Bonbon stopped talking at once when the door latch clicked.
A month before, she’d designed a full hour-long session to evaluate prospective instructors and reveal all their strengths and weaknesses.
It had only taken the first two minutes of it for her to realize that Hailey really was everything she thought she was. The girl had readily confirmed that she had perfect recall, when asked- though she had this mischievous smile on her face when she did so, so Bonbon got the idea that wasn’t the whole story.
But it was enough. She was confident she wouldn’t be averse to the rest of the story… and Hailey had been so interested in her techniques, and seen through so many of them, that she’d decided to make the call… and had given Hailey an opportunity.
The girl had, when presented with the very-much-sought-after opportunity to become her apprentice within the Agency, shrugged and told her it sounded fun.
So now, a full hour after the train had started moving… The girl really was an alarmingly fast learner, so they’d covered the entire Student Instructor training base she and Starlight had crafted… and about half of the Agency Basic Training. Well… half of the part that didn’t involve physical activity, at any rate. The girl seemed surprisingly fit for her happy-go-lucky attitude, so she didn’t expect that would be difficult to do later.
She’d have to tell the Agency leadership about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity she’d given the girl, but she’d first have to wait until somepony managed to open the portal back home and she could actually reach the Agency leadership. She wasn’t going to be able to do that herself… but Starlight Glimmer, once a student of Twilight’s and now the Research Team Lead within the Student Instructor Program, just might. She looked up as the door slid open. The soundproofing evident in the same had come as a welcome surprise.
It was Draco Malfoy. He seemed to have lost his goons again- and it made her wonder where he’d left them. He was, however, looking less uncomfortable than he had on the station with those bodyguards.
“Well hello there,” Hailey greeted calmly, smiling mischievously at him.
He stared at her for a few seconds, then silently stepped into the compartment and closed the door behind him.
“A boy that doubts,” he began.
“Well, that’s definitely a start,” she observed. “A girl that remembers.” She paused, and tilted her head. “You know, I’m curious. If you could snap your fingers to magically turn yourself into a secret agent, a magic engineer, a schoolteacher, or a housewife, which would you choose?”
Bonbon looked at her. Where did that question come from? It didn’t make sense. A secret agent, magic engineer- what was Hailey thinking?
Draco looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Would…” He paused. “Would it be too much to ask for all four?”
“In this scenario, yes,” Hailey mused, though Bonbon noticed her eyebrow quirk.
“Hmm,” he muttered, rubbing his chin. “That’s a good question,” he muttered. “I think… I think I’m going to have to go with a schoolteacher.”
It was Bonbon’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Funny you should pick that one,” she observed. Draco was most likely in the top fifty percent of candidates she’d scouted- and she only had seventy percent extra candidates. As such, he was basically guaranteed to get offered the job.
“Oh?” he asked, glancing between them, and settled on Bonbon. “Uh- I’m sorry, who are you?”
“A girl with an opportunity,” Bonbon answered simply, then smiled. “Call me Bonbon, the Hogwarts Student Instructor Program Management Team Lead.”
He blinked. “... What?”
“So it was interesting you’d pick that one when that’s the one that you can become, right here and now. Do you want to?”
He stared at her for a second. “Uh… Crabbe and Goyle will be waiting for me, I only told them I needed to use the bathroom.” He gestured slightly back at the door.
“It doesn’t have to be right now,” Bonbon informed him. “Are you interested?”
“C-Can I get back to you on that?”
“Sure,” Bonbon answered. “Just have an answer ready by breakfast tomorrow.”
Bonbon looked up at a knock on the door. She’d just finished giving Hailey the ‘basic’ training, then… She wondered who was interrupting with such perfect timing.
Then the door slid back to reveal a smiling witch with a cart full of food. “Anything off the cart, dears?”
A brief glance informed Bonbon that there were price tags on everything- as such, since Professor McGonagall had only given her a bare minimum to get her necessary supplies second-hand and she’d spent every knut she’d earned on various additional supplies… Even though Starlight had shored up her budget with some of the financial assistance some of the graduated Equestrians were sending her, she had flat zero coins on her, and as such was unable to get anything, even if she wanted to.
Hailey, on the other hand, had no such limitation. She drew a small, bulging pouch of coins from an inside pocket of her robes as she stood up. “Oh, sure.” She paused, scanning the cart with her eyes. “Hmm… I can’t say I’ve ever had any of this stuff before. So… how about some of everything?”
The smiling witch raised an eyebrow. “That’s going to be expensive,” she observed.
“That’s what I’ve got it for,” Hailey smiled, gesturing with her bag, before she set about deciding exactly how much she wanted of each item.
Bonbon watched calmly and silently as Hailey purchased what had to be between a quarter and a half of her own weight in snacks. It wasn’t her place to say anything.
Even if she had to forcibly suppress her jealousy when the girl dropped no less than three gleaming golden galleons back into her money bag when digging for the copious amounts of sickles and knuts required to pay the lady. Finally, her bag some thirty or forty coins lighter but not appreciably smaller because of it, she tucked the bag back into its inside pocket- which didn’t cause her robes to bulge or droop from the weight- and piled up all her new snacks on one of the seats while the lady closed the door and continued on to visit the rest of the train.
“Hungry, much?” Bonbon asked, staring at the tower of sweets.
“A little bit,” Hailey nodded. “I got enough to share, so help yourself.” She gestured towards the pile. “Hmm… I think I’ll start with these chocolate frogs,” Hailey decided, picking up a package. “Hop realistically in your stomach…” She paused. “I hope not, that sounds like a great way to get a stomachache.”
Bonbon laughed. “Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me. These wizards have come up with some of the strangest ideas I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.”
“Only one way to find out,” Hailey announced, opening the package.
Bonbon found herself laughing once again. She wasn’t sure what it was about this girl that was quite so disarming, but even she found Hailey to be… well, disarming.
Even though the Agency training exercise had revealed her to have a mental capacity at least an order of magnitude greater than Bonbon’s own, alongside observation and analysis skills to match, making her perhaps the scariest person she’d ever met… even without knowing her physical capabilities.
It really was a good thing she’d managed to build a positive relationship with such a capable girl.
About half an hour of taste-testing the various sweets later, they found a jackpot. Neither of them knew that’s what it was at first, of course.
“Ahh, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans,” Bonbon observed, picking up a bag of colorful jelly beans. “This should be interesting.”
“Yeah,” Hailey agreed. “I think the chocolate frogs are probably the tamest sweets- they’ve only got famous witch and wizard cards in them, whereas…” She looked across the rest. “Oh, where did we start?”
Bonbon raised an eyebrow. “Perfect recall?” she asked.
“Well yes,” Hailey agreed, “but it makes people uncomfortable if I let it show, so I’m in the habit of hiding it. Same for… well, everything else.” She waved vaguely at her head. “But anyways, I wonder if they’ve simply got a lot of flavors or if it really is every flavor?”
“Only one way to find out,” Bonbon announced facetiously, and opened the package. Hailey’s oddly disarming qualities meant she was actually having fun- though not, she expected, as much as she’d have if Lyra were with them. As near as she’d been able to tell, Lyra Heartstrings, her wife, was not in Britain. It was a good thing she had someone as friendly as Hailey.
Though that reminded her: Those same disarming qualities also made her extremely scary on her own… Yes, Hailey was definitely the scariest person she’d ever met, bar none. Possibly the scariest person any Equestrian had ever met.
And with that in mind, she had a sudden idea.
“You know,” she began, picking out a purple bean. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Mm?” Hailey asked, looking up from where she’d been reading the back of a card from a chocolate frog- this one seemed to be titled ‘Albus Dumbledore’. She definitely liked chocolate a lot more than Bonbon did.
“Well, the Agency has a secret language only taught to the elite,” she informed her, and popped the bean into her mouth. She paused for a second. “Huh, weird flavor for a jellybean. Almost tastes like glass. But anyways, even just with what you’ve shown me so far, I expect you’ll qualify under that ‘elite’ label by next month at the latest, so I was wondering how hard it’d be to teach it to you.” She picked out a bright red bean. “This one looks almost like it’s waiting to burn me,” she observed.
Hailey chuckled. “It does, doesn’t it?” she agreed, before smiling up at her. “I don’t expect it’ll be too hard. I mean, I know French, German, Arabic, Ancient Greek…” She trailed off, and shrugged.
Bonbon gazed at her for a few seconds. “You’re a very scary girl, you know that?” She popped the bean into her mouth, and let out a gasp of surprise. “Yikes!” She pulled out her hip flask- it used to be a simple bottle stored in the briefcase in her tail, but that briefcase was now stored in some sort of hammerspace in her hair and the bottle had become a hip flask- and washed it down with water. “That was hot! If I was going to place the flavor…” She paused. “Jalapeno peppers, I think. And very strong.” She glanced up. “So, uh…” She switched to the Agency’s secret language, codenamed ‘Charlie’. “Od uoy dnatsrednu siht?”
Hailey laughed. “Pey, I dnatsrednu ti tsuj enif,” she informed her, far more fluently than any Agent Bonbon had ever heard- even herself. “Dnim fi I yrt- sorry, mind if I try a few beans?”
It was Bonbon’s turn to laugh, as she held out the package. “You’re a very scary girl, you know that?”
Hailey chuckled as she plucked a small handful of beans from the package, then picked a strange greyish one and started inspecting it. “Yeah, I get that a lot, whenever I let it show.” She tilted her head. “Not always verbally, of course.” She tried sniffing the bean, and raised an eyebrow. “Smells like black pepper,” she observed, before popping it into her mouth. “Oh my. And you’re right, it’s very strong.”
“Two peppers and a piece of glass,” Bonbon mused, pulling out another bean, and sniffed it as well… It was faint, but she was able to pick out the scent. “They must mean every flavor, this smells like some kind of plant. Not one I’m familiar with, though.” She popped it into her mouth, then scowled. “Hmm, definitely a vegetable, but I’m not a fan. Which is weird, I like most vegetables.”
Hailey sniffed one of her beans. “Hmm, want to wash it down with a toffee?”
She looked up. “Oh, sure, why not?”
Hailey flicked it to her, and she snapped it out of the air with her jaw rather than her fingers… then scowled. “Yeah, that’s toffee, but my toffees are better.”
“They are?” Hailey asked curiously.
“Well yeah,” she shrugged. “Back in Equestria, I’m a candymaker. What else did you think my name meant?”
She laughed. “Well, I’d love to taste it at some point. So don’t get rusty now, young lady!”
Both of them burst into laughter.
Most of the package was gone when Hailey finally stood up and stretched. “Alright,” she informed Bonbon. “I need to use the bathroom- do you think you can hold down the fort?”
“Hmm, it might be difficult, with this onslaught,” Bonbon mused, gesturing at the closed door. “Hurry back, or they might push their advantage.”
Hailey laughed. “Sure thing,” she agreed. “But when I get back with the-!” She paused. “Bertillery? Nah. When I get back with the Bertie Botts Brigade, they’ll be trembling in their wrappers.”
Bonbon laughed as well. “In all seriousness, though, the stories the others have told me about their first rides were…” She paused. “Um, not pleasant. So be careful.”
She smiled. “I killed the most fearsome Dark Lord in history when I was four months old,” she informed Bonbon calmly, suppressing the manic grin that wanted to show on her face. “So if someone decides to cause some trouble, they’re the ones in trouble, not me.”
Bonbon raised an eyebrow. “You killed…?”
“Lord Voldemort,” Hailey informed her. “Apparently his curse rebounded or something, so it’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds.”
She raised her other eyebrow. “He died when he attacked…?” She paused, then tilted her head. “Did something happen?”
“Yeah. Mom and Dad never told the world I wasn’t a boy. I don’t plan on telling them, because I don’t want Harry’s fame.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Bonbon nodded. “But don’t let me hold you up any longer, I’d hate for you to fall.”
Hailey giggled. “Yup. Be right back.” She left the compartment, closing the door behind her.
The passage… wasn’t a bedlam, but there were a lot of people meandering their way up and down it. One, just entering at the back of the car, had a bruise forming on the side of her face, but judging by the colors in her aura, she’d come out on top and was proud of it. The traces of blood on her knuckles hinted to the same- and given the vast quantity of selfless good in the same aura, she imagined the girl had been protecting someone else.
She was a fairly heavily-muscled upper-year ‘colorhead’ with curly purple and turquoise striped hair, after all.
Hailey smiled to herself and turned towards the front of the car, where the nearest restroom was… just in time to see someone enter the car. Well, sense; there were a couple girls in the way, having a conversation with each other. The first was facing away from her, and the other wore a badge identifying her as a prefect on the right side of her chest, whereas her nameplate would be on the point of her left breast. It really wasn’t a very good place for the nameplate.
But that someone had a very, very dark aura. She could only describe it as ‘black’... representing hopelessness, helplessness…
If she had to describe the aura as a whole, the term she would use would be ‘suicidal’.
Most of the suicidality was transient- she wouldn’t normally have been, but someone must have been abusing them, manipulating their emotions, in order to push them into a massive mental breakdown.
She immediately split her mind and isolated the burning rage building up within her; there was a time and a place for that, but this wasn’t it. She could vent on the poor schmuck that did this later.
The prefect and her companion stopped talking as the person stalked around them, revealing themself to be a girl about Hailey’s age with bushy brown hair and tears in her eyes. She also didn’t have any of the colorful patches over her nameplate that all the older students seemed to- perhaps that meant she was also a first-year?
The girl the prefect was talking to turned around as the brown-haired girl- Hermione Granger, according to her nameplate- passed her, revealing herself to be Head Girl Aurora Lewis, by badge and nameplate. “Wha-?” she began, evidently confused. “What happened?”
Hermione ignored her, except for a twitch in the corner of her eye. Evidently, she was used to people pretending to care but not really.
“Hermione?” Hailey asked gently.
The girl really winced this time, but ignored her as well, marching straight past.
“Hermione,” Hailey called, much more firmly.
Hermione stopped, but didn’t turn, nor respond verbally. Past her, the girl with the bruise paused, watching concernedly.
She paused, pausing time briefly so she could have an internal debate about exactly how to disarm the girl; she was evidently expecting more violence. “What did he do?” she asked.
She must have been right in her expectation that her inexperienced best guess was not the actual best choice. Hermione turned her head slightly, though not far enough to see her in her peripheral vision. “Well?” she demanded sharply, anguish evident in her voice. “Are you going to say it?
“Say what?” Hailey asked calmly, unsure if she was going to regret it or not.
Hermione turned at her and started marching aggressively back towards her, even though the tears were actually flowing now. “That I’m up to no good,” she snapped. “That I’m ugly, that nobody likes me,” she was talking faster and louder, the anguish building up. “That I’m too smart for my own good, that I’m an insufferable know-it-all, that I’m a mud-blood, that-! That-!” She stuttered to a halt.
Hailey had, rather than trying to interrupt or stop her, gone with her instinct and stepped forward to meet and hug her. The action seemed to have caught Hermione by surprise, stunning her into silence as she tried to comprehend what was happening.
She also noticed that Head Girl Aurora Lewis and her prefect friend- whose nameplate she hadn’t seen yet- had exhibited strong reactions to the term ‘mudblood’, just as Madam Malkin and her assistant had.
And just like the bruise-faced girl stalking dangerously up the corridor, too- her face was contorted with rage, but a brief glance in her direction informed Hailey it wasn’t them she was mad at, it was whoever had called Hermione by the term.
Speaking of, the girl’s nameplate declared her to be Flurry Heart.
Hailey held the hug, squeezing gently and humming softly in her ear, until Hermione’s irrational anger ebbed away.
Finally, she released it, and stepped back to put her hands on Hermione’s shoulders instead. “I think you look just fine,” she told her calmly. “And I’m also an insufferable know-it-all. And I have another friend that’s also an insufferable know-it-all.” She paused for a second. “So why don’t we team up and show them who’s really missing out?”
Hermione looked up at her. “But if nobody likes me-?”
“He’s wrong,” Hailey told her simply. “When people start saying things like that, what they’re really telling you is that you don’t care about what they’re saying because they’re just saying it.”
Hermione sighed, looking down. “But it’s true,” she muttered.
“Not any more,” Hailey smiled. “I like you, and I expect Bonbon will too. I mean…” She paused. “I never had any friends either. Until I found out about Hogwarts.”
Hermione shrugged her hands off her shoulders, then stepped forwards to hug her. “Just don’t leave me,” she whispered.
Hailey returned the hug. “I won’t, don’t worry,” she informed her, glancing up at the look of relief on Flurry’s face- well, insomuch as it wasn’t overshadowed by her fury at Hermione’s attacker. She waited a few seconds, before gently pushing Hermione off of her.
Hermione looked up at her. It looked like she was beginning to recover already.
“I do need to use the bathroom, though,” Hailey informed her, “so how about I introduce you to Bonbon?”
“So how about I introduce you to Bonbon?”
Aurora Lewis, the Gryffindor Head Girl, shook herself out of her amazement, watching the two girls walk off, back towards a compartment not far down the car. This little black-haired girl had just calmed someone that had been that stressed out in a matter of seconds. She’d watched it, but was still having trouble believing it!
If only there had been someone like that at the school when she had been a first year. She’d been so scared, and bullied to boot- to the point where she’d briefly recognized herself in young Hermione Granger.
But now she was Head Girl, and she hadn’t become one without fighting her way through six years of her Hogwarts education. It was her responsibility to find out who had done that to Miss Granger, and see that they got punished for it.
She turned to her friend, seventh-year Ravenclaw Prefect Alverta Nettle. “What do you think happened?” she asked softly.
“Good question,” Alverta muttered, rubbing her chin. “She came from the compressed cars, so some eighty percent of the school is suspect. Maybe someone saw it?”
“We’d have to guess-and-check,” She scowled. “That’s going to take forever.”
“Do you think that Bonbon is going to ask what happened?” Alverta asked.
Aurora opened her mouth… and stopped.
A voice was coming out of the compartment door the black-haired girl had opened. “What happened?” it asked.
Both of them turned to look.
“Someone tried to convince her to jump off the back of the train, I expect,” the black-haired girl’s voice said. Her voice was calm and level- the girl must have an amazing level of control over her emotions.
“Convinced,” Hermione corrected, her voice wavering slightly but growing steadily steadier.
“Who was it?” Bonbon asked.
Aurora and Alverta both stepped silently closer, listening carefully.
“I don’t know,” Hermione muttered. “He was…” She shivered.
“Alright,” Bonbon accepted. “Where was it?”
“Uh-!” Hermione paused. “Around the middle of the next car,” she muttered.
“Okay, um,” the black-haired girl interjected. “I need to use the bathroom, so I’ll be right back?”
Their answers must’ve been nonverbal, because they didn’t hear any before the black-haired girl emerged from the compartment again, closing the door behind her, then marched straight past Aurora and Alverta with an odd, foreboding aura around her that caused both seventh-years to flatten themselves against the walls as she passed, even without being asked. They then joined the passage behind her, and started walking up the car.
Both of them noticed- judging by Alverta’s suddenly tilting her head- when Hailey spurned the open bathroom and instead crossed the boardwalk between the cars, heading into the car Hermione had just come from.
They hurried after her. This girl wasn’t about to pick a fight and get hurt, was she?
Hailey ignored Head Girl Aurora Lewis and Prefect Alverta Nettle walking behind her as she crossed between cars, just as she had ignored the bathroom; that wasn’t her priority right now.
She spotted him almost the moment she entered the car. Not visually, no; there was someone else much closer, heading back towards the car she’d just come from.
But she could sense his aura, and the immense amount of glaring maliceevil found within it. There was no doubt he was her culprit- or at least likely to be him. As she marched forwards, the girl- a colorhead, it looked like- stepped out of her way then continued on her way, revealing…
The boy was facing away from her, talking with Veronica Rosewood, who was wearing a badge she could only just see the edge of. It looked like they both had their wands out and were arguing about something.
She noticed the sudden consternation increase in the three girls behind her- Flurry Heart was following behind the prefect and head girl- when they noticed the drawn wands, and glimpsed a drawn wand in the reflection off a door handle while they also accelerated.
She didn’t slow down for them. Instead, she listened to the argument going on ahead of her… and found herself accelerating as well as it confirmed her first impression.
Sixth-year Ravenclaw Prefect Veronica Rosewood didn’t even notice the appearance of four extra people in the passage. She knew that most people had left the passage and closed their compartment doors in anticipation of a fight breaking out- as a matter of fact, she’d drawn her wand in response to fifth-year Slytherin Junior Prefect Alden Avery drawing his.
There had even already been a brief exchange of spells. He’d gone for the full body bind, but she’d dodged it and nearly hit him with a disarming charm. She had no delusions that he was going to listen to her without a fight; the fact that she was muggleborn wasn’t exactly helping with that, as Alden was extremely hostile towards anything that wasn’t pure-blood. It fitted the Slytherin House of four years ago, when he’d started school, but not so much anymore with the universally accepting colorheads quickly outnumbering British students in not just the school but in each of the four Houses as well. Perhaps it was because Alden had been a first year student in the final year in which British students had outnumbered the colorheads school-wide? Or maybe it was because three quarters of the Slytherins in his year were colorheads, as her year was the final one in which British students enjoyed a majority over colorheads on a per-year basis?
“Mudbloods are absolutely inferior,” Alden sneered at her.
“That doesn’t give you any right to bully them like that,” she answered sharply.
“I have every right in the world to push nobodies out of my way,” he sneered.
“Do you even know her name?” Veronica asked.
He laughed. “As if,” he told her. “Why should I be bothered by the name of a mudblood?”
“Hermione Granger.”
Veronica got a sudden, very strong feeling of foreboding as she looked past Alden to see the speaker.
Alden actually jumped at the statement and whirled around.
There was…
A first-year girl, it looked like.
She had long, wavy black hair, and had draped it over her nameplate. Several paces behind her, Head Girl Aurora Lewis and Senior Prefect Alverta Nettle slowed down quickly to a walk rather than a jog, wands drawn, evidently wanting to be able to aim accurately in a hurry. There was another girl behind them- a fourth-year colorhead she recognized as Flurry Heart.
“What?” Alden asked, turning to the girl.
“Her name was Hermione Granger,” the girl informed him darkly.
Veronica wasn’t sure why, but she found herself backing away from them, even as she kept her wand trained on Alden.
“Oh,” he answered disdainfully. “You’re a mudblood too, aren’t you?”
He raised his wand.
He shouldn’t have.
She swatted it out of the way with so much force that it splashed and the whole car shook. The front half of his wand spun in the air and fell to the floor.
Veronica stumbled backwards while, behind the black-haired girl, Aurora and Alverta both froze in shock.
She knew why. The girl had just revealed something potentially very important to all of them.
She was a Royal.
And she was mad at Alden.
She found herself hoping that Alden survived whatever came next… a hope that was dashed by the girl’s next action.
As Alden drew back a fist to attack her the muggle way instead, she reached forwards to take a handful of his robes in one hand and his hair in another, before twisting in place and throwing him at the wall of the car.
The heavily magically reinforced wall of the car, which had been purportedly rendered indestructible by the expansion charms, cratered.
At the same time, the whole car lurched suddenly sideways and smashed into the cliffside on that side of the tracks.
Veronica found herself thrown between the two walls of the passage like a ragdoll- but for some reason, it didn’t hurt. Was that adrenaline, possibly caused by how Alden’s blood had now covered the entire corridor, from end to end?
Then she crashed to the floor and, as the car ground to a none-too-pleasant halt and finally rolled onto its side, compartments down, struggled to avoid getting slammed around too badly.
In the end, she wasn’t too successful. Even if she hadn’t been sprayed with blood, she rolled in enough of it she was probably going to have to throw away her brand-new robes as permanently bloodstained, even without the injuries she had probably sustained when the compartment and exterior walls had slammed into her so hard.
“Were there any others?”
She looked up. It was the black-haired girl, standing calmly on the floor- which was currently the wall- as if the car hadn’t leaned over. Her voice was far gentler than it had been a second before… and the girl was looking at her, the anger she’d shown at Alden completely gone from her expression.
“N-No,” she gasped. “H-He was the only one.”
The girl bowed her head. “Thank you.” She walked past, towards the front of the car.
Veronica looked back past Alden’s dead body.
Aurora and Alverta both seemed to have been stunned by the sudden development, but Flurry had recovered far faster; the girl was inhumanly strong, though not enough to qualify her as a Royal, so it made sense. Walking across the top of the wall next to the ceiling so she didn’t have to cross any compartment doors, Flurry quickly reached the impact site where Alden was still stuck in the wall, now the ceiling… and drove her fist into what had once been his gut. Then she blinked. “H-He’s still alive!” She managed to sound alarmed, surprised, horrified, and impressed, all at once.
“What-!?” Aurora gasped, practically leaping to her feet to dart forwards. “He’s-? Oh, my. You’re right.”
“How on earth did he survive that?” Veronica asked.
“That was going to be my question,” Alverta informed her, rising to her feet as well.
“Good question,” the Flurry informed them. “Back in my world, people were more durable than here… but not nearly enough to survive that!”
Veronica looked back at where the black-haired girl had gone… but she was gone. “Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Aurora answered.
Then Veronica noticed something, and looked down at herself, before looking up at the others again. “And how come we’re the only things in sight that aren’t covered in blood?”
A dull boom suddenly sounded from somewhere down the train.
“What the-?” the engineer gasped, leaning out the side of the locomotive and twisting to look back- but he couldn’t see anything other than the third car down leaning off the tracks and against the cliffside.
The brakes started squealing even before he wrenched his head back inside the locomotive to yank the regulator fully closed and slam all the brakes into the emergency position, resulting in enough braking pressure to throw the conductor against the front of the cab.
One of the windows of the third car being broken by a rock outcropping, which was then demolished by the magically-indestructible side of the car, probably didn’t help.
“What the-? What happened?” the conductor asked, struggling for a look of his own.
“Derailment,” he answered sharply. “Looked pretty significant, I hope nothing falls.”
The conductor winced. He was right; they were running along the edge of a mountain, so one side of the tracks was bordered by a cliff face and the other by a vertical drop. If any rolling stock fell down… everyone inside was doomed to an early grave, whether it was a magically-indestructible expanded car or not. The durability of the car didn’t affect the survivability of the landing.
The moment the train ground to a halt, they both jumped off, on the side of the vertical drop, and started walking along the train.
Within seconds, they could see around the third car… to see that the fourth car was on the tracks… albeit on its side.
“What the hell…?” the conductor muttered.
“Well, there’s a pretty big gap between it and the third,” the engineer observed, as they drew closer. “We should be able to inspect both sides of each car without difficulty.” He paused. “Do you think anyone’s still alive in there?”
“Probably,” the conductor observed, pointing past the car at the ground opposite. “Looks like it ground to a halt next to the tracks, then rolled- survivable, but definitely not comfortable.”
The engineer sighed, drawing his wand to start putting the third car back properly on the tracks. “How about we get started, then?”
The conductor helped- and a second later, one side of the truck was on the rails, and the other was inside the rails.
The engineer leaned down. “Oh wow. These wheels are bent pretty bad.” He magically lifted the car, mended the wheels, and set it back down, finally back on the rails- before mending the coupler. “Any rolling stock down the cliff?”
The conductor looked. “I don’t see any. Nothing seems to have fallen. Yet.” He walked towards the door onto the train- which was then slid back by a student on the inside.
A student with a Prefect badge, specifically.
“Is everyone alright in there?” he asked.
“We’re still looking for anyone that might have gotten hurt, but so far, everyone’s only been tossed around a bit,” the prefect informed him.
Aurora leaned out the door of the compartment. It was technically Veronica’s compartment, shared with a few other prefects that happened to be on patrol, but close enough.
Earlier, they’d used scouring charms to clean up all the blood, then magically pried Alden’s remains out of the ceiling-wall and placed them on a conjured stretcher. Almost as soon as they’d finished, the car had lifted a little and started rolling right-side-up again, so they’d transferred him in here to keep people from panicking or otherwise being horrified by the gore.
“Oh, well hello,” she greeted.
It was the black-haired girl that had thrown him into the wall, returning to the back of the car with an armload of Bertie Bott’s. Her hair was still covering her nameplate.
“Hello,” the girl answered calmly, bowing her head slightly. It was kinda odd to see that kind of show of respect from a Royal.
“Um- if I may ask, who are you?”
“A girl that cares for her friends,” the girl answered calmly, before pausing even with the compartment, such that she could see the stretcher.
“Evidently,” she agreed. “May I ask after your name?”
The girl smiled, and ignored the question. “How many pieces were there?”
“Ahh…” She paused, glancing back at Avery. “Twelve.”
The girl bowed her head again. “Thank you.” She continued on her way to the back of the car.
“I guess her name is ‘unspecified’, then,” Veronica observed.
“Probably means she doesn’t want people to know she’s a Royal,” Alverta agreed.
“A what?” Flurry asked curiously.
Aurora closed the door. “A Royal,” she answered. “In the wizarding world, Royals are defined by having otherworldly powers.” She shrugged. “If you had more than just super-strength, or had more super strength, you’d probably qualify as one.”
Flurry rolled her eyes. “Yet as a Princess of the Crystal Empire…” She trailed off. “Well, technically Mom is also a ‘princess’, but that’s just the term we use. Her role is more that of a Queen, or maybe Empress.”
“... That’d be a slightly different kind of Royal,” Aurora muttered. “And not one the wizarding government cares about, for that matter. We call people with otherworldly powers ‘royals’ because wizardkind kinda forces that role onto them.”
Flurry looked at her. “And she is one?”
She glanced back at the door. “Yes, that girl is one. And apparently she knows it, and doesn’t want attention. But since a Royal’s word is law… she’s fully entitled to anonymity, I believe.”
“Me too,” Alverta agreed. “We know which compartment she’s returning to, though- do you think it’d be a good idea to visit her in that compartment, once the train gets moving again?”
Aurora scowled. “I don’t want to hound her, though. Hmm… No more than one, I think.”
“Then you’d better go,” Veronica observed. “You’ve already presented yourself to her as a friendly face. And if you’re polite, and make sure she knows we’re accepting her request for anonymity…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “She might just tell us who we’re protecting from the public eye.”
Professor Dumbledore paused upon returning to his office from lunch, turning to look at one of his many instruments, which was tooting away merrily… indicating that the Hogwarts Express had set its brakes into the emergency position.
He sighed. “Fawkes?” he called. “Sounds like we’ve got a visit to make.”
“What in the-?” Dumbledore began, staring at the outside of the fourth car of the Hogwarts Express, while it bumped up against the third car so the conductor could connect them. “What happened?”
“No idea,” the conductor informed him, ducking into the gap between the cars. There was a minute of silence while he worked, then he emerged again. “Heard a bang, then the back of the third car and everything behind it were derailed, so we stopped in a hurry. Not sure exactly what did that- and, presumably, caused the derailment.” He paused. “This one was lying on its side, by the way. This side up.”
“... Ahh,” Dumbledore muttered- then walked up to the side of the car and climbed inside, Fawkes riding on his shoulder. Once inside, he walked down to the very large dent in the outside wall of the car, recognizing the effects of a scouring charm, likely used to clean up the broken glass that would’ve fallen from the windows. Interestingly, there was the imprint of a roughly humanoid shape at the middle of the dent, as if someone had been slammed against the side of the car in order to buckle it.
Even though this was one of the expanded cars, so this wall- as the barrier between expanded and unexpanded space- should be completely indestructible without erasing the contents of the car, which evidently hadn’t happened.
Then the compartment door next to him opened suddenly, revealing Head Girl Aurora Lewis… and behind her, Ravenclaw prefects Alverta Nettle and Veronica Rosewood, alongside a very helpful Slytherin fourth-year colorhead named Flurry Heart. That girl did have a bit of a violent streak, but she was so firmly on the side of good- and only ever violent with the more abusive rulebreakers- that he expected her to be a Prefect Candidate for the following year.
They were on either side of a stretcher that carried some unrecognizable but very bloody remains.
“Professor,” Aurora greeted.
“It was a Royal, wasn’t it?” Dumbledore asked.
She nodded. “It was. She had black hair- but that’s about all we know. Nobody saw her nameplate… or House patch.”
He sighed. “So who’s the victim?”
“Alden Avery, new Slytherin Prefect. We think she did it because he’s been bullying muggleborn first-years into jumping off the train.” She paused. “He’s still alive, by the way.”
He blinked. “He’s what?”
“He’s still alive,” Aurora repeated. “And no, we don’t know how he survived being ripped into twelve different pieces by an impact with the wall.”
“... Ahh,” he muttered. “And you’ve got everything under control?”
“I think everyone’s still in shock,” Aurora muttered. “I was actually just about to start searching for anyone else that might have been injured by the derailment, now that we’ve got him… Well, contained.”
He nodded slowly. “Alright. I’ll take him to Madam Pomfrey- is there someone that can come along to explain what happened?”
Veronica raised her hand. “I watched the whole thing,” she informed him.
Poppy Pomfrey, frequently called Madam Pomfrey or perhaps Hogwarts School Nurse but also known (to a very select few people) as the Goddess of Healing, knew a Curse of Survival when she saw one. She could also usually recognize a Blessing of Safety when she saw one, but as safety wasn’t part of her domain, she could never be as certain.
And now, before her, there was one of each.
Alden Avery, in twelve different thoroughly crushed pieces on the newly-bloodstained bed in front of her, carried the Curse of Survival. It was a tool often used by she and her deific colleagues whenever they felt the need to torture someone beyond belief, as it forced the victim to survive whatever injuries were given to them. As such, in only one out of all nine incidents she knew of where such a curse had been used had the victim not dearly wished they’d been killed instead.
It looked like Alden probably wasn’t any different, though he was unconscious… partly from pain, partly from loss of blood, and partly, though she knew neither Dumbledore nor the Prefect before her knew, because of the divine sleep she’d put him under as soon as he had arrived.
If he had earned divine displeasure that bad, she ought to take her time healing him… and be careful not to overuse her divine healing powers. According to the story that Veronica was telling her, his right hand had been slapped off- she didn’t know anyone capable of doing that without extra spells in play- before he’d been thrown into the wall, so she figured she’d just leave his hand with whatever regular wizarding healing spells could accomplish… and probably a couple other appendages as well.
As another example, he was to be castrated. It was an unspoken rule across the deities that in no event should a victim of a Curse of Survival be left fertile or be restored to fertility after the fact. They had, after all, won a Darwin Award by angering a deity.
… Usually. There were only four deities including herself, and she knew where all three others were, so the ‘black-haired girl’ Veronica Rosewood had described was probably some sort of Royal that was also capable of such a curse.
Speaking of Veronica… undoubtedly unbeknownst to the girl, especially considering the story, she carried a Blessing of Safety that was set to break down on its own in a few days. Blessings like that were often a lot harder to notice without the sort of powers necessary to detect one directly; rather than simply forcing someone to survive, or to remain unharmed in the face of danger… it simply caused danger to avoid them. Most of the time; whenever it wasn’t possible to make danger avoid them, one this powerful would easily protect them from harm when it showed up.
And judging by Veronica’s story, the Blessing of Safety- which had a side effect of keeping blood and gore from getting on its recipient’s body or clothes- had been granted to everyone on the whole train, except only Alden… which also suggested the black-haired girl’s fury had been suppressed far enough for her to take steps to ensure that those not targeted by her ire weren’t caught in it.
Who- and what- was this girl?