Tentative Title: Tilting Eve's Arm
Jun. 10th, 2011 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drownedinlight But it's still the girl!Harry Fic
“Well, all right then,” Ron agreed. A squeaking sent us all looking up, and a woman with a cart appeared at the door of the compartment.
“Anything off the cart, dearies?” she inquired.
“I’m all set,” Ron said holding up a sandwich.
“I’ll take a few things,” I said. I had never eaten much candy before, we didn’t have much of it around the manor, and I still had the money left over from our trip to Diagon Alley. I grabbed a few familiar things, like fudge, and half a dozen biscuits, and some unfamiliar things to try. John grabbed a few things too and paid with his left over money. When the trollies lady left, I pulled down our lunch basket, and we all began unwrapping our food.
“She always forgets that I don’t like corn beef,” Ron muttered.
“I like corn beef,” John said. “I’ll trade you for salmon.”
“Really?” Ron asked. His eyes had gone bright, like John had just saved him from drowning or something. “I’ve never had salmon before, is it good?”
“Very good,” I replied, taking a bite out of my own. “John’s just going through a phase where he doesn’t eat much fish.” I was quoting Dad on that one. John got a year to grow out of this phase and was requested to eat a few bites of any kind of fish Dad or Lily had at any time, so that he might acquire a taste for it. Ron took the sandwich offered him, and gave his corn beef to John. We all chowed down on our sandwich, and I found that the elves had also packed us some potato salad, extra sandwiches and some fresh greens. There was too much between the two of us, so we offered some to Ron, who gratefully eat every bit. When we started on our sweets, it became clear to me that I had bought too much, but Ron was not hard to convince to help us eat it.
While we were still eating the sweets, a boy our own age appeared in the door of the compartment.
“Er, have any of you seen a toad?” he asked.
“No, sorry,” John replied.
“He’s always getting away from me!” the boy moaned.
“Calm down,” I said. “Have a biscuit or a pasty.” He took the biscuit and ate it in two distraught bites.
“You know, you could probably just summon your toad,” John suggested.
“John, summoning’s a fourth year spell, not everyone got extra training,” I said. “And besides, that one boy said we aren’t allowed to do magic on the train.”
“The prefects probably could,” Ron said. “They have special compartments up at the beginning of the train, I’m sure you could go ask one of them.” The boy brightened at that.
“Thank you!” he said, turning to rush away, but at the last moment turned back. “I’m Neville Longbottom.”
“Your parents are Alice and Frank, right?” I asked. “Our parents know each other.” Neville looked at us for a moment, and then smiled shyly.
“So, you’re Harriet and John?” he asked. “Mum says she’s been trying to set up a play date with you two for years, but since she and Dad work, and the three of us had studies, it’s been difficult.” John and I nodded. We had heard about the conflicting schedules from both Lily and Dad. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and all three of us shook it, Ron introducing himself along the way. “Well, I’m going to go find a prefect, but would you mind if I came back after? And we could play exploding snap?”
“Sure,” I agreed, though the boys looked a little less sure.
“Not sure why he’s so intent on looking for the toad,” Ron said. “They’re dreadfully uncool. Though I haven’t got a pet so I suppose I can’t do any talking. I would have had a rat—Percy’s old one that is—but a couple of years ago the thing just up and disappeared.” A knock at the door raised our head again, this time to a girl our age with bushy hair. She was already wearing her school robes, and was nervously fingering her wand in her pocket.
“Sorry, have you seen a toad?” she asked.
“No; we already sent Neville up to the prefects’ compartment to get one of them to summon it for him though,” John said.
“Oh,” the girl said. She took a step back and looked up and down the corridor.
“You could wait here,” John said. “Until Neville comes back that is. We were going to play a game of exploding snap when he got here.”
“Oh! Thank you,” she said, stepping in. “I’m Hermione Granger.” She held out her hand to me first, and I squeezed it as I shook,
“Harriet Potter.”
“Any relation to John Potter?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, just ever so slightly. (Hermione doesn’t know it, but she does this when she requests information, whether it’s books or people she’s asking.)
“He’s my twin brother,” I said.
“Oh! Is that hard, having a famous brother?” Hermione asked. “I imagine it must be difficult because he’s already defeated one dark wizard and well, that’s something the likes of Albus Dumbledore has done. And…” she must have realized that we were staring, because she trailed off, began turning red and suddenly found her shoes very interesting. I smirked a little bit and turned to John.
“Well, I dunno John, are you difficult?” I asked.
“Oh!” Hermione exclaimed again, looking up. “You’re John Potter?”
“As far as I know,” John said.
“I suppose I just didn’t make the connection, I mean your eyes are so grey and yours are so green Harriet!”
“John has seer eyes,” I explained.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione blurted. “It’s just I read, a lot, and when I know something it tends to come all spilling out. And I was just getting up on the times, when I found out about you in some of the more recent history books, and then I realized I would be in the same year as you, and well, I just fell to parts. And sorry, I still haven’t asked your name yet.” She turned to Ron as she inhaled a great breath. It seemed Ron did not know what to do for a moment as he just stared at her.
“Oh, yeah, my name’s Ron Weasley,” Ron replied. “Erm, are you going to sit down?”
Hermione sat, right next to me. The compartment fell silent for a moment or two, no more than two I assure you, before Hermione turned to me and asked,
“What did you mean when you said that John has seer eyes?”
“Oh, well, there are a lot of diaries in our family library. We used to have quite a lot of seers and all of them had cloudy grey eyes, like John’s,” I said. “We haven’t had a seer worth salt for almost two hundred years though, and that was about five generations ago, so I’m not sure it could still come through.”
“Seeing’s a later in life gift though, innit?” Ron asked, taking up one of the left over pumpkin pasties.
“According to my family history seers would usually get their full gifts around sixteen or shortly thereafter,” I said. “But they would always have smaller visions beforehand, in their dreams, or they would have extreme déjà vu, or a kind of it,” I said when Hermione began to open her mouth no doubt to explain the déjà vu phenomenon. Hermione shut it for a moment, before she thought of a new question.
“Do many muggleborn students have a tough time with the curriculum?” I handed her a biscuit so that she might have something to do with her mouth as John answered,
“Well, our Mum was a muggleborn, and she was in the top of her year and headgirl at her time in Hogwarts,” he said.
“Yeah, when Percy and Fred and George go on about the stupider ones, it’s usually one of the older families,” Ron added. “A lot of people think that because their blood is older they can just get by no matter what. The muggleborns usually make the best grades because they try so much harder.”
“But you all have known about magic for years!” Hermione exclaimed. I noticed she wasn’t really eating the biscuit.
“We still have the same restrictions as everyone else,” I said. “None of us are allowed a wand until age eleven, unless in special cases like John. Mostly it’s for our own protection, because even in John’s case, he had to do a lot of core exercises before he could be allowed to use our grandfather’s wand to practice spells.”
“Core exercises?” Hermione asked. Even Ron leaned forward a bit, so I went on.
“There’s a reason they have us do small spells like turning match sticks into needles and levitating feathers,” I said. “It’s not to bore us; it’s to help our magical cores grow. When we’re younger, they’re still growing, like our bodies, and it’s very dangerous to tax our magical reserves.”
“It can kill you,” John said. “Regardless of whether or not the dark lord shot a killing curse at me, I wouldn’t have been allowed to do any magic if I couldn’t make my magic core grow. I even had to wait until I was eight to try the meditative techniques. Sometimes, if you can get evaluated a year or two before you’re eleven; your core will be big enough. But it’s still just safer to wait until you’re eleven, because by then most people have large enough cores.”
“That’s another reason they start us on feathers,” I said. “If someone can’t do the basic spell work, it might be a sign that they aren’t developed enough, and they might be risking their lives. They wouldn’t be pulled out of school or anything. Just given meditative exercises like John had to do to raise their core strength.”
“So then, why don’t they teach us the meditative exercises anyway?” Hermione asked. The cookie was crumbling onto her skirt and robe. I handed her a napkin.
“Well, once your core is large enough, there’s not much point,” John said.
“Well, they do help your control,” I said.
“Control freak,” John teased, a grin spreading across her face.
“What does that mean?” Hermione asked.
“That Harriet likes to be in control,” Ron replied. Hermione scowled at him, but I only rolled my eyes.
“It means that you get more in touch with your magic and are better able to control the amount of force you put into spells,” I said. “The reason spells don’t work sometimes is because even with the conductors like the wands and movements and the words is because people put too little or too much magic into what they’re doing. So, when you practice a spell over and over, you’re subconsciously learning how much magic to put behind your words.”
“But you can make some spells stronger and stronger the more times you practice it,” Hermione said. “Does that mean there’s a large scale to be had between not powerful enough and too powerful?”
“On some spells, maybe,” John agreed. “But with something like the patronus, once you’ve reached the corporal form, that’s usually it. You can put a little more oomph behind it, but it will still drive away the dementors.”
“Blimey,” Ron said. “I think I’m getting a headache. It’s like listening to Bill, Charlie and Percy talking about their favorite subjects all at once.” He was grinning as he rubbed his temples, so we all knew he was joking. “I mean, can’t we talk about something normal, like Quidditch, or play a quick round of snap before Neville gets back, or something?” Hermione was a little red again, but John and I only grinned. Before we could speak though, a pale haired boy appeared at the compartment door.
“I’ve heard that John Potter is in this compartment. Is it true?"
“Well, all right then,” Ron agreed. A squeaking sent us all looking up, and a woman with a cart appeared at the door of the compartment.
“Anything off the cart, dearies?” she inquired.
“I’m all set,” Ron said holding up a sandwich.
“I’ll take a few things,” I said. I had never eaten much candy before, we didn’t have much of it around the manor, and I still had the money left over from our trip to Diagon Alley. I grabbed a few familiar things, like fudge, and half a dozen biscuits, and some unfamiliar things to try. John grabbed a few things too and paid with his left over money. When the trollies lady left, I pulled down our lunch basket, and we all began unwrapping our food.
“She always forgets that I don’t like corn beef,” Ron muttered.
“I like corn beef,” John said. “I’ll trade you for salmon.”
“Really?” Ron asked. His eyes had gone bright, like John had just saved him from drowning or something. “I’ve never had salmon before, is it good?”
“Very good,” I replied, taking a bite out of my own. “John’s just going through a phase where he doesn’t eat much fish.” I was quoting Dad on that one. John got a year to grow out of this phase and was requested to eat a few bites of any kind of fish Dad or Lily had at any time, so that he might acquire a taste for it. Ron took the sandwich offered him, and gave his corn beef to John. We all chowed down on our sandwich, and I found that the elves had also packed us some potato salad, extra sandwiches and some fresh greens. There was too much between the two of us, so we offered some to Ron, who gratefully eat every bit. When we started on our sweets, it became clear to me that I had bought too much, but Ron was not hard to convince to help us eat it.
While we were still eating the sweets, a boy our own age appeared in the door of the compartment.
“Er, have any of you seen a toad?” he asked.
“No, sorry,” John replied.
“He’s always getting away from me!” the boy moaned.
“Calm down,” I said. “Have a biscuit or a pasty.” He took the biscuit and ate it in two distraught bites.
“You know, you could probably just summon your toad,” John suggested.
“John, summoning’s a fourth year spell, not everyone got extra training,” I said. “And besides, that one boy said we aren’t allowed to do magic on the train.”
“The prefects probably could,” Ron said. “They have special compartments up at the beginning of the train, I’m sure you could go ask one of them.” The boy brightened at that.
“Thank you!” he said, turning to rush away, but at the last moment turned back. “I’m Neville Longbottom.”
“Your parents are Alice and Frank, right?” I asked. “Our parents know each other.” Neville looked at us for a moment, and then smiled shyly.
“So, you’re Harriet and John?” he asked. “Mum says she’s been trying to set up a play date with you two for years, but since she and Dad work, and the three of us had studies, it’s been difficult.” John and I nodded. We had heard about the conflicting schedules from both Lily and Dad. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and all three of us shook it, Ron introducing himself along the way. “Well, I’m going to go find a prefect, but would you mind if I came back after? And we could play exploding snap?”
“Sure,” I agreed, though the boys looked a little less sure.
“Not sure why he’s so intent on looking for the toad,” Ron said. “They’re dreadfully uncool. Though I haven’t got a pet so I suppose I can’t do any talking. I would have had a rat—Percy’s old one that is—but a couple of years ago the thing just up and disappeared.” A knock at the door raised our head again, this time to a girl our age with bushy hair. She was already wearing her school robes, and was nervously fingering her wand in her pocket.
“Sorry, have you seen a toad?” she asked.
“No; we already sent Neville up to the prefects’ compartment to get one of them to summon it for him though,” John said.
“Oh,” the girl said. She took a step back and looked up and down the corridor.
“You could wait here,” John said. “Until Neville comes back that is. We were going to play a game of exploding snap when he got here.”
“Oh! Thank you,” she said, stepping in. “I’m Hermione Granger.” She held out her hand to me first, and I squeezed it as I shook,
“Harriet Potter.”
“Any relation to John Potter?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, just ever so slightly. (Hermione doesn’t know it, but she does this when she requests information, whether it’s books or people she’s asking.)
“He’s my twin brother,” I said.
“Oh! Is that hard, having a famous brother?” Hermione asked. “I imagine it must be difficult because he’s already defeated one dark wizard and well, that’s something the likes of Albus Dumbledore has done. And…” she must have realized that we were staring, because she trailed off, began turning red and suddenly found her shoes very interesting. I smirked a little bit and turned to John.
“Well, I dunno John, are you difficult?” I asked.
“Oh!” Hermione exclaimed again, looking up. “You’re John Potter?”
“As far as I know,” John said.
“I suppose I just didn’t make the connection, I mean your eyes are so grey and yours are so green Harriet!”
“John has seer eyes,” I explained.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione blurted. “It’s just I read, a lot, and when I know something it tends to come all spilling out. And I was just getting up on the times, when I found out about you in some of the more recent history books, and then I realized I would be in the same year as you, and well, I just fell to parts. And sorry, I still haven’t asked your name yet.” She turned to Ron as she inhaled a great breath. It seemed Ron did not know what to do for a moment as he just stared at her.
“Oh, yeah, my name’s Ron Weasley,” Ron replied. “Erm, are you going to sit down?”
Hermione sat, right next to me. The compartment fell silent for a moment or two, no more than two I assure you, before Hermione turned to me and asked,
“What did you mean when you said that John has seer eyes?”
“Oh, well, there are a lot of diaries in our family library. We used to have quite a lot of seers and all of them had cloudy grey eyes, like John’s,” I said. “We haven’t had a seer worth salt for almost two hundred years though, and that was about five generations ago, so I’m not sure it could still come through.”
“Seeing’s a later in life gift though, innit?” Ron asked, taking up one of the left over pumpkin pasties.
“According to my family history seers would usually get their full gifts around sixteen or shortly thereafter,” I said. “But they would always have smaller visions beforehand, in their dreams, or they would have extreme déjà vu, or a kind of it,” I said when Hermione began to open her mouth no doubt to explain the déjà vu phenomenon. Hermione shut it for a moment, before she thought of a new question.
“Do many muggleborn students have a tough time with the curriculum?” I handed her a biscuit so that she might have something to do with her mouth as John answered,
“Well, our Mum was a muggleborn, and she was in the top of her year and headgirl at her time in Hogwarts,” he said.
“Yeah, when Percy and Fred and George go on about the stupider ones, it’s usually one of the older families,” Ron added. “A lot of people think that because their blood is older they can just get by no matter what. The muggleborns usually make the best grades because they try so much harder.”
“But you all have known about magic for years!” Hermione exclaimed. I noticed she wasn’t really eating the biscuit.
“We still have the same restrictions as everyone else,” I said. “None of us are allowed a wand until age eleven, unless in special cases like John. Mostly it’s for our own protection, because even in John’s case, he had to do a lot of core exercises before he could be allowed to use our grandfather’s wand to practice spells.”
“Core exercises?” Hermione asked. Even Ron leaned forward a bit, so I went on.
“There’s a reason they have us do small spells like turning match sticks into needles and levitating feathers,” I said. “It’s not to bore us; it’s to help our magical cores grow. When we’re younger, they’re still growing, like our bodies, and it’s very dangerous to tax our magical reserves.”
“It can kill you,” John said. “Regardless of whether or not the dark lord shot a killing curse at me, I wouldn’t have been allowed to do any magic if I couldn’t make my magic core grow. I even had to wait until I was eight to try the meditative techniques. Sometimes, if you can get evaluated a year or two before you’re eleven; your core will be big enough. But it’s still just safer to wait until you’re eleven, because by then most people have large enough cores.”
“That’s another reason they start us on feathers,” I said. “If someone can’t do the basic spell work, it might be a sign that they aren’t developed enough, and they might be risking their lives. They wouldn’t be pulled out of school or anything. Just given meditative exercises like John had to do to raise their core strength.”
“So then, why don’t they teach us the meditative exercises anyway?” Hermione asked. The cookie was crumbling onto her skirt and robe. I handed her a napkin.
“Well, once your core is large enough, there’s not much point,” John said.
“Well, they do help your control,” I said.
“Control freak,” John teased, a grin spreading across her face.
“What does that mean?” Hermione asked.
“That Harriet likes to be in control,” Ron replied. Hermione scowled at him, but I only rolled my eyes.
“It means that you get more in touch with your magic and are better able to control the amount of force you put into spells,” I said. “The reason spells don’t work sometimes is because even with the conductors like the wands and movements and the words is because people put too little or too much magic into what they’re doing. So, when you practice a spell over and over, you’re subconsciously learning how much magic to put behind your words.”
“But you can make some spells stronger and stronger the more times you practice it,” Hermione said. “Does that mean there’s a large scale to be had between not powerful enough and too powerful?”
“On some spells, maybe,” John agreed. “But with something like the patronus, once you’ve reached the corporal form, that’s usually it. You can put a little more oomph behind it, but it will still drive away the dementors.”
“Blimey,” Ron said. “I think I’m getting a headache. It’s like listening to Bill, Charlie and Percy talking about their favorite subjects all at once.” He was grinning as he rubbed his temples, so we all knew he was joking. “I mean, can’t we talk about something normal, like Quidditch, or play a quick round of snap before Neville gets back, or something?” Hermione was a little red again, but John and I only grinned. Before we could speak though, a pale haired boy appeared at the compartment door.
“I’ve heard that John Potter is in this compartment. Is it true?"
