unfinished fic dump 2
do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart
glee/hp crossover. the top students from Lima’s McKinley School of Witchcraft and Wizardry get sent to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. ummm... there's not a really a plot to this, just random American Hogwarts headcannons and character interactions.
The day Rachel Berry got her acceptance letter to the Lima’s McKinley School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was the day that a star was born.
(Not really, though, since Rachel was born eleven years earlier so that’s technically her real date of origin, and has she mentioned that she’s been tap dancing whilst levitated since she could walk?)
Naturally, the letter came as nothing of a surprise to the Berry household, both her fathers being pureblood wizards, but that didn’t stop her from running through the house, slipping and sliding on her eleven year old stocking-clad feet, waving the parchment through the air like a conquering flag. It was still hung above her bed at home in a gold frame with stars winking around the perimeter.
She didn’t know many kids her age, wouldn’t have known how to speak with them, besides Noah from down the road, who she only knew because their parents were members of the same Sephardic wizarding community (a small pool within a small pond, they were practically raised together) who pulled her pig-tails and called her crazy, but always saved her the strawberry Bertie Botts Every Flavor beans because he knew they were her favorite. On the whole he was quite unpleasant though.
When she got to McKinley she discovered that the world was in a greater state of disrepair than she had realized; children her age were rude, messy, and spent far too much time talking about brooms and enchanted nail polish. (“It changes to match your robes,” a blonde Hufflepuff said flatly, not comprehending that some people had a Transfiguration essay due that would not be improved by a smear of confused lacquer that was attempting to mimic the shade of the drapes.) But Noah was sorted into her house, and they were sort of friends, so that was okay. And she met some people from Ravenclaw that she studied with, since Noah never seemed at all interested, though that Kurt boy and his friend Mercedes had personalities that were quite strong. (Which she knew a thing or two about.) Half-way through first year, that horrible girl Noah had befriended at the start of term (she wasn’t jealous of Santana, not a bit), sauntered up to her in the common room after a class where Rachel had told Professor Shue off for improperly explaining the contraceptive charm, and with one hand on her hip, proclaimed, “You’ve got a shit fashion sense and your voice makes my ears bleed, but you’ve got cojones. Wanna jinx the boys I saw peeping in the girl’s Quiddich locker room?” All in all, things were bearable.
She wore printed sweaters under her robes and knee socks that almost reached the hem of them (but if you asked the right boys on the Quiddich team they’ll tell you how one time she was twirling around at choir rehearsal and they found out her skirts under them barely exist at all.
She’s at the top of her class by the end of second year, nosing past Quinn Fabray on the list (which, honestly, Quinn’s transfigurations are underwhelming at best, so it’s really no surprise.) Her one weak spot is Potions- the needless cruelty that no doubt lends to acquiring those rat tails made her well over with tears and her vegan stomach clench. She has no use for flying, hates how recklessly dangerous it is (not to mention the splinters) but there was a brief period when she became obsessed with statistics and game plans and the Chudley Cannons’ chance at next year’s World Cup.
(This was in no way related to her equally brief feelings of affection towards a certain awkwardly built Beater who happened to captain the Hufflepuff team. Not at all.)
By the start of fourth year she was moderately well-liked by a decent portion of her year, on track to break records for number of house points won through sheer stubbornness, and fresh from a summer spent in Bali with her dads.
All this was to say that when Headmaster Figgins announced that the Triwizard Tournament would be held at Hogwarts and the top three witches and wizards from each house would be eligible to go and compete, Rachel didn’t hesitate to begin packing.
Excerpt from McKinley, A History -
After a wave of immigration from Great Britain just before the Muggle WWII, who through divination and just plain paranoia started to leave at the first signs of tension, the witches and wizards decided to found a school in the image of Hogwarts, the school of their childhoods. But some things got lost in translation. The founders had originally nixed the idea of carrying over the Slytherin house, since it had only seemed to cause problems back home. They’d created the Deercot house instead, which valued independence, sense of humor, and Muggle studies - in an effort to curb the pure-blood enthusiasts - but it was a failed experiment. The sorting hat seemed unable to place every fourth student or so, sputtering under the effort of placing the natural-born Slytherins in any other house, and so Slytherin returned.
Only the cowboy hat they used for sorting never quite got the message, or was being particularly obstinate, because every year it made a small handful of students, mostly half-bloods or purebloods that found the non-magical fascinating, into Deercots. They formed a band of roving pranksters, who considered themselves entirely apart from the other houses, and went around terrorizing first-years, asking if they were sure they didn’t want them to explain the espresso machine one more time because, really, it was quite fascinating. The Great Whoopie Cushion Attack of ’97 was legendary, because none of the other students knew how to guard against it. They knew the counter-spell to the Jelly Legs Jinx, but not how to watch where they sat. There was also that one time they tried to secede from the school in ’81, which proved unsuccessful when they realized that without the school they’d be cut off from magic, and none of them actually knew how all their Muggle trinkets worked.
(Rachel is friendly with one though, Tina, who had fallen in lust with the Muggle goth fad and hadn’t let it go.)
The three most talented witches and wizards from each house are chosen to represent Lima - Rachel (naturally), Santana and Noah from Slytherin; Finn, Brittany and Sam from Hufflepuff; Quinn, Kurt and Mercedes from Ravenclaw; and three students Rachel didn’t associate with from Griffindor.
(Ever since an army of former-Griffindors had lost the war in ’63, they had been rather ostracized. I mean really, is planning a line of attack really that much more difficult than charging in blind?)
Tina was the lone representative from the Deercots, though, which could either be because the house was so small (insanely small; a shed really) or because the rest had refused to take part in a fit of that famous Deercot independence.
She knew schools’ contestants usually arrived on flashy vehicles with flying horses or monstrous ships, but Headmaster Figgins waved off anything high budget with an assertion it was wasteful. So they ended up flooing in. She could tell by the students of Hogwarts’ faces that it was rather anticlimactic, with Kurt coughing exaggeratedly in the lead and Santana just behind threatening bodily harm if the soot permanently stained her robes.
Lima students didn’t wear uniforms beyond the robes, but Rachel knew most European schools did, and when she looked around the courtyard it wasn’t that difficult to pick out her schoolmates from the crush of Hogwarts students. There was Quinn in her tailored blue robes, the prim chiffon tie of her buttoned shirt underneath showing above the top clasp of her robe. Kurt was wearing traditional black, but with a fedora and bow tie, and beside him Mercedes was in purple, glitter zebra stripes catching the sunlight. Santana’s robes were ostentatiously red, just edging on orange, just to make it clear they were not under any circumstances to be confused with Griffindor colors. It made Rachel smile, how alike they were in their differences. She was so busy smiling fondly that she didn’t notice the redhead about to trip over her rolling suitcase and come crashing into her, until he did just that.
“Arg! The fringe of orange cried, and he managed to catch himself before they both went tumbling to the ground. He steadied her by her elbows, shook the hair out of his face and promptly turned as scarlet as his hair. “I am so sorry. Bloody good job I’m doing at inter-school cooperation, knocking into people like this.” He seemed to be muttering to himself more than her, but Rachel put on her best show smile and held out her hand.
“That’s quite alright. I’m Rachel Berry.”
“Ron. And again I am so so- Slytherin.” Ron had been trying to straighten her luggage scattered around her feet, and at that moment found himself eyelevel with her Slytherin prefect badge.
“Well, yes,” Rachel clarified uncertainly, and her megawatt smile dimmed just the slightest. At that moment two more Hoqwarts students made their way over to Ron’s side- the boy, a bespectacled, lanky thing with an oddly shaped scar that could only be Harry Potter, that was eyeing Ron ruefully, and the girl, hair so bushy Rachel thought she would politely offer use of her hair straightener, was already eyeing Rachel suspiciously.
“Alright there Ron?” Harry Potter questioned, wiping some dirt off his shoulder.
“Brilliant.” Ron took a further step back from her, firmly placing himself by his friends’ side. “Just didn’t have my eye out for this one’s massive pile of luggage.” Somehow this had turned into her fault?
“Oh,” Harry had just noticed the snake crest on her bags. “You’re in Slytherin?”
Rachel let the last vestiges of her courteous smile drop and allowed the frown that had been building to firmly settle on her face.
“Yes. Is that a problem?” The frizzy haired one was just beginning to form a response, when Rachel felt two people walk up to her sides. She glanced over at Santana on her right and Noah at her left, and recognized the hard set to their jaws. They were evenly matched now, three to three, and they looked to be some distorted mirror image of each other: Harry and Rachel’s dark hair and unsure expressions, Ron and Santana’s sharp looks of suspicion, and the girl’s and Noah’s frankly ridiculous hair styles.
The confrontation ends in a stalemate, and leaves an unsatisfied, sour taste in Rachel’s mouth.
Dumbledore informed them that they’d be sharing rooms with the Hogwarts students of the same house, and then eyed Tina, sitting awkwardly in the corner, and suggested they’d make other arrangements for her. They never got around to it though, and Tina was left wandering the halls that night. Thankfully the Room of Requirement had shown itself to her and she had happily informed them over breakfast that the sheets had skulls on them.
Rachel herself had had a rough night. Once they’d really started talking, the two Slytherin camps had had a… divergence of opinion.
“Nothing worse than Hufflepuffs. Except Mudbloods of course.”
Santana stood, and Rachel could tell she was ten seconds away from telling Noah to hold her earrings. Santana’s girlfriend was a Hufflepuff, and Noah, though usually too busy picking on first years to attend to inter-house rivalries, was scowling; his best friend Finn was also a Hufflepuff and his mother was Muggle-born.
“You did not just say those words to me. I’ll have your bal-“
“I’ll have you know that both Hufflepuffs and Muggle-borns are extremely vital to the magical world. 27% of aurors are Hufflepuffs, and approximately 1 out of every 3 important magical discoveries, most notably spell-work, are made by the Muggle-born because they bring a fresh perspective.”
Everyone was staring at Rachel, but her eyes were locked on this unpleasant blonde boy and his highly illogical opinions. Honestly, all it takes is a little research. “How many ground-breaking feats have you made-“ she hesitated on the last name, usually being insistent to dismiss nicknames or last names. Noah knew this, and his mouth dropped open slightly in her pause. “Malfoy.” She stared him down triumphantly.
“Are you sure she isn’t a Griffindor?” Pansy whispered to Santana, but in the silence of the Slytherin common room, the question boomed.
“Yep. She’s definitely all ours.”
Santana was looking at her with something like pride but with a pinch more smugness than the usual person, and Rachel smiled back.
Hogwarts seemed to divide their class schedules by houses much more than they ever had at McKinley. It wasn’t that she disliked the Slytherins - they were her people after all - but she missed Kurt and Mercedes gossiping in the back row, and Brittney’s questions that left the professor bewildered and unsure how to continue, and even Quinn rolling her eyes at Rachel’s excitement about their new essays. Sure, the houses at McKinley slept in the same rooms and hung out in the common room, but they didn’t always sit eating together or have all the same classes; Rachel found it rather creepy that they were confined to one long table of just Slytherins for meals. It was like they were being kept apart, which she didn’t find healthy in the least. No wonder the rivalry was so strong between the Griffindors and the Slytherins here; it’s hard to see the other side as people when you rarely saw them at all. She barely even came across people from the other houses, besides passing each other in the halls, and those she knew that did had to make an effort. Santana snuck nightly into the Hufflepuff girls’ dormitory, and she knew Noah was practically playing musical beds every week, because he bragged about it every morning.
Hermione took the empty seat beside her in the library that Wednesday. She folded her hand carefully in her lap, a two-pronged crease forming between her eyebrows. “I think we got off to the wrong start.” And she looked as if she was waiting to be laughed at, to be cursed and spit on, and Rachel wondered crossly exactly what the Hogwarts Slytherins had done to make her expect so little of the whole house. She smiled brightly instead and extended a hand.
“Me too. Truce?”
Hermione looked startled but, seeming to find no fault in neither her fingers nor her earnest expression, took her hand and Rachel shook it excitedly. Friends weren’t something she came by often.
“What are you studying?”
“Divination.”
Hermione appeared to be holding in an expression of distaste out of politeness.
“I know it’s not thought of very highly, but Daddy says I could have inherited the sight from Bubby, and I’ve always thought I’m a little psychic. I’m quite skilled for a witch my age, but my tessomancy isn’t perfect. I always seem to be seeing giraffes in the leaves, but logically not everyone I read for could be about to lose their left hand. I have trouble with ovomancy, for obvious reasons.”
Hermione looked at her interrogatively. “Why?”
“I’m a vegan.”
The other girl seemed to sink into herself at this point, appearing to be thinking something over. Rachel watched her think in one of her rare moments of silence, content to notate her own transcriptions of last class. When she roused, turning her serious gaze on Rachel, she set down her quill.
“Would you like to study for Potions sometime?”
Rachel resisted her initial compulsion to clap and do a little twirl, and instead picked up her quill again, smile wide and giddy on her face. “That would be nice.”
“You don’t act like a Slytherin” Ron pointed out, his arms crossed but face twitching, as if he was unsure what stance he was supposed to be taking.
“I actually almost got sorted into Griffindor, but I argued Ralph down.”
She saw Harry turn his head slightly at this, as if she’d caught his attention, out of the corner of her eye.
“Ralph?”
“The Sorting Hat.”
“You named your Sorting Hat Ralph? Some kind of queer ship you’re running over there.”
“Don’t be silly. Ralph named himself.”
Ron shook himself out of the murky waters of swamp confusion, only to return to another state of bewilderment.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be in Griffindor?”
Something about his expression told her not to insult the house whose table she was sitting at. She’d heard from Draco that Ron’s whole family was in Griffindor, going back generations. She thought that was nice, to have family traditions.
You don’t understand. At McKinley it isn’t like it is here. The Griffindors are kind of… ostrasized.”
“Whatever for?”
Rachel hesitated. “People don’t like to talk about it. Let’s just say there was a crew of Griffindors that lost a very important war.” She raised her eyebrows, and something like realization dawned on Ron’s face, before he frowned.
“I thought that was a Muggle battle.”
“It was, but then the magical community got involved… it was a mess. And everyone blames the Griffindors because they went in unprepared, no back up, no battle plan. It was grossly irresponsible. I know what you all think about the Slytherins here, and it’s not to that level, we don’t hate them or anything, but… it’s dangerous. That level of ego. Everyone says that Griffindors grow up to be reckless and big-headed. And I… I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a part of something great. But-“ she hedged, seeing Ron start to fume. “I’m sure you’re not like that. I mean, you wouldn’t go into to battle without a plan.”
Hermione seemed to be looking at Harry with a face of sharp smugness while he sputtered.
“Well, err, that is to say-“
“I see your grasp on the English language has much improved, Potter,” Draco drawled from behind her, “Pretty soon you’ll have mastered nouns. Maybe even a full sentence.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Just checking to be sure you weren’t torturing one of my Slytherins. I thought for sure she could only be here under duress. Are they holding you hostage, Berry?”
Rachel grinned. “Nope. I’m here of my own free will.”
He sniffed. “Your taste of company is unbefitting of a Slytherin. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’ve been temporarily struck blind and deaf. I can’t say the same for Lopez’s sense of direction. She appears to have found herself amongst the Hufflepuffs.”
They all turned to watch Santana sitting on the table in front of Brittney, explaining an article in the Daily Prophet to the blonde. She leaned forward to tuck a strand of hair back up into Brittney’s hunting cap. Rachel smiled.
“I think her direction is just fine.”
Rachel walked into the Slytherin common room to find Theodore blatantly hitting on Santana, and Santana blatantly rebuffing him. So basically it was a typical Tuesday.
“Listen, you little rat-faced twerp. I told you I’m dating someone else.” Rather than shrinking under her poison gaze, Theodore puffed up.
“My face isn’t ratty, it’s aristocratic. And I’m sure you get lonely with your lover all the way back in America. I could just-“
“What?” Santana violently shoved his creeping fingers away from her thigh. “She’s in another house, and she’s in the building and she has a nasty right hook,” which was a lie, Brittney even had a hard time eating gummy bears because she was afraid of hurting them, “so back the fuck up!”
Theodore seemed to be mulling that over, before his face it up.
“Don’t. Even. No one touches my girl but me, even if I’m supervising.” He finally deflated.
“I take it you don’t do much inter-house dating?” Rachel questioned curiously.
“Why would we?” Pansy piped up from one of the leather chairs by the fireplace, playing a game of wizard’s chess with Vincent which had devolved into a game of who could cheat better. Her queen was flirting her way past his knight. “Slytherins are clearly superior in every way.”
Rachel knew this to be a lie. Not from personal experience, mind you, but she’d heard enough talk from Santana and Noah to ascertain that Hufflepuffs were the best at foreplay, Ravenclaws the most creative in bed, and Deercots the best kissers. Slytherins were the dirtiest, but that was to be expected. Neither had any first-hand knowledge of the Griffindors’ skills, but she’d heard Noah grumbling once that they never put out.
Artie, one of the Griffindors, wheeled up to them. His mother had been hit by a magnified petrificus totalus curse just before he was born and it had gone disastrously wrong; he couldn’t move the lower part of his body and not even the most advanced mediwizards could counter it. He made it work for him though; his chair hovered about six inches from the ground and played Muggle rap music whenever he felt like he needed to make an entrance; she admired his courage.
When they’d announced the lists of student who would go to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament she’d thought “well that’s a waste; what good would he be in the challenge?” She felt guilty for even thinking it now, and she smiled apologetically.
Did you know that if you sing magic it creates murals of the air? And each singer changes it, their mood and talent, so that each performance is different; no two are the same.
“I can see what you all are thinking when you look at people from other houses.” Hermione frowned, and even then Rachel knew she was thinking that she couldn’t know, no one could tell that. “You think ‘that Hufflepuff boy’ or ‘the girl from Ravenclaw’ and when it’s someone you don’t like, you think, ‘well he’s in Slytherin and they’re all alike.’”
Hermione’s face twisted, and Rachel hated this, fighting with her friend. But this was important, and at the moment they were both still calm. “And I suppose you’re quite different then. I’ve seen the way you all look at the Griffindors.”
“True. We’re not perfect. But what about everyone else? When I see Brittney, I don’t think Hufflepuff, I think about how much she misses her familiar Captain Snuggleteeth, and how she can be so sharp sometimes even though she can seem a bit… simple. And I know that Quinn is in Ravenclaw, but I also know how much she hates that we remember her from before she had all those cosmetic spells and that she always sits one row back from the edge in the stands during Quiddich games because she’s afraid of heights.” Hermione’s head was tilting, and Rachel thought, yes, finally, I’m getting through. “Their house is a part of them, but it’s not the whole thing. They’re still people. There’s more to them.”
Draco had picked up “yo mamma” jokes from the transfers but they hadn’t quite translated correctly.
The blonde stared down smugly at Harry.
“Your mother’s dead.”
(Noah kept having to pull him aside to explain the concept again as Santana viciously rolled her eyes.)
With the walls between houses down, Kurt finds that one of the Griffindor boys, Blaine, a transfer from the all-boys school in upstate New York, wasn’t that bad after all.
glee/hp crossover. the top students from Lima’s McKinley School of Witchcraft and Wizardry get sent to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. ummm... there's not a really a plot to this, just random American Hogwarts headcannons and character interactions.
The day Rachel Berry got her acceptance letter to the Lima’s McKinley School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was the day that a star was born.
(Not really, though, since Rachel was born eleven years earlier so that’s technically her real date of origin, and has she mentioned that she’s been tap dancing whilst levitated since she could walk?)
Naturally, the letter came as nothing of a surprise to the Berry household, both her fathers being pureblood wizards, but that didn’t stop her from running through the house, slipping and sliding on her eleven year old stocking-clad feet, waving the parchment through the air like a conquering flag. It was still hung above her bed at home in a gold frame with stars winking around the perimeter.
She didn’t know many kids her age, wouldn’t have known how to speak with them, besides Noah from down the road, who she only knew because their parents were members of the same Sephardic wizarding community (a small pool within a small pond, they were practically raised together) who pulled her pig-tails and called her crazy, but always saved her the strawberry Bertie Botts Every Flavor beans because he knew they were her favorite. On the whole he was quite unpleasant though.
When she got to McKinley she discovered that the world was in a greater state of disrepair than she had realized; children her age were rude, messy, and spent far too much time talking about brooms and enchanted nail polish. (“It changes to match your robes,” a blonde Hufflepuff said flatly, not comprehending that some people had a Transfiguration essay due that would not be improved by a smear of confused lacquer that was attempting to mimic the shade of the drapes.) But Noah was sorted into her house, and they were sort of friends, so that was okay. And she met some people from Ravenclaw that she studied with, since Noah never seemed at all interested, though that Kurt boy and his friend Mercedes had personalities that were quite strong. (Which she knew a thing or two about.) Half-way through first year, that horrible girl Noah had befriended at the start of term (she wasn’t jealous of Santana, not a bit), sauntered up to her in the common room after a class where Rachel had told Professor Shue off for improperly explaining the contraceptive charm, and with one hand on her hip, proclaimed, “You’ve got a shit fashion sense and your voice makes my ears bleed, but you’ve got cojones. Wanna jinx the boys I saw peeping in the girl’s Quiddich locker room?” All in all, things were bearable.
She wore printed sweaters under her robes and knee socks that almost reached the hem of them (but if you asked the right boys on the Quiddich team they’ll tell you how one time she was twirling around at choir rehearsal and they found out her skirts under them barely exist at all.
She’s at the top of her class by the end of second year, nosing past Quinn Fabray on the list (which, honestly, Quinn’s transfigurations are underwhelming at best, so it’s really no surprise.) Her one weak spot is Potions- the needless cruelty that no doubt lends to acquiring those rat tails made her well over with tears and her vegan stomach clench. She has no use for flying, hates how recklessly dangerous it is (not to mention the splinters) but there was a brief period when she became obsessed with statistics and game plans and the Chudley Cannons’ chance at next year’s World Cup.
(This was in no way related to her equally brief feelings of affection towards a certain awkwardly built Beater who happened to captain the Hufflepuff team. Not at all.)
By the start of fourth year she was moderately well-liked by a decent portion of her year, on track to break records for number of house points won through sheer stubbornness, and fresh from a summer spent in Bali with her dads.
All this was to say that when Headmaster Figgins announced that the Triwizard Tournament would be held at Hogwarts and the top three witches and wizards from each house would be eligible to go and compete, Rachel didn’t hesitate to begin packing.
Excerpt from McKinley, A History -
After a wave of immigration from Great Britain just before the Muggle WWII, who through divination and just plain paranoia started to leave at the first signs of tension, the witches and wizards decided to found a school in the image of Hogwarts, the school of their childhoods. But some things got lost in translation. The founders had originally nixed the idea of carrying over the Slytherin house, since it had only seemed to cause problems back home. They’d created the Deercot house instead, which valued independence, sense of humor, and Muggle studies - in an effort to curb the pure-blood enthusiasts - but it was a failed experiment. The sorting hat seemed unable to place every fourth student or so, sputtering under the effort of placing the natural-born Slytherins in any other house, and so Slytherin returned.
Only the cowboy hat they used for sorting never quite got the message, or was being particularly obstinate, because every year it made a small handful of students, mostly half-bloods or purebloods that found the non-magical fascinating, into Deercots. They formed a band of roving pranksters, who considered themselves entirely apart from the other houses, and went around terrorizing first-years, asking if they were sure they didn’t want them to explain the espresso machine one more time because, really, it was quite fascinating. The Great Whoopie Cushion Attack of ’97 was legendary, because none of the other students knew how to guard against it. They knew the counter-spell to the Jelly Legs Jinx, but not how to watch where they sat. There was also that one time they tried to secede from the school in ’81, which proved unsuccessful when they realized that without the school they’d be cut off from magic, and none of them actually knew how all their Muggle trinkets worked.
(Rachel is friendly with one though, Tina, who had fallen in lust with the Muggle goth fad and hadn’t let it go.)
The three most talented witches and wizards from each house are chosen to represent Lima - Rachel (naturally), Santana and Noah from Slytherin; Finn, Brittany and Sam from Hufflepuff; Quinn, Kurt and Mercedes from Ravenclaw; and three students Rachel didn’t associate with from Griffindor.
(Ever since an army of former-Griffindors had lost the war in ’63, they had been rather ostracized. I mean really, is planning a line of attack really that much more difficult than charging in blind?)
Tina was the lone representative from the Deercots, though, which could either be because the house was so small (insanely small; a shed really) or because the rest had refused to take part in a fit of that famous Deercot independence.
She knew schools’ contestants usually arrived on flashy vehicles with flying horses or monstrous ships, but Headmaster Figgins waved off anything high budget with an assertion it was wasteful. So they ended up flooing in. She could tell by the students of Hogwarts’ faces that it was rather anticlimactic, with Kurt coughing exaggeratedly in the lead and Santana just behind threatening bodily harm if the soot permanently stained her robes.
Lima students didn’t wear uniforms beyond the robes, but Rachel knew most European schools did, and when she looked around the courtyard it wasn’t that difficult to pick out her schoolmates from the crush of Hogwarts students. There was Quinn in her tailored blue robes, the prim chiffon tie of her buttoned shirt underneath showing above the top clasp of her robe. Kurt was wearing traditional black, but with a fedora and bow tie, and beside him Mercedes was in purple, glitter zebra stripes catching the sunlight. Santana’s robes were ostentatiously red, just edging on orange, just to make it clear they were not under any circumstances to be confused with Griffindor colors. It made Rachel smile, how alike they were in their differences. She was so busy smiling fondly that she didn’t notice the redhead about to trip over her rolling suitcase and come crashing into her, until he did just that.
“Arg! The fringe of orange cried, and he managed to catch himself before they both went tumbling to the ground. He steadied her by her elbows, shook the hair out of his face and promptly turned as scarlet as his hair. “I am so sorry. Bloody good job I’m doing at inter-school cooperation, knocking into people like this.” He seemed to be muttering to himself more than her, but Rachel put on her best show smile and held out her hand.
“That’s quite alright. I’m Rachel Berry.”
“Ron. And again I am so so- Slytherin.” Ron had been trying to straighten her luggage scattered around her feet, and at that moment found himself eyelevel with her Slytherin prefect badge.
“Well, yes,” Rachel clarified uncertainly, and her megawatt smile dimmed just the slightest. At that moment two more Hoqwarts students made their way over to Ron’s side- the boy, a bespectacled, lanky thing with an oddly shaped scar that could only be Harry Potter, that was eyeing Ron ruefully, and the girl, hair so bushy Rachel thought she would politely offer use of her hair straightener, was already eyeing Rachel suspiciously.
“Alright there Ron?” Harry Potter questioned, wiping some dirt off his shoulder.
“Brilliant.” Ron took a further step back from her, firmly placing himself by his friends’ side. “Just didn’t have my eye out for this one’s massive pile of luggage.” Somehow this had turned into her fault?
“Oh,” Harry had just noticed the snake crest on her bags. “You’re in Slytherin?”
Rachel let the last vestiges of her courteous smile drop and allowed the frown that had been building to firmly settle on her face.
“Yes. Is that a problem?” The frizzy haired one was just beginning to form a response, when Rachel felt two people walk up to her sides. She glanced over at Santana on her right and Noah at her left, and recognized the hard set to their jaws. They were evenly matched now, three to three, and they looked to be some distorted mirror image of each other: Harry and Rachel’s dark hair and unsure expressions, Ron and Santana’s sharp looks of suspicion, and the girl’s and Noah’s frankly ridiculous hair styles.
The confrontation ends in a stalemate, and leaves an unsatisfied, sour taste in Rachel’s mouth.
Dumbledore informed them that they’d be sharing rooms with the Hogwarts students of the same house, and then eyed Tina, sitting awkwardly in the corner, and suggested they’d make other arrangements for her. They never got around to it though, and Tina was left wandering the halls that night. Thankfully the Room of Requirement had shown itself to her and she had happily informed them over breakfast that the sheets had skulls on them.
Rachel herself had had a rough night. Once they’d really started talking, the two Slytherin camps had had a… divergence of opinion.
“Nothing worse than Hufflepuffs. Except Mudbloods of course.”
Santana stood, and Rachel could tell she was ten seconds away from telling Noah to hold her earrings. Santana’s girlfriend was a Hufflepuff, and Noah, though usually too busy picking on first years to attend to inter-house rivalries, was scowling; his best friend Finn was also a Hufflepuff and his mother was Muggle-born.
“You did not just say those words to me. I’ll have your bal-“
“I’ll have you know that both Hufflepuffs and Muggle-borns are extremely vital to the magical world. 27% of aurors are Hufflepuffs, and approximately 1 out of every 3 important magical discoveries, most notably spell-work, are made by the Muggle-born because they bring a fresh perspective.”
Everyone was staring at Rachel, but her eyes were locked on this unpleasant blonde boy and his highly illogical opinions. Honestly, all it takes is a little research. “How many ground-breaking feats have you made-“ she hesitated on the last name, usually being insistent to dismiss nicknames or last names. Noah knew this, and his mouth dropped open slightly in her pause. “Malfoy.” She stared him down triumphantly.
“Are you sure she isn’t a Griffindor?” Pansy whispered to Santana, but in the silence of the Slytherin common room, the question boomed.
“Yep. She’s definitely all ours.”
Santana was looking at her with something like pride but with a pinch more smugness than the usual person, and Rachel smiled back.
Hogwarts seemed to divide their class schedules by houses much more than they ever had at McKinley. It wasn’t that she disliked the Slytherins - they were her people after all - but she missed Kurt and Mercedes gossiping in the back row, and Brittney’s questions that left the professor bewildered and unsure how to continue, and even Quinn rolling her eyes at Rachel’s excitement about their new essays. Sure, the houses at McKinley slept in the same rooms and hung out in the common room, but they didn’t always sit eating together or have all the same classes; Rachel found it rather creepy that they were confined to one long table of just Slytherins for meals. It was like they were being kept apart, which she didn’t find healthy in the least. No wonder the rivalry was so strong between the Griffindors and the Slytherins here; it’s hard to see the other side as people when you rarely saw them at all. She barely even came across people from the other houses, besides passing each other in the halls, and those she knew that did had to make an effort. Santana snuck nightly into the Hufflepuff girls’ dormitory, and she knew Noah was practically playing musical beds every week, because he bragged about it every morning.
Hermione took the empty seat beside her in the library that Wednesday. She folded her hand carefully in her lap, a two-pronged crease forming between her eyebrows. “I think we got off to the wrong start.” And she looked as if she was waiting to be laughed at, to be cursed and spit on, and Rachel wondered crossly exactly what the Hogwarts Slytherins had done to make her expect so little of the whole house. She smiled brightly instead and extended a hand.
“Me too. Truce?”
Hermione looked startled but, seeming to find no fault in neither her fingers nor her earnest expression, took her hand and Rachel shook it excitedly. Friends weren’t something she came by often.
“What are you studying?”
“Divination.”
Hermione appeared to be holding in an expression of distaste out of politeness.
“I know it’s not thought of very highly, but Daddy says I could have inherited the sight from Bubby, and I’ve always thought I’m a little psychic. I’m quite skilled for a witch my age, but my tessomancy isn’t perfect. I always seem to be seeing giraffes in the leaves, but logically not everyone I read for could be about to lose their left hand. I have trouble with ovomancy, for obvious reasons.”
Hermione looked at her interrogatively. “Why?”
“I’m a vegan.”
The other girl seemed to sink into herself at this point, appearing to be thinking something over. Rachel watched her think in one of her rare moments of silence, content to notate her own transcriptions of last class. When she roused, turning her serious gaze on Rachel, she set down her quill.
“Would you like to study for Potions sometime?”
Rachel resisted her initial compulsion to clap and do a little twirl, and instead picked up her quill again, smile wide and giddy on her face. “That would be nice.”
“You don’t act like a Slytherin” Ron pointed out, his arms crossed but face twitching, as if he was unsure what stance he was supposed to be taking.
“I actually almost got sorted into Griffindor, but I argued Ralph down.”
She saw Harry turn his head slightly at this, as if she’d caught his attention, out of the corner of her eye.
“Ralph?”
“The Sorting Hat.”
“You named your Sorting Hat Ralph? Some kind of queer ship you’re running over there.”
“Don’t be silly. Ralph named himself.”
Ron shook himself out of the murky waters of swamp confusion, only to return to another state of bewilderment.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be in Griffindor?”
Something about his expression told her not to insult the house whose table she was sitting at. She’d heard from Draco that Ron’s whole family was in Griffindor, going back generations. She thought that was nice, to have family traditions.
You don’t understand. At McKinley it isn’t like it is here. The Griffindors are kind of… ostrasized.”
“Whatever for?”
Rachel hesitated. “People don’t like to talk about it. Let’s just say there was a crew of Griffindors that lost a very important war.” She raised her eyebrows, and something like realization dawned on Ron’s face, before he frowned.
“I thought that was a Muggle battle.”
“It was, but then the magical community got involved… it was a mess. And everyone blames the Griffindors because they went in unprepared, no back up, no battle plan. It was grossly irresponsible. I know what you all think about the Slytherins here, and it’s not to that level, we don’t hate them or anything, but… it’s dangerous. That level of ego. Everyone says that Griffindors grow up to be reckless and big-headed. And I… I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a part of something great. But-“ she hedged, seeing Ron start to fume. “I’m sure you’re not like that. I mean, you wouldn’t go into to battle without a plan.”
Hermione seemed to be looking at Harry with a face of sharp smugness while he sputtered.
“Well, err, that is to say-“
“I see your grasp on the English language has much improved, Potter,” Draco drawled from behind her, “Pretty soon you’ll have mastered nouns. Maybe even a full sentence.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Just checking to be sure you weren’t torturing one of my Slytherins. I thought for sure she could only be here under duress. Are they holding you hostage, Berry?”
Rachel grinned. “Nope. I’m here of my own free will.”
He sniffed. “Your taste of company is unbefitting of a Slytherin. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’ve been temporarily struck blind and deaf. I can’t say the same for Lopez’s sense of direction. She appears to have found herself amongst the Hufflepuffs.”
They all turned to watch Santana sitting on the table in front of Brittney, explaining an article in the Daily Prophet to the blonde. She leaned forward to tuck a strand of hair back up into Brittney’s hunting cap. Rachel smiled.
“I think her direction is just fine.”
Rachel walked into the Slytherin common room to find Theodore blatantly hitting on Santana, and Santana blatantly rebuffing him. So basically it was a typical Tuesday.
“Listen, you little rat-faced twerp. I told you I’m dating someone else.” Rather than shrinking under her poison gaze, Theodore puffed up.
“My face isn’t ratty, it’s aristocratic. And I’m sure you get lonely with your lover all the way back in America. I could just-“
“What?” Santana violently shoved his creeping fingers away from her thigh. “She’s in another house, and she’s in the building and she has a nasty right hook,” which was a lie, Brittney even had a hard time eating gummy bears because she was afraid of hurting them, “so back the fuck up!”
Theodore seemed to be mulling that over, before his face it up.
“Don’t. Even. No one touches my girl but me, even if I’m supervising.” He finally deflated.
“I take it you don’t do much inter-house dating?” Rachel questioned curiously.
“Why would we?” Pansy piped up from one of the leather chairs by the fireplace, playing a game of wizard’s chess with Vincent which had devolved into a game of who could cheat better. Her queen was flirting her way past his knight. “Slytherins are clearly superior in every way.”
Rachel knew this to be a lie. Not from personal experience, mind you, but she’d heard enough talk from Santana and Noah to ascertain that Hufflepuffs were the best at foreplay, Ravenclaws the most creative in bed, and Deercots the best kissers. Slytherins were the dirtiest, but that was to be expected. Neither had any first-hand knowledge of the Griffindors’ skills, but she’d heard Noah grumbling once that they never put out.
Artie, one of the Griffindors, wheeled up to them. His mother had been hit by a magnified petrificus totalus curse just before he was born and it had gone disastrously wrong; he couldn’t move the lower part of his body and not even the most advanced mediwizards could counter it. He made it work for him though; his chair hovered about six inches from the ground and played Muggle rap music whenever he felt like he needed to make an entrance; she admired his courage.
When they’d announced the lists of student who would go to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament she’d thought “well that’s a waste; what good would he be in the challenge?” She felt guilty for even thinking it now, and she smiled apologetically.
Did you know that if you sing magic it creates murals of the air? And each singer changes it, their mood and talent, so that each performance is different; no two are the same.
“I can see what you all are thinking when you look at people from other houses.” Hermione frowned, and even then Rachel knew she was thinking that she couldn’t know, no one could tell that. “You think ‘that Hufflepuff boy’ or ‘the girl from Ravenclaw’ and when it’s someone you don’t like, you think, ‘well he’s in Slytherin and they’re all alike.’”
Hermione’s face twisted, and Rachel hated this, fighting with her friend. But this was important, and at the moment they were both still calm. “And I suppose you’re quite different then. I’ve seen the way you all look at the Griffindors.”
“True. We’re not perfect. But what about everyone else? When I see Brittney, I don’t think Hufflepuff, I think about how much she misses her familiar Captain Snuggleteeth, and how she can be so sharp sometimes even though she can seem a bit… simple. And I know that Quinn is in Ravenclaw, but I also know how much she hates that we remember her from before she had all those cosmetic spells and that she always sits one row back from the edge in the stands during Quiddich games because she’s afraid of heights.” Hermione’s head was tilting, and Rachel thought, yes, finally, I’m getting through. “Their house is a part of them, but it’s not the whole thing. They’re still people. There’s more to them.”
Draco had picked up “yo mamma” jokes from the transfers but they hadn’t quite translated correctly.
The blonde stared down smugly at Harry.
“Your mother’s dead.”
(Noah kept having to pull him aside to explain the concept again as Santana viciously rolled her eyes.)
With the walls between houses down, Kurt finds that one of the Griffindor boys, Blaine, a transfer from the all-boys school in upstate New York, wasn’t that bad after all.