Arrival at School

Aya had finally finished her homework before the start of term.

Although it was so watered down that she could have put a mermaid in it for a swim, as long as she wasn't handing in blank parchment, she could admit that her brain leaned more toward the beast than the human.

On the last night of the summer holidays, Mrs. Weasley invited her to a feast at the Burrow to round off a perfect summer. Aya brought along Duoduo's specialty, beef stew, packed with tomatoes. It was her favorite meat dish lately.

It was a lively evening. As a homemaker, Mrs. Weasley sometimes found her cooking hampered by the plain ingredients she had to work with, but the flavor was beyond reproach. There was even an enticing dessert of honey pudding at the end. If Mrs. Weasley hadn't repeatedly insisted that dessert had to come after the main course, Aya could have skipped the meal altogether and eaten all the pudding!

Amid the lively atmosphere, Fred and George pulled out the Filibuster Fireworks they had bought with their pocket money and played with them. They also gave a few to Aya. As Xiaohua's owner, she deserved such special treatment!

After arranging to sit with Harry and Ron on the train the next day, Aya had one last cup of hot cocoa before Duoduo took her home to wash up and go to bed. Although she had to return to that school where she would have to do homework again tomorrow, she was very happy today.

Duoduo had packed Aya's luggage back when she was frantically rushing to finish her homework. Drawing on her experience from the previous school year, Aya had asked Duoduo to prepare a few extra empty trunks for her to fill with castle trash later.

Now, apart from materials of purple quality or higher, her backpack held her food supplies, weapons, and snacks, with the last few slots reserved for her everyday textbooks and stationery.

After hearing about her backpack, Duoduo had sewn her a little white shoulder bag with a floral print, especially for snacks like jerky and candy. But Aya usually wore her school robes, which had quite large pockets, so she had no use for it. Even so, she still liked it very much.

On the morning of September first, Aya slept in before getting up. As before, she left Duoduo to take her luggage back to school and traveled light herself. When it was nearly time, Duoduo took her to King's Cross Station.

"I still have to go home and tidy up. Be good and wait here for your friends, all right, Aya?" Duoduo instructed her softly, handing her the little bag. "These are sweets I bought in Hogsmeade yesterday, a new selection from Honeydukes. Remember to share them with your friends."

Aya took the bag but refused to nod. After saying goodbye to Duoduo, she watched her Apparate away.

Aya waited and waited at the station entrance. Even Xiaohua had begun flicking her tail impatiently. Aya wondered whether Duoduo had brought her half an hour early. Otherwise, why hadn't Harry and the others arrived when the train was due to leave in a little over ten minutes?

"We're here, we're here!" Aya was busy unwrapping a lollipop when she finally heard a familiar voice. She looked up to see a battered little car stopped in front of her. Mrs. Weasley was telling the children to get out, while Mr. Weasley took the luggage from the boot. "A quarter of an hour left. Merlin, we nearly missed it!"

"Percy! Percy first-" Mrs. Weasley called. Aya came over too. "Oh, little Aya, why are you still here? You should be going in!"

"I'm waiting for Harry and Ron," Aya mumbled around the sweet in her mouth.

"All right, then we need to hurry. Next-dear, you go in first, then Fred and George," Mrs. Weasley said quickly. "I'll take Ginny. You three follow us."

Aya nodded obediently and watched Mrs. Weasley lead Ginny into the wall. Then she turned to Harry and Ron. "You go first. I don't want your luggage trolleys running into me."

"We wouldn't do that," Ron said with a pout. Harry shook his head too, checked that Hedwig's cage was secure, and pushed his trolley toward the entrance wall alongside Ron.

Bang! Aya had been concentrating on biting her lollipop, but she looked up at the tremendous crash to see the two boys' luggage scattered everywhere. Harry had been knocked to the ground and was sitting there, while Hedwig's cage had rolled off to one side.

"What are you doing?" a guard shouted nearby. Many people looked over at Hedwig's cries.

"What happened? Did the wall refuse to let you in because I didn't go first?" Aya came over and helped pick up Hedwig's cage, while Xiaohua climbed onto her shoulder and hung there of her own accord. Ron went over to help Harry up. He had taken a hard fall.

"Why can't we get through?" Harry asked quietly. It wasn't time yet; the station clock showed that there were still more than ten seconds to go.

"I don't know," Ron said, looking around anxiously as Aya felt the wall they should have been able to walk through. "We're going to miss the train."

"We really can't get through. Were you actually able to make a piece of public magic like this stop working?" Aya felt the wall, which seemed like an ordinary wall, in some surprise. Mrs. Weasley and Ginny had only passed through it a few minutes ago.

"We didn't! That's it, the train's left. What if my mum and dad can't come and get us? Do either of you have any Muggle money?" Ron asked blankly, a little at a loss.

"Don't ask me. The Dursley family hasn't given me pocket money in six years," Harry said with a dry laugh.

"I do, but we probably won't need it, will we?" Aya crunched up her lollipop and tossed the stick into a bin. "We can get back to school another way, can't we?"

"Another way?" Harry looked at her expectantly. "How?"

"Hmm... Duoduo?" Aya tilted her head. She wasn't worried-more precisely, she would have been delighted not to go to school! As soon as she got there, she would have to hand in her summer homework, and she knew perfectly well what hers was like.

"That's right!" Ron brightened. "A House-elf can take us back to Hogwarts, and she's a school House-elf in the first place!"

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He wondered if he had landed a little too hard on his bottom just now; his head felt somewhat dizzy.

The three of them went to a quiet spot outside the station and called Duoduo.

"What?!" Duoduo wanted to scream, but Ron hurriedly cut her off. "Why would that happen? It can't be! That entrance has been in use for many years and hardly ever malfunctions!"

"But it malfunctioned today!" Harry said. "Duoduo, can you take us back to school?"

"Yes, but I have to tell Headmaster Dumbledore first. Whoever it is, bringing people into the school has to be reported to a professor in advance," Duoduo said shrilly, her voice still full of disbelief. "Aya, are you hurt? You shouldn't be, should you?"

"Nope." Aya turned around in a circle.

"She wasn't hurt. She watched us get hurt," Ron said quietly.

Duoduo first took the three of them back to Aya's house, then returned to school herself to inform a professor. Harry still liked the full-length mirror Aya had brought back from her robbery, while Ron rubbed his stomach where the trolley handle had struck him—it still hurt a little.

Before long, Headmaster Dumbledore brought Professor McGonagall with him, and they arrived at Aya's house.

"Oh, children, I hear you've run into a little trouble?" Dumbledore's smile was as kind as ever. Taking turns, Ron and Harry told him how the station entrance had been blocked.

"Yes, Harry landed on his bottom, and Ron's tongue popped right out," Aya added from the side, earning glares from both her friends.

"Oh..." McGonagall also knew a few simple diagnostic spells and checked the two minors over. "Nothing too serious, but Mr. Potter, you're a little too tense. Relax-"

Harry's ears burned as he stood there awkwardly, looking at Dumbledore. His eyes strayed involuntarily toward the enormous mirror in the entryway—he was afraid Dumbledore would take it back. It was his only way of seeing his parents.

Fortunately, Dumbledore paid no attention to the luxurious mirror, which was completely out of place in the modest little house-even though he had been its previous owner and its current owner had acquired it for nothing. With Duoduo's help, he took the three children to the station to investigate. A tracing spell revealed that there were indeed signs that a spell had been used there.

"All right, let's go back to school," Dumbledore told the three after finishing his examination. His expression was somewhat grave, but he remained calm. Only then did Harry's anxious expression ease a little. He had been afraid that if he couldn't get on the train, he would lose his place at Hogwarts.

The three children arrived at the castle several hours early. Once the fear of being unable to attend school had passed, Harry and Ron settled into the empty common room and began to brainstorm.

"It might have been Dobby," Harry said. "That was what he did when he caused trouble at the Dursleys'. He didn't want me to go back to Hogwarts. He said there was a great danger in the castle."

"But what for? He must have a reason," Ron said.

"He said he thought I was a good person?" Harry said hesitantly. "But he's the Malfoy family's House-elf, and he doesn't listen to a word I say."

"Because you're not his master?" Aya interjected at random.

"At least Headmaster Dumbledore knows about it now. I think maybe it was because we were the last to arrive that Dobby was able to do it!" Ron guessed, ignoring Aya entirely.

"Can House-elves act on their own?" Harry suddenly asked Aya. None of them knew much about House-elves, and Aya was the only one who was close to Duoduo.

"Duoduo once said the school's House-elves hardly ever appear in front of people. She said that for a House-elf, their master's orders generally come before everything else?" Aya shook her head. "Maybe we can ask Headmaster Dumbledore. Duoduo usually takes care of me according to his instructions too."

"Are you really close to Headmaster Dumbledore?" Ron asked curiously. He had heard Aya suggest asking Dumbledore more than once.

"We're all right. I don't think we're very close." Aya recalled the two times she and Dumbledore had fought over things last term. "He's a bit stingy."

"...Don't listen to her nonsense." Harry was amazed at Aya's ability to lie through her teeth. "That mirror in her house belongs to Dumbledore."

"It's a spoil of war!" Aya retorted.

"...Anyway, that mirror is the same thing as the one I took you to see last Christmas."

"Merlin's smelly socks, you mean the original mirror was actually that big?!" Ron was shocked. No wonder the mirror had been covered when he went to Aya's house before.

"I told Duoduo the mirror was unusual and suggested she cover it with a pretty cloth," Harry explained quietly to Ron.

"True. Even a thief breaking in would be completely crowd-controlled," Ron said with a nod. "You were absolutely right to put it in the entryway."

"Thank you?" Aya didn't understand, but she could accept the compliment.

"Then are we going to look for Dobby?" Ron asked Harry. He hadn't experienced the serious consequences of Dobby's actions, and his impression of Dobby was still limited to the bad things he'd done.

"We've got nowhere to look for him. We can't just go and ask Malfoy, can we?" At that, Harry wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'd rather have died crashing into the wall outside Platform Nine and Three-Quarters."

"That's a bit extreme," Ron said, shaking his head. "Besides, even if you asked Malfoy, he wouldn't tell you. Given the way things are between you two, if Dobby really is his family's elf, he'd be delighted if Dobby crippled you."

At lunchtime, because there was no one else in the castle, the Great Hall wasn't serving meals as usual, so Duoduo brought lunch for the three of them to Gryffindor Tower. After they ate in the common room, Aya ran out to start sweeping the castle, which she hadn't seen for an entire summer.

Honestly, Hogwarts had a great many classrooms, but far too many of them were locked up. This wasn't just because the students didn't need them, but also because many classroom doors refused to cooperate. Most had to be opened in a particular way-kicking the door, turning the handle seven times, or kicking the door while turning the handle. That was why Aya hadn't been able to resist going in when she saw an open door last Christmas.

Besides, Aya couldn't really go around smashing down every classroom door. Leaving aside whether she could succeed, what if she got caught and lost points?

Following the trash-collecting route she had worked out in her first year, Aya swept through the castle at speed until she reached the dungeons and came to Snape's office door.

"Professor! I'm here to pay you back! And sell materials!" Aya pounded on the dungeon door until it thudded. Before long, it opened on its own.

"...Hawthorne, your summer homework had better have been written by your own hand, rather than passed through that waterlogged brain of yours and handed straight to me, reeking not only of stupidity but of something disgusting as well," Snape said viciously from behind his desk.

"I did work hard on my homework!" Aya didn't feel guilty at all. She had filled such a long piece of parchment—who dared say she hadn't worked hard? "Professor, when people greet each other, they shouldn't talk about upsetting things. Let's not talk about that today. I've come to pay off my loan, and I've got some materials too. My bag's almost full again-"

Snape's expression darkened at the first half of what Aya said, but the second half improved his mood. "I'll need materials on the level of a unicorn horn. Otherwise, I have no desire to be a student's cheap garbage disposal and pay for the privilege."

Aya frowned and thought about it. That was right; she had indeed treated Snape as a garbage disposal at first. After all, as everyone knew, merchants where she came from existed so people could sell them trash. No matter how worthless an item was, it would fetch one copper coin.

Although trash could be thrown away directly, Aya would secretly pick it up whenever a player discarded it and sell it, keeping the money as her own private savings.