Carmilla was dragged out of bed to the great hall for breakfast at seven in the morning.
Classes started at eight thirty, apparently, and they should be finished by three in the afternoon, but June explained that sometimes teachers would run over or under time. The timetable was very loose, unless you were late to class. You would get a detention in that case.
It was all very hypocritical.
She was eating French toast lathered in maple syrup, which she had just discovered was maybe the best thing in the world, aside from raspberry tarts, when a flock of owls came swooping down over them.
She let out a quiet shriek and dropped her fork, ducking when a barn owl nearly clipped her with its big wings.
"They're not going to hurt you Milla," June chuckled, reading a newspaper that had been dropped next to her porridge. Apparently, in the wizarding world, there was a war brewing. A dark wizard was gaining power, but no one seemed to be worried. June said that the ministry would sort the git out.
Carmilla ignored the letter that had just dropped on her toast. She couldn't read it, but she wasn't about to let everyone know that, so she waited a moment for Ace to sit down beside her. Sure enough, the pink haired girl picked up the letter, "Milla, you got a letter... Can I open it?"
The black owl he sent with the letter had four wings, which made her think that it might not be an owl. Her suspicions were confirmed when it swallowed a gold spoon whole, and flapped its wings at June.
"You aren't supposed to open people's mail," June said, and served herself some fruit.
"Go ahead."
"Merlins balls, this spelling is atrocious," Ace muttered, and then cleared her throat and held the letter out, squinting down at it. She put on a posh voice. "Dear Camilla, Hope you enjoy you're first day! If you fry on Friday you com for a visit, I have rock cak.. cakces...cackes. Love, Hagrid."
June began peeling a kiwifruit with a knife that she took from the black owl's claws before it ate that too. "That's nice of Hagrid. Did he take you to Diagon Alley?"
"Yeah," Carmilla said, remembering the horrified face of Mistress Theeny when the huge man in a trench coat stumbled through the doors, dropping coins and teacups and even a few small frogs that the girls had scooped up and ran off with immediately. They were living in the corner of the shower right now. They even had names. Hagrid would be happy. "He did."
Ace picked up a piece of toast off the stand a few first years next to them were devouring and poked the four winged owl with it. "This cannot be an owl, it-"
She didn't get to finish her sentence, because it squawked loudly, and bit Ace on the hand.
"Fuck!" she shrieked, squeezing her hand tightly once she'd ripped it from the shiny beak of the carnivorous bird. She leapt to her feet, knocking a jug of orange juice over. June flapped a napkin about, successfully scaring the bird off.
The students along the table, and a few from the other houses watched curiously, but went back to their breakfast a few moments later. Carmilla sighed. "Thanks, everyone."
"I don't think that's an owl, Carmilla!" June hissed, running around to their side of the table.
"It's not mine!" she shot back, pressing napkins to Ace's bleeding hand, who was holding back tears and biting her less cut up fist. The blood seeping into the napkins was making her head spin, and all she could smell was the thick metallic blood.
"Hospital wing, now." June instructed, taking charge.
Carmilla breathed through her mouth and prayed her fangs wouldn't slide out. "How many fingers do you have left?"
She pushed all of the napkins into June's hands, and stepped away slightly, pushing on her teeth with her tongue. The girls raced out of the hall, and Carmilla saw heads turn. They sprinted down corridors, bumping into a few annoyed students who were hurrying to class with arms full of books and quills. She followed a few paces behind.
"Do you know where we're going?!" Carmilla asked June.
Soon enough they reached wide double doors. Carmilla looked around and saw rows of white hospital beds with flowers on the tables and glasses of water. Light streamed through the large arched windows.
"Madam Pomphrey!" June called. A boy with fiery red hair in a bed with bandages up his leg stirred.
A kind looking woman who reminded Carmilla of Mistress Theeny bustled in carrying a tray of potions in little glass vials and a clipboard. Then she saw Ace holding the wad of napkins, which were covered in blood and feathers.
"Hagrid sent an owl." June explained quickly, and Madame Pomphrey sighed as she led Ace to a bed.
June nudged Carmilla as Ace's hand was being patched up and pointed to a large grandfather clock by the doors. It ticked slowly. They were late for class by five and a half minutes. Madam Pomphrey muttered a spell and started cleaning off the blood. Six minutes.
When it reached seven minutes, the nurse tutted and shooed the girls out of the hospital wing. Ace's hand looked fine now, but there was a bandage wrapped around it.
"Does anyone have their books?" Ace panted as they ran back down the winding halls.
"Yes, but I've only got one and we have Transfiguration." June muttered, pulling out a hardcover book with pigeons and teacups and swirly looking spells on the cover from her bag.
It seemed she was the only one prepared. Carmilla just shrugged at Ace and continued up the staircase that groaned underneath them and began to shift. Carmilla had thought she had enough time to collect the things she needed after breakfast, but maybe they weren't up as early as she had first assumed.
They reached Professor McGonagall's classroom, and Ace slammed open the door.
They burst through the doorway and everyone in the classroom turned to them. Including the teacher. The big room was filled with cages of animals and rows of desks. The largest one, at the front of the room, was occupied by the intimidating woman who read Carmilla's name at the sorting ceremony.
"Miss London, Jones, and King... You are nine minutes late. Care to explain?" Professor McGonagall said tersely, looking over her glasses with narrowed eyes.
Ace opened her mouth to explain, but June stepped forwards quickly, probably knowing Ace would make the situation worse. "Sorry Professor, we had to go to the hospital wing."
The three girls filed into the rows of chairs as subtly as they could. The last empty seat was next to the boy from the train, Severus. Carmilla sat next to him and tucked her bag underneath her chair, looking back up at their teacher.
"And it took all three of you?"
"There was a lot of blood." Carmilla said, hoping that would help their situation.
The annoyed Professor turned away and changed the subject. Dumbledore must have told her about Carmilla's... teething problem.
"As I was saying, before I was interrupted, today you will be learning how to transfigure an ink pot into a pillow. I trust you all have your supplies," she said, and moved to her desk, where her things were neatly arranged, unlike everyone else's. "The spells directions are in your textbooks, on page seven."
Well fuck.
Carmilla looked back to her friends, who were two rows behind her to the left.
June had already opened her book, and Ace shrugged helplessly. Snape ignored her, positioning his own inkpot in front of himself.
She felt a tap on her shoulder, and a boy with brown hair and a nice smile was looking at her. He was holding out a tiny green tub that matched his scarf. "I have a spare one, would you like to borrow it?"
"...I didn't get the chance to grab mine. Thank you." Carmilla said, accepting it gratefully. He'd saved her the embarrassment of sitting quietly at her desk until their teacher came over and told her off in front of the class. She pulled her wand out of her robe, the one thing she did bring.
It was an ivory colour, the man who sold it to her had said it was made out of dragon horn ivory, which explained the weird texture. Apparently, it was good for charms.
"I'm Charlie, by the way. You're the King girl, right?" The nice boy asked, glancing over at her. Her last name at the sorting hadn't let her fly under the radar, unfortunately. At least that was what the attention was for, and not because she walked up walls to get the spiders out of the corner because no one else could reach.
"That would be me. Pleasure to meet you." she said with a smile. Then she began eavesdropping on the other boy beside her. Severus was muttering something under his breath, but the ink pot in front of him did not become a pillow.
A few other people had pillows in front of them. The first student, a boy in Slytherin, earned five points for his house, and Ravenclaw girl a few rows in front had little feathers spurting out of her pot. Finally, Severus snapped, and yelled 'ut mollis'.
So that was the spell.
Ut mollis. Charlie was making swishing motions with his own light brown wand, the same colour as his skin, but nothing happened.
"This is a spell for fourth years, so you may not get it on the first try, but we will continue with it next lesson." McGonagall called from where she was telling off a student for tipping ink on his friends.
Snape was making a jabbing motion with his own wand, counteracting Charlie's.
Carmilla decided to mix them.
She swished her wand sharply, then poked her borrowed pot. "Ut mollis."
The sound of a pillow bursting came from her desk. Her ink pot was replaced by a dark blue pillow with gold edges, much like the ones in her dorm. Severus only sneered at her, and then ducked his head once the Professor strolled over.
"Well done Ms King. You have performed the incantation correctly. I've written the counter curse on the board and you will move onto that," she said, then walked away without another word.
Charlie gave her a thumbs up.
After spending the rest of the lesson trying to do the counter curse, and failing, Carmilla had to hand Charlie a very jabbed at pillow. He didn't mind. He said he was planning to use it in his next class, History of Magic. Only two students had managed to turn their pillows back into ink pots, but nearly everyone had managed the first part.
The sun shone down on Carmilla as she walked between the numerous greenhouses.
Despite popular beliefs, she wasn't going to turn to dust. The sunshine did make her a bit weaker though; it would take more energy to turn into a bat and bite someone's neck, but Carmilla just yawned more than usual and had to wear a lot of sunscreen in the heat of summer.
"Today we are harvesting the 'purpura cerasus'. Does anyone know what that means?" Sprout asked curiously, motioning to the small bushes in front of them once they were all standing in front of one, gloves on. She had round cheeks and a smile.
The girl from Gryffindor, Lily, put her hand up immediately to answer.
This lesson Carmilla was with the Gryffindor's, but Ace and June had potions, so she was alone. Peter, the blonde boy, was on her right. It looked like he wanted to eat the small glowing round fruits on the bushes.
"Purple berries. They can be found in a lot of forests and kept as houseplants. You can eat them, but they're also used in lots of potion recipes." She sounded like she was reading from a textbook.
"Very good! Four points to Gryffindor! You can all begin harvesting the berries into the bowls in front of you, but remember, be very gentle, they burst easily."
That was easier said than done.
Not a minute after she warned them all, James grabbed one of the berries too tightly. It burst immediately, and a purple juice turned to mist that floated in front of Carmilla.
She chuckled, and scooped some out of her own bowl. Once their teacher turned her back, she squeezed all of them. It smelt amazingly sweet. Peter bit down on one. It looked like he was smoking something purple. "I'm a dragon!"
James squished a few into the air and a cloud of grape smelling fog surrounded them. "The pranks I could pull with this!"
"Shit, she's coming back," Carmilla said, and began trying to wave away the very obvious purple berry remains. James struggled out of his robes and dropped it over the mess they'd made when Professor Sprout walked past.
The three of them stood still. She watched the boys hold their breathes.
The fun only lasted a few minutes. Once the teacher was gone and the mist settled, Carmilla realised it stayed. Their gloves were a dark purple, but that could be washed. The problem was their faces.
"Shit!" James hissed, and started frantically scrubbing at his splotchy lavender face. They only had ten minutes left of the lesson, so they had to alternate between picking the berries and filling up the harvest bowls to make up for the ones they had destroyed and asking around to see if anyone had a cleaning spell.
No one did.
"You're a Ravenclaw! Don't you know everything?!" James asked desperately. He tripped over a stone outside the greenhouse.
"Maybe you should gather your courage and tell Professor Sprout you got purple berry stains all over you," Carmilla shot back quickly. These house expectations were sort of annoying. She didn't know anything about anything.
James pouted and pushed his glasses up his nose. They were round.
She shrugged and squinted against the sun. She would have to buy some sunscreen when she visited Hogsmeade. Hopefully they had more than the lolly shop she'd heard a lot about. "Besides, that was my second lesson ever."
"Didn't you transfer from Ilvermorny?" Peter asked quietly.
"...Yeah, that's what I meant."
The three of them walked into the hall, and many of the students there eating lunch turned around and giggled to themselves. Carmilla figured that meant the purple splotches were still covering her pale skin. Teasing followed her while she ran to where June and Ace were sitting, ducking her head.
Ace opened her mouth to speak.
"Don't even start," Carmilla grumbled, and reached for the slices of sourdough bread on the gold dish in front of her.
June just rolled her eyes. She was wearing golden teardrop earrings today. She looked down at the plate her shepherd's pie was on, away from her timetable. "Why do you think they changed all the plates and cutlery?"
"Probably a vampire or something," Ace said through a mouthful of her gravy sandwich.
Carmilla choked on her lunch. "What?"
"Aren't they supposed to, like, die if they touch iron or silver or whatever? The defence teacher's probably a secret vampire or a werewolf," Ace said, wiping gravy off her face and shrugging. It just spread more. She looked to June. "Wasn't there a half dragon lady a few years before we arrived?"
June nodded, "Liz said she was eating all of the owls in the owlery, remember?"
"Then she had a go at Flick," Angela said, turning away from her previous conversation with a Hufflepuff boy at the table next to them. She leaned over the jugs of juice. "My cousin was in her class that year. They spent half a semester collecting gold for charities before someone figured out the teacher was just hoarding it all."
"How did the school get a teacher like that?" Carmilla asked, taking a sip of the apple juice in the shiny golden goblet in front of her. "Wouldn't Dumbledore have people lining up at the doors to teach here?"
At least, that was impression she got from Hogwarts.
Hagrid had proudly told her that Hogwarts was the biggest and best wizarding school in all of England, and probably the world. It certainly had the money and resources to prove it. They'd replaced every piece of silver in the building over the summer holidays because of one student.
June pressed her lips into her teeth and Angela exchanged a glance with her.
"What?" Carmilla asked. She figured her question was a normal one, but judging by the chuckles Ace was having trouble hiding, she had missed something.
Ace put down the last of her sandwich and reached for a napkin, cleaning the gravy off herself properly. She folded it over like she'd done it a million times. "It's cursed. The position, I mean. Of being the defence teacher. It's cursed."
"It's just rumours," June added, poking at her pie with a spoon, "technically. Because there's no proof... But..."
"No one lasts more than a year as the defence teacher," Ace continued, pushing her pink hair back over her shoulder. It fell back into place. "You just sign up for one year at this point, but it gets harder every time for Dumbledore to find someone."
"Wouldn't more people want to-"
Angela poked her head back into the conversation, an avocado bagel in her hand. She wore a lot of golden rings.. "There's a forty percent mortality rate."
Carmilla stared at her. June raised an eyebrow, "you did the maths?"
"Of course I did," Angela said, like she was surprised no one else had. "Only since the first time a teacher lasted a year, and there's a few outliers too, like the year the teacher was hit by the Hogwarts Express during the Christmas holidays. And the one that was dragged into the black lake at the very start of the year by mermaids and his body surfaced three days later without a head."
"Huh," June said, and ate another bite of her pie with a knife.
i know it seems like there's a lot of non canon characters to keep track of but i think its sort of unrealistic that the oc's in these books are always bff's with the marauders straight away
which still sorta happens but i tried to balance it out
dw you don't have to keep track of them all, just Ace and June, plus Charlie. and maybe Angela idk she just kinda pops in when she feels like it ig
<3