Entry: Thursday, September 16, 2021

Arienne has always been a mystery wrapped in an enigma. She put all the best-educated Upstanding Purebloods to shame with her skillful formalities on her very first day at Hogwarts- and don’t even get me started on how she has her own private bedroom! She’s obviously from an incredibly important family… yet, whenever she’s not surrounded by idiots, she’s also incredibly free-spirited.

And of course, she completely ignored the traditional House rivalry today, plucking a falling Gryffindor out of the air with some very fast wand work during our first flying lesson. Not only that, but to make it doubly impressive, she did that while riding a broom for what she said was the first time in her life!

I’m pretty sure it’s very un-Slytherin-like of me to say this, but she scares me. Yet, I also love her. As a friend, of course- I’d never be so improper as to suggest otherwise. It caught me by surprise that first day- September Fourth, I think it was, the day after the Hogwarts Express brought us to school. It was a Saturday, the day the Professors gave us all tours of the Castle and finally turned us loose to explore it on our own. That was also the day that Arienne- who I’ve taken to calling Princess Arienne, a label that amuses her for some reason- basically beelined to me. When I think about it, I really shouldn’t have been surprised; out of everyone in our compartment on the Express, I was the only one that was sorted into the same House as her.

Just like on the Express, her curiosity, ingenuity, energy, and amusement were unstoppable- except rather than mostly towards Harry, who she seemed to be able to identify despite whatever diversion magic his friend gave him, she pointed it all towards me.

And that was unsettling. Here she was: The one girl in the entire school that could be the perfect example of a noble lady on a moment’s notice- the way she shut Draco down on the train was evidence enough- but also the one first-year in the school capable of casting several different spells not just silently but wandlessly. Even just starting her first year in formal magical education, she’s already a formidable opponent in both the political arena and the magical one. Yet, somehow ill-informed about certain major issues…? Combined with her anger at the blood purists, I can only assume she was muggle-raised.

That would explain why she practically stormed to Professor Snape when she saw that the second common room password for October was due to be ‘Mudblood’. It’s not anymore- when Professor Snape wasn’t able to calm her fury, he agreed to change it. Not that ‘Muggle-Blood’ is any better- Arienne is still miffed about it- but she’s refraining from hexing teachers over it.

It still boggles my mind that she defeated a registered duelist in what amounted to a magical duel before her first lesson in the same!

I only know she did that because I happened to be in the common room when she saw the sign early on Sunday, the Meet And Greet day, and I followed her when she promptly stormed out of the room. Professor Snape was still only half awake when she nearly ripped his office door off its hinges, so that might have been a factor in his inability to defend himself from her wandless onslaught.

In any case, ever since Tour Saturday, we’ve been friends. She keeps secrets- she keeps so many I can almost smell them- but then again, so do I. We both understand that, and respect each other’s right to keep our secrets, so neither of us pry.

And the reason she sought me out that day… was because I was a friend of Harry Potter, The Boy who Lived, and she was very interested in him.

Not about the Boy who Lived, though. Only Harry Potter as a person. She doesn’t care about his fame. But she was curious how I had become his friend.

And that… boy, wasn’t that a surprise. A little over a month ago now, a pure white snowy owl, apparently named Hedwig, had shown up while I was having breakfast with Father, Mother, and my sister Astoria. And in her beak was… an invitation to a tea party, addressed to all four of us. We’d all expected that to be from a girl- only girls offer tea parties- so we’d all been caught by surprise when it turned out to be from the Boy who Lived himself, and the address of the party was Potter Manor.

We went, of course.

At that party, Father was noticeably worried about Harry, given his looks- and Harry readily revealed that he had been raised by… unkind muggles, but was now out from under their boots.

And that had been the start. The revelation that he’d contacted Longbottom and Bones first, and had similar tea parties with them, had been unsurprising- unlike the House of Greengrass, Longbottom and Bones are long-standing allies to the House of Potter. Yet Harry didn’t seem to care about our differences, and when he introduced me and Astoria to Neville and Susan on a later visit, he helped us get over the initial ice and become fast friends.

I swear, that boy was a natural Slytherin, forging new alliances and renewing old ones as naturally as he breathed… yet he still landed in Hufflepuff. Now that I’m thinking about it, that’s in line with one of Arienne’s observations on the train- that the true house for a true Slytherin… is not Slytherin at all, but anywhere but Slytherin.

I asked the Hat for Slytherin anyways, simply because that’s where I was expected to be and I don’t want to stand out. But Harry? He showed us that necklace he got from somewhere, and told us it’s got diversion magic on it so nobody but us can figure out that he’s the Boy who Lived. Well… nobody but us and Arienne for some reason, as it turned out, but still. Then he explained that he wants to just disappear into the woodwork, so to speak, and go unnoticed by most. I think he’s managed that- nobody reacted any differently when McGonagall called his name in the sorting, and I’ve heard several people commenting that the Boy who Lived must not be coming to Hogwarts this year.

I’m also ‘insignificant’ to my peers… though, being from a longstanding pureblood family, I wouldn’t be if I wasn’t in Slytherin.

Sooner or later, all the other boys and girls are going to find out why it’s a bad idea to discount me and- especially, I think- Arienne as insignificant.

They think she’s insignificant because she maintains friends across other Houses. Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom in our traditional enemy house of Gryffindor, then Susan Bones and of course Harry in Hufflepuff. She’s not shy about it either- that’s what she had to shut Draco down about on the Sunday after the Tour Day, the ‘Staff Meet and Greet Day’. He didn’t learn anything on the train.

Everyone had expected Draco to start lording over the rest of the House this year, since his father is right up next to the Minister and on the Hogwarts Board of Governors… but no. Instead, Arienne has come out as the true master of Slytherin House, and people are afraid of defying her. Draco seems to be scrambling to become her number one minion, even- but she shuts him down on almost a daily basis, since he can’t seem to learn.

I’ve seen people try to curse her five times now. Two of them were caught by teachers, one was clubbed out by a nearby Royal Guard- what they are doing at Hogwarts I still don’t know- and the other two were taken by her dastardly return fire. All five are in very hot water, with the threat of expulsion hanging over their heads for ‘improper use of a magic wand’.

But that’s enough about Arienne. This is my journal, not a biography.

I have been enjoying my classes. There’s a lot more going on at Hogwarts than I heard there would be from various other purebloods that went before me; from what I hear now that I’m here, it’s all new. Math, reading, writing, latin, science. Not an ounce of magic in any of those core classes, but I’m enjoying them- especially science. Who knew that muggles could do things that even magic could not, simply through an understanding of the world around them? Well, and I suppose Latin is technically related to magic. It’s a language class, but it’s a core class because all our incantations come from latin, and an understanding of the language will not just make us better at incanting but enable us to adjust our incantations on the fly for our specific use case- or, if combined with Arithmancy, cook up entirely new spells on the fly.

Then there’s the electives- some of which are available all the way down in first year. Students are not required to take any electives in the first two years, and only required to take two each year thereafter; that requirement hasn’t changed. However…

For my first year, I’ve picked Muggle Studies because I’ve always been curious about them, Political Science because it’ll be necessary when I grow up, and finally Etiquette because I’m curious what the class is about. Or at least, I was- and Arienne was delighted when I spontaneously used her as a practice subject for some of the things I’ve already learned there.

While also demonstrating that she’s evidently been taught it all from a much younger age- when she wants to, she gives off an even more refined air than the teacher does!

I’ve found myself trying to figure out what noble House she’s from… but I can’t seem to find it. Her surname, Fox, doesn’t appear in any of the books I have access to- so maybe her family is a branch of one of the others, born from a daughter of the House? Or maybe the House had a female Heir inherit, and that resulted in a new name? But I haven’t found any records of that!

And now I’m back onto Arienne. She’s just… I said it earlier, didn’t I? A mystery wrapped in an enigma.

So… how about I turn back to the class that made me want to write this entry in the first place? It was our first flying lesson of the year. Gryffindor and Slytherin were there together, and Madam Hooch had all the shiny new school brooms laid out neatly. The beginning of the class was rather uneventful- until the wind caught one of the Gryffindor boys. Neville was already nervous and jumpy, but he was also doing really well- until that wind made him wobble. He reacted by pulling the handle of his broom up to hug it… which is the command to make it shoot up into the sky like a cork shot from a bottle.

Naturally, it did that. Then he looked down, and fell off his broom. Arienne did her magic thing to soften his landing, and seemed annoyed that she wasn’t fast enough to save him from a sprained wrist, even though Hermione assured her the fall would probably have been lethal, meaning she’d most likely saved his life.

So Madam Hooch told everyone to get down on the ground and wait while she took Neville up to the Hospital Wing… because apparently a sprained wrist means he can’t just use his other hand to open doors, or something? Whatever.

Then Malfoy found something in the grass. A clear glass ball- a Remembrall, specifically. The one he was showing his friends at the Gryffindor table this morning.

Then he took off into the air, threatening to leave it in a tree for Neville to find.

And Arienne flicked her wand, plucking it right out of his hand and making it fly down to hers.

When, at the end of the lesson, Madam Hooch asked Arienne if she wanted to play Quidditch for Slytherin… her answer shocked the whole class.

“Absolutely not.”

“Alright, just- wait, what?” Madam Hooch asked, blinking.

“I said absolutely not,” Arienne confirmed. “I want no part in a violent game that’s designed to make one player more important than the entire rest of the team.”

“But you would-!”

“Absolutely. Not,” Arienne barked, straight into Madam Hooch’s face. “I am not playing that man-killer of a game and nothing you say is going to change that.”

Continued: Thursday, September 16, 2021

And now I’m back to Arienne again. She’s on my mind far more often than I care to admit. A mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Fun fact: For some reason, in my doc, this section wasn't labeled as an 'Origin' section, despite being the only part Daphne has in the entire story.