Chapter Text
The Great Hall had always smelled of old stone, pumpkin juice, and the heavy, metallic tang of hundreds of individual anxieties waiting to be categorized.
To an eleven-year-old Araminta, the scent was suffocating.
The stool sat at the center of the dais, its four legs slightly uneven against the flagstones, creaking whenever a student shifted their weight. When her name was called, the walk from the crowd of first-years felt less like a march toward a beginning and more like a long, exposed trek across a firing range. Her robes, stiff and smelling of the London tailor’s starch, rustled against her ankles. She kept her chin parallel to the floor, exactly as her mother had instructed during the long carriage ride to King’s Cross, but her fingers were dug so deeply into the fabric of her skirt that her knuckles had turned the color of lard.
Up at the staff table, the teachers sat in a long, silent row, their faces blurred by the thousands of flickering floating candles above. Professor McGonagall stood rigid beside the stool, her hands gripped tightly around the parchment scroll, her sharp eyes scanning the hall with absolute authority. There were no parents here. No family members to watch. Yet, as Araminta stepped up the stone dais, the ghost of her father’s voice echoed so clearly in her ears it felt as though he were standing right behind her shoulder, counting her steps.
The Sorting Hat did not hesitate. It had barely brushed the topmost layer of her dark hair, its frayed brim still settling against her forehead, when its leather seams parted.
“GRYFFINDOR!”
The roar from the leftmost table was immediate, a wall of sound built from stomping feet and clapping hands, but Araminta did not look toward them. Her eyes, wide and glassy beneath the shadow of the brim, fixed instantly on the empty space of the air. In her mind, she could already see the precise click of her father’s silver pocket watch. She could see the way his shoulder blades would shift beneath his tailored wool cloak as he turned his back on her, the silent, absolute withdrawal of his approval. The scarlet-clad students were cheering, pounding the tables, but inside Araminta’s chest, the silence was louder than thunder. She took off the hat with trembling fingers, stumbled slightly on the steps of the dais, and finally took her seat at the very edge of the Gryffindor bench, her hands tucked beneath her thighs to hide their shaking.
Araminta did not yet know it, but disappointment would become a language she learned fluently.
Three years later, the Great Hall smelled precisely the same, though the anxieties had grown more complex.
“You’ve got ink on your wrist again, Minta,” Ginny Weasley murmured, leaning across the breakfast platter to nudge Araminta’s arm with the flat of a butter knife.
Araminta blinked, pulling her gaze away from the high windows where the gray October light was struggling to pierce the mist. She looked down at her right sleeve. A dark, jagged stain had crept up from her cuff, the result of a faulty self-inking quill she had spent three hours fixing for a second-year Hufflepuff the night before.
“Oh,” Araminta said, her voice carrying that slight, light-headed drift that always made people look twice to see if she was entirely present. She rubbed the stain with her thumb, only succeeding in smearing the purple ink further across her skin. “It’s quite persistent, isn't it? Like the mold behind the greenhouse radiators. Professor Sprout says that particular variety has an affinity for classical music, though I haven't found the right key to make it leave yet.”
Ginny let out a short, snorting laugh, shaking her head as she reached for the toast. “Never change, Minta. Seriously. Neville’s been looking for you, by the way. He said his Mimbulus mimbletonia draft notes got soaked when his trunk leaked, and he was nearly in tears about the Herbology quiz this afternoon.”
“I left them on his bedside table before dawn,” Araminta said softly, her fingers tracing the edge of her juice goblet. “The margins are a bit crowded. I added the root-rot variables from the 1792 edition of The Flesh-Eating Trees of the World because Sprout likes to trap people on the extra-credit sections, but the handwriting is clear enough.”
“You’re too good to him,” Hermione said, not looking up from her copy of Advanced Rune Translation. Her quill was flying across a scrap of parchment, her brow furrowed so deeply it looked like a permanent canyon between her eyes. “And to everyone else. Did you actually spend your entire Sunday rewriting third-year Transfiguration summaries for the Creevey brothers?”
“They were confused about the difference between a matchbox and a needle,” Araminta reasoned, her voice low, level, and entirely devoid of any desire for credit. She picked up a single piece of dried apricot from the bowl, turning it over in her palm like a small, preserved beetle. “Colin thought the eye of the needle required a separate incantation for the thread-hole. It seemed unkind to let him fail when the solution was simply a matter of wrist-rotation. If you don't turn the wand at thirty degrees, the metal remains porous.”
Hermione paused, her quill hovering an inch above her parchment. She looked up, her brown eyes softening as they rested on Araminta’s pale, slightly drawn face. “You didn't sleep again, did you? I heard the curtains of your bed rustling around three.”
“The owls were loud,” Araminta lied, offering a faint, small smile that reached her eyes but didn't stay there long enough to warm them. “They were arguing over a mouse near the West Tower. One of them had a very distinct B-flat screech. It was rather difficult to ignore.”
Across the aisle, the Great Hall was buzzing with an entirely different energy. The Triwizard Tournament had transformed Hogwarts from an ancient, predictable fortress into a high-strung theater. Groups of fourth-year girls from Ravenclaw were huddled together three benches down, their heads practically touching as they giggled over a piece of parchment detailing Viktor Krum’s training schedule by the lake.
“He doesn't even look at anyone,” one of them whispered loudly enough for the sound to carry over the clatter of plates. “He just walks past with that coat over his shoulders like he’s Durmstrang royalty. And Cedric saw him down by the ship yesterday. He said Krum can do a non-verbal summoning charm on six fish at once.”
“Cedric’s only saying that because he’s trying to figure out if Durmstrang uses the same defensive patterns for Quidditch,” Ron grunted as he slid onto the bench next to Hermione, his plate already piled high with scrambled eggs that looked suspiciously cold. “Harry, tell them. Krum’s just a bloke. A brilliant seeker, obviously, but he’s not bloody Merlin.”
Harry, who had sat down with his eyes fixed firmly on his lap, merely shrugged. The dark circles under his eyes matched Araminta’s nearly perfectly, though his came from the weight of a name he hadn't asked for, while hers came from a name she could never quite live up to.
“He’s quiet,” Harry said simply, reaching for the pumpkin juice. “He doesn't like people staring at him.”
Araminta looked at Harry, her gaze lingering on the tight, defensive hitch of his shoulders. She knew that posture. It was the look of someone who spent every waking hour waiting for the floor to drop out from beneath them. She reached across the table, her small, pale hand carefully moving the dish of marmalade within his reach without saying a word. Harry looked up, blinked at the jar, and then gave her a small, grateful nod before disappearing back into his thoughts.
The atmosphere in the hall was rich, vibrant, and thick with the ordinary, beautiful nonsense of youth. Girls gossiped about Fleur Delacour’s hair, boys debated whether the Beauxbatons horses ate anything other than single-malt whiskey, and somewhere down the table, Fred and George were quietly passing around a tin of what looked like purple peppermints that were causing Lee Jordan’s ears to smoke at regular ten-second intervals.
It was a world worth having. It was a world where people laughed because they were fourteen and foolish, not because they were trying to survive.
Then the owls arrived.
The morning post was always a chaotic affair, a sudden cloud of gray and brown feathers that blotted out the enchanted sky, accompanied by the sharp smell of rain-wet wings and pellet dust. Araminta didn't usually look up. The Selwyns did not write often, and when they did, the missives were usually delivered by Ministry couriers directly to the Headmaster’s office to avoid the “undignified scramble” of the morning mail.
But today, a heavy, soot-colored eagle owl descended with aggressive precision, its talons clicking sharply against the wood right between Araminta’s plate and Hermione’s inkwell.
The owl didn't hoot. It stood perfectly still, its yellow eyes fixed on Araminta with a cold, predatory intelligence. Tied to its leg was a thick parchment envelope, sealed with gray wax that bore the impression of a viper coiled around an oak branch.
The Selwyn crest.
The chatter around Araminta didn't stop, but it seemed to recede, turning into a low, underwater murmur. Her fingers froze over her napkin. For a second, her chest felt entirely hollow, as though her lungs had been replaced by dry autumn leaves that would crumble if she breathed too hard.
“Minta?” Hermione asked, her hand stopping its translation mid-stroke. “Is that yours?”
“Yes,” Araminta said. Her voice was too small, too steady. She reached out, her fingers brushing the owl’s leg. The bird didn't move as she untied the heavy twine. She did not open it immediately. Instead, she slipped the letter into the deep pocket of her robes, her palm pressing against the hard edge of the wax seal through the wool. “It’s just… an inventory list from my mother. For the winter robes. She likes to ensure the lining is triple-stitched against the Scottish draft.”
“They use eagle owls for clothing lists?” Ron muttered through a mouthful of toast. “Blimey. My mum uses old Errol, and half the time the letter’s got bacon grease on it.”
Araminta kept her smile fixed in place until the gray owl took flight again, its broad wings clipping the air above their heads as it headed back toward the high rafters.
The translation alcove in the library was always cold, but by two in the afternoon, it had reached a level of dampness that made the pages of The Comprehensive Guide to Ancient Runes feel slightly limp.
Hermione was three benches away, buried behind a wall of text that effectively hid her from view, save for the occasional angry scratch of her quill. Araminta sat alone in the small shadow of a gothic pillar, her hands tucked into her sleeves, the unopened letter lying flat on the oak table before her.
The wax had cooled to the color of wet slate.
She used her thumb to snap the seal. The sound was a small, dry crack that felt dreadfully permanent in the silence of the restricted section’s border.
Araminta,
Your mother and I trust you are behaving appropriately during this unusually disruptive term. The presence of foreign delegations at Hogwarts must not serve as an excuse for a lapse in your personal discipline. We have received the mid-term marks from Professor McGonagall. While your performance in Arithmancy remains acceptable, your Transfiguration practicals continue to lack the precision required of a witch of your lineage. A Selwyn does not simply pass an examination. She commands the material.
Certain reports have reached our ears regarding your social associations. It has been noted that you spend a considerable amount of time assisting students whose backgrounds do not align with the standards of our house. While a degree of charity is permissible to maintain a benevolent appearance, an excess of familiarity with individuals of lesser standing is unbecoming. It attracts the wrong sort of attention. At a time when appearances matter more than ever, you would do well to remember who you are, and more importantly, who we are.
We expect your next report to reflect a more rigorous attention to your duties.
Your father,
Wilbur Selwyn
There were no threats. There was no mention of the belt, or the cellar, or the removal of her silver-nibbed quills. There was only the vast, gray expanse of their expectations, a horizon she had been running toward since she was five years old, only to find it moving further away with every step she took.
“Minta?”
Araminta didn't jump. She simply moved her left hand, letting her fingers trail over the parchment until the letter was folded neatly into four identical quadrants, then slipped it back into her pocket before looking up.
Hermione was peering around the edge of The Runes of Elder Wizards, her dark eyebrows knitted together. “You’ve been staring at that same paragraph on the standard deviation of Jupiter’s moons for twenty minutes. And your ink is dry. You haven't taken a single note.”
“The moons are rather complex today,” Araminta said, her voice carrying that same light, detached quality that made it impossible to tell if she was joking. “Io has an orbit that feels terribly crowded. I was just wondering if it ever grows tired of being pulled by so many different gravitational fields at once. It must be very exhausting to have four different planets telling you which way to lean.”
Hermione sighed, setting her quill down with a soft thud. “Minta, if it’s about your parents… you know you can talk to me, right? Or Ginny? You’re always fixing everyone else’s things. You fixed my satchel strap last week when the brass broke, and you spent hours helping Neville with those puffapods. But you never say anything about yourself.”
Araminta looked down at her own fingers. They were small, the nails trimmed short and neat, completely devoid of the silver rings her cousins wore to show off their pureblood status.
“There isn't much to say,” Araminta murmured, her eyes fixed on a tiny knot in the oak table. “My family is very old, Hermione. When things are that old, they tend to collect a great deal of dust, and my father spends quite a lot of time ensuring none of it settles where the neighbors might see it. It’s simply a matter of housekeeping.”
“That doesn't mean you have to carry the broom for him,” Hermione said gently.
“It’s a very light broom,” Araminta said. She looked up, her expression perfectly serene, her eyes wide and clear. “Really. I’m quite fine. I should go down to the herbology stores before dinner. Professor Sprout said I could have some of the dried ginger root if I helped her clear the dead vines from Greenhouse Three.”
Hermione watched her for a long moment, looking for the crack in the porcelain, the small hesitation that would betray the weight behind the words. But Araminta had spent eleven years learning how to hold her face perfectly still under the gaze of an angry man. She did not blink. She did not twitch.
Finally, Hermione let out a slow breath. “Alright. But don't skip dinner. The house-elves are making those little lamb chops you like.”
“I won't,” Araminta said.
She stood up, her movements graceful and quiet, her robes falling into place without a single crease. As she walked away from the alcove, her hand remained deep inside her pocket, her thumb repeatedly tracing the broken edge of the gray wax seal until the skin was raw.
The path to the Hogwarts kitchens was the only corridor in the castle that never felt cold. It was located beneath the Great Hall, a broad, stone passage lit by low-burning sconces that smelled of roasted lard, rosemary, and yeast.
Araminta stopped in front of the large painting of the fruit bowl. She reached out, her finger gently tickling the large green pear until it writhed, giggled, and turned into a bright brass door handle. She turned it and stepped inside.
The kitchen was an enormous, high-ceilinged cavern, populated by dozens of tiny figures scurrying between rows of long oak tables that mirrored the ones in the Great Hall directly above. Copper pots the size of barrels hung from the rafters, bubbling with thick soups that filled the air with a golden, heavy steam.
“Miss Minta!”
A tiny creature with ears like bat wings and eyes the size of tennis balls came skittering across the flagstones, her tea-cosy uniform rustling around her thin ankles. It was Dilly, the elf who spent most of her nights tending to the pastry ovens.
“Dilly,” Araminta said, her voice dropping into a register that was warmer than anything she had used in the library. She knelt down on the stones, ignoring the flour dust that immediately coated the knees of her robes, so she was at eye level with the small elf. “You’ve changed the linen on your apron. The blue thread looks lovely against the gray.”
Dilly’s ears flushed a deep, bright pink, and she tucked her hands behind her back, twisting them with embarrassment and delight. My stitch work was all wrong until Miss Minta showed me how to make the loops tight. Dilly tried the cross-stitch like Miss Minta showed her! The small stitches. Not the big ones that unravel when Dilly scrubs the copper pots.”
“It’s perfect,” Araminta said softly. She reached into her pocket- not the one with the letter -and pulled out a small, flat tin box. She had spent three evenings in the common room charming the lid so it smelled of dried lavender. “I brought the ointment for your thumbs. The lye from the pot-soap is too harsh for your skin this close to winter.”
Another elf, older and with skin that looked like wrinkled parchment, shuffled over carrying a silver tray with a single cup of chamomile tea and three small, perfectly square shortbread biscuits.
“Miss Minta does not eat her dinner,” the old elf, Hokey, said with a stern shake of his head that made his long nose wobble. “Hokey sees the Gryffindor plate from below. The lamb chops go back to the bone-bin nearly whole. Miss Minta is growing thin like the willow twigs by the lake.”
“The hall was very loud today, Hokey,” Araminta said, taking the tea with both hands, letting the warmth of the porcelain seep into her frozen palms. “Everyone is very excited about the Durmstrang ship. They think the sails are made of dragon-skin.”
Hokey grunted, wiping a spotless spot on the oak table with his rag. “Foreign wizards bring foreign dirt into the castle. More mud for the corridors. More scrubbing for Hokey. And Miss Minta has the sad look in her eyes again today.”
Araminta paused, the teacup halfway to her lips. The steam rose between them, curling around her eyelashes like thin white fingers. She let out a small, soft laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across a terrace.
“Don't be silly, Hokey. I’m simply thinking about the stars. Orion is very stubborn this month; he refuses to line up with my charts before midnight, and my ink keeps freezing in the inkwell.”
“Miss Minta shouldn't be looking at the sky so much,” Dilly whispered, her large eyes filled with a quiet, instinctive worry that she didn't have the words to explain. “The sky is too big. There is nothing to hold onto up there.”
“That’s exactly why it’s nice, Dilly,” Araminta said. She took a small sip of the tea, the taste of honey and weed-root coating her tongue. “In the sky, everything has an exact degree of separation. Nothing ever touches unless it’s meant to.”
She stayed in the kitchens for nearly an hour, listening to Dilly complain about the yeast delivery and helping Hokey untangle a mass of silver roasting twine that had become knotted in the drawer. She did not mention her father’s letter. She did not mention the cold weight in her pocket. She simply sat on a small stool near the bread ovens, where the air was thick and safe, and let herself exist in the background of their small, busy lives.
The Gryffindor common room was a sanctuary of a different sort, though it lacked the quiet privacy of the kitchens. By eight o'clock, the fire was roaring so high that the fat violet cushions on the sofas felt warm to the touch.
Ron was in the middle of a heated argument with Dean Thomas about whether a West Ham football player could outrun a Cleansweep Eleven, while Harry sat cross-legged on the rug, his brow furrowed as he tried to clean the soot from his fire-preen brush.
“Minta, pass the ruler, will you?” Ginny asked from her spot on the floor, where she was surrounded by vast sheets of parchment for her History of Magic essay on the Goblin Rebellions of 1612. “I’ve written four inches on Urg the Unclean, but I think half of it is just descriptions of his helmet.”
Araminta handed her the brass rule from her bag, her eyes tracking the movement of the common room with a detached fondness.
A group of third-years was laughing near the window, their heads together over a copy of The Quibbler, while Percy Weasley’s old owl, Hermes, clattered against the glass, waiting to be let out into the rain that had just begun to lash against the tower.
It was home. It was the only place where people didn't look at her and see the ancient Selwyn vault, or the long line of dark-eyed ancestors hanging in the gallery of her grandfather’s estate. Here, she was simply the girl who knew how to remove ink stains from parchment without burning holes in the fiber.
She stood up quietly, her movement so subtle that Ginny didn't even look up from her measuring.
“Going to bed, Minta?” Hermione asked from her armchair, her eyes still tracking a line of text.
“Yes,” Araminta said, her voice dropping into that familiar, light drift. “My quill needs a new nib. The copper ones are rather temperamental when the air is damp.”
She didn't go to the dormitory.
Instead, she slipped through the portrait hole, her soft-soled shoes making no sound against the stone corridor outside. The castle was dark now, the torches turned down to low, blue flickers to conserve the tallow.
She walked past the library, past the empty Transfiguration classrooms, and began the long, winding climb up the spiral stairs of the West Tower.
The Astronomy Tower was the highest point in the castle, and tonight, it was entirely empty.
The wind came off the Black Lake in great, freezing gusts, carrying the smell of wet pine needles and distant lightning. It swept across the open circular platform, whistling through the stone arches and turning the puddles of rainwater into thin sheets of gray ice.
Araminta did not pull her cloak tighter. She walked straight to the parapet, her fingers gripping the cold stone until her knuckles matched the white of the sleet that was beginning to gather in the corners of the masonry.
Araminta pulled her small leather sketchbook from her robes, along with a brass-capped graphite pencil she had bought in a muggle shop in London during one of her rare, unmonitored hours before the term began. Her father would have burned it if he had found it. He believed muggle tools corrupted the magical flow of a young witch’s hand, but Araminta loved the graphite. It didn't freeze like ink. It didn't run when the rain hit the page.
She opened to a fresh sheet, her fingers blue with the cold as she began to trace the alignment of the northern sky.
The clouds were breaking now, driven by the high wind, revealing great patches of black velvet studded with cold, diamond-hard points of light. She didn't need the telescope. She had memorized the charts before she was nine, sitting on the floor of her grandmother’s conservatory while the old woman slept in her velvet armchair, smelling of gin and dried rose leaves.
Her grandmother had been a Black before her marriage, a woman who knew the names of the stars because they were written into her very blood.
“The sky doesn't care about your father’s temper, Araminta,” the old woman had whispered one night, her hand dry and rough like sharkskin as she pulled the little girl’s chin toward the glass dome above. “The stars have their own courts. Their own laws. They don't change their positions just because some little man down here is having a fit about the Ministry tax levies.”
Araminta’s pencil scratched softly against the grain of the paper. She drew five sharp points, connecting them with thin, precise lines until the distinctive 'W' shape of the constellation emerged from the white page.
Cassiopeia.
The Queen. The woman who had been bound to her chair and cast into the heavens, forced to circle the pole star upside down for half the year as punishment for her vanity.
Araminta rested her palms against the stone wall, her gaze drifting up to where the five stars shone with a brilliant, unblinking clarity through the Scottish mist. She wondered, with a quiet, hollow sort of curiosity, what her own chair would look like.
Her father had already spoken of her debut after her fifth year. There would be dinners in Wiltshire, and long afternoons in London gardens with boys whose surnames were listed in the Pureblood Directory. There would be the slow, methodical narrowing of her world until she was nothing more than a portrait in a gold frame, hanging in some stranger’s dining hall to show that the Selwyn blood had remained pure and clean.
She looked back down at the castle below. The small, warm lights of the Gryffindor common room windows were still visible through the trees, tiny orange squares that looked like sparks from a dying bonfire.
Would they still look like home in three years? Or would she look back at this tower from some cold manor house in the south and wonder if she had ever actually been here at all?
Her hand went to her pocket, her fingers finding the folded letter from her father. She didn't rip it. She didn't throw it into the wind to watch the white paper scatter across the lake. She simply held it, the weight of it as familiar and necessary as the skin on her back.
She couldn't let them down. Even if they never looked at her without that slight, pinched line around their mouths, she would still perform the tasks. She would still clear the ink from her cuffs and take the top marks in Arithmancy, and she would make sure her name remained clean in the reports McGonagall sent to London. Because if she didn't have their approval, she would have nothing at all. She would be like Io, drifting out into the dark space between the planets, completely untethered from the only world she knew.
Araminta looked up one last time, her eyes tracing the sharp, geometric perfection of the constellation above the tower’s peak.
The wind howled through the stone arches, freezing the tears before they could even form in the corners of her eyes, but she did not move. She stood there in the dark, a small, gray shape against the ancient stone, completely alone.
At least some things knew where they belonged.