Hogwarts Reimagined

Content warning for panic attack and sensory overwhelm, implied agoraphobia and grief

Their school shopping really had been done at the last minute. From Wednesday 28^th the few remaining days fled until Rhiannon, Luna and Dudley were left staring at the walls of the Rookery in the early evening of the 31^st of August – the night before they were due to leave for Hogwarts.

Xenophilius took Rhiannon aside just before dinner, holding a small book bound in violet leather and buckled closed with a strip of the same. He handed it to her and she turned it over in her hands, then looked up at him hoping he would answer her unspoken question

Mr. Lovegood smiled wryly, and gestured to the book Rhiannon now held. “I noted down some spells that might be useful to you – you can assist Dudley with them too. Sensory spells that normally might be considered jinxes but could help with light sensitivity around the full moon and dulling your altered hearing if it becomes overwhelming. Smell too. And a few illusion charms if you are bothered too much by your peers questioning your health – they should cover scars and the like. In a perfect world you could be honest, and I wish you didn’t need them, but the reality is you might and I would rather you have access to charms I know work than be forced to experiment.” he explained quietly. His mouth twisted, and he rubbed at his eyes underneath his glasses.

Rhiannon nodded, and carefully unbuckled the strap that bound the book closed. She leafed through it curiously, its’ contents lettered carefully in forest-green ink. Xenophilius’ usual handwriting was a semi-legible scrawl of mixed cursive and printing, she guessed he had probably charmed a quill to do the job more neatly.

One particular entry caught Rhi’s attention and she paused in her scrutiny.
“W-w-wo-wol-wolfsbane’s NEWT level.” she said quietly, the first syllable sticking as it so often did. Xenophilius nodded and began to tap his fingers together again. “That it is. As with the illusory charms – I wish I could believe you didn’t need to know. Do not attempt to replace your regular supply – this is only, only so that you may familiarise yourself with it in case that supply is compromised.” he replied gravely. He patted Rhiannon’s hand for a brief, awkward moment before he wandered off, and that was the end of the matter.

As could have been predicted, that night found Rhiannon sleepless and staring at the walls. She was unfathomably glad for the book Mr. Lovegood had given her, and when it became clear that sleep wouldn’t find her any time soon she busied herself with practicing the spells she had been given. The sensory-dampening spells she knew would be invaluable – even before the attack she had been extraordinarily sensitive to sensory input of all kinds and once the decision was made to do so, Rhiannon had feared that she would be unable to cope with a return to school.

The illusory charms were another matter. Changing others’ perception of her appearance in that way was an alluring prospect for a young, insecure girl such as Rhiannon. She would have preferred to avoid them entirely, rather than risk falling into a sinkhole of bodily dysmorphia and discomfort. But her trip to Diagon Alley had brought to terms the uncomfortable reality of her scarring that she hadn’t really considered – that people stared. And stares brought questions soon after, questions Rhiannon wasn’t comfortable answering. Given the turbulent and varied nature of the wizarding world, unusual and sometimes severe injuries, scarring and disfigurement were not uncommon, but not so in twelve-year-old girls who had not yet reached five feet tall.

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The first of September dawned uncomfortably bright and cheery on a Rhiannon who had slept no more than two hours that night. Comparatively, the fairly reticent Dudley seemed positively sunny, while Luna barely spoke and stayed close to their father all that morning.

Rather than risk another disastrous misadventure by Floo travel, the Lovegood household roped their motley belongings together and caged all three cats – much to Calypso’s displeasure, though the Kneazle-kittens Cheshire and Hope (a going-to-school and late-birthday gift combined from Hagrid to Dudley) were far more even-keeled; and gathered around a knotted circle of blueish cord. Xenophilius passed it through a loop of the luggage-monstrosity and then indicated for the three pre-teens to hold on the same.

Xenophilius reached for his wand, a wry grin breaking through his fretful expression. “I’ll Apparate home – an unlicensed Portkey shouldn’t attract much more than a cautionary note at worst if it’s just the one way. Hang on tight, do not let go.” he cautioned them, sharing a conspiratorial smile with the three of them at the slightly-illegal activity. Wand now in hand, he tapped the circle with it. “Portus,” he whispered. To Rhiannon and Dudley, the air was suddenly heavy with the crackling scent of ozone and electrical smoke, though they only had a moment to consider that before they were jerked along with the rope circle through what Rhiannon could only have described as a portal.

Unlike travel by Apparition, the travel by Portkey was not instant – merely very, very fast and completely irrespective of material physics. Rhiannon groaned and squeezed her eyes closed against the swirl of muddied colour as the almost two-hundred miles from rural Dorset to central London flashed by them in seconds. They were deposited in an unsteady heap in the midst of Euston Station, the air of the enclosed space immediately swamped by the same ozone smell, and at once Rhiannon understood why their luggage had been roped together. The cats made their complaints loudly known, and a disheveled Xenophilius Lovegood helped the three pre-teens untie their respective suitcases and load them and their pet crates on to wheeled trolleys set aside for the purpose. Rhiannon hooked her cane over the handle bar and leaned on her trolley heavily, after a few breathless moments she had recovered enough to follow Mr. Lovegood out through the barrier that separated the enclosed arrival space from the rest of Euston Station.

Immediately Rhiannon was glad of the sense-dulling jinxes she had applied that morning. Dudley had chosen to forgo them and he looked considerably worse off than he had moments before as they were assailed by a cacophony of indistinguishable noise. Rhiannon forged ahead stubbornly while Xenophilius hung back to assist Dudley and surreptitiously cast the same spells on him that kept Rhiannon functioning. Rhi groaned quietly and lowered her head as they approached the barrier between platforms nine and ten, resting her eyes for a moment as she limped through the barrier.

Inside the magical section of the station was a different kind of overwhelming. There was no crushing pressure to conceal all things magical, but the colour and sheer diversity of the sights around them was such that Rhiannon could barely comprehend it. She turned to check on Dudley, relieved to see he was much improved although still a little shaky as he gazed around them in awe at the magical denizens of platform Nine and Three Quarters.

“Her hair just changed colour!” Dudley exclaimed, amazed. Rhiannon smiled, weary but genuine, and squeezed her cousin’s hand. “C-co-colorvaria, or maybe a Metamorphmagus,” she suggested, though Dudley’s attention had already been caught by something else. Several times Mr. Lovegood had to pull him back by his shirt as he got dangerously close to being lost in the crowd.

“Don’t make me leash you, kid,” Mr Lovegood quipped after one such misdemeanour. Dudley stared blankly, then his scarred face split in a wide grin and he cackled as the implication of the joke sank in. He did at least stay closer after that, and the three of them managed to hand over their luggage – sans the cats who would instead travel on board with them.

All at once their departure was all too imminent. A wordless Luna hugged his father tightly, neither speaking for a long moment. Rhiannon caught sight of tears in Luna’s grey eyes for a moment before xe dashed them away and wiped zir blue-lensed glasses clean, putting on a brave face for her father to wish him farewell.

Xenophilius fidgeted from one foot to the other and back, biting his lip and one long-fingered hand worrying at his loose hair as he looked around them at the pressing crowd and shrank from the overbright light glaring through the clear station roof, flinched from the flailing end of some passerby’s scarf, then almost slapped himself in his hurry to cover his ears as the whistle that served as the train’s boarding call blared over the already-overwhelming din of the station.

Rhiannon shook her head and set Calypso’s crate on the ground, then darted forward to hug the kind but scattered man who had taken her in. Only a brief hug – she was still very very sensitive to who she could touch – but in the moment it looked as if he needed the grounding. She lurched away quickly and adjusted her glasses where they had fallen askew, reclaiming her crated cat as she did so.

“Go home, Dad – I’ll be fine,” Luna said quietly. They too adjusted crooked spectacles, and shifted faer grip on Cheshire’s crate. Xenophilius’ tense expression grumbled, and he lunged forward to seize Luna in another tight hug like a drowning man clinging to a life buoy. Luna had to pry him free and straighten her father’s clothes, xir own solid frame trembling with withheld sobs. “Go, Dad,” ze whispered again.

With a last desperate look at his child, Xenophilius Lovegood stumbled away. He drew himself upright and cut a ragged line through the air with his wand, and half-fell through the rift it formed as the desire to escape the station won out over staying behind for Luna.

Rhiannon rubbed her own eyes again and pretended not to see Luna do the same. “Do you need a hand?” she whispered. Luna might have been both taller and heavier than her, but all Rhi could see was how lost her newest friend looked. They nodded shakily, and Rhiannon swapped Callie’s crate to the hand with her cane so she could take Luna’s free hand. Zie squeezed it a little too tightly, and Rhiannon led him and Dudley at an awkward shuffling pace, hampered as she was by Callie’s crate in her cane hand, through the dispersing crowd to board the train.

Being late as they all were, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of finding a completely empty compartment. Rhiannon passed door after door of rooms filled with people she didn’t know, unable to bear the thought of hours of stilted conversation and awkward questions she didn’t want to answer, her joints complaining as they wandered further and further down the train in search of a free space.

“Rhi! Over here!” a familiar low-pitched voice called out, and Rhi could have sung with relief. She looked up at Ron who held open the door to a compartment near the end of the train. Rhiannon squeezed Ron hand gratefully as she passed, and sank into a free space on the padded wooden bench along with Luna and Dudley. Ginny looked up from what she was doing and flushed scarlet, then returned to drawing or writing – Rhiannon couldn’t see – with barely a mumbled greeting.

Ron coughed, and Rhiannon looked up at him with her head tilted to one side curiously.
“How come you’re coming to Hogwarts?” Ron asked Dudley bluntly. Rhiannon frowned, mentally reviewing the last couple of weeks and realising that outside of the Lovegood house... that really hadn’t been discussed, had it. Dudley had come along with them to Diagon Alley, but he hadn’t bought a wand and Ron had gone with Rhiannon while Dudley had been fitted for a uniform. Of course he would have been overlooked.

Rhiannon opened her mouth to defend Dudley, but was stilled by her cousin’s quiet hand gesture. “’s alright, Rhi.” he reassured her, then turned his attention to Ron. “I can do magic. Not like you can. But I might as well do something with it, right?” Dudley countered calmly. He cast a fleeting glance at Ginny, then spread his hands open in his lap and shrugged. “Besides... Rhi shouldn’t have to come back by herself. Not after what this place put her through.”

Ron reddened, and his jaw went tense. He looked as if he wanted to argue, but a look at Luna and Rhiannon had him think better of it and he went quiet. Rhiannon ran her fingers over the carved ridges of her snake-headed cane and squeezed Luna’s hand still tightly clutching her own.

The tense silence was brief, broken as the train’s rumble deepened and they felt the vibration through the floor as it began to move forward, away and out of the station. Ron grimaced and rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands. Just as on their first train ride, his thoughts were almost visible in the air as he cast around for a new topic of discussion.

And just like the year before, it was left to Rhiannon to offer a life-raft to save the floundering conversation. She smiled wearily at the memory, and relaxed her grip on her cane. “So, I saw you a bit over the holidays but... it kinda got made all about my stuff. Did you do anything for the summer?” she asked, taking care to keep her voice soft so as to not overwhelm Luna as e recovered still.

Ron let out a relieved sigh and stretched out in his seat. “A bit. Dad’s teaching Fred and George to drive the car, so we ended up on a few adventures. None of them are that great with maps, and Dad wanted to go to this... what was it, model train show, one time? So we went for a haul out to that and got kinda lost getting back,” he said with a wry laugh.

From there, the conversation unstuck somewhat and even flowed a little more freely as Ron and Dudley went off on a tangent about the intricacies of constructing train tracks and all that went into it. Rhiannon had absolutely no interest in the topic, but she enjoyed listening quietly to their interest in it, absorbing the peaceful energy through a sort of friendly osmosis.

The year before, Rhiannon had boarded the train at Kings’ Cross station, platform four and three quarters, with Hermione. The Hogwarts’ express didn’t conform exactly to regular transport routes so that was their next stop just a few minutes later. Rhiannon, Luna and Dudley all rushed to cover their ears as the train screeched to a halt and Rhi scooted sideways away from the wall that separated them from the corridor as the clamour of hard-soled shoes echoed down the train, announcing more students boarding.

Rhi peered down the hallway as best she could without actually touching the wall. She had the irrational worry her friends wouldn’t be there, even though she’d seen Hermione at Diagon Alley. Even though Neville had got a new wand just for that year.

Her worry was eased finally as she caught sight of Neville’s fair hair in a brief gap in the queue, then taller Hermione a short distance behind him. Her hair had been very neatly rearranged into cornrows this year and allowed to spring free in a puff at the back, Rhiannon guessed probably so she couldn’t chew it in her nerves. It looked cool, and even weary as she was Rhiannon managed to smile and wave as they reached the door.

Now as the crowd finally settled with the flow of students boarding having ended, the motley group of friends were faced with the more pressing issue of there simply not being enough space in their cramped compartment. Hermione grimaced, and shuffled awkwardly on the spot. The door of the compartment directly across the aisle from them clattered and slid open, and a freckled boy with light reddish-blond hair Rhiannon recognised belatedly as Aeden Finnigan from her year at school. Inside the carriage compartment with him was Dean Thomas-Adusei, another Gryffindor boy also in Rhiannon’s year, and a chubby bespectacled girl with red-brown hair done up in bunches whose uncoloured uniform marked her as a first-year.

“Hey, some of you can come in here,” Aeden offered cheerily. Hermione grimaced and shuffled in place, knotting one hand in her skirt, while Neville just frowned. Dudley stood and dusted his hands on his pants, then jerked his head at the open door. “Hey, Ginny, you want to shift over with me?” he suggested. Ginny looked up, a little startled at being called on. She bit her lip and Dudley offered her a reassuring smile. “We’ll just let Rhi catch up with everyone, it’ll be all good – we’re gonna be in the same year without them, may as well get used to doing stuff on our own, right?” he added on.

That settled the matter. Ginny closed the little black-covered journal she had been working in and shuffled out of the compartment to seat herself in the other along with Dudley, the two second-year Gryffindors and the other first-year girl. Hermione settled in on Rhiannon’s other side between her and the doorway, leaving Neville to seat himself between Ron and the window.

Resuming conversation was a little more awkward after that, but Rhiannon guessed Luna probably appreciated the quieter environment and they all talked quietly about new school subjects, who their teachers might be and events over the holidays to pass the time of the train ride to school and ease their collective nerves at the prospect. The time passed with stubborn slowness, and Rhiannon was honestly more bored than nervous at the prospect of school after a few hours. She bowed out of the murmured conversation and rested her head back against the padded wall with the plan of just napping the rest of the trip away.