qswa

[slythervivian]

Vivian is a quiet child. Shy and easily overwhelmed, she is most often found at home studying quietly under her mother's approving eye. She does well enough in school that her parents start to talk about sending her to a fancy boarding school when she's older; St. Paul's, perhaps, or maybe Sevenoaks. Vivian doesn't object. She is always well behaved, and she never speaks unless spoken to. If her parents think she should go away to school, she's sure they know best. She doesn't need to talk to them about it. And she certainly doesn't need to mention the strange things that happen sometimes in her room, late at night when she's falling asleep. Her books can't actually float. The street lights don't actually make pretty moving shadow designs on the wall. It's just a pleasant fancy.

And then suddenly it isn't just a child's fancy anymore. There's an older couple showing up to Explain Things to her parents carrying a fancy letter on parchment- sealed with wax, even- and an entirely different kind of boarding school to attend. Her parents seem more confused and afraid than anything else, but the wizard couple is very insistently, politely persuasive. Vivian gets the feeling her parents don't quite know what to do with her. But having been presented with such a convenient answer, the arrangements are made.

She'll be attending Hogwarts in the fall.

---

It becomes obvious to Vivian very quickly that the helpful couple left a lot of things out. Until recently the school was, literally, a war zone. Perhaps they'd done it on purpose; they'd said something vague about fetching her "because the faculty were busy", but Vivian suspects belatedly that they really meant "because the faculty are recovering from an enormous magical battle, yes seriously." She doesn't tell her parents; they would worry, or pull her out of school, and she doesn't really think she'd be any safer if they did. She is, as always, quiet. The Sorting Hat puts her in Slytherin, and she gets quieter. She doesn't socialize, she doesn't answer questions about her home life, she spends as much time as she can in the library. Eventually the older students write her off as "one of those weird Asian witches", and she sees no need to correct them. She is a weird Asian witch. Better than a pureblooded snob, as far as she's concerned.

She does well in school. She's not inspiring awe and admiration in Ravenclaw hearts or anything like that, but when you do nothing but study you do well in school, and Vivian does little else. She likes the work, and doesn't feel the loss. She finishes year one, then year two. Her parents are pleased she's doing well, and don't otherwise ask questions; magic makes them uncomfortable. It certainly never occurs to them to ask if she's making friends. She's not, but she prefers it that way. She likes her cozy armchair in the library much more than the older Slytherins, that's for sure.

Her disinterest in socialization does not survive the onset of puberty.

---

Vivian isn't clear on when, exactly, she realizes that other witches are pretty. But other witches are definitely pretty. So Vivian starts attempting to meet some. Her studying starts moving closer and closer to other students' study groups. There's one group in particular, with a beautiful Ravenclaw witch her age... Vivian watches them. She's not the only one, this group is awfully famous so she doesn't stand out much, but she's still too shy. She tries not to stare as much. (She fails. She's so smart. And that smile.) She tries to at least stare at other girls. (More successful, but it's not a large student body; she only has so many options). And she worries and daydreams and panics that she'll say something and be crushed in the process. (She says nothing.)

But there's no one to talk to about this. Why can't she find any gay witches or wizards to talk to? She listens to gossip. She asks innocent questions when she dares. She only comes up with three names, in the whole school, and the two girls are dating each other. That's probably the only reason anyone knows about them at all, she decides glumly. This is just not talked about at Hogwarts. And it's not like she has friends to ask or compare notes with. She's "that quiet Asian witch" who doesn't make friends.

She decides that if no one is talking about it, she's going to make them.

She gets permission from the Headmistress. She talks Madame Hooch- on the principle that the flying instructor has the most free time- into acting as the faculty adviser. And she starts distributing flyers.

Queer/Straight Wix Alliance introductory meetup, Monday October 2 at 7pm in the Charms classroom. Cauldron cakes and chatting.

Comments

[pleating]

"I think it's part of her internship, that she's responsible for bustling people to Pomfrey if they need it? Something like that."

[slythervivian]

"Still." She pauses thoughtfully. Miranda's gone now, the library's mostly empty. "Was there- did something-" she falters. "Do you know what her thing was, earlier? She sounded so mad about the Muggle world idea... I didn't upset her or anything, did I?"

[pleating]

"No, no, she wasn't mad about the idea, she was mad at the possibility that I'd, I don't know, mention unicorns too convincingly in front of somebody, and the obliviators would have to come clean up after me, because she really, really hates memory charms."

[slythervivian]

Vivian thinks about this, feeling a bit lost. "Does she get like that a lot? Most spells are pretty scary if you think about them..."

[pleating]

"She's mostly like that about mind spells. Memory charms, confundus, stuff like that. She actually learned to throw them off in our first year, Hermione Granger helped her."

[slythervivian]

Vivian doesn't know much about magic, but she knows enough to honestly say, "Woah. That Hermione? Woah."

[pleating]

"Yeah, she was still here, then, finishing up, she missed her last year because of war stuff."

[slythervivian]

"I don't think I knew enough back then to realize- that's so cool."

[pleating]

"Yeah! Although Miranda had some philosophical differences with her. About memory charms. I don't think they're still friends."

[slythervivian]

"What happened?" Vivian asks curiously, without thinking, then flushes. "If you can say, I mean."

[pleating]

"During the war Hermione wanted her parents to evacuate so she memory charmed them into believing they were different people without a daughter who had always wanted to live in Australia, so they went."

[slythervivian]

If Hermione did half the things people like to say she did, Vivian supposes her parents would've had to go into hiding. "So they couldn't be- tortured?" she guesses, wincing.

[pleating]

"Yeah, basically."

[slythervivian]

"That must've been horrible. But- Miranda thought she should've done something else...?"

[pleating]

"Miranda thought she should have told her parents they were in danger and asked them to please go to Australia."

[slythervivian]

Vivian pictures having this conversation with her own parents and bites back a sigh. "Well, mine would probably have insisted on calling the police, so they'd get Charmed either way. I guess I don't really know anything about Hermione and her family."

[pleating]

"I sort of see Miranda's point but she's very adamant about it, almost scarily."

[slythervivian]

"She's scary a lot of the time anyway. Some of those articles about her are intense."

[pleating]

"She kills Dementors for fun."

[slythervivian]

"Okay, so I've been able to tell from context that's a big deal but Professor Reed hasn't really covered them, help?"

[pleating]

"Dementors are soul-eating monsters who suck the happiness out of anyone who gets too close. And until Miranda killed one, they couldn't be destroyed."

[slythervivian]

"She- how?!"

[pleating]

"They could be repelled, with a spell called the Patronus Charm, which is made of happy memories. Most people's looks like an animal made of silver light. Miranda's looks like a person, and instead of shooing Dementors away it chases them down and kills them. She saved our lives - we were looking for Jenny, me and her and Emma and Professor Fisher - and there was a Dementor that had Jenny cornered, and she'd morphed her mouth away so it couldn't take her soul, but she couldn't run away. Professor Fisher fainted. I couldn't do anything, Emma couldn't, but Miranda knew the spell and she'd never gotten it to work before but that time it worked and the Dementor was gone."

[slythervivian]

The whole school knows something happened, that night in the forest, but the stories got wilder in each telling. This is the first time Vivian's heard what's probably the actual story, and with any kind of context on how weird it is that Silverlight- and that nickname makes sense now, doesn't it- can actually kill something no one else can.

(She'd point out that Karen hasn't really answered her question about 'how' but from the sound of it no one, possibly including Miranda, can answer that, so she doesn't bother pressing.)

"No wonder she's famous," she says faintly.

[pleating]

"Yeah. And she keeps doing it! She goes out, summers, to places where there might be dementors, and she camps out and stalks them and kills them. She wants to drive them extinct."