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runespoorTitle: Second Year
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Andromeda Black, Ted Tonks
Prompt: 025 - Strangers
Word Count: 2015
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Second in the Love in Hogwarts Years series. My thanks go toluckilyotto who beta'd the series.
Second Year
As a whole, Andromeda loves second year. She knows more people and has more authority than she had as a first-year, and it's nice not to be one of The Children anymore. The first two months or so, she still cannot shake a mild case of jealousy that Bellatrix is always going to be older, more experienced, and scarier than she is (well, the first thing, at any rate), and sometimes she's almost envious of how Bella is clearly the leader of her little gang, which acquired a new member in the person of Evan Rosier, a first-year, alright except for the fact that he overestimates the value of his lineage, though he is aware than it cannot compare with the Blacks. But Andromeda always loved annoying Bella, specially when she goes in The Responsible Miss Black behaviour, and that is simply easier to do when one assumes the role of the barely-involved bystander.
It is also the year she stops even putting up a show of working on her Herbology, causing quite a kerfuffle amongst the teachers and Slytherin House itself. Andromeda loves attention, that much is a given, she's a proud Black, but she absolutely cannot stand other people peeping in and trying to run her life. They mean well, particularly Bellatrix. Andromeda looks up a number of curses she's planning to use on the next person who'll make a comment, but somehow she's always quicker with her tongue than she is with her wand. She makes the onlookers laugh, and also a number of enemies, with that talent of hers, both inside and outside her House, but when she sees that upstart bourgeois Malfoy, strutting around like he owns the castle because of the shiny new badge on his puffing chest, paling with rage and unable to punish her, because she's a Slytherin and she's a Black, or the Head Boy, Longbottom, spluttering for words after she's debunked his patronising approach, she feels like everything that'll come her way from them will have been entirely worth it.
As her Herbology marks show no trace of improvement, no matter how minor, Professor Slughorn calls for her. Andromeda likes him, for all his bad jokes and overdone theatricals – he reminds her a bit of the corny extravagance that is her great uncle Alphard, who always insists on being called Uncle, except that she can spend hours attending Slughorn's lessons without feeling annoyed with his non-sequitur. Those are also a specialty of Dumbledore, but the Headmaster has a way of grating on her nerves that have more to do with his knowing eyes and perpetual composure, just like her father. Andromeda is more aware than any of her sisters how dangerous a man Cepheus Black truly is. As a matter of consequence, she doesn't trust Dumbledore any further than Bertha Jorkins could hex him, but Slughorn is likeable, and rather more straight-forward in his kind of manipulative.
He wants to know about it, of course. He cares about his students. He mostly cares about those that show promise, but Andromeda refrains from saying it out loud. After all, he never pretended otherwise. Her mind is set, and Professor Slughorn is not a stupid man. He provides her with several openings and sends her on her way with a sigh, not bothering to hide that he's disappointed but resigned.
Before she leaves, though, she's seized by a sudden intuition, and pauses at the door. She asks him whether he could give her a pass for the Restricted Section. There are whole areas of magic she's interested in, she says, but they aren't covered at Hogwarts. Maybe he could… recommend some reading to her? He stops her before she goes on. He thinks she's still a little too young, and no doubt that's what the Headmaster will object when he learns that a second-year has even monitored access to the Restricted Section. He doesn't say anything about the fact that the Restricted Section is Restricted for a reason, and she's grateful for it. He's looking at her as if she were someone completely different from the twelve-year-old who all but stated she's got better things to do with her time than to work on Herbology. Better wait a few years, when she's assimilated the basics of magic to the point she needn't think to know them. She says she knows them already, she's a Black. Her tone conveys quite clearly her opinion about the half-squibs the school is made of, but she doesn't come in the open and disclaim it like Bellatrix would have done, because, well, mostly it'd be tacky. And it would be insulting Professor Slughorn , who is spending his life teaching the witless. The shadow of a smile crosses his lips, and he looks down on her record, which is nothing to fidget about. The Restricted Section will have to wait, he repeats, but if arcane branches of magic tempt her (his tone bespeaks only of intellectual purposes), then maybe she should consider Ancient Runes and Arithmancy for electives. They are, at one level or another, the key to theory.
After her meeting with Professor Slughorn, nobody bothers her anymore. It's quite clear they've done everything they could.
*
Her behaviour isn't common knowledge outside Slytherin House, but Ravenclaw and Slytherin now have their Herbology classes together, so it'd be pretty hard to miss that what Andromeda does in Herbology cannot exactly be called "work" anymore, and has been reduced to "attending", and Ted, contrarily to what the Absent-Minded Ravenclaw Stereotype demands, is actually quite aware of what goes on, even during the classes. Besides, it's not as if Herbology is the most challenging of his classes.
Ted finds her attitude strange and rather miffing.
Ted, by this point, spends the majority of his free time studying, with the dustiest and least-used tomes he can find in the library. He cannot fathom, for the life of him, why the Sorting Hat gave him a choice as to whether he'd like to go to Slytherin, and is far less disturbed by the half-condescending attestation of his House that he's, really, "the Hufflepuff of Ravenclaw Tower". Of course, his schoolwork is also consistently the most precise, the best researched, and always raises exactly the sort of questions teachers are gratified to see their students understand cause something of a problem. He's known his ability to spend hours on his quest of the most obscure yet telling example. In the House of the smart and the scholars, he's by far the best student; but as his classmates are precisely the smart and the scholars, he's neither envied nor reviled for it, merely gently mocked. Most Ravenclaws are too busy exploring the library to settle down and concentrate on their schoolwork.
They fancy themselves intellectuals, but Ted, whose paternal grandfather was after all a recognised painter, whose mother is a literary critic, and whose sister is studying cinema in France, is more than often taken aback by their cultural ignorance when it comes to the Muggle world. He doesn't really know how to react, so mostly he keeps silent and tries to gradually initiate his classmates.
It becomes soon apparent that this isn't quite the smart thing to do in terms of prudence, which helps shattering Ted's image of sensible Hufflepuffness and reassures his House that he does belong. One day, when he's trying to explain about Shakespeare and the witches in Macbeth and the ghost in Hamlet and, yes, even the potion in Romeo and Juliet and how it's probable that the wizards followed the Muggle playwright's incentive, a nearby Slytherin, a third-year, snaps.
A scene ensues. The kind of frozen-in-time scene that degenerates nine times out of ten into an all-hexes-breaking-loose melee, unless an authority figure intervenes before the first wand is out.
Being Muggle-born isn't the trendy thing this spring, and frankly it doesn't take a genius to make a wild guess at what it could mean. It is nevertheless Ted's first encounter with the word, no matter what extensive reading he's done in one year and a half, and every second that goes by makes his mouth burn with the temptation to ask the question. And Ted is a Ravenclaw, kin to Pandora and Faustus, people with more curiosity that good sense, so sharp they cut themselves.
What is a Mudblood, he asks, with an odd twist to his lips, halfway between a snarl and a smile.
Then, of course, no authority figure can appear fast enough to prevent all the jinxes and curses from being shouted and rebounding on the stone walls, in a concert of yelping portraits and twelve- and thirteen-year olds crashing on the floor. They're young enough that none of their spells is painful or dangerous, taken separately, but as a combination, most participants are landed for the night in the infirmary. It's lucky, they're admonished by an angry Flitwick, that he arrived before more permanent damage was done and more permanents sanctions had to be handed out – Flitwick's voice is actually going squeaky with indignation.
Afterwards, when he's mulling over the confrontation in the two days he's stuck in the hospital wing, Ted can't bring himself to wish he'd done otherwise. Well, perhaps he'd have erected a reflecting shield before trying to get back at the one who'd called him a Mudblood in the first place, particularly with a Confusing Spell he'd had no hope of actually performing right (that was one thing to be said against advanced reading on seventh-year material, he thought). But whenever he risks a glance at the giggling Slytherin, who only scowls at him from time to time when the spell drifts away for a moment, and will not leave Pomfrey's care for a least three more days, he feels that the satisfaction mostly makes up for the fact that he has two weeks of detention to serve, and a serious lecturing with his parents to prepare for.
Hogwarts being the biggest gossip factory on this side of the Channel, there is little talk about anything else until the next Quidditch match, three weeks later. Ted is randomly accosted by a number of students who want to know about the fight, and there's even a few thoughtful Gryffindors who seem a bit surprised that he's not at the Duelling Club, and who advise him to come, as it'd be a waste of talent not to. Since two of these Gryffindors are Prefects and the Duelling Club is run by Professor Flitwick, Ted judges it's wiser to avoid attracting even more attention to his relatively out of character actions. He had no wish to become a casualty of the on-going Gryffindor/Slytherin squab. Also, his once immaculate disciplinary record is no more, and the less Flitwick holds it against him the better.
It makes for strangely interesting Herbology classes. Ted considers himself to be quiet, mild, and all-around non-confrontational, so the satisfaction he derives from the mixed scowls, hisses and twitches the Slytherins send his way leaves him a bit perplexed. Well, scowls and hisses from the majority, at any rate; the one doing the twitching – Avery – twitches, present of habit, and Andromeda Black doesn't seem to care one way or another, as she watches instead the rest of the students battling with baby Mandrakes, her eyebrows raised with polite interest. He can't ignore them, exactly, because seven pairs of eyes glaring at one are not that easily overlooked, but he doesn't let them get to him either. Usually he looks back, expression blank, when he can spare a moment, and enjoys seeing them looking away.
It makes for even more strangely interesting Potions class, in that Professor Slughorn doesn't seem begrudging in any way, neither of Ravenclaw House nor of Ted himself. Then again, Professor Slughorn has been vaunting Ted's prowess at brewing for almost two years now, so maybe he's cutting him some slack on the grounds that Ted is top of the year. Or Ted isn't worth his time: it's a plausible alternative.
Ted doesn't know which makes the more sense.
Author:
runespoor7 Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Andromeda Black, Ted Tonks
Prompt: 025 - Strangers
Word Count: 2015
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Second in the Love in Hogwarts Years series. My thanks go to
luckilyotto who beta'd the series.As a whole, Andromeda loves second year. She knows more people and has more authority than she had as a first-year, and it's nice not to be one of The Children anymore. The first two months or so, she still cannot shake a mild case of jealousy that Bellatrix is always going to be older, more experienced, and scarier than she is (well, the first thing, at any rate), and sometimes she's almost envious of how Bella is clearly the leader of her little gang, which acquired a new member in the person of Evan Rosier, a first-year, alright except for the fact that he overestimates the value of his lineage, though he is aware than it cannot compare with the Blacks. But Andromeda always loved annoying Bella, specially when she goes in The Responsible Miss Black behaviour, and that is simply easier to do when one assumes the role of the barely-involved bystander.
It is also the year she stops even putting up a show of working on her Herbology, causing quite a kerfuffle amongst the teachers and Slytherin House itself. Andromeda loves attention, that much is a given, she's a proud Black, but she absolutely cannot stand other people peeping in and trying to run her life. They mean well, particularly Bellatrix. Andromeda looks up a number of curses she's planning to use on the next person who'll make a comment, but somehow she's always quicker with her tongue than she is with her wand. She makes the onlookers laugh, and also a number of enemies, with that talent of hers, both inside and outside her House, but when she sees that upstart bourgeois Malfoy, strutting around like he owns the castle because of the shiny new badge on his puffing chest, paling with rage and unable to punish her, because she's a Slytherin and she's a Black, or the Head Boy, Longbottom, spluttering for words after she's debunked his patronising approach, she feels like everything that'll come her way from them will have been entirely worth it.
As her Herbology marks show no trace of improvement, no matter how minor, Professor Slughorn calls for her. Andromeda likes him, for all his bad jokes and overdone theatricals – he reminds her a bit of the corny extravagance that is her great uncle Alphard, who always insists on being called Uncle, except that she can spend hours attending Slughorn's lessons without feeling annoyed with his non-sequitur. Those are also a specialty of Dumbledore, but the Headmaster has a way of grating on her nerves that have more to do with his knowing eyes and perpetual composure, just like her father. Andromeda is more aware than any of her sisters how dangerous a man Cepheus Black truly is. As a matter of consequence, she doesn't trust Dumbledore any further than Bertha Jorkins could hex him, but Slughorn is likeable, and rather more straight-forward in his kind of manipulative.
He wants to know about it, of course. He cares about his students. He mostly cares about those that show promise, but Andromeda refrains from saying it out loud. After all, he never pretended otherwise. Her mind is set, and Professor Slughorn is not a stupid man. He provides her with several openings and sends her on her way with a sigh, not bothering to hide that he's disappointed but resigned.
Before she leaves, though, she's seized by a sudden intuition, and pauses at the door. She asks him whether he could give her a pass for the Restricted Section. There are whole areas of magic she's interested in, she says, but they aren't covered at Hogwarts. Maybe he could… recommend some reading to her? He stops her before she goes on. He thinks she's still a little too young, and no doubt that's what the Headmaster will object when he learns that a second-year has even monitored access to the Restricted Section. He doesn't say anything about the fact that the Restricted Section is Restricted for a reason, and she's grateful for it. He's looking at her as if she were someone completely different from the twelve-year-old who all but stated she's got better things to do with her time than to work on Herbology. Better wait a few years, when she's assimilated the basics of magic to the point she needn't think to know them. She says she knows them already, she's a Black. Her tone conveys quite clearly her opinion about the half-squibs the school is made of, but she doesn't come in the open and disclaim it like Bellatrix would have done, because, well, mostly it'd be tacky. And it would be insulting Professor Slughorn , who is spending his life teaching the witless. The shadow of a smile crosses his lips, and he looks down on her record, which is nothing to fidget about. The Restricted Section will have to wait, he repeats, but if arcane branches of magic tempt her (his tone bespeaks only of intellectual purposes), then maybe she should consider Ancient Runes and Arithmancy for electives. They are, at one level or another, the key to theory.
After her meeting with Professor Slughorn, nobody bothers her anymore. It's quite clear they've done everything they could.
*
Her behaviour isn't common knowledge outside Slytherin House, but Ravenclaw and Slytherin now have their Herbology classes together, so it'd be pretty hard to miss that what Andromeda does in Herbology cannot exactly be called "work" anymore, and has been reduced to "attending", and Ted, contrarily to what the Absent-Minded Ravenclaw Stereotype demands, is actually quite aware of what goes on, even during the classes. Besides, it's not as if Herbology is the most challenging of his classes.
Ted finds her attitude strange and rather miffing.
Ted, by this point, spends the majority of his free time studying, with the dustiest and least-used tomes he can find in the library. He cannot fathom, for the life of him, why the Sorting Hat gave him a choice as to whether he'd like to go to Slytherin, and is far less disturbed by the half-condescending attestation of his House that he's, really, "the Hufflepuff of Ravenclaw Tower". Of course, his schoolwork is also consistently the most precise, the best researched, and always raises exactly the sort of questions teachers are gratified to see their students understand cause something of a problem. He's known his ability to spend hours on his quest of the most obscure yet telling example. In the House of the smart and the scholars, he's by far the best student; but as his classmates are precisely the smart and the scholars, he's neither envied nor reviled for it, merely gently mocked. Most Ravenclaws are too busy exploring the library to settle down and concentrate on their schoolwork.
They fancy themselves intellectuals, but Ted, whose paternal grandfather was after all a recognised painter, whose mother is a literary critic, and whose sister is studying cinema in France, is more than often taken aback by their cultural ignorance when it comes to the Muggle world. He doesn't really know how to react, so mostly he keeps silent and tries to gradually initiate his classmates.
It becomes soon apparent that this isn't quite the smart thing to do in terms of prudence, which helps shattering Ted's image of sensible Hufflepuffness and reassures his House that he does belong. One day, when he's trying to explain about Shakespeare and the witches in Macbeth and the ghost in Hamlet and, yes, even the potion in Romeo and Juliet and how it's probable that the wizards followed the Muggle playwright's incentive, a nearby Slytherin, a third-year, snaps.
A scene ensues. The kind of frozen-in-time scene that degenerates nine times out of ten into an all-hexes-breaking-loose melee, unless an authority figure intervenes before the first wand is out.
Being Muggle-born isn't the trendy thing this spring, and frankly it doesn't take a genius to make a wild guess at what it could mean. It is nevertheless Ted's first encounter with the word, no matter what extensive reading he's done in one year and a half, and every second that goes by makes his mouth burn with the temptation to ask the question. And Ted is a Ravenclaw, kin to Pandora and Faustus, people with more curiosity that good sense, so sharp they cut themselves.
What is a Mudblood, he asks, with an odd twist to his lips, halfway between a snarl and a smile.
Then, of course, no authority figure can appear fast enough to prevent all the jinxes and curses from being shouted and rebounding on the stone walls, in a concert of yelping portraits and twelve- and thirteen-year olds crashing on the floor. They're young enough that none of their spells is painful or dangerous, taken separately, but as a combination, most participants are landed for the night in the infirmary. It's lucky, they're admonished by an angry Flitwick, that he arrived before more permanent damage was done and more permanents sanctions had to be handed out – Flitwick's voice is actually going squeaky with indignation.
Afterwards, when he's mulling over the confrontation in the two days he's stuck in the hospital wing, Ted can't bring himself to wish he'd done otherwise. Well, perhaps he'd have erected a reflecting shield before trying to get back at the one who'd called him a Mudblood in the first place, particularly with a Confusing Spell he'd had no hope of actually performing right (that was one thing to be said against advanced reading on seventh-year material, he thought). But whenever he risks a glance at the giggling Slytherin, who only scowls at him from time to time when the spell drifts away for a moment, and will not leave Pomfrey's care for a least three more days, he feels that the satisfaction mostly makes up for the fact that he has two weeks of detention to serve, and a serious lecturing with his parents to prepare for.
Hogwarts being the biggest gossip factory on this side of the Channel, there is little talk about anything else until the next Quidditch match, three weeks later. Ted is randomly accosted by a number of students who want to know about the fight, and there's even a few thoughtful Gryffindors who seem a bit surprised that he's not at the Duelling Club, and who advise him to come, as it'd be a waste of talent not to. Since two of these Gryffindors are Prefects and the Duelling Club is run by Professor Flitwick, Ted judges it's wiser to avoid attracting even more attention to his relatively out of character actions. He had no wish to become a casualty of the on-going Gryffindor/Slytherin squab. Also, his once immaculate disciplinary record is no more, and the less Flitwick holds it against him the better.
It makes for strangely interesting Herbology classes. Ted considers himself to be quiet, mild, and all-around non-confrontational, so the satisfaction he derives from the mixed scowls, hisses and twitches the Slytherins send his way leaves him a bit perplexed. Well, scowls and hisses from the majority, at any rate; the one doing the twitching – Avery – twitches, present of habit, and Andromeda Black doesn't seem to care one way or another, as she watches instead the rest of the students battling with baby Mandrakes, her eyebrows raised with polite interest. He can't ignore them, exactly, because seven pairs of eyes glaring at one are not that easily overlooked, but he doesn't let them get to him either. Usually he looks back, expression blank, when he can spare a moment, and enjoys seeing them looking away.
It makes for even more strangely interesting Potions class, in that Professor Slughorn doesn't seem begrudging in any way, neither of Ravenclaw House nor of Ted himself. Then again, Professor Slughorn has been vaunting Ted's prowess at brewing for almost two years now, so maybe he's cutting him some slack on the grounds that Ted is top of the year. Or Ted isn't worth his time: it's a plausible alternative.
Ted doesn't know which makes the more sense.
