Hermione took a deep breath, and let it out, as she approached the unused dungeon classroom door she knew Draco would be waiting behind. She’d told Hailey and Ron- she didn’t think she’d seen Harry once all year- that she was getting Alastor for the dueling club. She technically was, even, but she needed to talk to him before they headed up to meet the rest.
Specifically, she needed to ask him some very personal questions… and she was pretty sure she had finally worked up her courage to do so.
Finally, she stepped out of accelerated time in front of the door by wiggling the lurgid side to side, twisting the three-quarters-plurdled gabbleblotchits three and a quarter turns to the inside, and squeezing the freddled gruntbuggly to one third of its normal fortitude.
Then she put her hand on the door, and opened it in the normal way, just seconds after she had stepped through the portrait hole in Gryffindor Tower, almost as far away as she could get without leaving the castle.
As expected, Draco was waiting inside, doodling at the teachers’ desk, and the rest of the room was empty.
He waited until she closed the door before he spoke. “Good evening,” he greeted.
She smiled back at him. “Good evening,” she answered, though her tone betrayed her worry.
He raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?” he asked curiously, rather than the ignorance or outright aggression he would’ve shown in public to a ‘mud-blood’ like her. After all, he had the family name to uphold, and Hermione was certain that politics were one of the nastiest things she’d ever heard of.
She shook her head. “No, nothing’s wrong,” she told him, walking over to sit next to him.
He leaned casually against the desk. “C’mon Hermione, something’s bothering you, I can tell. What is it?”
“Would-!” She sighed, sat down, and looked up at him again. “Draco, I…” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “Are you a girl or a boy?”
He stared at her.
She averted her gaze uncomfortably. “Just because I did a few aura checks in Charms today, and I noticed that your essence says you’re a girl.”
He blinked, looked down at himself, and back up. “It says I’m a girl?” he asked.
She nodded. “I- I don’t know when it changed, but it definitely didn’t when I scanned it before the Papa Tango… which was the last time I looked at it.”
He looked at her. “Papa Tango?” he repeated, confused.
She blinked. “I never did tell anybody, did I? My gain-the-foreigners’-powers spell was named the Papa Tango a week or so ago.”
“Ahh,” he muttered, then scowled. “Well, I certainly seem to still be a boy. Though I certainly wish I could turn into a girl.” He tilted his head. “What might’ve changed the essence thing?”
She stared at him. “Are… Are you trans?”
He blinked. “What’s that?”
“It’s-!” she began, and paused, trying to think of a way to summarize the multiple-hour-long explanation her parents had given her during the summer. “Hailey,” she finally decided. “Essentially, a witch born in the body of a wizard, or vice versa.”
“I don’t know. I certainly seem to be a wizard, but…” He scowled. “What do you mean, a witch born in the body of a wizard? Wouldn’t they just be a wizard?”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well yes, but also no. The point is…” She paused, thinking. “I know you’re physically a wizard… but in your mind, in your dreams, maybe, are you, or do you identify as, a girl?”
He scowled. “One of my fondest dreams involves discovering a new sex-change potion that’s safe for juveniles to drink,” he told her. “I keep waking up before I drink it, though,” he added, in a disappointed tone.
“The Mirror of Erised,” she said suddenly, the idea flying into her brain. “It showed you a girl, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty one, too- I’ve decided to call her Silversong.” He showed her the notebook he’d been doodling in, which was filled with drawings- some in ink, some in pencil, some colored, some not, but all of various girls. The ones he showed her were of a strange, silver-haired girl. “That’s about what she looked like.”
“Yet Hailey saw Hailey,” Hermione told him, “even when she was Harry.”
He nodded. “Yeah?”
She tilted her head. “Is it possible that she- that Silversong- is who you really are, on the inside?”
He looked down at the page. “I… I don’t know. I suppose it might be, but Silversong isn’t exactly a British name, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” Hermione agreed. “Sounds like one of the Foreigners to me.”
He shrugged. “She looks like one of them, too. I wonder who she really is?”
She scowled at the page. “I… I have no idea.” She looked up. “But… You’ve said you’d take the sex change potion in a second if it wasn’t so dangerous- would you ever want to change back?”
He shook his head immediately. “No,” he said decisively. “I hate being a boy.”
“Then you’re probably trans too,” she concluded. “And… And a witch born into a wizard’s body.”
He looked at her, tilted his head, and thought for a second. “I… I think I understand now,” he muttered.
“Do you have a chosen name?” she blurted out, before clapping her hands over her mouth, blushing cherry red. “Oh, sorry, that was terribly-!”
“Sorelia,” Draco laughed. “Whenever I manage to turn myself into a girl, that’s what my name will be. Sorelia.” He paged through the notebook, and showed her a drawing of a female version of himself. “See?” He glanced at it. “I’ll need quite a few cosmetic spells and potions to look like that, but it shouldn’t be too hard.”
Hermione smiled. “Cute,” she told him. Or her?
Draco looked at the drawing for a couple seconds, before looking back up at her. “Anyways, what might have made my ‘essence’ say ‘girl’? I thought you said that never changes.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t,” she agreed. “It’s in the set-in-stone section of the Essence, that no potion can touch.”
“Stone can be molded,” he observed.
She nodded. “It can be. And something did just that, to make it say ‘girl’. The only thing I’m aware of powerful enough to do that would be my Papa Tango, but it shouldn’t do that. I specifically designed it to maintain the target’s ident-!” She gasped, the matrix for the same running through her mind, then slapped her hand to her forehead. “Yup, it did it, almost certainly. It’s designed to maintain the target’s identity throughout, not their body. The new form it turns you into is supposed to match your identity- as provided by your soul- as closely as possible, before it adds your old form back on again.
“Which means, since the transformation rewrites how your body works, it also had to rewrite your essence to tolerate the changes. And with that focus on identity, it could very easily have slipped up and let that control those parts of the Essence, rather than the old essence.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “Which means I don’t have to worry about it messing things up, because it’s only going to make things more right than they were before.”
“Interesting.” He tilted his head. “What effect might that essence change have?”
She smiled. “None. Except that the Ministry’s file on you will insist you’re a girl, no matter what you look like, and unlike Hailey, you’ll be able to enter the girl’s dormitories.”
He blinked. “Is that… it?”
She shrugged. “And your new form from the PT is almost certainly female to match, but yeah, that’s it.” She took a deep breath. “Anyways… Sorelia, unless you still want me to use ‘Draco’ in private?”
He smiled, and chuckled. “Sorelia, then. Go ahead and tell the others about it, even, but keep her as an ‘anonymous friend’? Kinda like Alastor is for Draco.”
She chuckled. He- no, she- was right, while out in the Castle, Draco liked to brag about his anonymous friends that had all sorts of abilities and could get information from the most unlikely of sources- but he had never named a single one of them, making them sound like unfounded claims. “Anyways, Sorelia, we’d probably better go to the Dueling Club. Will you be showing as Draco or Alastor?”
He shook his head. “As Draco, unfortunately. It’d be suspicious if the Malfoy Heir randomly decided he didn’t care about dueling.”
There was a sudden knock on the door, making both of them jump, before someone opened it and stepped in.
It was Bonbon.
“Ahh, there you are,” she greeted, shutting the door and walking over. “Hermione, and Draco,” she bowed her head to each of them in turn, as she approached the teachers’ desk from the other side. Then she smiled, looking at Draco. “Or should I say Alastor?”
“What- er-!” Draco began, taken aback.
Hermione looked at him, then back at Bonbon. “H-How’d you know?”
She shrugged. “It was kinda hard to miss how Alastor- who didn’t have a class record- played Fluffy to sleep last year, but it was Draco that returned,” she commented lightly. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone.” She glanced at Draco. “Though speaking of, I haven’t seen Alastor around nearly as much as I’ve seen Hailey- is there a limit to your transformation or something?”
He winced, and nodded. “Time limit, yeah.”
She nodded. “Then you’re probably not going to want to waste any of that precious time teaching, will you?”
“T-Teaching?” he gasped.
She nodded. “Now that we’ve finally got all our classes covered, we’re looking at putting together a Special Instruction Team to help tutor struggling students in whatever they need help with. We’re getting a fair few students in each subject regularly coming to their instructors for so much extra help it’s negatively impacting those instructors’ own performance by cutting into their study time.”
He blinked. “So… your solution is to make more instructors?”
She smiled, and nodded. “Specifically, an interlocking instructor team capable of relying on one another but also with a wide range of specialities, allowing them to very quickly find the best way to help any given student, and help them as quickly as possible with as little disruption to their own work or other duties as possible. We also anticipate the team would teach a remedial class for those students that need it.”
He snorted. “So, Crabbe and Goyle?”
She nodded. “Yes. Though for those two, our psychologists are saying they’re not stupid, they just can’t seem to get through to them.” She glanced at Hermione, and turned back to Draco. “Before you make any gung-ho decisions, I should probably warn you that Hailey is on the list as well.”
He scowled, putting a finger on his chin. “Which would mean… But then…” He sighed. “I guess that’ll just have to wait for me to become Sorelia, then.”
She tilted her head. “Sorelia?”
He blinked, blushing. “Oh, um…”
“Um-!” Hermione muttered, looking between them, and finally settled on Bonbon. “Sorelia is to Draco as Hailey is to Harry, just… without the book to the face.”
Draco let out a small snort of laughter at her word choice, but Bonbon just nodded understandingly, glancing at Draco and seeming satisfied. “Assuming the change is large enough, yes, Hailey need never know it’s you.”
Welcome, Sorelia! (not sure how to pronounce that, but welcome!)
10994318
so-RELL-ee-ah... or something close to that. I'm terrible with typing pronunciation.
10994342
Ooh, cool name!
10994342
Aside from the variations between how the different TTS voices stress the syllables, is this what you were thinking of? (Try switching it from Emma to Joanna to see what I mean.)
(I constructed the "sɔːrɛliːə" IPA with the help of Wikipedia's very nice Help:IPA/English page where you can just scan down the lists of examples until you find the one that matches the sound you want.)
10994410
Yeah, right about.
Perhaps the only problem with IPA is that nobody can read it...
10994413
True. I use it more as a non-proprietary "machine-readable pronunciation" format so I can hyperlink people to a site like ipa-reader.xyz in addition to the more human-readable text.
Wonder how long it will be before Draco learns to become Silversong or Sorelia. This is an interesting new twist to the fic, and I'm liking it so far.
10994342
So, like Corellia, but S instead of C
10995254
Never heard of Corellia, but yes.
10995282
It’s the planet where the Millennium Falcon was built...
10995295
Huh... learning something new every day, I guess!
... Millenium Falcon. That was the one with whats-his-face the Jedi, right? And Vader?
First Alastor, then Silversong, and Sorelia? Either Draco has an identity issue or he love to play others.
10995591
Well... this iteration of him still thinks Silversong is someone else...
But yes. He hates his original identity, and so loves to "play others", so to speak, and evade his very "noble" identity...
10995771
draco "homestuck prince of heart" malfoy
Hm... This is sincerely BAFFLING, I mean... here you have someone who "identify" as a girl while LITERALLY everything, INCLUDING their INNERMOST e most BASIC essence indicates he is a boy... and he goes on saying that he hates being a boy... This does not have any sense... seriously... you are LITERALLY saying that A=!A. In such a situation you should REALLY REALLY try and get some psychological evaluation on WHY this one HATES being a boy. This whole fic is being QUITE cavalier on the whole trans issue, with dropping the "You are trans" card immediately... It's... a big nope.
10998192
... Well I'll admit, the 'essence' is fictional... but you can think of it as a part of the body, just a little more intangible than chromosomes (and so can't be touched by a potion, though a sufficiently powerful spell can reach it anyways).
As for the rest? It's basically the definition of transgender. She is one thing, but identifies as another. Why? Because she is, in her heart. There is no outside reason, nor conscious reason, that any amount of psychological evaluation might discover.
Overall... The transgender elements in this story are what make the phrase "Based on a true story" applicable. Because yes, they're based on real-world transgender experiences. Which, yes, are never fun, and often confusing, and sometimes fly in the face of everything we knew... but they're no less real for it.
Seriously. A common misconception among transgirls that don't know about transgenderism or whatever is that all boys wish they were cute anime girls, or otherwise girls. Sorelia is a step past that, having talked to her parents and determined that it is not, in fact, normal, even though they didn't understand it- or realize what it was- either.
But of course, it's normal anyways: For transgirls.
10999862
I mean the new movie. We just got a British sounding unicorn.
I was thinking you could have given Hogwarts Express double-decker coaches and electric train to pull them. Electric trains most likely have way more tractive effort then the diesel or steam train ever could and it goes faster. I think students don't really need an outdated sleeper car they just need a place where to sit, and you can always pack them like sardines like trains in India. If the HP's Britain had a modern high speed network they could have always gotten one of those Chinese bullet trains and everyone would have arrived at their destination in 3 hours instead of the normal 8.
11000394
The new... G5 MLP movie? Never seen it... and doesn't exist in the HP universe, which I was referring to. Though with the spoilers I've been seeing/hearing, it might actually be worth a watch.
11000471
Both diesel and steam are fully capable of spinning their drive wheels at lower velocities- or, in car terms, "doing a burnout". As a matter of fact, it's the engineers job to keep it from doing that! The problem is that the maximum acceleration any given locomotive can apply to its train is 9.81m/s^2... multiplied by the ratio of the locomotive's mass to the total mass of the train, locomotive included, no matter its power source. If it tries to accelerate faster, without superfriction and keep-the-nose-down spells (most trains aren't strong enough to pull wheelies even with perfect friction, this one's magic-augmented), it'll lose traction and spin tires. The actual maximum is actually somewhat lower than this, though sand allows it to get close.
Electric passenger trains often have so much more power apparent, and so much greater accelerative capability, because unlike any freight train or any steam or diesel-electric train, they often have motors in every car- including the coaches, turning it into a train of locomotives rather than a train of free-rolling cars. Thus, with that ratio being right about 1:1, it can very easily hit the accelerations you see on subway or high-speed passenger trains (which are far below maximum power, since they don't want to throw you around).
The problem with getting a high-speed rail to Hogwarts is that the line already set is most definitely not high-speed; it was designed for a fairly old steam train, which had comparable top speed to modern freight locomotives. And, for an all-electric train, they'd have to not only provide all new rolling stock and straighten out some of the bends (and increase banking) to tolerate a higher speed limit, but also electrify the entire stretch- electric trains don't carry their power plants with them like diesel electric do!
Alright ... this is character overload?
Draco manages to have Alastor ... why a second male form? He sees "hearts desire" of Silversong, but now is looking at "personal desire" of Sorellia?
Can you give us confused readers some spoilers to understand this character? Because it behaves nothing like the canon character, and so far I'm having real trouble understanding this one.
Are you sure that Hailey isn't just Harry's kink/fetish? The same thing is for Malfoy with his Silversong fantasy.
11057811
Yes, I am sure. They're experiencing a very real phenomenon called "Transgenderism". Those that are afraid of it- which includes J.K. Rowling herself- will often label it as a fetish, but that's a pretty easy mistake to make. As a matter of fact, for a lot of years, I thought it was a fetish or something.
But the truth is, there's a difference between fetishizing femininity... and wishing to simply be feminine (and the same for masculinity/masculine, though I don't have any transmasculine characters right now). Silver describes it rather well herself in a few chapters, as I recall.