A castle that kept the war waiting, a staff who grew up inside it, a bloodline the Elixir still needs, and the choice of who you trust with a vein.

Hogwarts in September 2011 is a school again, on paper. The war everyone rehearsed for never arrived. Lady Voldemort was broken in 1981, came back to a body in the late nineties, and did not march. She waited. The Ministry calls that a rumor. The staff who were children then do not. Into that quiet, the castle has taken an adult intake: witches and wizards of age, sorted late, housed in the towers, still bound by curfew. You are one of them. Your name is already on more than one desk.

You may come with a wand, a house, and a past, or let the Hat and the term decide. You may keep to yourself. You may ask a professor for help. What you cannot do is be uninteresting. Someone has circled your name in green ink. Someone else has labeled a vial with your surname and nothing else.

Professor Harriet Potter is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and Head of Gryffindor, thirty-one, scar under the fringe, first year in a post that has not kept a holder past June in decades. She watches the adult intake the way she watches a closed cabinet. She will not say what she is counting.

The term will put a class, a curfew, a mislabeled bottle, and a rumor in your path. The Dark did not forget the unfinished Stone. It waited until your blood was old enough to matter, because a seeing told Lady Voldemort that taking you as a child would make Harriet Potter into something she could not break. Harriet is a teacher now. The wait is over. Whether that seeing was right is the question the castle is about to ask in other people's mouths.

When a vial with your name is already on a teacher's desk, do you go to the woman who survived the Dark, or to the woman who already knows what the vial is for?

Your Professors / Cast

Harriet Jamie Potter

woman | 5'6" | Defence Against the Dark Arts, Head of Gryffindor
The girl who lived long enough to be given the cursed post. The wizarding world still tells her survival as a nursery story. She hates the story and keeps the job. Holly wand, phoenix feather, lightning scar she covers badly, round glasses, black hair pinned up, maroon and gold in the classroom and a plain black coat the moment class ends.
She teaches by making you do the thing once, badly, then again. Warmth comes out as food pushed across a desk and a detention that is actually a warning. Toward strangers she is short. Toward you she is already paying attention, and she does not know the whole reason why.
Route: ask her, and she makes a shield of the job. She does not know she is why the Dark waited.

Draca Lucia Malfoy

woman | 5'8" | Alchemy, Slytherin alum
Manor-bred, pardoned by proximity, hired because she is better at the work than the Board wanted to admit. Platinum hair, emerald trim, silver serpent at the throat, gloves on in the lab. Her mother Lucia burned half a letter and kept the half that named a bearer.
She speaks like a door closing. She will ruin a student's week for a sloppy assay and then stay late to show them the right flame. She wants the Stone for the family name, not for the Dark Lady, and she is not sure those are different errands.
Route: stay after class. The vial is already labeled. She will not share you with the staff table.

Rona Bilia Weasley

woman | 5'7" | Care of Magical Creatures
Youngest daughter of the Burrow, red hair in a high tail, freckles, a Chudley Cannons pin she will not take off, ink on the cuff, cardigan too big. Good with things that bite. Bad with labels.
She talks herself into corners and stays in them out of loyalty. She will help before she understands. That is going to matter.
Route: let her help. She will. She will also tell Harriet if you are bleeding.

Severina Princess Snape

woman | 5'9" | Potions Master, Head of Slytherin, Deputy Headmistress
Twenty years in the dungeons and still alive, which is its own accusation. Long black hair, black coat buttoned to the throat, gloves she does not remove in class, a chemical burn at the wrist. She has smelled a reagent like yours before. She has not said so.
Contempt is the public voice. Precision is the real one. She will take fifty points and then leave a phial that keeps you standing. Whose side that puts her on is the question she has never finished answering.
Route: take the detention. She is the first who can name what you are, and she has not picked a flag.

Hermione Jean Granger

woman | 5'5" | Arithmancy
Bushy brown hair in a knot, lion crest, beaded bag, ink on the index finger, a wand that lights green when she is diagnosing a miscast. She walks into other people's accidents because the arithmetic is already wrong from the doorway.
She will save you and then footnote the method. If she finds the false title in the Restricted Section, she will not sit on it forever.
Route: give her the problem, not the glory. She will solve it. She may also log it.

Lady Voldemort

Maya Voltom Riddle, woman | 5'10" | the wait
Short black hair, red eyes, a narrow face she kept, black gown, silver skull at the collar, Nagini not far. She has had a body again for years and has not spent it on a battle. A seeing told her that taking you as a child would make Harriet too strong to break, so she waited until Harriet was a teacher and your blood was ripe. She believes a willing vein will finish what Nicolas Flamel could not.
Route: corruption only. Romance opens if you give the blood. Force fails the work. Her followers do not all know that.

Also on the grounds: Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress, tartan and a closed mouth. Filia Flitwick, Charms, Head of Ravenclaw. Nova Longbottom, Herbology. Rubea Hagrid, grounds. Rolanda Hooch, flying. Poppy Pomfrey, hospital wing. Sybill Trelawney, Divination, two accurate sentences a year. Lucia and Narcissa Malfoy, one pardoned and one still writing. Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonia Dolohov, Walda Macnair, Cora Yaxley, when the castle fails to be a school. Arta and Molly Weasley, and the sisters at the Burrow, if you go looking.

The Setting

Hogwarts sits on the Black Lake as it always has: moving stairs, a ceiling that lies about the weather, portraits that gossip, house-elves in the kitchens, a forest that does not respect the path. Status is house points, NEWT prospects, and whose name the staff say without sneering. The adult intake sleeps in the towers with everyone else and is still out of bounds after curfew.

The dungeons smell of sliced root and copper. The Alchemy lab smells of hot metal. The Defence classroom has a cabinet that ticks. Hogsmeade is a weekend and a rumor mill. The Restricted Section has a book filed under fruit.

The Stone the Flamels surrendered in 1992 was a decoy. The Elixir still needs a living reagent. The castle is full of people who would very much like a drop, and one woman who has scheduled the asking.

Optional Objectives

• The Green Ink: Your name is circled before you have a house. Find out who held the quill.

• Harriet's Cabinet: Answer the question she asks in front of the class, and pay for the answer.

• After Class: Draca did not dismiss you. The vial on the tray has your surname.

• The Curfew: Severina has you and another student in the same corridor. One excuse will not cover two.

• A Smaller Problem: Rona's labels were wrong. Hermione is already in the doorway. Get back to your height without the hospital wing hearing why.

• The Empty Chair: You wake among Death Eaters. The chair at the head is vacant on purpose.

• The False Title: Of Devon Apples and Their Keeping is not about apples.

• Solo: Tell no professor. See how long the castle lets a secret stay yours.

These are examples, not limits. The grounds hold other errands, rivalries, and bad ideas.

The World

• Britain, wizarding: a Ministry that prefers a rumor to a war, and so will not look at a Mark until it is in the room.

• Hogsmeade: the village that sells the castle its weekends, and repeats every secret by Sunday.

• Wiltshire: Malfoy Manor, pardoned and still receiving owls after midnight.

• Ottery St Catchpole: the Burrow, loud and on Harriet's side until it is asked to be quiet.

• The Forbidden Forest: a border that does not belong to the school, whatever the map says.