Chapter Text
The woman– introducing herself as Professor Mcgonagall--sat across from Mother and Father in the lounge, which is the room to the right of the foyer, where unwanted guests are welcomed. But the woman doesn’t know that, and she will leave too early to learn about it. Cassandra, a maid of seven years, brings in tea, most likely lavender, and sets out four saucers with their designated teacups. The teacups were from China, and inherited from Mother's side of the family. They were a gift from a trading partner around 150 years ago. Their delicate patterns are still vibrant as if they were created a few days before.
Cassandra pours the scalding liquid into the cups, three fourths of the way to the top, following etiquette and not spilling a drop. She serves Mother first, then Father. One sugarcube and a dollop of honey respectively. She hands me mine with a gentle smile and a bit of cream. She then serves the guest without asking what they wanted, stern face back in place. A bit rude, but shows the point that she shouldn't overstay her welcome. She bows and leaves, most likely just standing outside of the door in case of an emergency.
During this, no one speaks. The woman--Professor Mcgonagall, get that in your head--seems a little tense in the silence, almost an awkward one. Mother seems pleasant to stare her down and Father is just as content. In the silence the tea, true to predictions, is lavender.
The woman doesn’t touch the tea, leaving it on the table. A shame, Cassandra is an expert in preparing tea. She instead reached into a pocket of her old fashioned outfit. It looked like a fancy costume of a witch, pointy hat and all. Mcgonagall places the letter, or what seems to be a letter, onto the wooden table. Another antique, from India. Made from Black wood, also known as Ebony, the price range is considered high, however it’s value is because of its longevity of 5 to 6 decades.
The letter is then slid across with slightly wrinkled hands. So the woman is older than she seems. With permission from Father, the letter is picked up. It is addressed to Yudelle von Diablos of Ravenna , Citrine Room on the Third Floor, Hallowed Manor, Ciranne. On the other side is the wax seal. The coat of arms is unknown. Aunt’s ornate letter opener cuts through it cleanly.
Dear Miss Diablos,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and supplies.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely
Minerva Mcgonagall
Minerva Mcgonagall
Deputy Headmistress
HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY
Headmaster Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
It had addressed her wrong, but she could not expect the woman in front of her to understand the difference of titles. Yudelle is the heir, thus she should be addressed as the young lady or young mistress of the Diablos household. She allows the oversight. But, something whispers to her, it will only be allowed once. Power is power, and names hold more than people know. She reads it twice. A few words stick out to her. School, Witchcraft, Wizardry, September, Owl. The list after the headmaster’s name must be his titles. The government could be a form of democracy or multiple high societies hold power. Only power could reveal her name to the public. She finished her evaluation.
It is then passed onto Mother and Father. They also reread the letter, taking in the information unknowingly given. After a minute or two both look at Mcgonagall as if she lost her mind.
“It is hard to believe, but your daughter is a witch.” She said in response to their judging looks. “It might be best to show you proof that magic is real.”
She pulls out a stick out of her sleeves. The stick is a little under 10 inches and is a dark wood with a lighter handle, polished and well cared for. A wand, the woman has a wand. With a swish and a flick, the untouched tea infront of her starts to rise slowly. Up and up, the bubble of warm tea floats. Neither Mother nor Father show their surprise on their faces, almost like an unbreakable mask. But, they tense slightly, in a way that only people who have lived with them can tell. Then, they start to calculate. The gains, the losses, everything that could be affected.
“Yudelle,” Mother turns to me, composed once more. “Is this true?”
Father and McGonagall look at where I sit. “Odd things have happened around me, it is not out of the question that I could be a witch.”
The woman looks pleased. I addressed her: “Is this school required in order to know magic?”
She almost looks surprised when asked. “You can refuse, however I recommend trying a year then deciding whether or not to continue. You need a certain level of control or else you would have accidental bouts of magic happening constantly.”
I look at Mother and Father. Their faces give away nothing. They are planning. A smile places itself onto my face. “Ms. McGonagall, I would like to talk with my parents in private about this. Could you come back another day for our response?”
She nods. She is good at reading the room. Her stay lasted too long. Cassandra enters the room then escorts her out, the tea left cold. After the front door closes with an echoing thump, Mother and Father turn to me.
There is darkness. Brighter darkness than the one she was just in, but darkness nonetheless. Yudelle shifts from where she was laying, grazing a wall. She shifts to the other side and finds the same result. Underneath her is a soft cushion, it has a velvet like feel to it. And in a final hope of freedom, she reaches upwards. To her unfortunate luck, there was something in her way. She's in a coffin, most likely to be buried. Naturally, she starts to panic.
Her beloved wands start to warm up.
She grabs onto her magic, twisting it around herself. A protective layer covers herself. Yudelle starts to wave her Alder wand with her left hand, intending to blow the lid off and the dirt if she was already placed in the ground. Flicking her wand, almost charged with magic, a voice is heard. The flow stops. It is not speaking english. Ears straining, she makes out the language. Surprisingly, it was Japanese, and while she was not of that ethnicity, her studies covered the language. The voice came closer talking about a … uniform?
“Gotta hurry and get one!”
The steps of the person (?) were light and stopped in front of her (and the coffin she resides in). A shuffling can be heard. A grunt. “It’s too heavy! It’s time for my special move!”
A flash of blue. It is getting hotter. Then everything bursts. The lid is off in a fiery wave of flames. The culprit is a cat-raccoon creature that reminds her of a tanuki. It is small, about the size of a house cat, but is standing on two legs making it seem bigger. Its ears, however, are what draws her attention. They were on fire. Or rather there was fire in the ears. It unexpectedly made the creature very cute.
“Gahh! Why are you awake!”
Not an odd question considering that she did just step out of a coffin very much alive. Unfortunately for the creature, she was distracted by something else. The room she is in was filled with similar coffins floating around. The magic holding such a spell together seemed to be linked to the mirror in the middle of the room. Nevermind that, there was a talking Tanuki in front of her.
“I’m not a tanuki! I am the great Grimm-sama, you know!”
She said that out loud didn’t she.
“Oh, well. Human, give me those clothes, or else…” his (he used Ore instead of the polite watashi) voice trails off. And then in a moment of realization proudly proclaims, “I’ll roast ya whole!”
At that proclamation, the raccoon-cat monster huffed out a small ball of blue fire. She definitely is dreaming, tanuki’s can’t breathe fire, only shapeshift.. “Tanuki-kun, do you know the way out?” Even if the creature isn’t a tanuki, it is best to be polite in case they use rudeness to imprison her like a fairy would. However, Tanuki-kun (now called in her head) didn’t like her asking or talking.
“I told you, I’m not a tanuki! I am the Great Grimm-sama!” finishing his declaration with a massive fireball heading her way. Quickly ducking, it flew over her head. She could feel the heat try to burn her. It wasn’t like in a dream, she could see the flames lick at her reaching at scorching everything in her path. Yudelle listened to her gut, and started to run. Through the only doorway and into long winding halls that remind her too much of Hogwarts.
As she runs, she passes through a courtyard. In a glance all she could focus on was the oddly placed well in the middle surrounded by greenery. Passing through gave her the feeling of Snow White escaping through the dark forest. She found herself in a library. Books were randomly floating in place. The lights dim, casting a relaxing vibe throughout the rows of books. Taking in deep breaths, trying to get her beating heart under control, She fiddles with the wand in her left hand. Yudelle hears something behind her.
“Did you think you could run away from me!? You lowly human! Now, if you don’t want to be roasted whole, give me those clothesー” Ah, the tanuki followed her. A sharp crack was heard, loud enough to make her flinch. It was the sound of a whip, a flashback to her past of watching the circus entered her mind. Those were the days.
“Fugya!? It hurts! What’s this string!?” The tanuki was wrapped up, bound. And, the one holding the whip turned out to be a man. He wore a half bird mask that reminded her of plague doctors mixed with a masquerade mask. His top hat was a traditional black with a royal blue ribbon tied at the base of it. The ribbon was held together with a small gold rimmed mirror and a black feather.he was dressed in a black suit missing the jacket, instead replacing it with a flamboyant black and blue cape that reminded her of wings. His vest was sparkly and his hands were covered in black gloves. He even had golden finger coverings that sharped to create claws. All Yudelle could think of when she saw him was that crows would love him.
“It’s not a string. It’s the whip of love!” The strange man exclaimed. This is getting weirder. A panic starts to rise in Yudelle’s chest. She should be on the train, going home, not wherever this is, not stuck in a dream that reminds her too much of things she shouldn’t remember.
“Aah, I finally found you. You’re a new student, right? That’s not good. To leave your gate early! Not only that, but you have yet to get your unruly familiar under control.” He had turned to her in her breakdown.
“Let me go~! I’m not this guy’s familiar!”
“Yes, yes, every rebellious familiar says that. Let’s be quiet for a while, shall we?” ah, he ignored the tanuki (His name is Grim, right? Names were never her forte). The poor creature tried his best and ended up being muffled by the whip wrapped around his mouth. As the strange man turns his focus to the tanuki creature she sneakily puts her Alder wand into her hair and silently casts an illusion on it to disguise it as a simple hair decoration. Yudelle then did it to the Cherry wand as well. To an outside perspective it would seem like she has two wooden flower hairpins. Alder has an alder flower and Cherry bore multiple sakura blossoms. It is better to lie with half truths, and illusions are the same.
“Really. It’s unheard of for new students to open their gates early and come out by themselves.” he sighs. “How impatient are you? Come, come, the opening ceremony has started long ago. Let’s go to the Mirror Chamber.”
The weird man will not stop talking, he seems to find joy in his own voice. Yudelle can feel her patience thin and the urge to cast a muffalo on him rises. Wait. New student? Mirror Chamber? He turned to Yudelle. And started to talk. Ah, she said that out loud didn’t she.
“It’s the room where you woke up - the room with a lot of gates lining up. Every student that enrolled in the school went through the gates to come here. Usually, students don’t wake up until we open the door with a special key, but,” he looked at her as if it was her fault that she woke up in a coffin, nearly got set on fire then ran. Almost as if it were her fault for being outside, lost. Yudelle has a sudden urge to rip his eyes out.
“So those caskets were gates.” She carefully confirmed, slowly using Legilimens to snake into his head. Yudelle hit a wall. She pulled out in order to not alert the strange man of her meddling. The strange man had some skills that he had hid well. Sne continued to talk. “I think that the flames blew the lid off.”
“It seems that in the end, the main culprit is this familiar. If you brought him here, then look after him responsibly. Oh!” He stopped walking for a moment. “It is not the time for a lengthy talk. If we don’t hurry up, we’ll miss the opening ceremony. Come, come, we need to move.”
Yudelle took the moment of his pause to throw some questions his way. “Before that, who are you? Where is this place?”
“Oh?” The man looked at her in surprise. “Are you not fully conscious yet? I wonder if, perhaps, your memories are in disarray because of the space transportation magic… Oh well. It happens a lot, after all. I will explain to you as we walk. I am kind, after all.”
Kind? The man was getting stranger and stranger the more he talked.
“This is ‘Night Raven College’. It's a place where magical children with exceptional talents gather, Twisted Wonderland’s most prestigious magician training academy. And I am the headmaster supervising this academy under the board chairman, Dire Crowley.” The man, now known as Dire Crowley explains.
“Magician?” Yudelle's thoughts start to rapidly move. Is this one of the hidden schools like Mahoutokoro. No, he said Twisted Wonderland, like it is a place. No place exists with such a name. Wonderland is just fantasy, but Twisted Wonderland is not anything or anywhere. This means that either she got kidnapped by a cult or she is somewhere else . Magic exists, so any possibility could be true. If the personification of depression and death exist along with creatures that can show you your worst fear, a person has to be more open minded to all ideas.
“The only ones who could enroll to this school are those with excellent qualities as a magician, the ones who have been approved by the 'Mirror of Darkness’. The chosen ones are called into this academy through the 'gates’, from all over the world. Do you remember a black carriage came to pick you up?”
Yudelle paused for a moment. She remembered the mirror, she remembered the green flames, she remembered the darkness. She did not remember a carriage.
“That black carriage is intended to pick up the new students chosen by the Mirror of Darkness. It is a special carriage carrying the gate that leads to the academy. From time immemorial, it has been decided by conventional wisdom that carriages are used for pick-ups on special occasion, am I right?”
“In other words, I was brought here by force by that carriage!?” Crowley glanced down at her and seemed to see something that she did not know of. He doesn’t answer.
Grim’s struggle starts to become louder, distracting Crowley. Without looking back he continued walking, “Come, we’re going to the opening ceremony now.”