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Whispers From the Otherworld
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Published:
2024-09-30
Words:
1,158
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
19
Kudos:
47
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8
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309

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Summary:

In 1991, Sally-Anne Perks was sorted into Hufflepuff. But there was no such person sitting OWLs in 1996.
Here is one possible explanation, involving Fae, true names, and Professor Sprout being a good Head of House.

Notes:

Prompt:

 

Twist of Fate - make your own whimsical, fae-themed prompt!

True names and the Fair Folk... can be a tricky combination.
Also inspired by that one Twitter post. https://x.com/chawleeknight/status/1185048782783700992?lang=en

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

 

It could have been so much worse. The student was lucky. --- no, rephrase. Everyone who was aware of the Good Neighbours' ways is impressed that nothing worse has befallen ---. No. That nothing worse happened.

 

It is only a year and a day. From the 5th of January 1996 to the 6th of January 1997. Now, at the beginning of June, the half-way point is a scant few weeks away.

 

This week is just particularly galling, because it is the week of OWL examinations.

 

The student has to hear the name 'Patil, Parvati' called out, and followed immediately by 'Potter, Harry'. The student cannot even think the name that was called out between those two at the Sorting in 1991. Cannot even use pronouns in the privacy of thought. Even thoughts are not private from magic, from what fairies - greater fairies, beings so much more significant and powerful and dangerous than the tiny creatures that decorate Christmas trees - can do to shape and change the world.

 

The Christmas-tree fairies are pretty, but the student will never admire them again in quite the same spirit. Any admiration will be a deliberate tribute - the student knows better than to withhold that, to withhold any measure of the respect owed - but the student will no longer feel the innocent delight that was once engendered by the fairies' presence, only a creeping dread. As a first-year muggleborn, the student marvelled at the little creatures' presence. One more example of a mythological creature that was actually real.

 

The student didn't know, then, that the other fairy stories were real, too. Changelings. Parties that lasted for one night in human perception, and decades in the real world. The power of words, and true names. Nobody told the student the danger was real. The fifth-year came back from the winter holidays to find the trees being taken down, the fairies that had decorated them leaving in a group, headed in the same direction. That person - the one who still went by the name that cannot now be thought - followed them, out through the Hogwarts grounds, and came, eventually, to a green hill with windows and doors, with lights glowing in the darkness, and trails of sparkling fairies streaming in, from Hogwarts and Hogsmeade and who knew where else. There was a doorkeeper, shaped like the small fairies but the size of a young child, seated at a desk, quill and parchment at the ready, and they had looked up at the student.

 

"May I have your name, please?" the doorkeeper had asked. In all innocence, the student had replied:

"Sally-Anne Perks," and that was that. The being had smiled - the memory still made the student shiver, the depths of knowledge and merriment in those eyes, the sharpness of those teeth.

"And your pronouns?"

"She/her," and thankfully, mercifully, having the pronouns taken had been enough to startle the student, when the realisation came that, even in the student's own head, pronouns would not form. Enough that when the question came about the student's Hogwarts House, the student had not replied; had been struck silent, curtseyed and fled.

 

Luck that the reflexes left over from the ballet classes attended by a small child who knew nothing of Hogwarts had been correct; luck that there was no further punishment for discourtesy; and, above all, luck that the student's Hogwarts House had not been taken. Luck that Professor Sprout was still the student's Head of House, able to set out with jug of cream and iron horse-shoe for parley, able to return and give the good and bad news.

 

It was only for a year and a day, and not forever.

 

And with a Hogwarts House preserved, the student - the Hufflepuff - can still attend lessons. Can even sit OWL examinations. After Blaise Zabini, they will call forward the Unnamed Student or the Nameless One. Conventions vary. This has happened often enough that there are standing conventions: perhaps every twenty years or so, though less than half of those occurrences affect public examinations. As awful as it seems to the student, for the examiners, this is routine. Professor Marchbanks, later, will offer congratulations on the student's good fortune.

 

Professor Sprout has spoken to the student's parents. Other arrangements are being made for the summer; for the student to go into the muggle world would represent a terrible breach of the Statute of Secrecy, whereas in the wizarding world, everyone can tell what has happened. Being sprayed with salt, or having rowan berries conjured at a person's face, or the constant gestures to ward off the evil eye: these are nothing. The horror and the pity in people's eyes are bearable. The student knows, now, who among their housemates is a true friend, and who is not; who, among strangers, will go out of their way to be unkind to the afflicted, and who will be helpful in passing.

 

The knowledge is useful. The price is higher than the student might like, but not nearly so high as it could have been. The student will not make that mistake again. Nor will the student cross a mushroom circle, or use the word 'fairy' out loud for any creature but the small tree-fairies, or eat food offered by a stranger. Nor will any of the other muggle-borns of their generation. (Or so the student thinks; it is entirely normal for a teenager to believe their personal misfortunes are more widely known than they in fact are, and as it so happens, both Hermione Granger and Dean Thomas have had other fish to fry and so remain oblivious.)

 

The house-elves are teaching the student to brew ale and make cheese. This coming winter, the student will bring the fruits of their labours to the sìth, accompanied by Professor Sprout and 'another representative'. The word 'thank you' is to be considered stricken from the student's vocabulary for the duration; and, if there is no further mis-step, there the matter will be ended.

 

The OWL scores that will have allowed the student to take NEWT classes will be transferred to the returned name. The student will - hopefully - go on to take NEWTs under the new-old name, will once again be congratulated by Professor Marchbanks.

 

That is the most likely outcome, the one Professor Sprout is aiming for. The student is grateful, glad all over again to be a Hufflepuff.

 

There are no guarantees, of course.

 

(There are other things, besides namelessness, that will stand in the way of a muggle-born student sitting their NEWTs in the summer of 1998. But the Nameless One does not know this.)

 

(And if there are a few strange, chance happenings that grant the recently re-named Sally-Anne Perks a few very near misses in the chaos of the Thicknesse Ministry's catch-22 on blood status and truancy? Well. It ought not to be so very surprising.)

 

The Good Neighbours do not easily relinquish a promising plaything, for good or for ill.

Notes:

The title is, of course, a line from 'The Stolen Child' by W. B. Yeats.
https://poets.org/poem/stolen-child
The poem as a whole doesn't match Sally-Anne's situation, but that one line, I thought, hinted very well at both the younger Sally-Anne's ignorance of the darker sides and perils of the wizarding world, and also the current nameless student's ignorance of the vicissitudes that Sally-Anne will face in the future.
Thanks to the very discreet friends who helped me when I was dithering!