Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-11-16 11:00 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-11-16 11:00 am
Fanfiction: Don't Blame the Wrackspurts (Peep Show/Harry Potter)
Peep Show fanfiction! It's been a while. I started writing this fic eight years ago.
Title: Don't Blame the Wrackspurts
Fandom: Peep Show/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13? Nothing beyond strong language.
Wordcount: 4,300
Summary: Mark Corrigan goes to Hogwarts. It's a disaster.
“This magic thing is pretty sick, isn’t it?”
Mark doesn’t entirely know how to respond. Intellectually, of course, he knows that some of the other children on the Hogwarts Express will have been raised as Muggles and become aware of the existence of magic only recently, but it still feels much like being asked, So, chairs, right? Having feet. Cool as shit.
“You’re a Muggle-born?” he asks, tentatively. He’s never met an actual Muggle-born wizard before; everyone his family associates with is at least half-blood.
“Jesus,” the boy says. “Only trying to say hello.”
“It’s not—” What? “It’s not an insult, it’s just – it’s just what you are. Your parents aren’t magical, are they?”
“Oh,” the boy says. “Right. Yeah, no, they’re not. I thought you were calling me, like, a cunt, or something.”
It’s a word Mark’s heard before, but not in any conversation he was intended to overhear, and certainly not from another child of his age; he assumes this boy must be a fellow first-year, if he’s new to magic. Perhaps Muggle children are raised differently. His father’s always made it sound as if Muggles are essentially raised in the wilderness, eating leaves, but Mark has occasionally caught glimpses of the Muggle side of London, and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of wilderness there.
“So, right,” the boy says. “What’s this pig place we’re going to?”
Mark blinks. “This... what?”
“The pig place! The pig school place this train goes to, with the pigs.”
“Hogwarts?” Mark asks. “You’re asking what Hogwarts is?”
Perhaps his father’s been right all along; perhaps Muggle children truly do know nothing at all.
“Yeah,” the boy says. “I mean, I got the letter. I know it’s got books, like real school.” He says this in a tone of intense disgust. “But it’s cooler, right?”
“Cooler than real school?” Mark asks, bewildered. “Hogwarts is a real school. One could argue it’s more real than any school that neglects to cover the magical aspects of life.”
The boy snorts with laughter. “One could argue? Forget Hogwarts; you’re not real. Who are you?”
“Er,” Mark says. Is that a request for him to introduce himself? “Mark Corrigan.”
“God, you’ve even got an old-person name,” the boy says, which Mark would contest; names that wouldn’t turn heads in the Muggle world are currently fashionable amongst the younger generations. It’s not like he’s an Aberforth. A miracle that he’s not, really, considering his father. “I’m Jeremy.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mark says, entirely out of social obligation.
“So I keep hearing about huff-and-puffing and slithering and stuff,” Jeremy says, sprawling in the seat opposite him. “What’s all that shit?”
Mark, disconcerted by the sign that this boy apparently doesn’t intend to leave any time soon, needs a moment to gather his thoughts. “Well, er, they’re the houses of Hogwarts. We’ll be Sorted into houses according to our temperament and abilities. Essentially Ravenclaw is for students of intelligence and wit, Gryffindor for bravery and valour, Slytherin for ambition and, well, ruthlessness, and Hufflepuff for... for hard work and loyalty.” Merlin, if he’s trying so hard to get into Ravenclaw will the Sorting Hat interpret that as loyalty to his father? Has he been working too hard at being intelligent? He can’t end up in Hufflepuff; he’ll be disowned.
Jeremy nods, considering. “I reckon I’ll be in Gryffindor. Or Ravenclaw. Can you be in two houses at once? Maybe they’ll have to change the rules for me.”
Mark frowns. “You can’t be in two houses at once.”
“Yeah, they’ll definitely have to change the rules for me.”
“They won’t.”
“Gryffinclaw,” Jeremy says, speculatively. “That sounds pretty cool. I’ll call my house that. Actually, I guess I don’t have to stick with the other houses’ names, do I? I can call it Rocking-something. Rocking... face.”
“They’re not going to invent a new house and let you name it,” Mark says, becoming steadily more irritated by Jeremy’s failure to be intimidated. The Sorting is a terrifying, life-changing event. Mark has been worrying about it since more or less the moment he emerged from the womb. Surely this boy should be at least slightly nervous.
“Well, they’re not exactly going to let you name it, are they? I mean, who are you? It’s not like you’re the king of Hogwarts.”
Mark stares. “Why are you any more – look, the four houses have existed for centuries. They’re named after the four original founders of the school, and there was no founder called Rockingface.”
“Fine!” Jeremy exclaims, throwing up his hands. “I’ll go with stupid Gryffinclaw, then!”
Mark finds he doesn’t have the strength to argue. He’s wondered before why his parents never speak to Muggle-born witches or wizards; if they’re all like Jeremy, he’s going to have to send his father a heartfelt letter of thanks for shielding him from Muggle-borns.
Of course, if he ends up in Hufflepuff his father’s never going to read it. He’ll probably curse Mark’s owl dead on sight. Not that that would be any great loss, because Mark hates his owl. It’s a huge intimidating eagle-owl and Mark is terrified of it. His father bought it for him, of course, despite Mark’s protests; apparently any son of his was going to have a manly pet. Mark doesn’t feel particularly manly when he’s shaking in a corner, trying to work up the courage to approach its cage. He would have been much happier with a toad.
-
The moment arrives far too soon: the moment when the Sorting Hat is about to be placed on his head and quite possibly ruin his life. Why did his parents have to saddle him with a surname so early in the alphabet?
He walks to the stool like a man walking to the gallows, trying not to shake too obviously. His legs feel like they belong to someone else.
The Sorting Hat drops over his eyes. He tries to keep breathing, although, frankly, it’d probably be simpler if he stopped.
The hat doesn’t say anything for several seconds. It feels like about eight years.
He’s going to be a Squib. He’s going to be a Squib, and his father will never speak to him again, which is an outcome that in theory doesn’t sound too bad but that Mark is instinctively desperate to prevent at any cost.
“Hmm,” the hat says in his ear. “Interesting. You’re not really Gryffindor material, I’d say, and there’s little real loyalty, either.”
Not a great thing to hear, but at least it sounds as if he might avoid Hufflepuff. He tightens his grip on the stool.
“You’re a bright one, certainly,” the hat says, “but I can see a rashness that I fear is going to lead you to make rather poor decisions, young man.”
This is utterly humiliating. Some part of Mark is convinced that the hat is speaking to the entire hall, even if it kept its observations on the students preceding him to itself.
Ravenclaw, he thinks, desperately. You said I’m bright, so put me in Ravenclaw.
“Ravenclaw, eh?” the hat says. “Well, I like to take a person’s choices into account, but that isn’t really your choice, is it? I don’t see why I should sort you according to your father’s wishes.”
No, really, please do, Mark thinks as hard as he can.
“Dreams of power and affluence? A certain desperate disregard for moral borders when backed into a corner? You’re a difficult case, admittedly, but I think you’d be best suited to – SLYTHERIN!”
“Who wouldn’t bend their morals when backed into a corner?” Mark demands, as the Slytherin table begins to cheer. “On those grounds, surely everyone should be sorted into Slytherin.” But the hat is already being yanked off his head, and, with a last desperate glance at the Ravenclaw table, he makes his slow way to sit amongst the Slytherins, his tie already changing from a neutral mauve to green and silver.
Slytherin is all right. Slytherin is not Hufflepuff. It’s not being a Squib. It’s not ideal, but it does at least mean that Mark is probably still going to have a roof over his head come the holidays. And, no matter how much Mark tells himself that, it can’t drown out the voice in his head saying you’ve failed.
Mark sits there, among the Slytherins, with his head down. A couple of people try to talk to him, but he’s not great at making conversation at the best of times, and right now he’s too miserable even to attempt it. Before long, everyone has given up on getting his attention.
Maybe he can get through the next seven years like this: keeping his head down, never speaking to anyone. It seems to be the most appealing prospect available to him.
The table occasionally breaks into applause when another student is sorted into Slytherin. When there are only a few left in the yet-to-be-sorted queue, the applause breaks out again and Mark glances up.
He recognises the boy approaching the table. It seems he hasn’t been sorted into Gryffinclaw after all.
Mark realises too late that the seat next to him is empty.
“It said I certainly have aspirations, even if I’m unlikely to achieve them,” Jeremy says, throwing himself moodily into the empty seat. “It’s a stupid hat. I think we should set it on fire.”
We? Mark certainly didn’t sign up for this. “You can’t set the Sorting Hat on fire; it’s a priceless historical artefact.”
“Well, it’s a stupid historical artefact and it’s wrong,” Jeremy says, folding his arms and glaring at the empty plates in front of them.
He continues to glower throughout the Sorting of the remaining couple of first-years and Professor Dumbledore’s speech, at the end of which Jeremy asks, embarrassingly loudly (Mark glances away and tries to pretend he can’t hear), “When do we get food?”
As if in answer to his question, the feast chooses that moment to materialise in front of them.
“Oh, my God,” Jeremy exclaims, his dark mood performing an immediate about-face, “magic is fucking amazing.”
-
“It says flying here, Mark,” Jeremy says, waving his timetable in front of Mark’s nose. “Flying! There are flying lessons!”
“Well, of course,” Mark says. As little as he’s looking forward to flying, he does understand the value in giving children a grounding in basic forms of transportation.
“Do we get our own planes?”
“Planes? What?”
Jeremy folds his arms and gives him a withering look. “Oh, you’re going to pretend ‘oh, I’m so magical I don’t know what planes are’?”
“Do you mean... aeroplanes?” He’s done a certain amount of reading on Muggle substitutes for magic, when he knows his father is unlikely to catch him; it’s an interesting subject. He hadn’t realised Muggles just called them planes. Or perhaps that’s unique to Jeremy; he thinks, or at least he hopes, that Jeremy may be atypical in some ways.
“Jesus Christ,” Jeremy says.
“No aeroplanes, no,” Mark says. “We’ll be flying on broomsticks.”
“Broomsticks?” Jeremy demands. “That’s a witch thing, right?”
Has Jeremy somehow failed to notice the ‘of witchcraft and wizardry’ aspect of their school’s name? “Er. Yes?”
“I mean, don’t you fly on something else if you’re a guy?” Jeremy asks. “Like, a... microphone stand, or something cool?”
“Is that what Muggles do?” Mark asks, bewildered. “Gender-segregated forms of air transportation? Are aeroplanes for men or women?”
“I mean – I mean, no, everyone takes planes, but broomsticks are definitely a girl thing.”
They’re not. Are they? Mark’s going to be selfconscious about this now. “Well, regardless, I think we’ll be flying on broomsticks.”
“Ugh,” Jeremy says. “Fine. At least it’s flying. Where are the brooms?”
“In the broomshed, I imagine.”
“Is it locked?”
Mark pauses. “Dare I ask why you want to know?”
“Flying, Mark,” Jeremy says. “I can’t wait until Thursday.”
“I really think you should,” Mark says. “The rules expressly forbid first-years from flying without supervision.”
According to rumour, Harry Potter broke this rule last year and ended up on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. It seems prudent not to mention that.
(He walked past Harry Potter in the corridor yesterday, he’s almost certain. Potter looked at him with obvious wariness. Mark hasn’t even spoken to him, and the Boy Who Lived already dislikes him. Probably thinks he’s an arsehole. Slytherin does seem to have an unusually high percentage of arseholes.)
“How do you know what the rules say?” Jeremy demands.
“I’ve read them.”
Jeremy looks at him incredulously. “No, you haven’t.”
He wasn’t expecting to be contested on this point. “I absolutely have.”
“Who reads rules?”
“I do,” Mark says. “How else am I supposed to ensure I comply?”
“Well, whatever. Rules are made to be broken.”
“That’s not true!” Mark protests. “That’s almost precisely the opposite of the case! Rules are made to be followed! Jeremy—”
“I’m going to fly, Mark, whether you want me to or not.”
“I promise you I have no objection,” Mark says. “All I ask is that you wait until Thursday, so you’re not entirely guaranteed to break your neck.”
-
Jeremy does wait until Thursday, as far as Mark knows, although Mark suggests that may be more due to the broomshed’s locking magic than to Mark’s entreaties.
“Did you see me up there?” Jeremy asks in excitement as he dismounts. “Flying is easily the best lesson. Easily.”
Mark did indeed see him up there, and what he saw had all the grace of a pirouetting troll. He opts not to mention that. “I don’t know; I prefer to keep both feet safely on the ground, personally.”
“All right,” Jeremy says, and then, after an obvious mental struggle, “...boringy pants. What’s your favourite lesson, then?”
“We’ve not really been here long enough to establish an adequate sample size.”
“If you had to choose. If someone had a gun to your head. Or a wand. Whatever.”
“I don’t know,” Mark says, considering. “I suppose... History of Magic?”
Jeremy, who has been scratching his ear, stops mid-scratch, staring at him. “History of Magic?”
“Yes,” Mark says, tensing a little. “What of it?”
“History of Magic is the most boring lesson ever invented,” Jeremy says. “It has literally bored our teacher to death, Mark. He is literally dead.”
“I do think it could benefit from a more involved teacher,” Mark concedes, “but I think the source material is interesting enough to make up for Professor Binns’ shortcomings.”
“Wow. Okay. I’d sort of assumed you had to be cool if you could do magic, but then there’s you, isn’t there?”
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Mark says, testily.
-
The letter Mark has been dreading arrives at breakfast. His horrible owl drops it onto his plate and sweeps past, hooting in his ear with dark satisfaction.
Mark sits petrified, staring at it.
It isn’t a Howler. At the very least, it isn’t a Howler.
Perhaps he could just... neglect to open it.
“Hey, is that for you?” Jeremy seizes the envelope and tears it open.
“Jeremy!”
“What?” Jeremy asks, pulling out the sheet of misery within. “Oh, check out the fancy writing. Who’d be able to read this? Can you read this?”
Mark snatches it out of his hand. Glances at it, sees the phrase while Slytherin is a perfectly adequate house, of course we’d rather hoped, and he absolutely does not have the strength to read any more. He folds it up and tucks it back into the envelope.
The flap is ruined; there’s no way to close it neatly. He’ll need to obtain a new envelope. If he can’t close it properly, he’ll never feel shielded from the mildly expressed but crushing disappointment within.
“What does it say?” Jeremy asks.
Mark looks over at him, perplexed. He looked at the letter for no more than two seconds; does Jeremy truly believe he was capable of reading it in that time? Because he doesn’t understand magic, or because he doesn’t understand reading?
“Fine,” Jeremy says. “Don’t tell me. I can’t believe you want to marry Professor Binns.”
-
Mark writes a reply to his father, darting small glances through his fingers at his father’s letter: just enough to plausibly be able to claim that he’s read the entire thing. Nothing he reads in it feels good in his stomach.
To be honest, the main purpose of this response is to provide an excuse to send his owl away for a while.
Mark sends it off from the Owlery and pauses on his way back to the dungeons, with a longing glance at the stairway leading up to Ravenclaw Tower. Up there are the clever ones, the ones whom the hat sorted correctly, the ones who aren’t a disappointment to their fathers.
And then something his father told him comes back to him. The entrance to the Ravenclaw common room isn’t locked with a password; you just have to answer a question.
Why shouldn’t he be able to answer that question? It’s not as if thinking is the exclusive province of Ravenclaws. He can open the door and get into the Ravenclaw common room, and then...
Vague, wild ideas of masquerading as a Ravenclaw for the rest of his Hogwarts career flooding his imagination, Mark races up the stairs and knocks on the door to the common room. There’s a moment before the eagle-shaped doorknocker comes to life.
“If tomorrow six dragons will fly over the Atlantic,” the eagle says, “when does the flight become a fact?”
What sort of question is that? Why couldn’t it have been something about tactical errors during the Second Goblin Rebellion?
“Look,” he says, quickly, “I know a lot about goblin uprisings. Can’t you ask me about those?”
“A creative answer,” says the doorknocker, “but perhaps not the answer I seek.”
Is it mocking him? This is perfect; he’s trapped outside the Ravenclaw common room, being mocked by a doorknocker in the shape of a bird.
“Well,” Mark says, feeling idiotic, “I mean – if it’s definitely going to happen – but I suppose...”
He hates this. He can’t get his thoughts about it straight in his head. If he gives an answer, it’s definitely going to be the wrong answer and this bastard doorknocker is probably going to laugh at him and he’ll never get into the Ravenclaw common room. Is there even an answer at all? There has to be; Ravenclaw is about knowing things, isn’t it?
Maybe it’ll give him a different question if he knocks again. He takes a deep breath and gives it another try.
“If tomorrow six goblins will stage an uprising,” the eagle says, “when does the uprising become a fact?”
Definitely, definitely mocking him. He hates this entire door.
“Have you forgotten how to think?” asks a mild voice from behind him. It doesn’t sound mockingly meant; the question seems genuinely curious, which Mark feels is quite a lot worse.
Mark turns to see a blonde Ravenclaw girl, about his own age. Some part of him is convinced that he’s about to be sent to Azkaban for being caught trying to break into another house’s common room.
“You’re wearing the Slytherin colours,” she says, tilting her head. “So are you a Slytherin pretending to be a Ravenclaw, or a Ravenclaw pretending to be a Slytherin?” She sounds interested rather than outraged, at least, but perhaps she’s trying to lull him into a false sense of security. “Or a Hufflepuff pretending to be a Ravenclaw pretending to be a Slytherin?”
“I’m not a Hufflepuff,” Mark says, almost automatically, feeling a little rush of relief just at being able to say that. No matter what else happens, at least he’s escaped Hufflepuff. They’re not going to drag him back into the Great Hall and stick the Sorting Hat on his head again and resort him. Are they? Merlin’s beard, he hopes they can’t do that. Even if there were a chance he’d actually end up in Ravenclaw this time, he wouldn’t be able to cope with that sort of pressure again.
She nods, looking serious. “Which other houses are you not in?”
“Look,” Mark says, dropping his voice, “I’m – I’m in Slytherin. But I think the Sorting Hat made a mistake.”
“They say the Sorting Hat is always right,” the girl says. “I don’t think that’s true. If a Wrackspurt flies into your ear, how can the Hat know who you really are?”
Mark laughs a little, nervously, and then he stops laughing. She doesn’t look like she’s making a joke. This is obviously proof that the Sorting Hat is fallible; there’s a Ravenclaw in front of him, and she’s talking about Wrackspurts as if they actually exist.
The girl hops up the steps to stand next to him. Mark presses himself into the wall.
She knocks on the door.
“If tomorrow six dragons will fly over the Atlantic,” the doorknocker says, “when does the flight become a fact?”
“Hmm,” she says. “It depends on whether you think our actions are predetermined. I don’t know.”
“You don’t,” the eagle agrees, and the door swings open.
Mark stares at it in speechless outrage.
-
The girl is a Lovegood, it turns out, which explains a great deal. Magical, he remembers his father telling him, with great disdain, but barely. Nothing to say worth listening to. Merlin knows how Xenophilius made it into Ravenclaw; he was a blight on our fine house.
His daughter appears to have made it in as well, equally mysteriously.
She’s invited him into the Ravenclaw common room, at least. Mark gazes around at the statues and bookcases in desperate hunger.
Perhaps, if he befriends Lovegood, he can spend more time here, he can learn how Ravenclaws think, he can shape himself in the image of the house, and then – and then—
And then he can... transfigure himself to look like a new student, and be Sorted again next year, and the Sorting Hat will be forced to admit that he’s clearly Ravenclaw material after all.
Will that work? Can he tell himself that that will work? He isn’t exactly drowning in options.
Unfortunately, this plan requires him to spend time with Lovegood.
It’s not that she isn’t nice. She’s perfectly pleasant, and, moreover, her apparent unawareness of social norms makes Mark feel slightly less terrified by the constant possibility that he’s breaking them himself. It’s just that, well, she’s entirely deluded about how the world works, and it’s increasingly difficult to tolerate.
“You must have excellent views up here,” he blurts eventually, in a desperate effort to deter her from talking about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
You must have excellent views up here. Isn’t he the most riveting conversationalist who’s ever lived?
But Lovegood only nods seriously. “Yes, they’re rather good. Would you like to see?”
She leads him up the spiral staircase, to a door at the top of the tower with an elaborate key in the lock. She opens it and shows him into a small room with high, narrow windows.
“See,” she says, pointing out over the grounds, “there are the mountains.”
“Yes,” Mark says. “Yes, I know what mountains look like.”
“And the forest is over there, and – there, look, you can see the Thestrals.”
“The what?” Mark asks, not thinking. He immediately regrets it. When Lovegood uses a word he doesn’t recognise, he’s swiftly coming to realise, it’s best to leave it unquestioned.
“There, drinking from the lake. I think the whole herd is there.”
There is clearly nothing where she’s pointing.
He was barely able to put up with her believing that imaginary creatures existed somewhere. If she’s going to pretend she can see things that patently aren’t there, Mark is going to be absolutely unable to endure it. This entire plan was a mistake. He can’t befriend Lovegood; he cannot be in the same room as her for another second.
He storms out of the room and slams the door and turns the key and realises only in the course of doing so that he may be going slightly too far. If he unlocks it quickly and he pretends he didn’t do that—
The doorknob rattles from the other side. It’s too late; she knows.
“The door’s not opening!” Lovegood calls through the door. “Did you lock it?”
“The wind blew the door shut!” Mark calls. “And – and I think a Wrackspurt locked it.” She’ll buy that, surely? She’s an idiot; she’ll buy that.
“A Wrackspurt?” Lovegood asks, dubiously. She is evidently not buying it. Shit.
“Or – or something. Hold on.” He rattles the key ostentatiously in the lock. He can’t let her out, can he? She’ll realise pretty quickly that he must have locked her in, she’ll tell everyone, he’ll probably be expelled... “I think the key’s stuck.”
Wait, what’s the alternative to letting her out? Leaving her imprisoned in this room forever? Pushing her out of the window?
It’s too late; he’s committed to this now.
“Can’t you use an Unlocking Charm?” Lovegood asks.
Mark panics and snaps his wand in half.
In immediate hindsight, this may not have been his best idea.
“My wand’s broken,” he says, his mind screaming desperately over any useful thoughts he might be having right now.
“Alohomora,” Lovegood says from the other side, and the lock clicks and the door swings open and oh, right, of course she has a wand of her own. Of course.
Mark just stands there, frozen, staring at her. Holding the useless halves of his wand.
Lovegood examines the key, frowning. “Are you sure it was a Wrackspurt?”
“I think so,” Mark says, clutching at straws. His life is over. “It looked like a Wrackspurt.”
“Wrackspurts are invisible, you know,” Lovegood says, slightly patronisingly.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. The Lovegood thinks he’s delusional.
-
“Where were you?” Jeremy asks.
“I’d really prefer not to talk about it,” Mark says, flopping face-first onto his bed in the Slytherin dorms. Where he belongs. He doesn’t deserve to be in Ravenclaw; he’s the stupidest person who ever lived. He’s not sure he even deserves to be in Slytherin. He deserves to live in the second-floor lavatories and be used as a toilet brush.
“What the fuck happened to your wand?”
Mark presses his face harder into the pillow and tries very hard to suffocate himself.
Title: Don't Blame the Wrackspurts
Fandom: Peep Show/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13? Nothing beyond strong language.
Wordcount: 4,300
Summary: Mark Corrigan goes to Hogwarts. It's a disaster.
“This magic thing is pretty sick, isn’t it?”
Mark doesn’t entirely know how to respond. Intellectually, of course, he knows that some of the other children on the Hogwarts Express will have been raised as Muggles and become aware of the existence of magic only recently, but it still feels much like being asked, So, chairs, right? Having feet. Cool as shit.
“You’re a Muggle-born?” he asks, tentatively. He’s never met an actual Muggle-born wizard before; everyone his family associates with is at least half-blood.
“Jesus,” the boy says. “Only trying to say hello.”
“It’s not—” What? “It’s not an insult, it’s just – it’s just what you are. Your parents aren’t magical, are they?”
“Oh,” the boy says. “Right. Yeah, no, they’re not. I thought you were calling me, like, a cunt, or something.”
It’s a word Mark’s heard before, but not in any conversation he was intended to overhear, and certainly not from another child of his age; he assumes this boy must be a fellow first-year, if he’s new to magic. Perhaps Muggle children are raised differently. His father’s always made it sound as if Muggles are essentially raised in the wilderness, eating leaves, but Mark has occasionally caught glimpses of the Muggle side of London, and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of wilderness there.
“So, right,” the boy says. “What’s this pig place we’re going to?”
Mark blinks. “This... what?”
“The pig place! The pig school place this train goes to, with the pigs.”
“Hogwarts?” Mark asks. “You’re asking what Hogwarts is?”
Perhaps his father’s been right all along; perhaps Muggle children truly do know nothing at all.
“Yeah,” the boy says. “I mean, I got the letter. I know it’s got books, like real school.” He says this in a tone of intense disgust. “But it’s cooler, right?”
“Cooler than real school?” Mark asks, bewildered. “Hogwarts is a real school. One could argue it’s more real than any school that neglects to cover the magical aspects of life.”
The boy snorts with laughter. “One could argue? Forget Hogwarts; you’re not real. Who are you?”
“Er,” Mark says. Is that a request for him to introduce himself? “Mark Corrigan.”
“God, you’ve even got an old-person name,” the boy says, which Mark would contest; names that wouldn’t turn heads in the Muggle world are currently fashionable amongst the younger generations. It’s not like he’s an Aberforth. A miracle that he’s not, really, considering his father. “I’m Jeremy.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mark says, entirely out of social obligation.
“So I keep hearing about huff-and-puffing and slithering and stuff,” Jeremy says, sprawling in the seat opposite him. “What’s all that shit?”
Mark, disconcerted by the sign that this boy apparently doesn’t intend to leave any time soon, needs a moment to gather his thoughts. “Well, er, they’re the houses of Hogwarts. We’ll be Sorted into houses according to our temperament and abilities. Essentially Ravenclaw is for students of intelligence and wit, Gryffindor for bravery and valour, Slytherin for ambition and, well, ruthlessness, and Hufflepuff for... for hard work and loyalty.” Merlin, if he’s trying so hard to get into Ravenclaw will the Sorting Hat interpret that as loyalty to his father? Has he been working too hard at being intelligent? He can’t end up in Hufflepuff; he’ll be disowned.
Jeremy nods, considering. “I reckon I’ll be in Gryffindor. Or Ravenclaw. Can you be in two houses at once? Maybe they’ll have to change the rules for me.”
Mark frowns. “You can’t be in two houses at once.”
“Yeah, they’ll definitely have to change the rules for me.”
“They won’t.”
“Gryffinclaw,” Jeremy says, speculatively. “That sounds pretty cool. I’ll call my house that. Actually, I guess I don’t have to stick with the other houses’ names, do I? I can call it Rocking-something. Rocking... face.”
“They’re not going to invent a new house and let you name it,” Mark says, becoming steadily more irritated by Jeremy’s failure to be intimidated. The Sorting is a terrifying, life-changing event. Mark has been worrying about it since more or less the moment he emerged from the womb. Surely this boy should be at least slightly nervous.
“Well, they’re not exactly going to let you name it, are they? I mean, who are you? It’s not like you’re the king of Hogwarts.”
Mark stares. “Why are you any more – look, the four houses have existed for centuries. They’re named after the four original founders of the school, and there was no founder called Rockingface.”
“Fine!” Jeremy exclaims, throwing up his hands. “I’ll go with stupid Gryffinclaw, then!”
Mark finds he doesn’t have the strength to argue. He’s wondered before why his parents never speak to Muggle-born witches or wizards; if they’re all like Jeremy, he’s going to have to send his father a heartfelt letter of thanks for shielding him from Muggle-borns.
Of course, if he ends up in Hufflepuff his father’s never going to read it. He’ll probably curse Mark’s owl dead on sight. Not that that would be any great loss, because Mark hates his owl. It’s a huge intimidating eagle-owl and Mark is terrified of it. His father bought it for him, of course, despite Mark’s protests; apparently any son of his was going to have a manly pet. Mark doesn’t feel particularly manly when he’s shaking in a corner, trying to work up the courage to approach its cage. He would have been much happier with a toad.
The moment arrives far too soon: the moment when the Sorting Hat is about to be placed on his head and quite possibly ruin his life. Why did his parents have to saddle him with a surname so early in the alphabet?
He walks to the stool like a man walking to the gallows, trying not to shake too obviously. His legs feel like they belong to someone else.
The Sorting Hat drops over his eyes. He tries to keep breathing, although, frankly, it’d probably be simpler if he stopped.
The hat doesn’t say anything for several seconds. It feels like about eight years.
He’s going to be a Squib. He’s going to be a Squib, and his father will never speak to him again, which is an outcome that in theory doesn’t sound too bad but that Mark is instinctively desperate to prevent at any cost.
“Hmm,” the hat says in his ear. “Interesting. You’re not really Gryffindor material, I’d say, and there’s little real loyalty, either.”
Not a great thing to hear, but at least it sounds as if he might avoid Hufflepuff. He tightens his grip on the stool.
“You’re a bright one, certainly,” the hat says, “but I can see a rashness that I fear is going to lead you to make rather poor decisions, young man.”
This is utterly humiliating. Some part of Mark is convinced that the hat is speaking to the entire hall, even if it kept its observations on the students preceding him to itself.
Ravenclaw, he thinks, desperately. You said I’m bright, so put me in Ravenclaw.
“Ravenclaw, eh?” the hat says. “Well, I like to take a person’s choices into account, but that isn’t really your choice, is it? I don’t see why I should sort you according to your father’s wishes.”
No, really, please do, Mark thinks as hard as he can.
“Dreams of power and affluence? A certain desperate disregard for moral borders when backed into a corner? You’re a difficult case, admittedly, but I think you’d be best suited to – SLYTHERIN!”
“Who wouldn’t bend their morals when backed into a corner?” Mark demands, as the Slytherin table begins to cheer. “On those grounds, surely everyone should be sorted into Slytherin.” But the hat is already being yanked off his head, and, with a last desperate glance at the Ravenclaw table, he makes his slow way to sit amongst the Slytherins, his tie already changing from a neutral mauve to green and silver.
Slytherin is all right. Slytherin is not Hufflepuff. It’s not being a Squib. It’s not ideal, but it does at least mean that Mark is probably still going to have a roof over his head come the holidays. And, no matter how much Mark tells himself that, it can’t drown out the voice in his head saying you’ve failed.
Mark sits there, among the Slytherins, with his head down. A couple of people try to talk to him, but he’s not great at making conversation at the best of times, and right now he’s too miserable even to attempt it. Before long, everyone has given up on getting his attention.
Maybe he can get through the next seven years like this: keeping his head down, never speaking to anyone. It seems to be the most appealing prospect available to him.
The table occasionally breaks into applause when another student is sorted into Slytherin. When there are only a few left in the yet-to-be-sorted queue, the applause breaks out again and Mark glances up.
He recognises the boy approaching the table. It seems he hasn’t been sorted into Gryffinclaw after all.
Mark realises too late that the seat next to him is empty.
“It said I certainly have aspirations, even if I’m unlikely to achieve them,” Jeremy says, throwing himself moodily into the empty seat. “It’s a stupid hat. I think we should set it on fire.”
We? Mark certainly didn’t sign up for this. “You can’t set the Sorting Hat on fire; it’s a priceless historical artefact.”
“Well, it’s a stupid historical artefact and it’s wrong,” Jeremy says, folding his arms and glaring at the empty plates in front of them.
He continues to glower throughout the Sorting of the remaining couple of first-years and Professor Dumbledore’s speech, at the end of which Jeremy asks, embarrassingly loudly (Mark glances away and tries to pretend he can’t hear), “When do we get food?”
As if in answer to his question, the feast chooses that moment to materialise in front of them.
“Oh, my God,” Jeremy exclaims, his dark mood performing an immediate about-face, “magic is fucking amazing.”
“It says flying here, Mark,” Jeremy says, waving his timetable in front of Mark’s nose. “Flying! There are flying lessons!”
“Well, of course,” Mark says. As little as he’s looking forward to flying, he does understand the value in giving children a grounding in basic forms of transportation.
“Do we get our own planes?”
“Planes? What?”
Jeremy folds his arms and gives him a withering look. “Oh, you’re going to pretend ‘oh, I’m so magical I don’t know what planes are’?”
“Do you mean... aeroplanes?” He’s done a certain amount of reading on Muggle substitutes for magic, when he knows his father is unlikely to catch him; it’s an interesting subject. He hadn’t realised Muggles just called them planes. Or perhaps that’s unique to Jeremy; he thinks, or at least he hopes, that Jeremy may be atypical in some ways.
“Jesus Christ,” Jeremy says.
“No aeroplanes, no,” Mark says. “We’ll be flying on broomsticks.”
“Broomsticks?” Jeremy demands. “That’s a witch thing, right?”
Has Jeremy somehow failed to notice the ‘of witchcraft and wizardry’ aspect of their school’s name? “Er. Yes?”
“I mean, don’t you fly on something else if you’re a guy?” Jeremy asks. “Like, a... microphone stand, or something cool?”
“Is that what Muggles do?” Mark asks, bewildered. “Gender-segregated forms of air transportation? Are aeroplanes for men or women?”
“I mean – I mean, no, everyone takes planes, but broomsticks are definitely a girl thing.”
They’re not. Are they? Mark’s going to be selfconscious about this now. “Well, regardless, I think we’ll be flying on broomsticks.”
“Ugh,” Jeremy says. “Fine. At least it’s flying. Where are the brooms?”
“In the broomshed, I imagine.”
“Is it locked?”
Mark pauses. “Dare I ask why you want to know?”
“Flying, Mark,” Jeremy says. “I can’t wait until Thursday.”
“I really think you should,” Mark says. “The rules expressly forbid first-years from flying without supervision.”
According to rumour, Harry Potter broke this rule last year and ended up on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. It seems prudent not to mention that.
(He walked past Harry Potter in the corridor yesterday, he’s almost certain. Potter looked at him with obvious wariness. Mark hasn’t even spoken to him, and the Boy Who Lived already dislikes him. Probably thinks he’s an arsehole. Slytherin does seem to have an unusually high percentage of arseholes.)
“How do you know what the rules say?” Jeremy demands.
“I’ve read them.”
Jeremy looks at him incredulously. “No, you haven’t.”
He wasn’t expecting to be contested on this point. “I absolutely have.”
“Who reads rules?”
“I do,” Mark says. “How else am I supposed to ensure I comply?”
“Well, whatever. Rules are made to be broken.”
“That’s not true!” Mark protests. “That’s almost precisely the opposite of the case! Rules are made to be followed! Jeremy—”
“I’m going to fly, Mark, whether you want me to or not.”
“I promise you I have no objection,” Mark says. “All I ask is that you wait until Thursday, so you’re not entirely guaranteed to break your neck.”
Jeremy does wait until Thursday, as far as Mark knows, although Mark suggests that may be more due to the broomshed’s locking magic than to Mark’s entreaties.
“Did you see me up there?” Jeremy asks in excitement as he dismounts. “Flying is easily the best lesson. Easily.”
Mark did indeed see him up there, and what he saw had all the grace of a pirouetting troll. He opts not to mention that. “I don’t know; I prefer to keep both feet safely on the ground, personally.”
“All right,” Jeremy says, and then, after an obvious mental struggle, “...boringy pants. What’s your favourite lesson, then?”
“We’ve not really been here long enough to establish an adequate sample size.”
“If you had to choose. If someone had a gun to your head. Or a wand. Whatever.”
“I don’t know,” Mark says, considering. “I suppose... History of Magic?”
Jeremy, who has been scratching his ear, stops mid-scratch, staring at him. “History of Magic?”
“Yes,” Mark says, tensing a little. “What of it?”
“History of Magic is the most boring lesson ever invented,” Jeremy says. “It has literally bored our teacher to death, Mark. He is literally dead.”
“I do think it could benefit from a more involved teacher,” Mark concedes, “but I think the source material is interesting enough to make up for Professor Binns’ shortcomings.”
“Wow. Okay. I’d sort of assumed you had to be cool if you could do magic, but then there’s you, isn’t there?”
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Mark says, testily.
The letter Mark has been dreading arrives at breakfast. His horrible owl drops it onto his plate and sweeps past, hooting in his ear with dark satisfaction.
Mark sits petrified, staring at it.
It isn’t a Howler. At the very least, it isn’t a Howler.
Perhaps he could just... neglect to open it.
“Hey, is that for you?” Jeremy seizes the envelope and tears it open.
“Jeremy!”
“What?” Jeremy asks, pulling out the sheet of misery within. “Oh, check out the fancy writing. Who’d be able to read this? Can you read this?”
Mark snatches it out of his hand. Glances at it, sees the phrase while Slytherin is a perfectly adequate house, of course we’d rather hoped, and he absolutely does not have the strength to read any more. He folds it up and tucks it back into the envelope.
The flap is ruined; there’s no way to close it neatly. He’ll need to obtain a new envelope. If he can’t close it properly, he’ll never feel shielded from the mildly expressed but crushing disappointment within.
“What does it say?” Jeremy asks.
Mark looks over at him, perplexed. He looked at the letter for no more than two seconds; does Jeremy truly believe he was capable of reading it in that time? Because he doesn’t understand magic, or because he doesn’t understand reading?
“Fine,” Jeremy says. “Don’t tell me. I can’t believe you want to marry Professor Binns.”
Mark writes a reply to his father, darting small glances through his fingers at his father’s letter: just enough to plausibly be able to claim that he’s read the entire thing. Nothing he reads in it feels good in his stomach.
To be honest, the main purpose of this response is to provide an excuse to send his owl away for a while.
Mark sends it off from the Owlery and pauses on his way back to the dungeons, with a longing glance at the stairway leading up to Ravenclaw Tower. Up there are the clever ones, the ones whom the hat sorted correctly, the ones who aren’t a disappointment to their fathers.
And then something his father told him comes back to him. The entrance to the Ravenclaw common room isn’t locked with a password; you just have to answer a question.
Why shouldn’t he be able to answer that question? It’s not as if thinking is the exclusive province of Ravenclaws. He can open the door and get into the Ravenclaw common room, and then...
Vague, wild ideas of masquerading as a Ravenclaw for the rest of his Hogwarts career flooding his imagination, Mark races up the stairs and knocks on the door to the common room. There’s a moment before the eagle-shaped doorknocker comes to life.
“If tomorrow six dragons will fly over the Atlantic,” the eagle says, “when does the flight become a fact?”
What sort of question is that? Why couldn’t it have been something about tactical errors during the Second Goblin Rebellion?
“Look,” he says, quickly, “I know a lot about goblin uprisings. Can’t you ask me about those?”
“A creative answer,” says the doorknocker, “but perhaps not the answer I seek.”
Is it mocking him? This is perfect; he’s trapped outside the Ravenclaw common room, being mocked by a doorknocker in the shape of a bird.
“Well,” Mark says, feeling idiotic, “I mean – if it’s definitely going to happen – but I suppose...”
He hates this. He can’t get his thoughts about it straight in his head. If he gives an answer, it’s definitely going to be the wrong answer and this bastard doorknocker is probably going to laugh at him and he’ll never get into the Ravenclaw common room. Is there even an answer at all? There has to be; Ravenclaw is about knowing things, isn’t it?
Maybe it’ll give him a different question if he knocks again. He takes a deep breath and gives it another try.
“If tomorrow six goblins will stage an uprising,” the eagle says, “when does the uprising become a fact?”
Definitely, definitely mocking him. He hates this entire door.
“Have you forgotten how to think?” asks a mild voice from behind him. It doesn’t sound mockingly meant; the question seems genuinely curious, which Mark feels is quite a lot worse.
Mark turns to see a blonde Ravenclaw girl, about his own age. Some part of him is convinced that he’s about to be sent to Azkaban for being caught trying to break into another house’s common room.
“You’re wearing the Slytherin colours,” she says, tilting her head. “So are you a Slytherin pretending to be a Ravenclaw, or a Ravenclaw pretending to be a Slytherin?” She sounds interested rather than outraged, at least, but perhaps she’s trying to lull him into a false sense of security. “Or a Hufflepuff pretending to be a Ravenclaw pretending to be a Slytherin?”
“I’m not a Hufflepuff,” Mark says, almost automatically, feeling a little rush of relief just at being able to say that. No matter what else happens, at least he’s escaped Hufflepuff. They’re not going to drag him back into the Great Hall and stick the Sorting Hat on his head again and resort him. Are they? Merlin’s beard, he hopes they can’t do that. Even if there were a chance he’d actually end up in Ravenclaw this time, he wouldn’t be able to cope with that sort of pressure again.
She nods, looking serious. “Which other houses are you not in?”
“Look,” Mark says, dropping his voice, “I’m – I’m in Slytherin. But I think the Sorting Hat made a mistake.”
“They say the Sorting Hat is always right,” the girl says. “I don’t think that’s true. If a Wrackspurt flies into your ear, how can the Hat know who you really are?”
Mark laughs a little, nervously, and then he stops laughing. She doesn’t look like she’s making a joke. This is obviously proof that the Sorting Hat is fallible; there’s a Ravenclaw in front of him, and she’s talking about Wrackspurts as if they actually exist.
The girl hops up the steps to stand next to him. Mark presses himself into the wall.
She knocks on the door.
“If tomorrow six dragons will fly over the Atlantic,” the doorknocker says, “when does the flight become a fact?”
“Hmm,” she says. “It depends on whether you think our actions are predetermined. I don’t know.”
“You don’t,” the eagle agrees, and the door swings open.
Mark stares at it in speechless outrage.
The girl is a Lovegood, it turns out, which explains a great deal. Magical, he remembers his father telling him, with great disdain, but barely. Nothing to say worth listening to. Merlin knows how Xenophilius made it into Ravenclaw; he was a blight on our fine house.
His daughter appears to have made it in as well, equally mysteriously.
She’s invited him into the Ravenclaw common room, at least. Mark gazes around at the statues and bookcases in desperate hunger.
Perhaps, if he befriends Lovegood, he can spend more time here, he can learn how Ravenclaws think, he can shape himself in the image of the house, and then – and then—
And then he can... transfigure himself to look like a new student, and be Sorted again next year, and the Sorting Hat will be forced to admit that he’s clearly Ravenclaw material after all.
Will that work? Can he tell himself that that will work? He isn’t exactly drowning in options.
Unfortunately, this plan requires him to spend time with Lovegood.
It’s not that she isn’t nice. She’s perfectly pleasant, and, moreover, her apparent unawareness of social norms makes Mark feel slightly less terrified by the constant possibility that he’s breaking them himself. It’s just that, well, she’s entirely deluded about how the world works, and it’s increasingly difficult to tolerate.
“You must have excellent views up here,” he blurts eventually, in a desperate effort to deter her from talking about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
You must have excellent views up here. Isn’t he the most riveting conversationalist who’s ever lived?
But Lovegood only nods seriously. “Yes, they’re rather good. Would you like to see?”
She leads him up the spiral staircase, to a door at the top of the tower with an elaborate key in the lock. She opens it and shows him into a small room with high, narrow windows.
“See,” she says, pointing out over the grounds, “there are the mountains.”
“Yes,” Mark says. “Yes, I know what mountains look like.”
“And the forest is over there, and – there, look, you can see the Thestrals.”
“The what?” Mark asks, not thinking. He immediately regrets it. When Lovegood uses a word he doesn’t recognise, he’s swiftly coming to realise, it’s best to leave it unquestioned.
“There, drinking from the lake. I think the whole herd is there.”
There is clearly nothing where she’s pointing.
He was barely able to put up with her believing that imaginary creatures existed somewhere. If she’s going to pretend she can see things that patently aren’t there, Mark is going to be absolutely unable to endure it. This entire plan was a mistake. He can’t befriend Lovegood; he cannot be in the same room as her for another second.
He storms out of the room and slams the door and turns the key and realises only in the course of doing so that he may be going slightly too far. If he unlocks it quickly and he pretends he didn’t do that—
The doorknob rattles from the other side. It’s too late; she knows.
“The door’s not opening!” Lovegood calls through the door. “Did you lock it?”
“The wind blew the door shut!” Mark calls. “And – and I think a Wrackspurt locked it.” She’ll buy that, surely? She’s an idiot; she’ll buy that.
“A Wrackspurt?” Lovegood asks, dubiously. She is evidently not buying it. Shit.
“Or – or something. Hold on.” He rattles the key ostentatiously in the lock. He can’t let her out, can he? She’ll realise pretty quickly that he must have locked her in, she’ll tell everyone, he’ll probably be expelled... “I think the key’s stuck.”
Wait, what’s the alternative to letting her out? Leaving her imprisoned in this room forever? Pushing her out of the window?
It’s too late; he’s committed to this now.
“Can’t you use an Unlocking Charm?” Lovegood asks.
Mark panics and snaps his wand in half.
In immediate hindsight, this may not have been his best idea.
“My wand’s broken,” he says, his mind screaming desperately over any useful thoughts he might be having right now.
“Alohomora,” Lovegood says from the other side, and the lock clicks and the door swings open and oh, right, of course she has a wand of her own. Of course.
Mark just stands there, frozen, staring at her. Holding the useless halves of his wand.
Lovegood examines the key, frowning. “Are you sure it was a Wrackspurt?”
“I think so,” Mark says, clutching at straws. His life is over. “It looked like a Wrackspurt.”
“Wrackspurts are invisible, you know,” Lovegood says, slightly patronisingly.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. The Lovegood thinks he’s delusional.
“Where were you?” Jeremy asks.
“I’d really prefer not to talk about it,” Mark says, flopping face-first onto his bed in the Slytherin dorms. Where he belongs. He doesn’t deserve to be in Ravenclaw; he’s the stupidest person who ever lived. He’s not sure he even deserves to be in Slytherin. He deserves to live in the second-floor lavatories and be used as a toilet brush.
“What the fuck happened to your wand?”
Mark presses his face harder into the pillow and tries very hard to suffocate himself.