Hogwarts Reimagined

When Rhiannon and the others awoke the next morning, the fire had been freshly stoked and someone had drawn blankets over their sleeping forms. Some had departed what had become the impromptu first-year sleepover party, leaving a small pile of notes behind in one unoccupied armchair. Left behind with Rhiannon was Hermione, Ron and Faye; Neville and Parvati had left early to visit their families, having been uninvolved in any of the events that had left the remaining four facing detention. Rhi rubbed sleep from her eyes and grinned wryly, it seemed that already they were starting to make a reputation for themselves.

A clatter of shoes on the stairs behind her startled Rhiannon into proper wakefulness, and she jerked upright and curled against the arm of the couch, dragging blankets with her as someone rushed down the stairs. Two someones, she amended, spotting the Weasley twins. “Potter!” George crowed gleefully. “And little brother! Oi, Ronniekins, what did you do? Mum’s goin’ to be raging just you wait, she wanted us all home for Christmas now it’s Charlie’s first one away.” he carried on, and he and Fred tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs to join them on the couches.

Ron’s ears turned red and he covered his head with the blanket. “She is,” he groaned, curling up under the blanket as if to avoid dealing with the issue. Then he sat up abruptly, stretching and yawning. “Hey, what did you do to get holiday detention?” he asked.
Fred laughed. “Ginny wrote us saying she missed us at home and we got caught mailing her a toilet seat for laughs like we said we would. Seemed like a good idea at the time and all. Oliver’s in for the holidays too – from that time with Prentiss. Prentiss’ stuck here too apparently, but McGonagall says he’ll be doin’ time with her, keep him away and all. Makes sense now we know you lot are in here – what did you even do? We know you lost a buncha points and all but that’s kind of it.” he explained, then chattered on good-naturedly. At the repetition of the question, Rhiannon went red and ducked her head into the blankets shamefaced.

George reached over and ruffled her hair, leaning down to inquire again but was foiled by a pillow to the face from Ron who could see how uncomfortable the crowding was making Rhiannon. “I-I-I, I, well, w-we, we found a three-headed dog in the out-of-b-b-bounds corridor and it was r-really sick and neglected, and w-we got caught coming back, after we helped Hagrid smuggle him out. Um. Charlie? Charlie helped.” she explained sheepishly, her face muffled by the blanket. Fred and George guffawed, and one of them clapped her on the shoulder. “Plus me an’ Faye got picked up duelling Draco Malfoy,” Ron piped up. He was as red as Rhiannon, but there was a certain pride to his words.

Fred slugged him with a pillow, and from that ensued an outbreak of rough-housing that had Rhiannon shrinking back into the couch. As soon as Hermione, now also awake, noticed Rhiannon’s distress she snatched up one of their textbooks from the night before and whacked the twins and Ron around the shoulders in quick succession. When they protested, she gestured to Rhiannon and glared at them, raising the book again threateningly. They backed off, and the twins settled themselves on separate couches while Ron returned to his armchair. “We’ll wait up for you lot, and head on down to breakfast together yeah? May as well face whatever McGonagall’s got planned for us together, yeah?” George offered, and with a grateful nod Rhiannon scurried off upstairs followed by Faye and Hermione.

‘Whatever McGonagall had planned’ turned out to be work. The group of troublemakers, joined by Lee Jordan and a handful of other older Gryffindors, found themselves split up and set to task assisting the various professors and staff of the castle. Rhiannon and Hermione worked best in quiet, so they were sent to help Madam Pince in the library, reshelving misplaced books, taking stock and placing orders for anything missing from the shelves. The two of them were easily sidetracked, but Madam Pince proved a patient taskmistress outside of school hours for anyone who cared about books and was fairly lenient on them, so the tedium of repetitive labour was balanced by learning about everything they picked up. Rhiannon was fascinated by the books on alchemy and the natural sciences of old magic long buried, while Hermione was more interested in the metaphysics and theory of magic, especially transfiguration. Between the two of them, they covered a significant portion of the library tasks over the first week of their holiday. Occasionally they were rotated out or others brought in to help, but that never lasted long and they soon found a routine that worked for them. Rhiannon eagerly pored over book after book, delaying putting them away as long as she could. Madam Pince feigned ignorance, and so on Christmas Eve, a Monday, Rhiannon and Hermione were curled up together on a beanbag in the corner of the library reading about alchemical advances during the Renaissance. Just as that period had had fantastic advances in technology and medicine for non-magical society, so even the insular magical community had advanced especially with closer relations to nearby European nations forming around the same time. Alchemy became less a myth and more a genuine field of study, and both girls were entranced by the historical recounting of the discoveries of the time. One in particular stood out to them – Nicolas Flamel, a French alchemist born near the beginning of the Renaissance period. Flamel and his wife Perenelle ran a book-shop as a hobby and front, while making some of the greatest changes to magical science of the time. According to the text, which was on famous wizards and technological advancement of the period, Flamel and his wife were the first and only known arcanists to successfully create the Philosopher’s Stone, a mythical substance said to grant eternal life and powers of physical transmutation, most famously lead into gold, to its’ holder. The Flamels disappeared from nonmagical society in 1416 to escape scrutiny for their suspicious longevity, and apparently at least at the time of the book’s publishing (some forty years ago) they still lived in an insular underground magical community in their home nation of France.

Buoyed by the wealth of new information, Rhiannon almost didn’t notice the arrival of Christmas day in full. She woke early on December 25^thintending to get on with another day of stocktake, only to be entirely sidetracked by the change to the half-deserted dormitory. Something smelled odd, and was that – holly? She shivered and awkwardly drew her dressing gown closer around her with one half-free hand, the chill of the wooden floor reaching through her thin woollen slippers as she padded downstairs, curious to see what was going on. Rhi blinked aside sleep and hugged Callie closer to her chest, settling down on one of the common room couches that had been dragged nearer to the central fireplace. Eventually her eyes adjusted to wakefulness, and she stared around in wonder at the suddenly changed common room. Despite so few students remaining over the holidays, someone had gone to the effort of decorating the space. Unlike what little she had seen of Christmas at the Dursleys’, the decorations here were closer to the original traditions of Yule, and the earthy pine scent of the enormous tree that stood in front of the window was mixed with the sharper smells of orange and spices from the decorations and the table with a modest array of old-fashioned Yule treats already half-demolished.

Someone hugged Rhiannon from behind and she stiffened, causing the back of her head to connect with the nose of whoever it was. They swore, and Rhiannon relaxed at the voice – Fred. Whoops. “Merry Christmas, Rhi,” he greeted her, and that was the invitation for a chorus of similar greetings from her house-mates. “Old Dumbles gave us the day off detention, so it’s free all day. It’s nice out, wanna play a friendly match later? After breakfast and all, there’s usually a decent spread for Christmas,” George contributed while Fred rubbed his nose, and the two of them settled on couches around the fire. Soon others wandered downstairs yawning and stretching, and Rhiannon found herself a little squished between Ron and Hermione with Faye sprawled along the back of the couch behind them. The small crowd of Gryffindor troublemakers formed a loose sort of semicircle facing the yule tree, and an older boy with messy blond hair – Rhiannon recognised him as Bryn Hendry, he’d taken over Keeping for the first couple weeks of Oliver’s punishment before they found a replacement for the rest of term until Oliver was allowed to return to games – took out an oversized red and white fuzzy hat and set himself up by the tree as some sort of Santa impersonation. Someone beaned him in the forehead with a rolled-up piece of paper. “Get on with it!” someone else yelled, eliciting a round of good-natured ribbing and laughter from the small gathering.

Under fire, the fourth-year boy held up his hands and called for a reprieve, grinning as he fished through the pile of presents under the tree. He took out his wand, and Rhiannon barely caught the end of a muttered charm incantation before seeing the pile erupt, and its contents spread out across the room to their owners. Her surprise was cut short as a number of presents piled up around her feet, and she was suffused in warmth. Hermione slung her arm around Rhiannon’s shoulders, and Faye slid down off the back of the couch to perch on the arm next to Ron. The common room was filled with chatter and the muted sounds of tearing paper, and tears welled up in Rhiannon’s eyes as she looked down at the gifts before her. Ron squeezed her hand, and Hermione huddled closer with an eager smile. Rhiannon could only shake her head wordlessly, tears running down her cheeks even as she smiled so widely she thought she’d break.

“We wanted you to have a good Christmas since term’s been so rocky. So we all wrote home about you.” Faye explained, reaching out over Ron to brush Rhiannon’s hair out from where it had caught in her eyes and glasses. Rhi sniffled and huddled into Ron’s shoulder, overwhelmed. In doing so she disturbed a disgruntled Callie, who struggled free of her arms to settle herself between Rhiannon and Hermione. The rest seemed to understand, but nobody in Rhiannon’s small friend-group made any move to unwrap their gifts until she recovered. Hermione held out a parcel from the top of the small stack, and Rhi took it from her when she had settled herself enough to sit back up. It was heavy and boxy, wrapped in green-and-gold paper tied with a gold bow. A small card attached depicted a cat sleeping peacefully amid destroyed Christmas decorations, and Rhiannon laughed as she saw it. She showed it to Callie, and ruffled the long-haired cat’s ears teasingly. “Don’t you go wrecking, yeah?” she murmured, dropping a kiss on the patient animal’s head. The only response was a soft rusty grumble, and Rhiannon set about reading the card before she unwrapped it.

Dear Rhiannon, it read,
You were lovely to have with us over the summer holidays and we are both very concerned about how you are being treated at school. Your new name is beautiful, thankyou for trusting us with it. Hermione tells us you’ve been stressed between school and sports so we thought this gift might bring you a little downtime. Hermione has already read them and recommended them for you. We are happy for you to stay with us again should you need, for as long as you need.

With love, Evelyn and Danjuma.

Rhiannon wiped tears from her eyes and carefully tucked the card into a pocket of her dressing gown before carefully unwrapping the gift so as to not damage the paper. Hermione seemed to be holding all of the excitement, and she bounced in place on the couch as Rhiannon revealed her gift. Inside were four small paperback books with beautiful artwork on the covers. The Song of the Lioness, by Tamora Pierce. Hermione squeaked and flapped her hands excitedly. “They’re really good! I read them all a couple of years ago and when Mum and Dad asked what to get you for Christmas I thought of them!” she explained, beaming. The cat grumbled at her overexuberant motion and she stopped, embarrassed.

Wonderingly, Rhiannon took up the first one – Alanna: The First Adventure - and read the back cover, then leafed through the first few pages. She bit her lip and hugged it to her chest, that same teary smile still tugging at her cheeks. ‘Thankyou,’ she mouthed to Hermione, unable to manage the words out loud.

Ron foisted the next gift on her. Unlike the first, it was large, squishy and didn’t have a card, only a small note with her full name printed messily on it in purple ink. As before, Rhiannon opened it carefully while Ron vibrated with anticipation, revealing a home-knitted jumper in green wool. Cautiously, Rhiannon patted at it – sometimes wool was too scratchy, like her school jumper. Ron grinned broadly. “I told Mum, and she made it out of soft wool and washed it special.” he explained proudly. Rhiannon turned it over and unfolded it, revealing a design of a crescent moon knitted on the front and a greased paper package of what smelled like toffee hidden inside, wrapped up in a red-and-gold knitted scarf, and matching gold-accented red fingerless mittens and hat. Callie reached out and kneaded happily at Rhiannon’s thigh where an arm of the jersey lay, and Rhi grinned. It even had the cat seal of approval. She shrugged off her dressing gown and pulled the jersey on over her pyjamas – purple flannelette with flowers on them, another gift from the Grangers previously so she had something for the winter.

The early morning was taken up with unwrapping gifts. Aside from the jersey and books from the Weasleys and Grangers respectively, there were presents from her other friends too. Faye’s family had sent Rhiannon a sturdy pair of girls’ winter boots and a warm coat of red tartan with gold and black in it, made of a heavy woollen outer and lined inside and around the edges with some sort of windproof polyfibre so as not to itch. It had a hood, the outer edge rimmed with what she guessed was rabbit fur. From Parvati and Padma’s family was a beautiful semi-formal summer dress, deep red with gold thread patterning on the under-layer and edging, and more books – The Hounds of the Mórrígan by Pat O’Shea and Pangur Bán the White Cat, Finnglas of the Horses and Shapeshifter by Fay Sampson. According to the small card with the gifts, Padma had recommended the books – she’d noticed Rhiannon’s interest in older Celtic stories. From Emilia’s family were even more books - Spellhorn by Berlie Doherty, Catwings by Ursula Le Guin and The Fairy Rebel by Lynne Reid Banks. Aside from the fiction, there was a historical text on remnants of old Celtic magic in modern British magic-craft that Emilia had thought Rhiannon might be interested in, her gift to Hermione was another book on the same subject. From Morag was a book on Quidditch strategy and safety tactics, as well as a new pair of replacement gloves – these were fingerless, so she didn’t have to wreck them. Ruefully, Rhiannon looked around at the small tower of books she was collecting on the floor, and realised her friends knew her better than she’d thought.

There were other gifts from those she wasn’t as close to – clothes, sweets and the like. But no more of it really stuck out to her until the gift from Neville and his family. According to the letter, he had been worried it would arrive late, and Rhiannon was glad she’d read the card first so she had some idea of what to expect inside. Callie had long departed the couch to play with discarded paper, so Rhiannon had a little free space to set aside the collection she was beginning to amass to focus her full attention on Neville’s gift. Her hands shook as she unwrapped it, and she bit at her lip in the anticipation. Inside was a small framed replica of a painting, depicting a red-haired young woman of seventeen or eighteen. She was dressed in blue, and sang soundlessly before an audience depicted only as shadows. Rhiannon’s eyes welled up with tears, and she ran her fingers over the painting. It was signed F. L., which Rhiannon presumed from the letter must have been the initials of Neville’s father. Her heart ached in an unfamiliar way, reading her friend’s untidy script again.

Rhi,
I told my mum and dad about you. I didn’t really have friends before and I was excited to tell them. When I told Dad what you changed your name to, he lit up. I’ve never seen him smile. My nan helped him find this, he wanted you to have it. It’s a replica of a painting he made of her end-of-year performance, before they all left school. Nan says he gave them the original for their wedding. She says thankyou, but I’m not sure why. Tell Hermione thanks for the Herbology manual and the terrarium kit from me.
Merry Christmas,

Neville

Rhiannon breathed a heavy sigh, stroking the small painting again. Unlike the Hogwarts portraits, it wasn’t sentient although it did move. It was more like a silent snapshot of time, a memory, and while Neville had told them only a little about his parents Rhiannon had some understanding of the weight of the gesture. She leaned against Ron for support, and Hermione squeezed one of her hands.

Now there was just one gift left. It was wrapped in simple brown paper tied with string, and Rhiannon could see no card – her name was printed directly on the paper in a looping scrawled script. Just as with the other gifts – the wrappings for which she had neatly folded and kept for re-use – she opened it with care, folding the paper and bundling it up in her dressing gown for easy transport back to the dormitory. Inside was an amorphous pool of... nothing. It couldn’t be nothing, but her eyes skated off of it, refusing to perceive it fully. Someone gasped, and Ron grabbed it out of Rhiannon’s lap. She went to grab it back and recoiled, the fabric felt oil-slick and awful in her hands. “Nope!” she yelped, scooting sideways into Hermione. “That’s an invisibility cloak,” someone whispered. Their tone was awed, Rhiannon couldn’t really see the appeal in something she couldn’t touch. “It’s all slidey so I don’t think it’s demiguise hair, is it charmed?” she mused to herself. “Try it on, try it on!” someone else called out, Rhiannon guessed probably a Weasley twin. She shook her head. “You do it Ron,” she suggested, wringing her hands to get the unpleasant feeling off of them. With a shrug, Ron obliged. He stood and shook the remnants of giftwrapping and ribbons off his pyjamas, wearing his own hand-knitted sweater – maroon, with a sparkly brown ball resembling a Quaffle on the front – and slung the cloak around his shoulders. As he pulled it closed at the front, his body below the neck blinked out of sight and the common-room gathering gasped collectively as Ron’s head bobbed strangely in midair. After a few moments Ron whipped it off again and bundled it up, shaking himself. He looked thoroughly disturbed by the sensation. “Oi, it dropped something when you put it on,” one of his brothers pointed out. So it had, and Ron collected the small folded-up parchment and handed both that and the cloak back to Rhiannon with a shudder.

Rhi curled her lip at the cloak and pulled her hands into the sleeves of her jersey to handle it, tucking it into her dressing gown along with the cards and wrapping paper. Then, curiously, she turned over the parchment and unfolded it. It was lettered in spidery green cursive, and her heart sank as she read it.

Harry, it began and immediately Rhiannon was discomforted.
Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time you took up his legacy. Use it well, and think on that.

A merry Christmas to you.

Rhiannon shuddered and crumpled the note up, her hands shaking and knuckles pale as she tried to squash everything it made her feel. She shook her head and shoved it at Faye, whose face darkened as she read it. “Well, fuck that. Lemme help you get this stuff up to the dorms and then we’ll go eat, yeah?” she offered. Rhi agreed gratefully and with her friends’ help she got her things upstairs and got changed into warm clothes for the day, thankful for the new coat and boots from Faye’s family, and Mrs Weasley’s knitted gifts.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, and only a few of the Great Hall fires were lit so Rhiannon let Callie into her coat for mutual warmth. The cat was a little too big to fit easily now, but the coat also was a little big on Rhiannon so it worked. She ate hastily, feeling uncomfortable at the same table as the teachers, and hurried back upstairs to get her Quidditch gear as soon as she was done.

As they had a day off, the students spent most of it outside. The weather was unusually nice albeit very cold, and they played an informal Quidditch tournament using school gear for those who didn’t have their own. That took up most of the day aside from the grand Christmas dinner at midday, and Rhiannon was pleasantly exhausted and full as she headed back to the common room after tea that evening. She found the common room taken over by blankets and pillows, several cats including her own in the best places around the fire. Hermione was waiting, it looked like she’d dragged the blankets down from their dormitory to form a bit of a nest in front of one of the couches. Some others were with her, and she had her brand new copy of The Hobbit. “Annabel taught me this cool spell at dinner, it’s one of the elements of making a Howler only without Sonorus, the Amplifying Charm. Basically we can get the book to read itself, and the others said they’d be interested so... want to camp out down here with us?” she offered, patting the blanket nest beside herself. Rhiannon shuffled over awkwardly, dropping her damp coat over the back of the couch and settling down in front of the fire.

Hermione took out her wand and concentrated, encouraged by the red-haired fifth-year Annabel Keen. “Loquitibus,” she announced clearly, rapping her wand sharply on the book which was open to the first chapter.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

A clear, unfaltering voice accented similarly to Hermione’s read the first lines out, and while Rhiannon had already read the story she smiled at the familiar feeling it brought. She settled in comfortably beside Hermione and all of them listened to the book as it read itself, falling quiet as they fell asleep themselves somewhere around the point of Bilbo leaving the Shire.