comes up. Clearly he knows something, but I have no way of learning what."

"Then find a way," the boy's father insisted, leaning forward across the other wizard's desk. "You live here, for Merlin's sake! I never thought stupidity was one of your vices, but possibly I was wrong—"

"If you wish to consider disinclination to uproot three years' worth of groundwork as stupidity, I can only conclude—"

Stifling a groan, the boy unlatched the door and slipped out into the corridor. He got quite enough of listening to people fighting with his father at home.

Since Mother thinks he ought to be doing one set of things, and some of his friends think he ought to be doing something else, and some of his other friends think he ought to be doing what they want instead. Shaking his head at the state of a world which placed adults in charge of everything, he meandered up the corridor, absently following his nose towards a faint smell of something savory.

I wish the Dark Lord hadn't ever fallen. Then there wouldn't be so much fighting, and the Muggles and Muggleborns would know their places, and the world would be a lot more fun to live in!


The young witch was as fascinated as she could ever remember being in her six and a half years of life. She had always known something about her was different, but never in her wildest dreams had she thought it might be magic.

Though it does explain why Mummy never catches me reading in bed anymore. If the batteries in my torch really did run out a couple months ago like I thought they had, and I'm making the light by magic now, maybe it's a light she can't even see.

Which, the girl concluded regretfully, wasn't fair to her mother, and she was going to have to stop.

I wouldn't want to get a name for using my magic wrong before I've even got here, after all!

Tucking her arms around herself, she gazed upwards at the vaulted stone ceilings, the floating branches of candles, the whispering paintings, and felt a thrill down her spine as she had every time she let the thought sweep through her.

Only five more years until I'll be a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…

"…is how Hogwarts came to be founded," said the Hogwarts professor who was leading their small tour, a short, plump witch with flyaway gray hair who had told them to call her Professor Sprout. "There was far less secrecy around magic in those days, but over the years, it's become wiser for wizards and witches to keep themselves hidden from Muggles—which does not mean you won't see your families any longer, once you've begun your education," she added briskly at one small, pigtailed girl's gasp of horror. "There have always been some Muggles who knew about the wizarding world, and the parents and siblings of Muggleborns are a long-standing part of that tradition. Now, we'll have a look at one of the House dormitories…"

Muggle. The girl tried out the word as the tour moved off down one of the corridors from the entrance hall. It felt a bit odd on her tongue, but so did most new words until one got used to saying them. Muggle. A person who doesn't have magic. And Muggleborn—a wizard or a witch whose parents are both Muggles, whose magic just blossomed out of nowhere.

Someone like me.

She spun once in place for the sheer joy of it all, then hurried after the tour. It wouldn't do to get left behind, after all.


The boy wasn't sure whether to be more astonished or disappointed. There were Mudbloods at Hogwarts, Mudbloods his own age, the pinnacle of everything his parents had always taught him to hate and fear—

And except for their clothing and the way they stared at everything, they looked and acted just like him.

They don't smell bad. They're not fighting every other minute. He nipped quickly behind a pillar as a girl at the back of the group looked around sharply, her bushy brown curls swinging with the movement. And that's the third time that one almost spotted me. If all I had to go on were the stories, and I saw her next to Crabbe or Goyle, I'd have to think he was the Mudblood instead…

The thoughts were immensely disquieting. Shutting his eyes, he tried to shake them off. Whatever might be true of the boys he'd known most of his life (and detested nearly as long), it wasn't true of him, he assured himself fervently. He was stronger, smarter, cleverer, than any Mudblood could ever be, and he'd prove it, just as soon as he got a chance—

"I beg your pardon."

A most undignified yelp escaped the boy as his eyes flew open. The girl who'd come so close to seeing him three times before was standing directly in front of him now, hands on her trouser-clad hips. "Is there a reason you've been following us?" she demanded. "Who are you?"

"My name's Malfoy." He took what refuge he could in this indisputable fact. "Draco Malfoy. My father's one of the school governors. Who are you?"

"Hermione Granger." The girl held out a hand, at which Draco looked disdainfully.

"I don't touch your kind," he informed her. "You're dirty."

An instant of shock across Hermione's face was replaced by naked fury. "Take that back," she spat. "Take it back now."

"Why? It's true." On firmer ground now, Draco grinned. "Besides, you're not just dirty, you're stupid. You don't know anything. Not why the school Houses are called what they are or which one's the best, not how to play Quidditch or fly on a broomstick, not even why the Forbidden Forest is forbidden—"

"Oh, and you do?" Hermione challenged. "Tell me, then, Mr. Know-It-All!"

"Because there are werewolves in there." Draco breathed the word in the same thrilling tone his father used when he was explaining to his son some of the dangers of the wizarding world, which a pureblood wizard was inherently intelligent and brave enough to overcome. "And werewolves like to eat people. Rip them apart and drink their blood and crunch their bones—"

"Ew!" Hermione clapped her hands over her ears. "You're disgusting! Besides, werewolves aren't real."

Draco snorted. "That's what you think. Stupid Mudblood."

A moment later, he was blinking hazily at the floor, wondering why he'd fallen down, and what was making his ears ring like that.

"Don't," said Hermione's voice very precisely from above him, "call me names."

She—she hit me! Blinking his eyes back into focus, Draco scrambled to his feet, staring at this impossible, intolerable girl. And now she's ordering me around, like she thinks she's as good as I am—like she thinks she's better

"I'll call you whatever I want to," he snapped back. "Especially if it's true."

"It is not true!" Hermione stamped her foot. "Just because I don't know things yet doesn't make me stupid! What do you know about cars and televisions and football, if you're so smart?"

"I don't have to know about that stuff, because I don't want to live in the Muggle world!" Draco shuddered at the very thought. "But you want to come and live in my world, when you don't know anything about it at all—"

"Which is why I came here for the tour, so I could start learning." Hermione glared down her nose at him. "And I'll be back again this summer, and for a day or two every holiday after that, and read the books they're sending with me in between times—"

"Oh, right. Books." Draco scoffed. "Like a book is going to teach you how to fight a werewolf."

"And you know so much about how that's done—"

"More than you!"

"So why don't you prove it?" Hermione smirked, as if certain she'd found an argument he couldn't answer. "Let's go out to the Forest this very minute and you can show me how!"

For half an instant, Draco wavered, but he'd lost too much face in this encounter already. If he didn't find some way to shut this girl up, he was never going to hear the end of it.

And besides, if I fly my course just right, I might be able to leave her behind to get eaten by something, and that's one less Mudblood in the world.

"Let's," he said shortly. "Unless you're scared."

Hermione sniffed. "Of something you can do? I don't think so."

Leaving a careful foot of space between them, they set off down the corridor, headed for the nearest door to the outside.


Looking for something, anything, to distract him from his massive stack of essays for marking (and to think I used to gripe about having to write the things!), Sirius shoved his chair back from his desk and got to his feet, glancing out the window as a matter of course.

His second glance was much less casual.

Too big for house-elves. Too small for students. What in Merlin's name—

Then he remembered.

The Muggleborn tour! That was today—and if a couple of those kids decided to peel off and go exploring on their own—

With an under-the-breath growl, he yanked open his office door and bolted for the stairs, hoping to head off the pair of small, scurrying figures he'd seen crossing the lawns before they could reach the trees.

Seeing as the idea behind the tour was to give them a good first impression of the magical world.

Getting munched on by something large and carnivorous definitely does not count!


"So?" said Hermione after she and Draco Malfoy (I wonder if all magical people have strange names?) had walked a short distance into the shade of the Forbidden Forest. "Where's the werewolves?"

"They'll come." Draco sounded confident, but Hermione had seen him glancing over his shoulder twice now. "As soon as they smell us, they'll come. We should keep an eye out for trees or rocks, anything we can climb that they can't."

"You can climb in those?" Hermione eyed the long, heavy robes Draco was wearing with disfavor. "Wouldn't they get in the way?"

Draco frowned down at his robes, then shook off whatever he was thinking to glare at Hermione again. "At least I'm not half-naked. Unlike some people."

"Yes, well, at least I'm not rude," Hermione shot back. "Unlike some people."

Whatever answer Draco would have made to this was overridden by a loud rustle from the bushes nearby. Both of them whirled to face it, backing away a step or two (or three, in Draco's case).

After several seconds in which the only thing Hermione heard was the thundering of her own heart, Draco relaxed. "It wasn't anything," he said, turning to face Hermione again. "And if you think that was rude—"

Movement past him caught Hermione's eye. It was hairy and tall, too tall to be a wolf, even a werewolf—and it had legs, too many legs, more than anything should have, including the ones reaching for Draco right this very second—

"Look out!" she screamed, and groped behind her for something to throw.


Grasseye burst into a full-out run as the human shrieking gained a second voice, rising in panic. The stench of the manyleg he had been tracking from a safe distance was stronger than ever, and he was grimly certain that he was about to encounter it from a very unsafe distance indeed.

Right in front of it. And probably right inside it, afterwards. But I have my teeth to fight with, and a human my age won't have their wand yet, so they don't have even that much…

A rock went shooting past him as he pounded out of the bushes.

Well, maybe they have more than I thought.

Now it was the manyleg's turn to shriek, dropping the robed human boy it had been trying to lift up as it clawed at one of its multiple eyes, which had been punctured by the sharp-edged rock. Grasseye bounded across the clearing and planted himself in front of the dazed-looking boy, snarling his fury.

You can't have him! Or her, either, he added mentally as he spotted the human girl hefting another missile at the other end of the clearing. Though I think she can take care of herself better.

Since the manyleg was still distracted by trying to get the stone out of its eye, Grasseye risked a quick glance and sniff-over of the moaning human he'd chosen to guard. The boy's hair was an even paler shade of blond than Alcyone's, and something hanging against his chest inside his false fur, his robes, had a smell not unlike that of the centaurs' work with their herbs, or the haze left in the air after the Stonehouse Pack sang one of their songs which was not simply a joyous uplifting of voices together but which was meant to accomplish something. It was a smell, Grasseye realized with a jolt, of magic.

{What is this?} he demanded of the boy, tapping his paw lightly against the thing, which was hard like stone or metal under his pads. {What does it do?}

"It's a shield." The words were mumbled, but clear. "Meant to protect me. Keep me safe."

{Just you, or other people?} Grasseye shoved his nose against the boy's neck when there was no immediate response to this, stifling the inevitable yelp with a paw. {Answer me,} he demanded, locking his green eyes onto the other boy's shocked gray ones. {Is it just for you, or can it grow?}

The boy pushed Grasseye's paw off his mouth. "I don't know," he breathed, getting his elbows under him and staring up at the manyleg. "What is that thing?"

Before Grasseye could answer, a torrent of shrill barks buffeted his ears. Ashtail tore out of the bushes, her fur fluffed out as far as it could go, her tiny teeth bared and ready. {Go away!} she howled at the manyleg, which immediately focused its remaining eyes on her. {Go away! Leave them alone!}

Grasseye grumbled low in his throat and braced himself to attack.

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Author Notes:

This may possibly be my last update until after the holidays. Or possibly not—it depends on how those holidays go.

In any case, have as safe, happy, and fun a holiday season as possible, and I'll see you next year!