The corridors of Hogwarts had a way of rearranging themselves when you weren’t looking, but having learned her lesson, Taylor moved through them with the confidence of someone who wasn’t getting lost. And she wouldn’t because she was cheating, with a bug trail.
Her explorations efforts had a method to the madness: she’d read enough about the castle in Hogwarts: A History to have a vague feeling on how things worked. She also had a gamut of knowledge on how magic was supposed to work from the many fantasy books she read before magic school became real. So, when she rounded a corner and found a suit of armor standing sentinel beside a tapestry, she stopped, planted her feet, and informed it in a clear, level voice that she would accept its challenge to single combat if it had one to offer, but in return, she wanted whatever secret it was guarding. The armor did not respond. Taylor took this as a sign of respect or that it didn’t have any secret to lose and moved on. Luna trailed a half-step behind her, humming, occasionally reaching up to pat the wall as though encouraging it.
“This one’s sulking,” Luna observed, gazing at the armor ahead. “They do that in the autumn.”
Taylor nodded as if that made sense, which to her it more or less did. There was no reason to discount Luna’s opinion on things.
The portraits came next, a long gallery of them, and Taylor stopped at every third one to introduce herself and ask whether they had any quests, warnings, or cryptic advice to dispense. Most of the painted figures looked affronted, before pretending to be asleep. One stout wizard in plum robes told her to push off. By the time they reached the third floor she had verbally extended a tea-party invitation to two passing ghosts (one accepted; the other drifted through a wall mid-sentence, which Taylor decided was a polite decline), arranged an alliance to trade castle secrets with a portrait of a sleeping knight, and declared a particular staircase ‘trustworthy’ after watching it for nearly a full minute.
Luna found all of that perfectly reasonable, and said so after Taylor maybe forth sneaky glance to see her reaction to her antics. It was exactly the kind of solidarity Taylor had been hoping for in a friend. She was pretty sure Luna wouldn’t judge if she found Taylor playing with bugs. Luna wasn’t like the others.
Taylor afternoon of exploration ended up, maybe, with more adventure than she had been expecting. It started with ghosts, or a ghost (she’d later realise it was a poltergeist).
She had led Luna in a meandering path around the castle poking her nose into every interesting thing she could find. She offered more duels to suits of armors (none accepted), had chats with chatty portraits, and sneaked around nosy students. Up fascinating stairs and down curved corridors the duo went. Their destination was a classroom, with the posh looking wizard from the books, second year students, including Harry and his gang, and Cornish Pixies.
A lot of havoc wreaking pixes.
Taylor had noticed the cluster earlier in the day, but unwilling to spoil the surprise, made sure she wasn’t paying attention to them. Knowing she’d have time later in the day to explore, it seemed a good opportunity inspect possible friends and see more of the castle.
The pixies, for their part, were having the time of their lives. A clot of electric-blue bodies zipped through the air, upending inkwells, knotting the curtains, and, with what Taylor could only interpret as real glee, suspending a very dignified-looking boy from a chandelier by the hood of his robes.
To anyone else it was a disaster.
And disaster invited more disaster.
Someone cackled, high, wheedling, delighted and unheard in the chaos of the classroom, and a squat ghost in a violently orange bowtie came corkscrewing down through the ceiling. The ghost took one look at the two first-years lurking in the corridor and peeking inside the classroom, clasped his hands together, and beamed the grin of a creature who had just been handed a present it did not have to wait for.
Taylor smelled the bully from a mile away, even if it was a dead bully. Still, she decided to try diplomacy first: She gave him a small, courteous nod, grabbed Luna’s hand and without turning her back on the ghost, retreated.
That appeared to disappoint him, by the frown on his face. He followed them, going through walls and ceilings and paintings.
“Ickle firsties! What are you doing sneaking around?”
Luna waved at the ghost. “We’re exploring! And you?”
The ghost’s face split into a grin of the wicked and damned.
“No.” Taylor said with all the conviction she could muster, even though she knew what came next.
The ghost only smiled wider. Then even more chaos ensued.
In the blink of an eye, he had messed up the whole corridor: the portraits were dangling, the hall was full of dust and dirt, the decoration scattered and broken, glass windows shattered and doors cast ajar.
“STUDENTS VANDALISING THE SCHOOL!” He bellowed. “STUDENTS DESTROYING THE CASTLE DOWN THE DEFENSE CORRIDOR!”
Taylor didn’t wait to see what would happen, she ran, dragging Luna with her. Behind them, the ghost kept bellowing. She broke her own rule, watching from every single bug nearby for any place to hide or incoming pursuers, and not a moment too soon. Barreling from a nearby passage, came an old man preceded by his cat. She had heard of him during the lunch break, Argus Filch, the caretaker(who hated students more than Snape and doled out punishments like they were candies), and his cat, Mrs. Norris.
Getting caught was out of the question. She didn’t want a second detention on the second day of school.
Filch stopped at the devastated corridor, his face split into a snarl. Mrs. Norris dashed the same way they had ran to, and Filch came hot in her wake.
They fled blindly across corridors, through doors with Taylor doing her best to avoid any other student, but Mrs. Norris wasn’t making it easy to escape: the damned cat had a preternatural ability to follow them around.
Filch was gaining on them fast; and on the other side of the corridor just past the bend, waiting behind a wall and barely out of sight was the same ghost that started all this mess. They were out of options. Taylor was getting desperate.
She stopped at a stretch of blank wall. There was a passage behind it; she could feel the bugs nestled in the dark on the other side, but no matter how she pressed and prodded she couldn’t find the seam, the catch, the trick of it.
“Open,” she told it, shoving at the stone. “Open Sesame. Open, please!”
The wall did nothing.
“Help me look,” she said to Luna, who began patting the stone with the serene diligence of someone soothing a nervous animal.
Mrs. Norris rounded the corner behind them.
Taylor grabbed Luna’s hand and whisper-yelled “Run!”, then sent a knot of flies straight up Mrs. Norris’s nose and into her eyes. The cat yowled, crashed against the wall and stop chasing them. With one of her bigger bugs, a fat spider tucked into the room where the ghost lay waiting, and a few other fliers, she nudged a shard of pottery off the windowsill. It tumbled and shattered. The ghost spun toward the crash, and in the half-second his back was turned, Taylor and Luna bolted past.
They kept running until panting breaths turned into giggles then into laughter. They ran until they couldn’t anymore. Taylor lay splayed on the blessedly cool floor, gasping and laughing. Luna had a special smile of her own.
“That was…” Luna started.
“Amazing!” Taylor laughed harder. “We should do that again!”
A quick look around to see where they’d ended up revealed some sort of trophy room. Curiosity prickling at the back of her mind, Taylor got up, checking the awards and old plaques.
Dumbledore had a slew of awards accredited to his name: Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, Gold Medal for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International Alchemical Conference, Order of Merlin, First Class, among many others. McGonagall had awards too: Transfiguration Today Most Promising Newcomer, Head Girl. A Tom Riddle also contributed to the line up: Special Award for Services to the School, Medal for Magical Merit, Head Boy; what an overachiever.
Along the lines of Quidditch awards, a Jonathan Bubbly won The "Dangerous" Dai Commemorative Medal. A Charlie Weasley had a Star Seeker award, while a James Potter, a star Chaser.
Another Weasley, Bill, was a Head Boy.
Of the newest awards, some were credited to Gilderoy Lockhart: Order of Merlin, Third Class, and Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile five times. What did a charming smile have to do with spell-casting and teaching she didn’t know, but an Order of Merlin seemed important enough.
What she didn’t find was any award or trophy to any Daniel Hebert. It was to be expected. He went and died.
Taylor didn’t notice Luna until she was by her side. Thankfully, she didn’t ask questions.
“It’s almost time for dinner.” Taylor said, still looking at the awards.
“I hope there are peppermint humbugs today.”
Taylor snorted.
While everyone was distracted eating dinner, Taylor had Dee and Dum sneak into the classroom with the trapped pixies and unlock the cage. It took a bit of finagling to unlock the cage, and if it wasn’t for the absolute control of her power, the pixies would have wreaked even more havoc. They were nothing like Dee and Dum: they were wild and chaotic, and ready to cause mayhem. Instead, she guided them out and around corners, away from prying eyes and toward the nest.
The growing number of bugs in her hideout was shaping up nicely. There were twenty-seven different species of spiders, twenty-one different fliers, as well as a huge variety of crawlers and creepies.
After dinner, she bade farewell to her dorm-mates and marched toward punishment, but she was intercepted in the common room, by Penny again.
“Hebert,” she said in greeting.
“Penny,” Taylor nodded back.
“Professor Flitwick is going to administer your detention instead of Professor Snape. He’s waiting for you in the charms classroom.”
“Thank you,” she said, unsure why things changed.
Penny gave her a playful shove, then returned to mingle with the older students.
Flitwick was waiting for her when she got there.
“Miss Hebert! Good on you for joining me!” He waved her inside, and purposefully toppled a stack of books. “Oh my, the room is a mess!”
Taylor stared at the professor, who winked at her.
“Well, go on and organize it. You may return to your quarters once you’re done.” And with that, he left, leaving Taylor on her own.
It took her about one minute to pile the books back again. Then she spent the next three and a half hours reading from every book she could grab. She even enlisted Dee and Dum’s help. It was the best!
The night ended with a tired troupe of children marching down the Astronomy tower carrying telescopes and yawning. The lesson was fun. Watching and cataloguing the stars wasn’t something Taylor had ever done, or thought she’d enjoy. It also helped that Luna had little stories and theories about each and every star in the sky. Taylor thought those were made up, but she didn’t much care; they all sounded so interesting she wanted to hear more.
Very late in the night, while her dorm-mates were lost to Hypnos, Taylor finally grabbed her mum’s letter and sat down to read it.