Entry tags:

beholder_2010, femslash, fic, mcgonagall/hooch, minerva mcgonagall, rating:pg13, rolanda hooch

FIC: "Air Heart" for leela_cat
Recipient: leela_cat
Author/Artist: magnetic_pole
Title: Air Heart
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Minerva McGonagall/Rolanda Hooch (background Minerva McGonagall/Walburga Black)
Word Count: 7,814
Warnings: None
Summary: Minerva McGonagall takes flight.
Author's/Artist's Notes: Leela, you mentioned that you were interested in alternative explanations of canon events. I hope this fits the bill. Thanks to S for beta assistance, and all of my appreciation to our fearless mod for her support and patience and for continuing to support this wonderful fest.

***

1.

Sometimes the smallest things change our lives so profoundly that we can't imagine who we might have been had they not happened. In my case, the event was a chance encounter with a flustered Headmaster Dippet under the cavernous vaults of Kings Cross Station on September 1, 1939.

It was the start of my third year at Hogwarts, an overcast day and a noisy one, filled with the chatter of children and the impatient whistle of the train and the occasional roll of thunder threatening bad weather in Muggle London after our departure. Damp and cross, my hair frizzing and my glasses slipping down my nose, I was dragging my trunk through the crowd when I ran up against a most unexpected figure.

"Headmaster!"

It was, indeed, the skittish, balding wizard who was scheduled to deliver our Sorting Feast address in just a few hours. I had never encountered him outside of Hogwarts before; in fact, it took me a moment to recognize him.

"Miss McGonagall!" he exclaimed. An expression of surprise--and pain; I'm quite sure I had stepped on one of his silver-buckled toes--faded to almost palpable relief. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you, Miss McGonagall. Responsibility personified. Just the right person for the job. You see, we--that is--I--"

He glanced about himself as if he had forgotten something, and then reached out and seemed to pluck two girls out the crowd. I didn't recognize either. One was tiny, a plump young thing with puffy, bespectacled eyes and a wet nose and limp brown hair and a plush animal under her arm--a Firstie, undoubtedly, and an unremarkable one at that. The bigger girl, however, was like no Hogwarts student I had ever seen. She had wild brown hair, cropped like a boy's, and a jutting chin, and sharp, darting yellow-brown eyes. She wore a brown leather jacket and an odd pair of safety goggles pushed up on her forehead. She was impossibly mature for a first year, taller than me, with breasts and hips like my mum's, and an air of suspicion about her.

"Make certain they reach Madam Pomfrey, she's the one who will deal with them, that's a good girl," the Headmaster said. "I must run, I have a meeting with the Mug-- with the other Prime Minister."

"But--" A protest was forming on my tongue. You must remember, dear reader, that I was thirteen and looking forward to a long train ride--and an equally long conversation--with my two closest friends whom I hadn't seen since June. No one had comforted me on my first, unhappy ride northward, and somehow my own loneliness that first day had convinced me that the very moral fiber of the wizarding world was formed through character-strengthening exercises like that one.

"You must help out, Miss McGonagall!" Dippet said bracingly. "We will all be helping out more now. Hogwarts is helping with the War effort! Yes, yes, helping with the War effort!"

And with that he vanished.

I was not ignorant of the War, but I did not fully understand why there were so many soldiers marching on the streets of London, or why my father had begun reading the Muggle newspapers, or why on that day Kings Cross had been crowded with throngs of school aged children. I certainly didn't connect the War with anyone I knew. And so I turned to the Firsties and said with perfect innocence: "You must both be sad to leave home. Why don't you come sit with me? My name is Minerva."

"I'm Rolanda," the bigger girl said. She had a low voice and an accent I couldn't quite place. "This is Myrtle. Where are we going?"

"We're going to find a compartment," I said. "We can sit together."

As we settled in and the train pulled out of the station, I looked up through the compartment window and saw the curious, dark eyes of Lucretia and Walburga, the two friends with whom I would have sat had I not acquired my charges. I waved them away with a roll of the eyes and a gesture that was meant to convey later. Lucretia was not the type for comforting first years, anyway. They peered inside the compartment curiously, then moved on.

"Those are my friends Lucretia and Walburga Black," I said by way of explanation. "They're in Slytherin. You'll meet them later, I'm sure. I'm in Gryffindor."

Rolanda stared out the window, watching the landscape pass more quickly as the train picked up speed.

"Do you want to clean up?" I asked Myrtle, offering her a handkerchief from my trunk. She took it sullenly with one hand and wiped her nose on the back of the other. The plush animal was still lodged under her arm.

"Looks like rain," I said, and then, when that elicited no response: "All sorts of lovely food at the feast," I said. "Do you like pumpkin?"

Myrtle silently pulled both of her feet underneath her and draped her tartan skirt over her knees.

"Why don't you tell me about the day you got your Hogwarts letter?" I suggested. That was a favorite first-year story; I knew how the letters of almost all of my classmates had arrived.

And strangely, at that, Myrtle began to cry again, and Rolanda turned upon me almost angrily.

"What is this Hogwarts that you keep talking about? What's Slytherin? What's Gryffindor? Dad said I was to be evacuated to Mum's old school. I didn't know I needed a letter."



2.

As you've guessed, my dear reader, they were both Muggles. Or, more precisely, Squibs. Rolanda was exactly my age, the thirteen-year old daughter of a prosperous Muggle widower and a builder who had almost single-handedly covered Essex with semi-detached houses. Myrtle was the ten-year-old, apparently non-magical daughter of the Minister for International Magical Cooperation and a well-respected member of the Wizengamot. ("Ooooh," Lucretia whispered to me later, when she heard the story. "That must be a scandal." "She might still get a letter," I pointed out. Lucretia rolled her eyes. "She's already started school with the Muggles, hasn't she? Parents always know.")

As I learned on that fateful train ride, they had both been summoned to the Ministry at dawn that morning--"that crazy place inside the telephone box"--and their parents had had a very long, protracted conversation behind closed doors with several magical and Muggle bureaucrats. Rolanda’s father believed that Hogwarts was the safest place in the country at the moment, a fortress in the wilds of the north, and he would stop at nothing to have her evacuated there. Myrtle’s parents had been reluctant to lose track of her in the Muggle evacuation. The negotiations had been last-minute and tense and were left open-ended: there had been no discussion of what classes they would take, no thought to where they would live, no date set for their return to London. Until that day, Rolanda had not even known that her mother was a witch.

Perhaps because he meant to be kind, perhaps because he was afraid of what the Sorting Hat might or might not say, Headmaster Dippet excused Rolanda and Myrtle from the Sorting and allowed Rolanda and Myrtle to choose what Houses they would live in. Instead we gathered in the hospital wing with Madam Pomfrey, who explained classes and magical education and the house system in a kindly, patient voice. Myrtle, who had packed six books in her bag but forgotten her nightdress, chose Ravenclaw. Rolanda glanced at me with something between Slytherin cunning and Hufflepuff loyalty and declared her preference for Gryffindor with a laugh: "That sounds like me. Foolhardy, my father always says. I toss my fate to the winds."

Now, truth be told, in my heart of hearts I had rather hoped she would have actually admired Slytherin's cunning or Hufflepuff's loyalty and chosen to live there. (It was clear, even after a few hours' acquaintance, that Rolanda Hooch did not prize books and learning above the rest.) You see, by some stroke of luck, I was the only witch my age in Gryffindor, and for the last two years I had been the only student in the castle with a room to herself. But I recognized that the situation was hardly fair, and had Rolanda not selected Gryffindor herself, the Headmaster might very well have placed her there. At least the teary-eyed Myrtle was now Olive Hornby's charge.

We went to the Sorting Feast together, where Rolanda peppered me with questions about the houses, about meals and classes and friendships and alliances, and every student in the school seemed to stare at us. I had never seen anything like it. Rolanda seemed not to notice. Afterward, I stopped by the library for a few minutes to catch up with Lucretia and Walburga. Immediately I was the object of half a dozen questions; all anyone could talk about was the new girl with the leather jacket and the safety goggles.

"She's huge!" Lucretia said, leaning forward and eying me eagerly. "Do you think she has giant blood? Have you asked?"

"How is she going to attend classes? She doesn't know anything," Walburga asked reasonably. Walburga always got to the heart of the matter, in that cool, analytical way of hers. She pulled her long, black hair up off her shoulders and knotted it at the back of her head, pinning it in place with her wand. Then she frowned. "She doesn't even have a wand, does she? She can't do anything."

And indeed, when I arrived back at my room, Rolanda was sticking some photographs up on the wall near her bed the old-fashioned way, with some Spellotape from my desk. I thought of offering to charm them for her but held my tongue.

"I have some decorations," Rolanda said. "We had to pack up quickly, but I thought ahead, just in case. Dad says he thinks the War will be over in a few months, at most."

The photos were all of steely eyed women like Rolanda, with leather jackets and leather caps and safety goggles and scarves that blew in the wind.

"This one's my favorite, Amelia Air Heart," she said proudly, pointing to the one closest to her night table. "An aviatrix," she added. "She died young, lost over the Pacific a few years ago. I met her when I was little, at an event in London, with my father. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic."

"On a broom?"

"No," Rolanda said rather crossly. "In an aeroplane, of course. I fly, too, you know. With my father. I want to apply for a license soon."

We had changed into our nightclothes and climbed into bed, by then. I tapped my wand on the light, which dimmed, and snuggled down under the covers. It was odd, to fall asleep in a room with someone else. I was an only child, and I never had done so before. Indeed, I don't believe I had been alone with a Muggle before. Now there was Rolanda--and half a dozen Muggle aviatrices, all staring off into the distance defiantly.

"Good night, Rolanda," I said.

"Good night," she replied. And then, after a few minutes, when I thought she might have fallen asleep: "They don't seem very friendly here, Minnie."

I didn't realize she had noticed. "We don't get new students very often," I said as tactfully as I could. "They're just wondering what you will be like. They'll see, when classes start."

Rolanda didn't reply. I listened carefully for the sound of her breathing easily or crying, and when I heard nothing, I turned on my side and pulled the blanket over my head.



3.

My dear reader, I find it painful to tell you of Rolanda's first year at Hogwarts. Despite the best effort on the part of the professors, Rolanda and Myrtle quickly went from curiosities to oddities to, well, one must be frank about it: objects of ridicule. It shames me now to look back on it, but at the time, it was impossible for us to understand how little Rolanda knew of our life, or how unhappy Myrtle was at leaving her Muggle school in London, or how worried both were about their friends and families, especially when, that spring, the bombs started falling on London.

They both were slow to make friends in their House. I don't believe, in retrospect, that Headmaster Dippet had chosen wisely; as word spread about their arrival, it became clear that they had decided against three Houses without earning their place in the fourth. (As if the Sorting Hat decided a person's inclinations, or conferred a person's best qualities! But that was how the process was perceived.) Moreover, while both Rolanda and Myrtle were both placed in first-year classes that, theoretically, could be taken without a wand or without magic--Potions, Arithmancy, Herbology, history of magic--they struggled with all of them. Professor Slughorn was kind with Myrtle to the point of obsequiousness, but she was a squeamish child, and even the most basic, harmless potions ingredients-- rats tails or dragon's blood--made her cringe. She spent her time in Herbology talking aimlessly to her plush animal about her garden back home.

Rolanda showed no such signs of missing home, but she was obviously out of place, towering over her classmates. The boys eyed her breasts openly and sniggered at her wild hair and her goggles, which, much to my chagrin, she'd taken to wearing along with her robes. She was the target of cruel tricks in the hallways, particularly when I wasn't nearby to reverse a casual hex. She fell asleep in history of magic--which, to be fair, was a fairly common affliction among students of all magical abilities--and struggled with even the most basic Arithmancy. I had to work through every problem with her in the evening, after dinner, our scrolls and charts spread out across my bed. My dear reader, those assignments tried my patience as few other events in my life have; I hadn't made a mistake on an Arithmancy assignment since October of my first year, and I simply couldn't understand why Rolanda was so thick.

"It's just maths!" I said, throwing down my quill one grim winter night when I discovered that she hadn't solved a single problem correctly. "Didn't you learn anything before you came here?"

"Right," she said, tight-lipped. "No, I suppose I didn't. And you're not a Ravenclaw, so you're not smart enough to explain it to me."

I pulled back, stung. "What's so hard about the idea that the number seven has magical properties? It's not like six or eleven! You're the one who's refusing to learn!"

The only thing that made the year tolerable for her was flying. Apparently no magic at all was needed to mount a broom, and Rolanda was as nimble and quick and fearless in the air as anyone I'd ever seen. She commandeered an ancient Silver Arrow from the broom sheds that no one else cared about, and she flew it as gracefully on it as if were the latest Cleansweep or Comet. She had the endearing habit of shouting as she flew, letting out a long, loud whoop as she rounded the Astronomy Tower or flew over the empty Quidditch pitch.

We heard the same lecture over and over that year--in Transfiguration, with Professor Dumbledore, in Charms, with Professor Flitwick, in Wand Crafting, with Headmaster Dippet: we have guests here at Hogwarts this year, and they are to be welcomed; nothing negative is to be said about Muggles or Squibs or people without wands. Simply because one is not a wizard or a witch does not mean that one is stupid or unworthy.

And that's true. I can tell you that now: it's a truth so fundamental I would risk my life to defend it, and I have, more than once. But it's not what we're taught by our parents or our friends, or even our well-intentioned professors, and it's not an easy lesson to learn.



4.

The fact that Rolanda's second year at Hogwarts was happier than her first was due almost entirely to the fact that she had a talent for flying that even Andrew MacGonagall couldn't ignore.

Andrew was my least-favorite cousin, the eldest son of my father's younger sister, a brash, thick-skinned wizard with a genius for Quidditch and a completely undeserved Head Boy badge. He'd always had the worst MacGonagall traits, including the tendency to address all problems with crude force. Until I was sorted there myself, I had always thought of him as one of the Gryffindor MacGonagalls. (This is a story that shall never be repeated in the wizarding world, but I pleaded with the Hat for my parents' Ravenclaw, and I think Andrew knew it, because he mocked me mercilessly as Minerva the Lion-Hearted for weeks afterward.)

Truly, the boy didn't have an ounce of subtlety in his body--except for when he devised strategies for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, when he moved his players about the pitch with the finesse of Napoleon charting the domination of wizarding Europe. There, he was unrivaled.

Which was how I knew exactly what was on his mind when he deigned to sit next to me at breakfast on the second day of school, at the beginning of my fourth year.

"No Hooch this year?" he asked carelessly, as if he always joined us at meals. From the Slytherin table Lucretia rolled her eyes.

"She's back again," I said. "She's still making arrangements for her classes." (In reality, she was face down in bed in our room in the tower, groaning. "God, another year," she'd said. "Fetch me some toast, Minnie, will you?")

"Right," Andrew said, gesturing for two friends to come join us. They were both Beaters, big, knuckled-headed boys who lost us House points by neglecting to turn in their assignments. I glared at them.

"Do you think that half-giant you live with would like to try out for the Quidditch team?" he asked with a broad smile, loudly enough that everyone in the Great Hall must have heard him. Lucretia's eyes were as round as Quidditch hoops.

"She's not half-giant," I hissed immediately. The accusation was getting a bit tiring, especially since that was the year that Rubeus Hagrid joined us. I found Andrew's insensitivity galling, especially since he was now Head Boy and, ostensibly, official defender of all Gryffindors, great and small. "Besides, you hexed her on the way to Potions last week; why do you think she would want to play Quidditch with you?"

"It was just a size-changing spell on her robes, no harm done," Andrew said, shrugging. "I think she likes showing off those cauldrons." He exchanged a glance with one of his Beaters and laughed.

"I'll mention it to her," I said. "But I'll let her know you asked after the half-giant, too."

"Right," Andrew said affably. "Whatever you need to say to convince her. I want to move Frobisher here from Beater to Keeper this season, and we've agreed that Hooch is the best one to replace him. We've all see her fly. Make certain she tries out, will you?"

In the end I didn't have the heart to repeat Andrew's comment about half-giants to Rolanda, who wouldn't have understood it, anyway. She was touchingly flattered to be invited to tryouts.

"I've been reading up on Quidditch, Minnie," she said happily. "A proper British sport, isn't it? So many traditions and rivalries and rules, like cricket, but more dangerous."

Her eyes shone.

She was made a Beater, of course. Within a week, the Hufflepuff captain was watching her at practice and taking notes; within two, Andrew found a minion to follow her from class to class and reverse any hexes thrown in her direction, to ensure she was in top form for practice. Frobisher bought safety goggles for the entire team, for luck. Gryffindor won its first match against Slytherin after Andrew caught the Snitch by its wings thirty-eight minutes in, but Rolanda flew brilliantly, too, and everyone noticed. Andrew and Frobisher cheered her when she walked into the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, and she replied with a two-fingered salute that set them roaring with laughter. (It also cost Gryffindor ten points, I might add, but I could hardly be upset with her, not with all of Gryffindor cheering.)

Quidditch was good for all of us that year. Rolanda dedicated herself to learning the sport, and thank goodness she did, because Arithmancy had both of us at our wit's end. She had a certain discipline when it came to Quidditch that I had not believed her capable of, based solely on watching her study. She stayed up in the night, reading an old Quidditch rule book she had checked out of the library.

"Why don't you ask your father to buy you a better broomstick?" I asked after it seemed obvious that the sport had set itself up as a permanent fixture in our lives. "You'd do better with a Comet than that old Silver Arrow. You can ask Gringotts to convert pounds to Galleons, you know."

I'd never seen Rolanda look embarrassed, but at this comment she flushed and averted her eyes. "I didn't think I could ask my dad, you know," she said. "A hundred galleons for a broom? He would think that's ridiculous."

"It's good value, especially if you buy at the full moon, when owner is absent at Quality Quidditch," I said. "The assistant is willing to bargain." (Yes, my dear reader, I had researched them thoroughly. I had an eye on one myself.)

"Brooms are used to sweep the floor," she said with a shrug. "And my dad has more important things to worry about than sport. He just got another contract for emergency housing."

The War loomed beyond us, real but distant. "You would never sweep the floor with a Comet," I said, deliberately missing the point.

She smiled. "No, I wouldn't."

Because of Rolanda, I started to play again myself. I was not as good as Rolanda because I lacked her utter fearlessness in the air, but I had always enjoyed Quidditch, in the desultory way of someone who'd grown up batting about a Quaffle with her Mum and Dad. Now I threw myself into it with almost as much enthusiasm as Rolanda. I began practicing with her in the afternoons, teaching her the rules of the game in the evenings, watching her matches and offering advice. Walburga and I would spend our Sundays reading about Saturday matches in the Prophet and taking notes on the performance of various Beaters who, like Rolanda--as Walburga pointed out--had a clean turn and good aim but very little power in their backhand stroke.

Because Walburga loved Qudditch, too, my dear reader. She had no talent for flying, but she had an astounding facility with facts and figures, and she devoured the minutiae of the weekly reports with the appetite of a Bicorn. I'm not sure why I hadn't realized just how much she loved it, except that Lucretia had never been too fond of the sport, and it was hard to get a word in edgewise when Lucretia was around. Now, for the first time, Walburga and I spent our afternoons together, without Lucretia's constant commentary. I loved talking sport with her. I loved being with her. We wore cloaks and thick mittens and carried reference books and mugs of cocoa to the pitch, where we huddled together while Rolanda practiced, quizzing each other, talking excitedly, flushed with the pleasure of our own company. Every once in while Rolanda would swoop by with her trademark curdling yell, "Wooooooohoooooooo!"

In retrospect, I don't believe any of us had ever been happier. We had no idea at the time. Such is the nature of adolescent joy; it is completely unselfconscious.



5.

During Rolanda's second year at Hogwarts--my fourth--the War slowly invaded our magical fortress. There were small signs at first: a blackout spell that Headmaster Dippet cast over the castle that dimmed the heavens to the point that Professor Sinistra canceled our weekly Astronomy practicum indefinitely. Newspaper stories about the Blitz that Rolanda received from her father (via a Muggle postal carrier who made weekly trips to a box near the castle). More meals with potatoes. Fewer oranges. A report from Walburga's mother that their house in London had been jolted by the impact of a bomb two streets over.

"But it's Unplottable!" Walburga said, astounded, as she read us the letter one day over lunch. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and I squeezed her hand under the table.

"Apparently it's not Unbombable," Rolanda said dryly, digging into her pie. I gave her a stern look, but to no avail; I might have been Rolanda's closest friend, but in a competition with lunch, I lost out, every time.

In March the mood in the castle changed. A grim Andrew pulled me aside over breakfast one morning and asked me if I knew anything about a trip off school grounds. I didn't, but the worried look on his face--Andrew was largely ignorant of worry and the more negative emotions--caused my stomach to wrench for a moment. That night Gryffindor common room was unusually quiet, and all four sixth-year boys were nowhere to be found. Shortly after lights out, Andrew summoned the prefect Lucy Wheeler and left the Tower altogether.

Around three o'clock that morning, Rolanda and I woke to the sounds of boys whooping out on school grounds.

"Brilliant!"

"I'll wager there's not a single one left!"

"At this rate, they'll all be dead within the year! Yeeeeeeeeeeeah!"

"Burn, Muggle, burn!"

"Shhhhh....."

The next day, when we went into Hogsmeade, we learned that a town on the Clyde, north of Glasgow, had been bombed by the Luftwaffe several times that week. Rumor had it that one of the Slytherins had led a group of students out of school, off the grounds--no one was quite sure about the specifics of that feat--and, via brooms, to a nearby hilltop, where they watched the bombing with Omnioculars and drank Firewhiskey and talked about the prospect of an all-wizarding Scotland.

Rolanda, who had spent the previous summer with an aunt in a small village outside Glasgow, not that far away, was horrified.

"It was Lucretia's friend," she said darkly. "That Riddle boy. He's a Muggle-hater if I've ever met one."

I shrugged. "Perhaps. Not quite his style, though," I said, in an effort to be fair. I would love to say that I had foreseen Tom Riddle's descent into terror, but at fifteen I disliked him largely because Professor Dumbledore had offered him additional lessons in Transfiguration, something which I would have keenly enjoyed myself. "Dippet has been in his office all morning. We'll see which House loses points."

Rumor ran wild over the next week or so. First it was word of a planned midnight trip to loot in the bombed town, then reports of a new, secret society of pureblood students, then whispers that the ringleaders were to be expelled. Then there was a wave of justifications: no one had actually done anything wrong except leave school grounds; watching wasn't a crime; nothing had been taken, no one would want dirty Muggle items anyway. Everyone had an opinion. Several of the sixth-year boys looked so smug I would have given them detention on the spot, had I been the Headmaster, but after a day or so of conversations behind closed doors and one half-hearted school assembly to remind us that Muggles were no different from wizards, the matter was dropped entirely. No one was expelled. No one was placed in detention. No House lost points.

I don't condemn Headmaster Dippet, because I'm not sure that it's possible to recognize the stirrings of terrible things in our daily affairs, but I've often wondered what he said when he called Tom Riddle into his office that week, if he thought seriously about the implications of the rumors he was hearing, and if he later remembered that short, fruitless, afternoon meeting as one of those small events that just might have changed everything, utterly, forever.



6.

During Rolanda's third and final year at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle declared his love for Walburga Black, with profound consequences for everyone involved.

Profound to the adolescent mind, at least.

I'm not sure that Tom had any feelings for her at all; he was a cool, self-possessed boy, all charm and cunning and no real passion. And Walburga was too wistful for him, too ethereal, and in any case too wrapped up in her studies and her prefect duties for a boyfriend. But perhaps he sensed that, and pursuing a witch who would never have him was a strategy for remaining aloof himself. He was never too obtrusive in his attentions, just stopping by occasionally with a question, or complimenting Walburga on magic he had seen her perform.

Lucretia became completely impossible to live with. She had long been a friend of Tom's, and she admired him enormously herself, but perversely she dealt with her disappointment by trying to convince her cousin that she hadn't fully appreciated his charms and ought to give him a chance. It became impossible to study with her around, or to eat lunch peacefully, or be rid of her incessant comments about Tom, or Hogwarts weekends, or tea at Madam Puddifoot's, or the path on the way to the lake.

I defended Walburga against the unwanted attention both of them paid her, because...well, by my fifth year we were both prefects and obviously the two front-runners for Head Girl, and OWLs were coming up in June, and who else was I to study with? (Although, to be completely honest, even as quiet evening companions in the library--had either possessed the remotest interest in books or exams--Lucretia's and Rolanda's presence would have been unwelcome. The time I had alone with Walburga was precious.)

Rolanda, who ought not to have been affected in any way by Tom's unwanted affections, became inexplicably cross with Walburga, and that was simply awful, because Rolanda rarely made any effort at hiding her emotions, and we all suffered. It was an untenable situation, made worse by the stress of exams. The cauldron finally came to a boil at the end of May, with OWLs on the horizon for everyone except Rolanda, who had been prohibited from sitting for them. "That's fine," she had said after Headmaster Dippet called her to his office to break the news. "It's not as if a qualification in the History of Magic will do me any good." But classes became even more dull for her, now that she had no exams to prepare for, and proofreading her assignments became an exercise in futility; she wasn't even trying.

"Elfrida Clagg," I corrected her one evening, sitting on my bed and marking an abysmal essay on the history of the Wizard's Council. "Gunhilda is the name of the healer who developed the cure for Dragon Pox."

Rolanda joined me at the edge of my bed, peering over my shoulder at the heavily inked essay. "Elfrida, Gunhilda, I don't care," she said. "Why do wizards have such awful names?"

"They aren't that different from the ancient Muggle names," I pointed out.

"At least Muggles don't continue to use them into the twentieth century," Rolanda shot back in an argumentative tone that I had recently come to recognize. "Take Walburga. What kind of a ridiculous name is that?"

She might have complained about Minerva--or Lucretia, or Artemisia, or Barberus, or the names of any of a dozen of our classmates--but she didn't.

"It's a family name," I said reasonably, although, to be completely truthful, I had no idea. Everything the Blacks did seemed to be about family, though; it was safe to assume. "It's a pretty name. I like it."

"It's horrid," Rolanda said. "And it's pretentious for a sixteen-year-old witch who hasn't done a thing in her life except sit about and wait to be appointed Head Girl."

That stung. Already the Head Girl issue was a sore one with me; I wanted the position desperately, but in my darker moments, I was convinced I had some fatal flaw--my impatience at Potions, or my slightly awkward wand work, or my poor marks in Herbology my first year, or my long nose, or my hair's tendency to frizz in the rain, or (my dear reader, I must be honest with you here) my friendship with the oddest girl at Hogwarts--which would ultimately take me out of the running. Walburga had none of those liabilities. She simply had graceful, precise wand work, the highest marks in our year, and the purest blood of anyone I knew.

"Why do you persist in saying such negative things about her?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"I get tired of everyone's admiration," she said.

"She's never been anything but kind to you," I said.

Rolanda snorted. "As well she should be," she said. "That doesn't change the fact that I don't like her."

Her honesty was galling. "You're just jealous," I said, grasping. "You only wish you could be--you could be--" I caught myself just in time.

To Rolanda's credit, she simply shrugged. "I wouldn't like that life," she said. "Wouldn't take it if you offered it to me."

I would have dropped it at that, but Rolanda put her hand on my knee and took a deep breath, as if she were making an important decision, and looked me in the eye. "I am jealous, though," she said quietly. "I wish you loved me as much as you love her, Minerva."

I gaped at her, speechless. Her confession was completely unexpected, and I groped for a response, unable to do anything except articulate that surprising truth to myself, silently:

I loved Walburga.

As the old saying goes, a truth ignored comes back to hit you, like a Bludger.

After a moment of awkward silence, Rolanda stood up and flopped back onto her own bed. "Right. I suppose I'll still be here when that's crashed and burned," she muttered, curling up under the cover, facing away from me. "This God-awful War just goes on and on."

Had I not been sixteen and foolish, I would have realized immediately that Rolanda had earned her place in Gryffindor that day, and in my heart, had there ever been any doubt. As things stood, I finished marking the essay in silence, left it on the table between our beds, dimmed the light with my wand, and tried to quiet my thoughts with sleep.



7.

In the morning, Rolanda was out of bed before I awoke, but she found me at breakfast. She'd been flying, I could tell; her goggles were still wet with perspiration on her forehead.

"I found something I thought might interest you," she said in a normal voice that clearly meant we didn't need to discuss the night before. "Look at this."

She held out a magazine, folded awkwardly so that I could see a photograph but not the caption beneath it. The photo showed a familiar tall, thin witch with short, tousled hair, who was smiling and waving at the camera from in front of a small cottage with a lovely garden filled with wildflowers.

"I know her," I said slowly, trying to place her face, and Rolanda grinned.

I studied the woman for a moment before I realized. "My goodness!" I said. After three years of looking at her photograph on my wall, I should have recognized Amelia Air Heart's enigmatic, close-lipped smile immediately.

Rolanda thrust the magazine at me so that I could read the caption myself: Jocunda Sykes at her house in Windermere. This is where the famous witch lives when she is not defying gravity with her daring, long-distance broom flights.

"But this is Amelia Air Heart," I said, scanning the article in confusion. Jocunda Sykes had crossed the Atlantic on a broomstick several years earlier--the very first person to do so--and I remembered the excitement surrounding her flight clearly. Several of the older students had been granted permission to take a Portkey to London to join their parents at the Diagon Alley celebrations, and the second years had been asked to write an essay on her flight for charms--but, try as I might, I couldn't quite remember what she looked like. I had only the vaguest image of a witch who looked much like Amelia Air Heart in my mind.

I checked the date on the magazine: two weeks ago. I looked at Rolanda. "I thought you said she was killed," I said. "Years ago. In an aeroplane accident."

"She began a circumnavigation of the globe, but she went missing over the Pacific," Rolanda said. "Perhaps she Apparated. Perhaps she used a Portkey."

At that, the pieces began to come together. "So Amelia Air Heart is really Jocunda Sykes," I said slowly.

Rolanda laughed. "I think Jocunda Sykes is really Amelia Air Heart," she said. "No witch would have the courage to climb in a Lockheed Vega B5. Not after she's known the security of a broom."

We smiled at each other--close again, suddenly, in our shared secret. "Either way, she's fooled half of the world," I said.

We both rushed off to our own classes that morning, but I could hardly stop thinking of Amelia Air Heart, and apparently Rolanda couldn't, either. As I came out of Potions, Myrtle found me with a note from Rolanda:

She's probably the greatest flyer in the history of humankind, magic or Muggle, it said.

"Take this back to her for me, please, Myrtle?" I asked. Underneath Rolanda's comment, I added one of my own:

Only till you make a name for yourself.



8.

Rolanda's stay at Hogwarts came to an abrupt end a few weeks later, in June. I was in the midst of OWLs. She hadn't said anything about leaving, but I knew something was amiss when I returned to our room one evening and found her taking her pictures of women pilots down from the walls, her suitcase already packed.

"You're going?" I asked. "OWLs aren't over for another three days." It was a ridiculous comment; Rolanda wasn't taking any exams, of course.

"I know," Rolanda said.

"If you waited, you could take the Express..." I had begun to babble, but Rolanda cut me off.

"I'm going to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, Minnie," she said. "They aren't on the front line, but women are allowed to sign up and ferry aircraft. They're calling for civilian pilots."

"But you're only sixteen!"

"I'll be seventeen in September, and I look even older than that," she said. "And Dad says no one is asking many questions these days, anyway. He can arrange it." She shrugged. "I'm needed. I want to go home. I want to do something. It's not as if I need to prepare for NEWTs."

"But--"

And here I paused, because what right did I have to ask her to stay, or tell her that Hogwarts wouldn't be the same without her? But, irrationally, I wanted to. Everything had changed when she arrived, and everything would again change if she went away, I could tell already. My stomach squirmed anxiously.

"You're not coming back, then, are you?" I asked.

She shook her head. "There's nothing for me here." Then she grinned. "Except the Quidditch, of course."

"And me," I said. Unfair to play that card, I know, but I have always had a strong Slytherin streak in a crisis.

"Minnie," she said, setting her photos down on the desk and stepping toward me. "Minnie--"

She put a finger under my chin and drew me toward her. I stared at her, frozen, watching her yellow-brown eyes come closer and closer, until she tilted her head and closed her eyes and kissed me lightly on the lips.

I had never been kissed before. My heart pounded and I held my breath, willing the moment to stretch out forever. Then her lips parted, and her tongue slipped between my own, and I felt a surge of magic the likes of which I hadn't ever imagined. And then she pulled away.

"Oh!" I said, rendered speechless for the second time in as many months. "Oh!"

She chuckled under her breath.

"Rolanda--" I said, reaching out to catch her hand.

She pushed my hand away. "No blagging, Minnie," she said. "I'm off."

No blagging was an appeal to my sense of fair play, and it worked. I never committed a foul if I could help it, and I certainly never held onto my opponent's broom to slow her down; that was the worst sort of behavior on the pitch.

"I'll miss you," I said, instead.

"I'll miss you, too," she said.

Her father was to arrive by Portkey and pick her up in the Headmaster's office early the next morning, and so we said goodbye before bed. She embraced me roughly. "Come find me in my world," Rolanda whispered in parting, her voice a bit hoarse. "When you're ready. If you want."



9.

I didn't follow her, not immediately. I stayed for my sixth and seventh year, as prefect both times. I prepared for my NEWTs. I began to work with Professor Dumbledore on my Animagus transformation.

But my heart was no longer in my studies the way it had been before. The loss of Rolanda affected me deeply. So, too, did the souring atmosphere of those years---the increasing hostility toward Muggle-borns, the intermittent rumors of the secret society of purebloods, the bizarre accidents that began to befall Muggle-born students during my seventh and final year.

Myrtle's death was a shock to all of us--even, I suspect, those students who were experimenting with pureblood supremacy and who were hoping for an invitation to the secret society. She had lived with us, after all. But what finally jolted me out of my complacency was the sight of two Aurors leading Rubeus Hagrid--Hagrid, a harmless, sweet, thirteen-year-old boy!--out of Gryffindor Tower and the subsequent announcement that he had been expelled.

I raged. I fumed. Hagrid couldn't have opened the Chamber of Secrets; no one who had ever engaged in two minutes' serious conversation with him would have even considered the possibility. Justice had not been served. I went first to see Headmaster Dippet, who proved to be unresponsive, then to Professor Dumbledore, who prove to be sympathetic but impotent. I wrote to Rolanda, who replied rather bitterly that it was a good thing she had left Hogwarts already, since life for Muggles and half-giants was clearly hazardous. I asked Walburga to see if Tom couldn't look into this, somehow; he had a network of rather dubious friends who probably knew more than they were willing to let on to a Gryffindor prefect. She averted her eyes and shrugged, not quite promising to help, as I'd expected. Two days later, on a Hogsmeade Saturday, she made her excuses after lunch, and half an hour later, I caught sight of her with Tom, sitting in the window at Madam Puddifoot's. It was quite clear they were not talking about Hagrid.

I was sick of my life as it was, and I was heartbroken, and I was angry at the wizarding world in a way I couldn't yet articulate. In those last few weeks at school, Lucretia found a job at the Ministry, and Walburga decided she was going to stay in Hogsmeade for another year to work with Professor Dumbledore on his Transfiguration research. That position ought to have been mine--indeed, he had offered it to me--but I was no longer the kind of witch who wanted it. The castle had become more a prison than a fortress.

Two days after I finished my last NEWT, I was on a Muggle train to London, Rolanda's address tucked in a map in my suitcase alongside my wand, which I had wrapped up in a night dress. That morning, I had found a shop in Glasgow and purchased a rather pretty, shimmering green Muggle frock and practiced spending the Muggle money my mother had reluctantly exchanged for me at Gringott's. I was reminded of the time many years ago my father had taken a Portkey to visit an ailing grandmother in Chicago: the same frenetic excitement was in the air. Come find me in my world, Rolanda had said. It was, indeed, another world; just a few hours in the shops had confirmed that. My heart raced.

The train station was crowded with soldiers and not as similar to Kings Cross as I had expected. I found an older woman with a Highlands accent who reminded me a bit of Madam Pomfrey, who helped me purchase my ticket and showed me where to sit once we boarded. She mistakenly thought I hadn't been on train before, but I didn't abuse her of the notion; the low, running commentary about the peculiarities of Muggle travel was helpful.

She glanced curiously at my dress several times, and after a few minutes of polite conversation, as the countryside picked up speed outside our window, she leaned toward me. "This is a beautiful fabric," she said. "Are you coming from a wedding?"

I didn't know much about Muggle weddings, but I knew exactly what that comment meant. I could feel the blush spreading across my cheeks.

"Don't fret! You look beautiful!" She was sorry she had said anything, I could see. "What's your name, my girl?"

"Minnie," I said, remembering what Rolanda had said about wizarding names. And then, on an impulse, I fibbed: "Minnie Air Heart."

"Like the American pilot?" the woman asked, smiling and nodding knowingly, as if everyone in the world had heard of Amelia Air Heart. "My cousin saw her in Derry, where she landed after her transatlantic flight," she continued, glad of a change in topic. "She was meant to go on to Paris, but she had to land early. She set down in a pasture near my cousin's farm, and she climbed out of her aeroplane laughing and acting completely normal, as if women flew the Atlantic every day."

I couldn't help smiling. That sounded like Amelia Air Heart. That sounded like Rolanda. One day, perhaps, that might sound like me, as well.

"Are you a relation?" the woman asked.

"In spirit," I said, now completely truthful. Outside, the train whistle sounded, signaling the end of one life and the beginning of another.

I had finally taken flight, my dear reader, and it was exhilarating.



10.

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Kings Cross Station, Platform 10, 1930s (from nzetc.net)

2. Children being evacuated from London under Operation Pied Piper, September 1, 1939 (from bbc.co.uk)

3. Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932 and a cofounder of the Ninety Nines, an organization of women pilots (from guardian.co.uk)

4. Diana Barnato Walker, one of the first women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary (from en.wikipedia.org)

5. Clydesbank after the Blitz, March 1941 (from clydebank.eveningtimes.co.uk)

6. Ruth Nichols, who bested Charles Lindblom's transcontinental speed record in 1930 and later became the first woman pilot for a commercial airline (from wellesley.edu)

7. Diana Barnato Walker, 1943 (from en.wikipedia.org)

8. Members of the Air Transport Auxilliary (from dailymail.co.uk)

9. Glasgow Central Station (from nzetc.com)

10. Cover of the Picture Post, 1944, depicting a member of the ATA (source unknown)