Artemis Burberry is in her room, on Patricia Hall, lamenting to her great horned owl about the lack of relatively private fireplaces for Floo calls here, and wondering where her roommate is.
(Who names their daughter "Sherlock", anyway?)
"What are you, though, what kind of demented freak did they put me with, I will complain, Dad will sue the place, you shouldn't be around people till you've been a few years at the hospital to get straightened out in the head, did you get in the way of a Confundus or what, eugh," and, clutching her wand with what might be nervousness, Artemis surges to her feet and marches past him, heading for the stairwell to find someone suitably official to object to his presence at.
Bella hops up to get it, and blinks.
"Miss Stark?" says the Residence Director. Bella sits back down, as this isn't about her, but she listens.
The recently crying sixth grader points at Tony. "That's her, they're identical, it just makes it even more ridiculous -"
"Miss Stark, I was wondering if I could have a word with you about your sister?"
Bella blinks.
Miss Burberry does look reasonably distressed.
"She thinks she's a boy? She's got you convinced? Were you playing with your parents' wands or something to mess her up?" Miss Burberry mutters.
"And to complicate matters, the other Miss Stark is not currently in any of the locations designated for student access," the Residence Director adds.
Bella is frowning now.
"Why didn't you just room Tony and Sherlock together?" asks Bella.
"Miss Swan, this conversation isn't about you," says the Residence Director.
"Why didn't you just room them together, though," Bella says, "is there a rule against putting siblings together?"
"Yes, Miss Swan, as a matter of fact there is," says the Residence Director testily, "because one of the advantages of schooling over home education is integrating with the broader magical community, meeting more types of people, and coming to the understanding that one cannot stick solely to the company of one's family. The Miss Starks will not be rooming together. Ideally we will discover the issue with Sherlock's reference to herself as though she were a boy - and Antoinette's too, come to think of it - and we will find a way for Sherlock and Miss Burberry to room together peacefully."
"Fish. Ms. Fish," says the Residence Director. "Miss Burberry, will that be acceptable to you?"
"Is she going to keep calling her sister a he," Miss Burberry mutters.
"I believe that will be a matter between her and the school healer. Will Antoinette be an acceptable roommate, Miss Burberry?"
"Yeah, I guess," grumbles Miss Burberry. "But I don't want to move."
"Sherlock had no opportunity to settle into her originally assigned room, so I imagine it will make sense for you to stay where you are and for this Miss Stark to take her sister's assigned place. I have every confidence that you will be able to arrange this without adult help. I, meanwhile, need to find where the other Miss Stark has gotten to - unless you know, Miss Stark?"
"Sure, fine," says Miss Burberry.
"Point Me Miss Sherlock Stark," says Ms. Fish, laying her wand flat in her palm. Her wand spins helplessly. "I said, Point Me Sherlock Stark!" This time it gives her a direction, and off she goes.
"Come on," Miss Burberry sighs at Tony, "it's on Patricia Hall."
Meanwhile, Ms. Fish is making unsteady progress to what turns out to be the roof.
Ms. Fish sighs, and casts a Summoning Charm with sufficient force to unwedge Sherlock from the chimneys and call him into a sprawling heap at the stair landing. "In the future, perhaps you will be more responsive to faculty instructions. You will spend your next afternoon free period assisting Mr. Rothschild in the greenhouses with whatever he asks you to do; this will appear on your schedule in case you forget. At any rate, Miss Stark, your sister has generously agreed to exchange roommates with you. Perhaps you will find Miss Swan more amenable to your - habits."
"I advise you in the strongest possible terms, Miss Stark, to adjust your attitude," Ms. Fish snaps, sticking Sherlock's feet to the floor with a jab of her wand and marching around him to glare down at his face. "Your continued presence at this school is contingent on acceptable behavior. You have already antagonized your assigned roommate past endurance, earned a detention in advance of the beginning of your very first sixth grade classes, and obliged me to use magic to receive compliance on two occasions. I will not assign you further punishments for your rudeness if you will answer my perfectly reasonable question now. Do you know how to get to Analisa Hall?"
"...Yes?" she says, seeming a little surprised.
"Imperius, Cruciatus, and the Killing Curse," he says.
"And where did you pick up that information?"
He shrugs carelessly. "Read it somewhere, I guess."
"You are correct," says the teacher. "And who can tell me the reason why they are called Unforgivable?"
No takers this time.
"It is because," she says, "in every lawful wizarding society in the world the use of any one of these curses is punishable by death or worse."
She writes her best guess on the spellings of the curse names in her notes, though. She's pretty close - imperious is a word she knows and crushiatus reasonable for a ten-year-old.
Bella has magical theory next, which is mostly vocabulary words this early in the year but promises some cool stuff later in the semester. After that she has transfiguration, and she successfully turns a chip of wood into a similarly shaped chunk of iron after spending an entire hour trying (she is neither fastest nor slowest).
Then lunch!
"Guns are blockable, anyway, that's what bulletproof vests are for," says Bella, but she writes down this information. "I don't suppose you also know what execution or worse is supposed to mean? I thought about asking in social studies but I think it might give -" She glances at her schedule. "Mr. Li the wrong idea."
This lesson is on levitation; after various students are called on to read textbook paragraphs aloud and the teacher comments on the described features of the spell, they get assorted light objects (feathers, bits of tissue paper, leaves) to attempt to levitate. The teacher demonstrates - she's working with a book instead, but assures them that the principle is the same and the light objects are just about psychological barriers - and then has them set about their work.
Bella swishes-and-flicks with great care at her provided feather. She doesn't get it right away, so she tries again.
He slashes his wand at it and says, "Exstinguo!" and the fire abruptly goes out. The charred remnants of the feather drift back down onto his desk in a shower of ash.
He sighs, and tries levitating his charred part-feather. It flips over on the table and breaks in half, scattering more fragments of ash. Without comment, the teacher comes up to provide him with a leaf instead.
"Well, good luck." Bella switches wands, vine to hazel, and tries again. The hazel wand is apparently better suited here, and she gets her feather to go several feet into the air and hold still for four seconds before it falls, and then she wafts it upwards another foot, and the teacher comes by and pastes a gold star into her notebook without asking, which puts an expression of extremely mixed feelings on her face.
Bella wafts her feather up a bit harder and peels at the sticker; it threatens to tear the page and she smooths it back down. "I don't like people doing things to my notebooks without me saying it's okay." She's only practicing now, not notetaking; she closes the notebook and gives her feather another waft before it touches down and ends the spell.
"I have brooms next," she says, just by way of conversation. She can ask Sherlock why he was so spacey later; he is after all her roommate. "But potions after that, I'll see you guys then?" This last is directed at the twins.
It turns out that she is not clumsy on a broomstick. She's not a prodigy, either - the title of best in class belongs to this one boy - but she's not clumsy. And once the teacher has been satisfied that they all know how to hold on, they are allowed supervised flight with an altitude limit of forty feet and a speed limit enforced by the school broomsticks themselves, and oh, she can fly, she can fly.
Bella does not actually skip to Potions, but she looks like she would if she'd stay upright in the process, and she's beaming.
"I wonder what he's doing there then. I guess I'll ask him." Bella squints at the handwriting on the blackboard and takes out her potion kit's little box of newt eyes, and checks that the magical flame under her tiny cauldron works and then turns it off. "What did Sherlock want to ask the teacher?"
Bella mixes her moisturizing unguent with care because she wants to get it right, but Sherlock is really overdoing it, isn't he?
While the students mix, the teacher comments on the properties of the individual ingredients and what each of them is doing to the moisturizer, and Bella takes notes during the simmering stages of the potion when she doesn't have to add anything or stir or anything but keep time and mind the color.
At the end of the lesson, when everyone's potion has been inspected and graded (Bella's is "approximately perfect", but so are most people's, unless they forgot ingredients) the teacher passes around a bunch of vials of optional scents, and jars for them to scoop their unguents into, and Bella makes hers vanilla-cinnamon and jars it and dabs some on her nose and puts it away in her bag.
The teacher uses the last few minutes of classtime to advertise Potions Club. Bella is not particularly interested; there are sure to be other clubs, plus an entire library she hasn't gotten a look at yet.
Bella decides to prioritize reading ahead in this book more than the others, because what she learns is fascinating and also surprising and also the sort of thing that could be extremely practically important. She has been thrown into a very different culture.
She's going to go to check out the library next, but first she stops at her and Sherlock's room, to drop off her things.
Maybe Sherlock will be at dinner.
Sherlock makes no appearance at all, but lights out for the sixth graders isn't until ten and Bella wants to go to bed earlier than that, so she assumes he's off somewhere doing something and she goes to sleep.
"And they failed you?" exclaims Bella. "Because you didn't want to kill the mice? That's awful! And Tony said you were too good at Transfiguration to be held back in it, too, and that's just not fair, they should give you different tests to make up for it if they really think you'll grow out of it anyway or you'll be farther behind than you have to be."
"Yeah, sure," says Feral. "My point is, the whole world is like that. It's just full of that stuff. Where everybody thinks you should be doing something, and you get in trouble if you don't, and it's something messed up like setting mice on fire. But I don't think it's always as obvious as setting mice on fire. And people can think they're doing good stuff, think they're helping, and really they're lighting up mice. You know?"
(Her breakfast has been toast and scrambled eggs.)
On to Transfiguration. They are not making them transfigure live animals today; they're still on solid materials. Bella turns a sheet of glass into a sheet of cardboard, though this is much harder than yesterday's exercise and it takes her the entire class to do it and it's not even difficult in a particularly interesting way.
She has lunch next! Who's around?
"Hi, Sherlock," Bella murmurs, but there's no time for anything beyond that before they start learning to make teacups (or, in some cases, as there are not enough teacups to go around, shoes, or, in Feral's case, as he needs disposable materials, a piece of cardboard) dance.
The teacher has no such constraints about addressing students in class. "Miss Sherlock," she says, compromising between formal address and the presence of twins in the class. "Are you planning to provide your teacup any motive force, or are you hoping to glare it into dancing?"
Bella winces; she didn't really want to be the point of comparison, but she has in fact gotten her cup to do those things.
"I - sure," says Bella, sticking her vine wand back in her hair and catching the teacup when it threatens to clatter off her desk. "Sherlock. Sherlock, let's go, okay?" She puts her hand on his elbow.
"Healer Song!" she calls, gleaning term of address from the plaque on the door.
A middle-aged Asian wizard in white robes emerges from the recesses of the infirmary, currently unoccupied by damaged children. "Yes, Miss...?"
"I'm Bella Swan and this is Sherlock. Ms. Muller sent us because Sherlock spaced out in class. Sleep debt," she adds. "Can't sleep with anyone there. We're roommates, what should I do?"
Healer Song tuts and peers at Sherlock. "How long have you been without sleep? Two days?"
"All right. Well, for the immediate problem -" He fetches a dark brown potion from one of the cupboards. "Drink up. One won't hurt you. And then perhaps you'll be awake enough to tell us more about how your roommate can help you with getting to sleep at night."
"Well, please tell us everything you can about your sleeping problem, and we can get a better idea of what combination of solutions might work, because even if potions do the trick it's not a good idea to rely on them nightly for long," says Healer Song. "How long has it been going on? How does it manifest?"
Bella pipes up. "There's hours of free time in the afternoon. I could be in the library from four to lights out every day, and that's not a whole night's sleep but it's some? Why didn't you nap when I was in the library before?"
"I think," says Healer Song, "that I should give you a pass to skip your remaining classes, Sherlock, and you should catch up on proper sleep until your roommate returns to your room this evening, which it sounds like she's quite willing to avoid until late in the evening, and tomorrow you should come by after your classes and I'll give you a sleeping potion. If it doesn't allow to sleep while your roommate is present we'll have to work something else out, possibly a single occupancy or overriding the rule about placing siblings together for medical reasons. Does that sound good to you?"
"Bella, why don't you take Sherlock back to your room - I'm sure you know the way, Sherlock, but two days without sleep is no small thing for an eleven-year-old and the potion only helps so much - and I'll make excuses for the teachers."
Healer Song has actually been avoiding gendering Sherlock throughout this entire conversation. Perhaps this has something to do with the appointment Sherlock has with him at the end of the week.
"Sure," says Bella.
"Sorry," says Bella. This potion, they don't get to keep; it's all graded, then collected for a representative from the ACAAM Charitable Crusaders to pick up and ship to somewhere in the Third World where sixth-grader water purification potions are apparently in high demand.
Bella raises her hand to ask if they should make more, for the Third Worlders who need it, and is told that this is a class, not a meeting of the ACAAMCC.
The representative from that organization hands her some promotional material on his way out.
She hugs him. "Oh, and," she says, "you missed dinner, I brought you some cookies, I didn't see anything else I was sure would keep." She produces a napkin with several oatmeal cookies, mostly broken, and hands it to him. "If you wind up keeping a funny schedule instead of working something else out you maybe want to keep snacks around but for today I thought they might help." She sets her schoolbag down on her chair and sets about changing into her pajamas.
Sherlock might or might not have noticed this on the first night, but Bella talks in her sleep. "Mice. Iron. Aphid. Silver."
She sighs, and goes to catch up with Feral. "We get to practice when we're ready," she reports.
Is it Feral? Bella bets it's Feral. There she plops herself. "Some girl thinks you might murder me," she says. "She thinks you can see thestrals because of having killed somebody and that it's not safe to hang around you. Also she said you bit someone, but she said he drew his wand on you so I think that was probably the best thing you could've done if you couldn't just run away because otherwise he might have caught fire and that's worse than getting bit."
"I have known there was more to magic than me personally being able to do doggerel verse spells for like two weeks and I've only been systematically learning things for a few days and we don't get to magic law enforcement in social studies until unit three," Bella says. "Muggle law enforcement cares a lot when people die, I would know, my dad is a policeman! I thought magic law enforcement would be sort of like that, with magic in."
"Magical law enforcement," says Feral, "cares a lot if purebloods die, and halfbloods mostly count, and Muggle-borns do if anybody was looking. If you fuck up a Muggle, they only care if you did it publicly enough that they have to wipe a bunch of memories. They'll tell you different if you ask, but that's what's true."
"...It's like the mice," he says. "I bet you when you start on live Transfiguration, if you walk up to the cages and say you're gonna set the mice on fire, you'll get in huge trouble. But when we start on it in my class and I say I'm not gonna point my wand at anything I'm not willing to light up, I'll fail the class again. Caring about mice getting set on fire isn't one thing that works the exact same way everywhere for everybody all the time, or even the same way for the same person all the time, and neither is caring about people dying."
Hurray, friends! Also teacup-dancing! Bella is not in the five best kids in class anymore, since she missed half of the previous lesson, but she's not bad, and she sets about catching up with a will and will, if Sherlock looks like he wants, attempt to help him since he missed the entirety of the last lesson.
Bella tries to catch it, but she does not succeed, probably because her reflexes are still connected to her body and not her wand and she is about as coordinated as a three-legged drunk giraffe. The cup breaks and the teacher replaces it with one of the shoes (Tony gets a left ballet flat), as the teacups have all been distributed.
Nothing further of moment happens in Charms. It is time for brooms brooms brooms wheeeee!
And then Potions!
"Okay, can do." Today they are making shampoo. Literally. Shampoo. A fair number of the sixth grade potion curriculum appears to be toiletries. There's a footnote in the recipe about customization options; Bella looks at them and decides to try one. The teacher tells her that she wasn't supposed to do that, but it's too late to change; she is permitted to go on with her variant that will cause her shampoo to double as conditioner.
Magical social studies passes without event, although Bella is now attempting to judge the teacher's receptiveness to questions like "is it true that magical law enforcement, as a system, doesn't care if Muggles or Muggleborns get killed as long as it's not inconvenient to cover up". Her initial impressions are tentatively favorable, but not enough that she ventures inquiries today.
She heads for the healer's next, attempting to meet Sherlock there.
The material on Occlumency doesn't seem to have anything about Memory Charms at all.
It is a rare and difficult skill, and not commonly taught at wizarding educational institutions.
Bella wants to learn it. Memory Charms are bad, Legilmency is also bad. This is her top priority. Only the fact that she doesn't suspect anyone of actively being interested in the contents of her mind will allow her to do homework or anything before she has this mastered. She wants introductory exercises and ways to check her progress that don't involve inviting somebody to point a wand at her; can she have them?