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Chapter Text

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Summer holidays had always been a brief reprieve—a splash of cold water to her face—a spot of zero in the tumultuous flood of magical activity that drowned her year in its current.

Yuu wondered whether she had felt her holidays to be long or short as she gazed absently out of the window of her pristinely made room in muggle England. The sun outside was strong, but not strong enough to pierce the lingering chill and fog that early mornings still carried with them. Everything was washed out here, reduced in intensity, so that she felt her own presence fading into the mist beyond the glass pane.

There was no point in pondering, though. The two months of beautiful, oppressive normalcy had faded into the past. Whether she cared or not—it was over.

It was time to return.

She might feel little more if anyone else did, but Yuu, just like her room, just like the scenery, was stolen by a cool, clean sensation passing through her chest. Bare. Empty. The snug warmth and deep night-sky ceiling of the Ravenclaw Common Room, the smiles and sneers of her classmates, the flare of her wand in her hand; it all faded back into obscurity. Just like now…

She couldn’t find it within herself to care.

“Yuu-chan!” Her mother called upstairs in Japanese. It was the first time she’d heard her voice all year.

Force of habit made Yuu strain her ears, sit up straight. Even after all these years and all of her failed experiments, she could not get rid of the tiniest piece of expectation pulling at her attention. As if despite the odds, maybe this time would be different.

“Wake your father. He’ll be the one to drop you off at the station. I’m leaving.”

Or not.

“Yes, mother,” Yuu called back, turning away from the misty window and activating the Self-Levitation Charm on her trunk by running a finger over it. She stopped by the washroom on her way over to the master bedroom to neaten her appearance, directing the trunk to the door where it settled obligingly down with a thump to await her. She’d learned from experience that when she dressed more neatly, trouble tended to take longer to find her.

Yuu was no longer a small child wearing clothes too large for her frame. She straightened her button-up carefully and made sure the wrinkles were smoothed out. The solemn-looking reflection, gazing back at her through a curtain of hair that fell over her eyes, mirrored her movements. Behind the black glittered a bright blue that could not be completely hidden despite her best efforts.

As she stared distractedly at the reflective glass, the shadow of a cloud passed over her image.

—Aah! My most beloved lady…

Yuu’s unfocused blue eyes snapped to attention in the mirror beneath her dark bangs. Had someone turned the television on downstairs? The strong echo of a strong masculine voice had filled the room abruptly enough for her to jump at its volume—and even as she frowned, the mirror before her was fogging over, its surface becoming as indistinct as the dawn outside.

The strange voice spoke in fluent Japanese, her mother’s first and strongest language, and the same language Yuu had spent the past few years learning. But she had returned her last instruction CD to the library weeks ago, and the principal communication method here was English.

Was it just a hallucination—?

Before she could think further, the cloudy washroom mirror glowed with a billow of deep, black-green mist that obscured her face’s reflection. Yuu sucked in a gasp, coming out of her thoughts.

—The noble, beautiful flower of evil…

—It is you who are the fairest of all in this world!

‘Flower of evil?’

Yuu tensed as the mirror burst into green flame. An illusion—a spell? The obviously unnatural occurrence finally brought caution to the forefront of her mind.

But using underage magic was out of the question for Yuu, and no one she knew in the area was at all familiar with the otherworldly power that sizzled beneath her skin. What would be the possibility that a wizard or witch had appeared in her sleepy, uneventful town?

She herself had confidence that her control over her own magic was stable enough to avoid accidental casting. And, even more strangely, this green fire didn’t crackle at her skin like the feel of magic did within Hogwarts, didn’t feel like a tangible force she had become familiar during the past several years. Instead, it was completely alien. Out of her expectations.

Just like the giddy feeling of plunging into the unknown Yuu had first experienced over four years ago.

—Magic mirror, on the wall. Tell me. In this world, who is the…

The only difference was that fifteen-year-old Yuu was far more aware of the dangers of magic than eleven-year-old Yuu.

For now, she ignored the voice. In these situations, it was not wise to just sit and stare at a possibly enchanted mirror. But it would be just as dangerous to use magic without permission. As great clouds of what looked like dark emerald flame began to burn brighter and brighter against the surface that had once housed her reflection, Yuu’s fingers closed around her wand in her sleeve and she bent down, ready to run.

A sudden rush of sound assaulted her ears, froze her in place. Yuu jerked her head to the right, cocking her head to listen—was this the ominous creaking of… Weighted wood? A carriage’s bumping movement over pavement, like the carriages that took her to school from the Station? Slowly, the clip-clop of hooves neared in her hearing… But the window was shut. How could sound pass so clearly into her head?

Impossibly, a flock of broad-winged ravens burst past the washroom window, their cawing piercing the barrier of her wall like it was paper. She had not seen a bird the size of a raven in her small town for as long as she could remember. Three black feathers remained swaying at her window-side in their wake, cradled by the air in a slow, tracing descent.

An omen. The phrase appeared unbidden in her mind.

No. There had to be a better explanation. Yuu jerked her head back to the mirror. This strengthening green fire was not at all like the brightness of Floo Network fire. No magic she had ever experienced felt like ‘nothing’. There was no pressure, no presence. It felt as if she had stepped into a weightless dream.

—O, one who has been guided by the Mirror of Darkness.

Was it calling her? Yuu did not answer—speaking to magical artifacts lent them power, or so she had read once. Instead, she glared at the completely green mirror and backed away one step, two. Her ankles seemed weighted with heavy stones.

—Take the hand of the one who is reflected in the Mirror as thine heart desires.

Following the command, her mirror’s ghostly green light was extinguished in a wave of pitch black—an inky substance flooding the glass that sent every hair on the back of her neck standing up straight. Now she felt something, a nameless something that was too thick to be fear. Still, Yuu could not wrench her eyes away, nor could she turn and run. Her feet refused to obey her movements any longer.

An enchantment must have been in place—something was pinning her still, because there was no other explanation for her sluggish response time, her inability to pull out her wand. Her riveted attention trapped straight ahead regardless of the screaming instinct to hide. A heavy gathering of that same something shoved down on her shoulders and smothered her mind, and she could no longer distinguish it between an outside force or the workings of her own thoughts.

Yuu had never been good at resisting magic—or whatever this was—and a strange sense of fantasy, a reverie cut her off from any of her usual reactions. So she could only watch as a large hand stretched out of the mirror entirely, reaching towards her with its palm open…

Let’s get going soon, she heard someone calling, then a different voice grumbling Oi. We’re leaving. Follow me. And someone else snapping Stop dawdling, I won’t forgive tardiness.

We have to go.

Hurry up. Being outside is killing me.

Shall I guide you to our destination?

Stop standing there in a daze.

If you don’t come quickly, you’ll lose your head.

Come on, let’s begin.

Oh! You’re here! I was waiting…

Your hand.

“Wait,” Yuu finally managed to muster up a shout. She realized with horror that her right hand, her wand hand, was lifting towards the hand stretching out of the mirror from her pocket. But the voice was not answering her plea, and the cacophony of voices all continued to speak in Japanese, so she abandoned her English and repeated in her mother’s native tongue, “Wait! What’s going on?”

She received no answer. Her hand met the hand in the mirror and Yuu’s surroundings plunged out of sight in a dizzying spiral of light and colour. Just like that, all the talking voices snuffed out into silence, but those were not important—the more important thing was her utter defencelessness against this possibly dangerous happening, this nameless thing trapping her in place right now…

Was it trapping her, though? Was she still standing in her washroom, or had the mirror sucked her right through…?

This was not the same tug at her stomach that meant Portkey activation. It was not the squeezing vertigo of Apparition. Nevertheless, Yuu felt her heart drop dangerously as her feet left the floor…

—No regrets? The deep voice echoed into her mind solemnly over the blood rushing in her ears.

“I’ve got nothing but regrets right now!” Yuu shouted before the world tumbled into night.

—

CHAPTER ONE | The Strange Inhabitants of Night Raven College.

—

The hall was dark. Through her half-lidded eyes, Yuu could barely make out the dimly lit chain-links of innumerable chandeliers strung across a domed ceiling. A host of floating coffins glowed that same unearthly green with barely suppressed light, illuminating the room just enough for her eyes to adjust to its surroundings. The hush of the room pervaded her ears and breath.

Nothing felt solid. Was she dreaming?

She stretched her fingers cautiously. Wiggled her toes. No pain.

Yuu sat up. As she did, she realized her socks were touching the foot of a raised dais suffused in gold, and when she raised her head, a metal-engraved mirror came into view floating atop the platform, illuminated with a single beam of that same light. It looked eerie, unearthly. Like an illusion.

Gradually, reality dawned upon her, and she scrambled to her feet to take a few wary steps back, shivering as her hands met the cold stone floor with the movement. Where was she? What was going on?

This was not like the owl that had burst into the living room in the middle of the night, bringing with it a letter that opened up a new world. No—this was somehow more ominous.

She looked around carefully, trying to calm her racing heart. Two hissing snakes carved into each side of the ovular mirror glinted ominously down at her, their heads sculpted in excruciating detail, before the black mirror’s glass burst into scarlet flame.

Fire! Yuu leapt backwards a step, fingernails whitening around her wand.

—The inferno that turns even tomorrow to dust.

It was the same voice from her mirror, again echoing in her mind with a presence that refused to be ignored—perhaps this was the original voice of the enchanted mirror before her? Yuu controlled her breathing and straightened cautiously to look up at the burning glass. It was far taller than her, grander than any mirror she had seen before.

As fast as it had lit, the fire extinguished, frozen solid by a shard of ice so white it glowed blue.

—Ice that seals even time in its tracks!

A burst of leaves consumed the ice and ruffled Yuu’s hair. —The great tree that swallows even the sky!

Scrambling for understanding, for identification, was growing increasingly difficult. This demonstration was… It could only be Nature magic or something she had no knowledge of, the mirror some ancient artifact—but whatever it was, she could not ascertain how an image in a mirror was affecting the real world like this. She’d only read a little bit about enchanted mirrors, only seen the Mirror of Erised once (and not directly). Only now did Yuu wish she’d paid more attention to that particular library book.

Yet this did not seem like the magic she was so used to, nor the old magick that the centaurs had shown her, not house elf magic nor the curious turning feeling of Time magic spinning with a Time-Turner.

Everything was so foreign, so unknown, that for all of her scrambling, she could not determine a frame of reference at all.

The foreboding deepened into a heavy sense of dread. Yuu was utterly out of her element.

Suppressing her panicked breathing, she decided that in this situation, there was no use to be worrying about Traces or laws or Statutes anymore, not when the surroundings were so permeated with this strange new magic that she was sucking lungful after lungful with each breath. It smelt electric but felt weightless, nothing like what she was used to—nothing like anything she knew.

The magic (if that was what it was) glowed with impossibly bright brilliance as shards of light flew around her, illuminating her neatly arranged clothing. Foreign and dizzyingly lucent, it stole her usual calm and apathy until Yuu could not even recognize the reason behind her racing heart.

The mirror went dark again. —Do not fear the power of Darkness.

It seemed as if it were talking directly into her mind, the voice echoing impossibly in the empty hall. —Now, show me your power.

“Why do I have to do something like that?” Yuu raised her voice to respond, ignoring its trembling—

—As if in answer, everything exploded into light.

—For me! The mirror’s voice projected directly into her head, and without warning she saw a great, greyish beast drowning out her vision. It outgrew Norberta the Norwegian Ridgeback, roared with a force that rippled the air around it, and turned glowing blue eyes her way.

Yuu tried to stagger backwards, but once again her feet had stopped listening to her.

—For them. And for you—time is short.

A crowd of comparatively slight figures in dark robes faced the four-legged creature as her vision edged away from its enormous form. Some were shouting, some bleeding, some on their knees. Yuu could not hold back a gasp whistling down her throat as the beast roared again and the mane around its neck burst into cerulean, neon, turquoise flames. Wings sprouted from its back like a great chimaera and the robed figures fell back with dismayed cries—

The beast reared back into the air; now, she finally managed to see the heads of snakes protruding from its sides, dancing in the air like a hydra’s. Long, lashing tentacles struck the ground and shook her vision. The innumerable eyes studding their heads were wide open, pupil-less, an unearthly glowing polar blue that burned and froze the air.

Around the beast, piles of rock, columns of mountain trembled and shook and crumbled into sand. Beneath it, the groaning earth cracked open and swallowed jagged pieces of metal and rock. The robed figures—young men?—were shouting, holding up what looked like fountain pens topped with jewels that glowed in the dim surroundings, but several had already collapsed, spent. The ground was sticky with blood.

In this vision, it was clear they were fighting a losing battle.

Yuu’s shell-shocked mind began to spin again. There was no time, the mirror had said—did that mean this was a prophecy? But prophecies were not told through mirrors, always spoken in words, and Professor Trelawney had never said…! Still, the terrifying sight freed her legs to move and Yuu to take steps forward towards the frightening sight, ready to draw her wand, perhaps foolishly.

She didn’t know what was going on. Didn't understand what she was seeing. For someone who had lived in peace-time like Yuu, the gruesome scene before her was so jarring that she could not do anything else.

Yet the voice would not let her open her mouth to focus on a spell. It drowned out the image once again in blackness, and its deep timbre was solemn when it said slowly—

—By any means, do not let go of that hand.

—

The next time Yuu awoke, it was to a great thumping surrounding her and a small pitter-patter followed by some low muttering. For one delirious moment she thought she might have been waking from a long reverie, tucked away safely in her compartment on the Hogwarts Express, warm and drowsy with the sunny September day.

What had she been dreaming about before? Her mind was hazy and disobedient.

Right. Yuu was supposed to be going to Hogwarts that day. Before—

Her washroom mirror exploded into green and black.

“Crap. People are gonna come soon! Gotta get a uniform fast-like… Ugh…!”

The thin voice came from somewhere around her feet. Yuu’s still swimming consciousness focused on it as she tried to remember what came after. Something about fire, and ice, and a voice that had said…

What did that voice sound like again?

“Uuuugh. But this lid is so freakin’ heavy… Fine. Things have already come to this, so I might as well bust out my hidden move, too. Take that!”

The thumping intensified and the blackness around her lifted.

More specifically, something covering her vision fell to the ground with a loud clatter and a rush of heat.

Yuu jerked upright just in time to miss a giant blue fireball blowing past her hair. “Holy—!” she gasped, waking up instantly and rolling to the side. Consequently, she fell out of the spot she had been lying in and collapsed onto the floor in an ungainly heap.

A catlike creature, from whom the muttering was emanating, glanced over at her and screamed. “Gyaaah———!! Why’re you awake already!?”

In lieu of a response, Yuu gaped wordlessly at him and then around at the illuminated room. This was the room with the mirror she had seen earlier in the darkness.

What darkness?

But she had just been here… Hadn’t she?

Ignoring the strange feeling pressing against her disordered mind, Yuu brought her thoughts back to the surroundings. It was still full of floating coffins and now, irregular patches of blue flame fizzling out into embers against the walls, the floor.

Yuu had fallen from one of the open coffins floating in the air; it was still smouldering with the blue remnants of the fireball that she’d dodged. Something about these flames seemed familiar to her…

What was this strange sensation of déjà vu that pressured her mind so uncomfortably?

But it was not the time to get stuck in her thoughts. More importantly, she had never seen a fire-breathing creature like this in front of her, and it was talking. Despite being relatively familiar with the existence of magical creatures that could speak—most notably the centaurs and house-elves—no rat, cat or owl had spoken directly to her like this.

So her first statement was a rather stupid, “There’s a talking tanuki and it’s standing upright…”

“Who’re you calling a tanuki?! I’m the Great Lord Grim!” The newly named Grim yelled back at her. Standing on his hind legs.

Yuu gaped at him even more obviously. This ‘not-tanuki’ only came up to her waist, but its attitude was a lot bigger than its size. “You’re… Grim…?”

“Don’t forget the Great Lord!” The creature—Grim corrected her. He looked almost comically human standing upright, but only if she ignored the twin tufts of fiery blue coming out of his ears.

—Had she seen this somewhere before?

Struck by a sudden headache, Yuu looked away from the ears and down to his bright blue eyes. “Um.” Her social awkwardness prevented anything else from coming out.

“…Whatever. Oi, human. Pass me those clothes!” Grim, unaffected, pointed somewhere by where she was sitting. “If you don’t… I’ll roast you!”

At his last words a great cloud of fire burst into life behind him. Yuu flinched backwards and felt the heat and thought that she really had seen that fire somewhere before. In any case, it was probably a good idea to stay as far away from those blue flames as she possibly could, since blue fire burned at much higher temperatures than yellow and red. In theory, anyway. When magic came into the equation, all scientific knowledge flew out the window.

“Getting literally roasted by a tanuki would be a little too original,” she muttered to herself. Normally, a talking magical (?) creature she’d never seen before would be more than enough reason for excitement, but right now everything was so alien and confusing that wariness overwhelmed all of her usual calm.

Grim heard her. “I said I’m not a tanuki!” he shouted back.

She pushed herself decisively to her feet. “Okay, Mister Not-a-Tanuki, you can get whatever you need yourself. I’m lost here, so I’m leaving before I turn into a shish kabob!”

“Huh!? Oi, wait!”

Yuu ran past him even as he shouted out. Eyes cataloguing exits—only one huge set of doors—she dove out of them, down a stone-paved corridor, and into what looked like a lecture hall.

First step: get out of here.

Furiously thinking as she moved, Yuu wished for the first time that she had access to her Yajirushi broom—she was terrible at running and even with her hatred of flying, getting altitude was always good for gaining her bearings in a new environment. There was just too much she didn’t know. Still, now was not the time to be worrying over spilt milk.

Was this Hogwarts?

But she didn’t feel the deep undercurrent of magic that ran in the stone floors. None of the silvery ghosts’ missing limbs, glistening with greyish blood as they drifted aimlessly through the air, were visible in the darkness. No trick stairs, no steps turning into slides. No portraits staring down disdainfully, sleepily, fondly down at them.

Everything was alien.

The row of classrooms followed out to a pavilion hallway that reminded her of Greek architecture, and then outside to a garden. Doing her best not the trample the grass, Yuu cut straight through the patch illuminated by soft moonlight—had she slept through the entire day? Or was she still dreaming?—thumped her way down a paved stone staircase that spiralled down and down to a long street, and finally dove back inside a building standing tall in the falling dusk. It turned out to be a huge library lit only by ghostly dots of yellow-green light she nearly mistook for fireflies. Yuu, squinting at around at the towering bookshelves, narrowly missed bumping into a book that was floating by her head.

Books didn’t float in the Hogwarts library. Any of the unrulier tomes were usually sealed and wrestled into submission to prevent unfortunate ‘accidents’. The spiral staircases leading up to the second floor were nowhere to be seen.

Yuu’s brain turned up incongruency after incongruency and she finally could only think, what the hell is going on?

“—Thought you could run away from my nose, you pathetic human?” Grim skidded to a stop right behind where she was staring, dumbstruck, at the rows of books fading into the darkness and the circling ones floating in front of her eyes. “Tough luck. Now gimme those clothes if you don’t wanna be roasted alive!”

“Wait, my clothes?!” Yuu spluttered, taking a step back and clutching at her button-up sweater. “I’m wearing these!”

“I don’t—fugya!?” Both of them jumped as what looked like a long, sparkling snake whipped out of the darkness around Grim’s small stomach. “Ouch! What’s with this string!?”

“It’s not a string, it’s a whip! Of love!”

Yuu narrowly managed to swallow a scream. A tall figure had melted of the darkness of the library without either of them noticing and was standing right beside her, as if he had been present all along.

She hadn’t noticed his entrance at all.

The first thing Yuu observed was the huge mantle the new arrival wore over a neatly pressed vest and dress shirt, because it looked like something a flamboyant villain from a Dixney movie would wear. A great fluttering amalgamation of royal blue and violet gold-embroidered fabric, it was topped off with a blanket of raven’s glossy feathers. Yuu, who had been a rare member of the fine arts club that barely existed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, admired the beautifully made costume with an open mouth.

The new arrival turned to her as if he hadn’t just called whatever sparkling thing that was holding Grim a ‘whip of love’. Too shocked to point out the ridiculousness of that name, Yuu just continued to stare as she met the gaze of a black raven-like mask that covered most of the man’s face. As he leaned forward to stare right back at her, a matching black top-hat tipped down over his head, exposing a small gleaming mirror attached to its blue ribbon.

“Um,” she emitted intelligently.

The man narrowed glowing golden eyes—were those eyes, or were those balls of light?—behind the mask. “Aah, I finally found you! You are one of this year’s newly admitted students, correct?”

“…What?” she replied dumbly.

“Leaving from the Gate without prior permission is expressly forbidden, might I add,” the golden eyes winked briefly out of existence.

They glowed like the ghost lights floating in this library.

Having been caught off guard so many times already, Yuu’s normally quick brain could not quite process everything occurring around her at the moment. There were far too many new variables, new unknowns that distracted her. Did this man’s voice not sound familiar? Did not the mirror at his hat seem strange? Was there not something unearthly about his sudden appearance? Why was his ‘whip of love’ sparkling like that?

Yuu swallowed, not knowing why those eyes put her on guard instinctively. “Sir, I—”

“Besides! Untrained magical familiars are against the school rules.” Crowley swept past her stammering briskly.

Magical familiars… Was he referring to Grim? Yuu protested instinctively, “That’s not my familiar! In the first place—”

Grim struggled noisily, interrupting her words, as the man dragged his whip—and Grim—over to them. “Let me go! I’m not this guy’s familiar! Not the Great Lord Grim!”

“Yes, yes, all rebellious familiars say the same thing. Do be quiet for a moment, will you?”

The man retracted his whip, fished Grim up by the scruff of his neck, and covered his snout with one gloved hand. Grim’s protests were immediately muffled into inaudible murmurs.

Yuu realised that the stranger was still frowning at her. “My word. Never in the history of this school have I seen a new student open the Gate themselves and try to leave!” He sighed. “Are you really that impatient?”

“Hold on a second, sir, I haven’t left anywhere—”

“Come now, the school opening ceremony has begun a long time ago. Let us proceed to the Mirror Chamber before we experience any more delays.”

A long time ago? How long had she been here?

No, that wasn’t important right now.

Yuu planted her feet and glared up at the stranger, tired of being interrupted. “What do you mean by newly admitted student!? What gate!”

“The room you woke up in that was surrounded by Gates is what I mean, of course. Imagine my surprise when in the middle of the ceremony, I discover an open one devoid of student!” The man paused from where he was pulling her resisting arm towards the door with a theatrical sigh, but explained patiently with his free hand still clamped around Grim’s snout. “Oh, do keep up. All students entering this academy pass through one of the Gates to arrive here—”

“There was no gate or any remotely door-like structure I—”

“Normally, students are not supposed to wake up until a special key is used to unlock those Gates, but…”

“Wait a second, those weren’t coffins?” Yuu blurted out with wide eyes, finally making the connection.

“Well, in a manner of speaking. Marking the boundary where one bids farewell their current world and are reborn to a new one… That is the theme with which the Gates are designed.”

“Bids farewell—are you saying that I’ve died?” she said sharply. “In the first place, I didn’t come through the door with a key. That tanuki you’re holding onto blew off the cover with a fireball.”

“Mmmph!” Grim protested incoherently.

“So you’re saying that all the fault lies with this familiar.” The man shook Grim once. “I must say, if you are the owner bringing him along, you should take responsibility for him and make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen. In the first place, how did he get into your Gate with you?”

“He wasn’t even in the cof—”

“Oh my! Would you look at the time! There is absolutely none to spare explaining things you should already know.” The man began to pull her along again. “If you don’t hurry, the school’s opening ceremony is going to end. Follow me.”

School opening ceremony… And the way they were all speaking Japanese… The surreal feeling was becoming stronger by the moment.

Had she somehow come to a different magic school in Japan? Having attended the washitsu-filled Mahoutokoro last year, Yuu felt that there was something very strange about all that was taking place before her. Was she really not dreaming? Had the past (rather hectic) semester gone to her head and given her hallucinations, mixing up the European Hogwarts with the Japanese Mahoutokoro and spitting back out some amalgamation her brain had created by itself?

But…

After all of her furious thinking, all her scrambling to make sense of the world around her, Yuu finally paused. Did it really matter if this was a dream?

She’d never cared much about these things.

After all, nothing really mattered.

“Wait a second. At least tell me where I am,” Yuu gave up and decided to roll with it. Humans were adaptable creatures, and it didn’t look as if she was in control of the situation. Running away would probably be impossible with this man here, and she had too many questions about where they were right now.

Plus, the way he had worded it seemed like she had ‘died’ already. Yuu had never died before—or never remembered herself dying, so it was a rather new and exciting experience. She didn’t feel dead at all; in fact, she was still rather short of breath from sprinting across whatever place this was. Surely if she no longer lived, the concept of breathing and her poor athleticism would have been irrelevant to her.

“Oh? I thought you were properly awake… Is your consciousness still not fully established yet?” The man lifted a dark glove to his chin in thought. “It seems that perhaps the effects of the Space-Travel Magic have left you a little confused… I suppose that’s not rare.”

“Space-Travel?” Yuu echoed. Not Apparition? Not Floo?

He wasn’t listening. “Oh well, this happens once in a while. Very well. Allow me to explain as we walk, since I am an astoundingly nice person.”

The golden eyes curved into crescents.

Yuu decided that she didn’t really trust this new, smartly dressed, strangely masked ‘nice’ man. “And who exactly are you, sir?”

“All in good time, child.” He tugged her into a walk and led her back out of the darkened library into the courtyard garden dyed in dusk. Far more open to the elements than she had originally anticipated, the courtyard was filled with flourishing apple trees and benches. The cobbled stone pathway clicked against the man’s dress shoes and made no noise on her socks as they crossed the idyllic landscape leisurely, passing a small well.

Yuu glanced around greedily until he cleared his throat theatrically with an “Ahem!”. Then she turned back around and nodded expectantly with sparkling eyes. She hadn’t felt this excited since she had seen Hogwarts for the first time.

Just like how Yuu had been saved by magic, just like how she endlessly thirsted and hungered for knowledge—this was an entirely new, different place to explore. Perhaps she cared about little, but knowledge was one of the few things that had stolen her heart, and magic was another.

She could feel both secrets and magic lying here. Yuu could never resist their siren call.

At her eager perusal, Yuu thought she saw the golden eyes soften just the slightest bit. “Around you is the courtyard of Night Raven College. This academy is where the rarest of talents, the magicians holding the most potential, are chosen from all over the world to gather. In fact, it is the most prestigious development school for magic in the entirety of the Twisted Wonderland,” the man explained with a flourish. She saw that the tips of his gloves were fastened with what looked like metallic claws that shone in the rising moonlight.

“Twisted… Wonderland?” she repeated with a frown. What a strange name for a world. Or was it the name of some continent?

“And! I am the Headmaster of this school, entrusted with the position by the board chairman. My name is Dire Crowley.”

“H-Headmaster,” Yuu stammered, voice squeaking. She had been nothing short of rude to this man without knowing who he was—and although Yuu wasn’t the most classic rule-abiding student, she respected the wizarding staff of her school immensely. “Umm, I apologize, Headmaster Crowley, I had no idea.”

Crowley laughed, swinging around a rather listless Grim with his other hand. “That’s quite all right. I am very nice.”

“…” She wisely refrained from further comment in light of his new identity.

“The only ones who have the privilege of attending this school are those who are chosen by the Yami no Kagami—the Mirror of Darkness as having the makings of an excellent magician.”

Yuu noted carefully how he did not use the term ‘witch’ or ‘wizard’. One point for the ‘it was all just a dream’ theory.

Crowley continued, “The chosen ones are summoned here from all over the world using the Gates. In fact, a black carriage carrying a Gate should have arrived at your residence to welcome you.”

Yuu wracked her brain and as if through a fog, remembered checking her appearance in the mirror that morning and hearing the creak of a carriage, beholding the flutter of ravens’ wings. If she concentrated harder, she could barely remember glimpses of a dark forest—of a horse with wild eyes—

Her head pounded. What else had she seen? What was she forgetting?

“That black carriage is expressly for the purpose of welcoming students chosen by the mirror. It carries the enchanted Gates that are connected to this school. Wouldn’t you agree that a carriage is the only way of transportation on a special day? After all, this procession has been in fashion since time immemorial.”

He was right; just like this school, Hogwarts employed the use of horseless carriages to escort students from Hogsmeade’s Station to the school grounds. Yuu briefly wondered why everyone involved with magic have such a flair for the dramatic, for the appearances, for unnecessary ceremony. One would think that they were all from the theatre department. Then she remembered that it wasn’t like she had any room to point fingers. Even fewer wizards and witches joined the fine arts club or choir, both of which Yuu was a part of.

For now, she nodded along, trying to put her disordered memories together with little success. She frowned. “…So you’re saying that I was brought here without my permission.”

“That’s such a crass way of putting it.”

The nearly forgotten Grim had had enough of being dangled from the Headmaster’s hand. “Mmph! Mmmph!”

Yuu asked hesitantly, “Should we maybe let him down?”

Crowley ignored both of them. “Now that that’s settled, let us attend the opening ceremony. Or whatever’s left of it.”

Maybe not.

“Headmaster, is there any way of declining this transfer in?” Yuu jogged to keep up with his longer strides and changed tack. “I think this whole thing must have been a mistake.”

But Crowley was finished with his bout of ‘astounding niceness’ and was content to ignore her and Grim completely this time. Yuu, who didn’t care much either way, shrugged and remained pliable as he pulled her all the way back through the winding hallways of the building. Before long, they arrived at the huge double doors she’d run from.

His hand felt strangely familiar around hers, Yuu noticed absently. And his voice, where had she heard it before?

—Do not let go of that hand.

Yuu squeezed a little tighter. For no logical reason, being in contact with this person took away some of the unfamiliar tenseness in her shoulders. He was untrustworthy, was frightening, was unnatural. And yet, the more she spoke with him, the surer she became that Crowley was ‘safe’. This strange dissonance melded seamlessly into her mind until it faded out of importance.

She wondered when she was going to wake up, and then decided it didn’t matter either way.

—

Crowley cracked the door to the Mirror Chamber open to meet a flood of noise. For a moment Yuu doubted the sight that met her eyes as the same dark room filled with a ghostly gleam, for now there was no trace of its past.

Brightly lit with warm orange fire, the cold and dark atmosphere of the stone hall had changed dramatically; light-trapping curtains had been pulled back on the ring of windows circling the room, adding the softness of moonlight to take the edge off the dark coffins gleaming as they bobbed up and down mid-air. Filling the chamber to capacity were what seemed to be a flood of youths all dressed in the same dark hooded robes ringed with the same violet on Crowley’s mantle. The gold embroidering on their sleeves and hems flashed in the firelight and worsened the pounding of her head.

The youths—students?—seemed to be divided into several large parties fanning out across the circular room, each group faced with a hooded leader standing in front of them. Yuu was reminded of the first night of school that took place each year in the Great Hall at Hogwarts; these leaders occupied the spot where prefects and Head Boys and Girls would be gathered with the professors that looked down upon them.

All of the students were chattering, their lively words filling the room with a cacophony of sound that echoed off the walls and ceiling. Yuu, who was still being tugged along by Crowley, was immediately overwhelmed by the noise and sheer volume of the crowd. She’d never been used to dealing with large groups of people, nor had any positive experiences with them—and this group was much larger than the usual crowd she passed by in the Great Hall.

It was a good thing that this time, the gazes did not turn her way for even a moment.

Recovering, she scanned the gathering quickly and estimated over a hundred students present, perhaps over two. The sea of hooded robes looked elegant and almost sinister in their black lined with exquisite purple embroidery. Now that she was closer, Yuu could appreciate the delicate craft of the golden trim that flashed here and there, tracing the long bolts of fabric hanging all the way down to the stone floor.

Her head ached. She had seen this uniform somewhere before… But where?

“Now, I suppose the opening ceremony, as well as the proceedings of division into the dormitories, has ended,” the closest leader’s voice passed sternly over the crowd in a carrying command. He stepped forward, the firelight gleaming off of a barely visible patch of scarlet hair peeking from his hood. “Are you listening, newcomers? In the Heartslabyul dormitory that you have all just been admitted into, I embody the rules. Keep in mind that I will behead those who disobey me. Understood?”

The students standing in front of him went unnaturally silent.

The hush quickly rippled over to where they were standing. Yuu was doing a lot of gaping today. “Headmaster? Is he allowed to say something like that?”

Before Crowley could respond, the person next to that unbelievably violent-sounding leader—prefect?—yawned with exaggerated slowness, cutting off the end of the red-haired person’s sentence. “…Fuaaah. The tiresome ceremony’s finally over with.” His dark skin glowed in the light as he took a step forward, raising one wickedly clawed—clawed?!—hand in a careless wave. “We’re heading back right now. Savanaclaw dorm, follow me.”

His compatriot, a pale-haired young man wearing thin lenses, smiled over at the group he was standing before. “Everyone who has just been divided here, greetings,” He said politely, also soundly ignoring the other leaders beside him. “On this celebratory occasion, I would like to congratulate you on your enrolment in this prestigious establishment! So that you can all enjoy your school life here to the fullest, I will do my very best to support you all as the Dormitory Head of Octavinelle.”

A tall, rather androgynous blond brushed their sleek bangs out of their face impatiently. “More importantly, where on earth did that Headmaster go? He hasn’t come back after leaping out of the room halfway through the ceremony…”

This person in particular was tall for a student and more beautiful than anyone she’d seen in her life. It was the kind of beauty that made one wonder whether the person in question was truly human, glowing like the unearthly appearance of a witch or wizard with Veela blood. Normally, she would have spent more time staring in appreciation; however, Yuu was instead busy gawking at the space beside them, where instead of a person standing, there was a floating tablet. Or something.

Attending Hogwarts necessarily meant a complete divorce from technological advancements due to magical interference, so as the years wore on, she’d started to fall out of touch with the latest developments in technology… But she was pretty sure tablets couldn’t hover yet. What was more, although her father was good with computers and smart devices despite being from wizarding ancestry, she had never seen him in possession of a machine this thin.

Yet the device was working; it was floating effortlessly and displaying what she guessed was a video chat app with the English words SOUND ONLY splashed across the azure screen, completely unaffected by the clearly magical surroundings. Yuu began to wonder if her magic and this magic were even remotely the same.

More points for the ‘it was all a dream’ theory.

A listless voice commented from the speaker. “Abdication of professional duties,” it muttered. “This means we can go, right? GG. I’ll send a school map to the students I’ve got, so let’s just finish this thing already.”

Yuu wondered wildly if it was an AI talking. Even Elexa didn’t sound so natural. And it was strange that the voice was in Japanese even though the screen read in English…

On the tablet’s other side was a dark-skinned boy with large bangle earrings and mahogany kohl smeared liberally around his scarlet eyes, completely at ease with the floating technology right by his elbow. He peered forward into the crowd and shrugged. “Maybe he ate something bad and had to go to the—”

Crowley let go of her and slammed the door the rest of the way open. “That is incorrect!”

Yuu knew she was escaping reality a bit, but that last exchange had sent her almost into giggles. Belatedly, she noticed that Crowley had tossed Grim into the air; she dove forwards to catch him in his parabolic descent. He felt like a solid, warm stuffed animal in her arms. Alive and real and surprisingly large. In Crowley’s hand, he had looked tiny, but up close he was the size of a toddler, his head almost as big as hers.

“Thought I was gonna die,” Grim gasped, finally able to speak.

Yuu had always liked animals. She stroked the top of his head once. “Are you okay?”

“…Humph!” He cast her a proud glance before turning away. “Don’t need you fussing over me!”

“Ah. He’s back.” The red-haired person—who had just threatened to behead his dorm-mates—blinked. On second glance, what little she could see of his face reminded Yuu strikingly of a China doll. For someone who’d just threatened to murder a bunch of new admittees, he was built thin and shorter than the rest of the leaders standing up front (except for the tablet).

“One of the new students was missing, so I went to find them, that’s all! Children these days. No patience.” Crowley’s cape fluttered as he turned back to her and plucked Grim out of her hands again. “Now. You’re the only one who hasn’t been put into a dorm yet. I’ll keep this tanuki-kun for you, so hurry and face the Mirror of Darkness.”

“…A student? Missing?” the redhead murmured. While Yuu could not see his face clearly, she had the distinct impression that he was glaring at her.

Before she could react further, Grim was taken struggling from her arms. “Mmmm!!”

Poor guy, Yuu thought absently, before Crowley pushed her bodily out of the crowd and before the mirror.

And the stares of the room turned her way.

It was much easier to ignore the crowd of students behind her if she focused on something else, so naturally her eyes homed in on the floating structure before her, which slowly revealed an ivory theatre mask emerging from dark smoke that obscured its glass. Its mouth was curved down into a frown, the holes of its eyes empty.

This mask suspiciously reminded her of the Dixney movie involving the most beautiful of them all, or something. Should she try calling ‘mirror, mirror, on the wall’?

Distantly, Yuu felt the weight of many eyes on her back. Again. Just like…

The mirror opened its mouth. In a rich, deep voice, it uttered ponderously, “State your name.”

Perhaps chanting was unnecessary after all.

“My name is Yuu.” She answered honestly, forgoing her last name. After all, it wouldn’t be wise to reveal her identity just in case it was used against her. One could never tell with magical artifacts.

Plus, her last name didn’t matter anymore. Since it didn’t legally exist.

“Yuu…” The mirror paused. “The shape of your soul is…”

Yuu waited. Shape of a soul? Was this some sort of weird Sorting? Her brain was more creative than she had expected if it could dream this whole thing up. So much for the ‘no imagination’ thing that had taken her down from an O to an E letter grade in third year Divination.

“…………….” The mirror deliberated.

This silence wasn’t surprising. Back in her first year at Hogwarts, The Sorting Hat had been quiet for quite a while before announcing her addition to Ravenclaw. In fact, it had told her it couldn’t really get a read on her. Yuu, therefore, stayed silent and patient in front of the mirror even as the students in the hall all began to whisper.

“…………………” The mirror remained silent.

“Um,” Yuu started for the third time that day, wondering if she should supply some information.

“…I cannot see it.” The mirror said at last.

The murmuring chamber fell pin-drop silent before their hushed dialogue returned, louder. Crowley broke forward out of the crowd and gasped, “What?”

“I cannot detect a single wavelength of magical power from this one…” The mirror said emotionlessly. “Both the colour and the shape… Are non-existent.”

“But that’s impossible!” The Headmaster insisted.

Magical power, it had said, Yuu thought to herself—not magic. That detail caught on the edge of her awareness like a burr.

“Therefore.” The mirror paused dramatically. “This one is not fit to be put in any dormitory!”

Yuu’s mind spun furiously while the residual silence from his statement hushed the room of students in shock once more.

This mirror—or whatever it was—couldn’t read her magic. But she knew she was a witch and had seen sufficient evidence of that fact, which implied that Crowley said about her bidding farewell to her world meant that this magic was not her magic. Yuu had, however, learnt that all magic was fundamentally the same everywhere, from Africa to Russia to the US; this was taught in Ancient Runes—that the great presence of magic was one unified existence…

There could only be one conclusion: that she was no longer in a realm she understood, and her magic was no longer in a place where it could be understood.

One more point for the ‘it was all just a dream’ theory.

The hall finally erupted into loud and unconcealed conversation. All the eyes on her back pricked at her consciousness. Yuu thought ruefully that this must have been what Albus and James Potter had felt as the sons of a saviour. Unfortunately, she had never been on the end of positive attention like that, however misplaced.

In her case, this was probably more like the usual fare Yuu was subject to. The drawing away, the forced politeness, the darting of eyes and the way she was given a wide berth…

Crowley took a step forward. “There is no way that the black carriage has welcomed a human who cannot use magic! In the past hundred years of student selections, there has never been a single mistake in the process!”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t worry Headmaster!” the boy with the earrings called over with an easy-going grin. “Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.”

“It isn’t that simple!”

That’s because I can use magic. Just not your magic, Yuu thought to herself, remaining quiet. She was more interested in his ‘hundred year’ declaration. This school was a lot younger than Hogwarts if it was only a hundred years old.

“Just why would…” Crowley put his chin in one gloved hand again.

Grim took the opportunity to struggle free. “Puha! Then just give that kid’s seat to me!”

And he leapt from Crowley’s slack fingers.

The Headmaster was shaken from his thoughts. “—Ah! Stop right there, tanuki-kun!”

Grim ignored him, diving mid-air to land lightly on Yuu’s head. She teetered briefly in surprise at the weight of him. “Unlike this human over here, the Great Lord Grim can use magic! So instead of that kid, take me into this school. I’ll even show you my magic right now!”

“You…!” The red-haired boy who had made the beheading statement threw out a hand sharply. In the dim light, Yuu could barely make out the way his teeth gritted together, as if incensed. “Everyone get down!”

Grim gave an unimpressive cat-like hiss, or roar—but before Yuu could react, he reared back and spat out a ball of flame that set the chamber alight with a tumultuous rumble of blue fire. He wasted no time in leaping from her head to land on the stone floor amid the resulting shouting.

“Whoa! Ow, ow, ow! My butt’s on fire!” the dark-skinned, white-haired boy wearing the long bangle earrings leapt out of the way, slapping at his behind. His voice was drowned out by the rising voices of all the students in the hallway.

Crowley clutched his head theatrically. “At this rate, the entire school will be drowned in a sea of flames. Someone! Please catch that tanuki!”

Yuu watched the running Grim evade a few grasping hands and was strangely reminded of the time when she’d taken care of similarly rambunctious baby dragons over the summer of her third year. It was the experience that had led her to seek out an internship with magical creature caretaking. If she didn’t count the fluffy, cat-like structure of Grim’s form, he resembled the spirited Chinese Fireball hatchling quite a bit. Were dragons feline or canine, anyway? Either way, he was cute, and those blue eyes were very pretty.

Perhaps the resemblance was why she was loath to leave Grim alone.

“Why don’t you hunt him down? He looks just like one of your snacks.” The beautiful androgynous person was smirking unpleasantly over at the tall, dark-skinned young man beside him.

He yawned and waved a clawed hand dismissively. “Why do I have to? Too much trouble.”

“Well then, how about I take on the thankless task of ‘bullying’ the small animal?” The polite young man wearing glasses adjusted them with a finger, his smile widening ominously.

“Just as expected of Azul-shi,” mumbled the floating tablet, “building up the favourability gauge already.”

“Catch the tanuki! Are you listening to me?” Crowley shouted over the students scattering out of Grim’s way.

“Can someone put out this fire on my butt, at least!?” the boy with the bangle earrings hollered.

Yuu cast her eyes over the chaos exploding in the Mirror Chamber and mumbled, “I thought he wasn’t a tanuki.”

It seemed that this Night Raven College’s opening ceremony was more than full of excitement, even compared to Hogwarts’ first night of school. Whether it was her dream organizing itself into something recognisable—or proof that all magical schools behaved alike—this precursor gave her a feeling that the future was stacked with events to come.

—

As the few students standing in front debated on who was up to the task of catching Grim, Yuu watched the boy with the long bangle earrings running comically back and forth, sparks of fire flying from his robes. She felt a little sorry for him, and this event was also an opportunity. Now, in the chaos, was as good of a time as ever to test her magic.

One more perfunctory glance around the room. No one was watching her. Yuu decided against using her wand, since she had been studying wandless magic recently, and sucked in a breath to focus her intent. It was a good thing that her favourite spellwork subject was in Charms.

Yuu directed her attention towards the student who was running around with his robes alight with blue fire, and silently and wandlessly cast a simple Extinguishing Charm. She let out a breath of relief when the blue tongue of fire fizzled out to smoke.

This meant that at least she still had her magic. Being called magic-less by the mirror had been slightly unnerving, and she was glad to prove it wrong.

Hopefully the Charm didn’t activate the Trace. Weak spells like these weren’t powerful enough to catch the attention of the Ministry in most circumstances, so the risk was probably worth it.

As the (scary) redhead and the (ominous) glasses-wearing student came to some agreement and went after Grim, both still smiling wickedly, Yuu made her way over to the student she’d helped, who was looking behind him confusedly. “Are you all right?” she asked awkwardly.

“Huh? Oh! Yeah, I’m fine!” He turned back to her with a wide grin, the white teeth bright against his caramel skin. “Guessed someone helped me out or somethin’. Ah ha ha! Wonder who it was!”

“…I’m sure they’re just glad you’re okay.” Yuu smiled up at him as he tipped his hood back and scratched his short white hair. She’d never seen someone with hair this white despite being so young; it stood out all the brighter against his dark skin. Perhaps the unusualness of his appearance prompted her into voicing the question she had never expected she would utter. “Can I ask your name?”

The student seemed vaguely surprised, but he covered it up with a big smile. “Huh? Me? I’m Kalim… Kalim al-Asim! Nice to meet’cha. You’re that new kid who has no magic, right?”

“I’m Yuu,” she introduced herself, wondering briefly why someone who looked like he was from a middle eastern country was speaking Japanese like it was his native language. “Seems like it. I actually have no idea how I got here.”

“Really! That’s gotta suck!” Kalim’s eyes crinkled when he smiled, and he seemed so utterly free of suspicion or malice that she grinned back at him. “But guess you have to go back home now.”

Yuu nodded. “After they catch Grim over there.”

“Is that what they call the tanuki?” Kalim looked comically confused.

“Apparently he’s not a tanuki,” Yuu smothered a laugh.

“Huh? Then what is he?”

Unsure of the answer herself, Yuu just shrugged. Before she could say anything, both of them started at a large crash and looked over at Grim, who was now backed up against the remnants of a chandelier. Briefly, she wondered how much money he’d just racked up in repairs.

“Can’t you tell that we were letting you swim free?” the glasses-wearing student was saying, holding what looked like a glowing fountain pen in his hand. He shrugged in a graceful movement that seemed almost boneless, sighing, “What a pitiful creature.”

“Funaaa—!!” Grim cried rebelliously. “You wanna be set aflame?!”

“Give it up while you’re ahead,” the redhead commanded, his hood falling back and revealing narrowed grey eyes the colour of slate. The set of his mouth was still fearsomely displeased. “If not—”

“No way! I’m going to enter this school if it—”

The redhead clicked his tongue, vein throbbing against his temple. Yuu wondered why that student was in such a bad mood. “Azul, get back!”

As if he had been expecting the command, the one called Azul lowered the glowing pen (?) in his hand and neatly moved aside just as the shorter one stepped forward and roared, lifting his own instrument, “Order and silence!”

Light gathered ahead of his fountain pen while, as if by instinct, the students around him obeyed and ceased to produce noise. The leader’s clear voice was filled with energy borne from anger as he declared, “The sentence comes first—the verdict afterwards. I’ve given you fair warning. Now, prepare yourself… Off with Your Head!”

“What is he, an executioner?” muttered Yuu, but her eyes went wide when a flash of sparkling light rushed out towards his opponent. It preceded the appearance of two halves of a metal collar, both of which snapped around Grim’s neck with the heavy click of a lock.

What had that been? Different from heat, light, or coldness, the power that manifested itself before her was…

Magic.

“—Fugya! What the heck is this!?” Grim emitted in a choked voice, tiny feet lifting off the ground with the impact of the spell that gave him the momentum to remain briefly airborne.

“The Queen of Hearts’ twenty-third law!” Red brows drawn together in a glare, the boy stepped forward with his pen (?) still glowing, voice carrying over the quiet hall. “States: do not bring cats into a place of ceremony. Therefore, cat, your presence is an unacceptable violation. I’ll have you removed right away!”

“I’m not a cat either!” Grim managed, waving his stubby limbs around angrily. “I’ll burn this stupid collar up in an inst—! Guh! Wait… Wh-why isn’t my fire coming out!?”

The angry redhead sneered, his shoulders still tight. “Hmph! Until I take it off, you won’t be able to use magic at all. Just like… A house cat.”

Grim took offence in response. “I’m not a pet!”

“Don’t worry, there’s no way any of us would desire a pet like you.” He sniffed down his nose at the floating creature and shrugged dismissively. “Well, by the time we throw you out of the grounds, I’ll have taken it off, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

His partner in Grim-chasing, who had been apparently named Azul, clapped a few times. “No matter how many times I see Riddle-san’s Unique Magic, it’s still a sight to behold. Such a short incantation to precede such a powerful spell… What an admirable magician. And to seal any kind of magic is rather convenient, isn’t it? I’d absolutely want to obtain… Oh my! I meant to say I would like to refrain from being on the receiving end.”

“…Is that person even trying to hide his suspiciousness?” Yuu mumbled.

“Azul’s always saying stuff like that,” Kalim whispered back from beside her. He’d been watching the goings-on without reacting with more than a grin. “By the way, uh… Yuu, why d’you look so surprised? Never seen Riddle’s magic?”

So the angry leader’s name was ‘Riddle’, which was a little ominous. “In case you haven’t figured out yet, Kalim-san, I come from a place where your magic doesn’t even exist.” Yuu responded automatically.

A second after she’d said the words, she regretted them. The only thing these people knew about her was that she didn’t possess magic—not that she came from some place where there was none. It had been a slip of the tongue.

Perhaps she was more panicked than she had expected.

“Right, right!” Kalim laughed without surprise, not noticing Yuu stiffening. “Then this has gotta be your first time seeing magic, huh? Ha ha! No wonder your mouth was open! Man, you’re gonna be really shocked once I show you my magic carpet! What d’you say, wanna go for a ride?”

“A magic carpet?” Yuu swung around to face him in surprise, but was distracted when Crowley swung her around gently with both hands on her shoulders.

“Please do something about that familiar!” he scolded her. “You should have trained it—”

“Like I said when we first met, Headmaster, he isn’t my anything,” Yuu explained again. This time she actually managed to finish her sentence. “I really only met him around an hour ago. Just like you, sir.”

“—What?” Crowley paused.

“I told you this earlier too,” Yuu hinted, raising a brow.

“…Is that so? Ahem!” He cleared his throat loudly.

“Maybe his ears are going bad too,” Kalim said in a rather carrying voice. “Is it your age catching up with you, Headmaster?”

“I’m still young!” protested the Headmaster even as Yuu privately agreed with him. “Anyway! Let’s throw him out from the grounds. I’m a nice person, so I won’t make stew with you, tanuki!”

“Let me go—!” Grim struggled under what had been called ‘Riddle’s Unique Magic’ as a hooded student obediently took hold of him and began to pull. “Let me go! I’m going to become—! I’m going to become a Grand Sorcerer for sure…! I swear I’ll…!”

The door shut behind him with loud slam.

Yuu looked blankly at the space where Grim had been. Perhaps due to his resemblance to the dragons she’d taken care of, she felt sorry for him, too. The frustration and determination in his eyes made a strong impression in her memory, even though now she could only see the closed double doors where he had struggled.

“Seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it?” she mumbled.

“That so?” Kalim crossed his arms behind his head, seemingly unbothered. “But he isn’t supposed to be here, right? And he doesn’t even have a human form. In other places we’d have beheaded him pretty much instantly.”

Again with the beheading. What was this place, medieval England?

“Without even hearing his motivation?” Yuu looked over at him with a slight frown.

Kalim regarded her with his beautiful red eyes for a few moments. Then he showed his white teeth in another grin and planted a hand into her hair. “You’re a nice kid, huh, Yuu?”

“Not really.” She denied, letting him mess up her hair. “I’m just… Too curious for my own good.”

“Well!” Crowley clapped his hands, bringing quiet back to the hall. “There were a couple of unexpected bumps and delays, but with this, the school’s opening ceremony draws its curtains. Each Head of Dormitory is to lead their new housemates back to their dorm… Hmm? But wait, I don’t see hide nor hair of Diasomnia’s Mister Draconia…”

The clawed student rolled his eyes under his hood. “That guy’s always missing,” he spat in bad spirits.

“Huh?” Kalim blinked several times. “Did you all forget to tell him it was today?”

“Then why didn’t you tell him?” The androgynous person put one hand on their hip, sending a derisive glance in his direction.

Kalim crossed his arms, taking the suggestion seriously. “Well. Sure, but I don’t really know the guy…”

Once again the hall filled with murmurs. Yuu made out snatches of conversation like, ‘Wait, so Malleus Draconia seriously attends this school?!’ and ‘That Malleus Draconia!’ and ‘Holy shit, I go to the same school as someone like that… Should I just quit and go home?’

The reaction was even stronger than the whispering that occurred when she had been declared magic-less. Yuu blinked as she chased the whispers and nearly missed the quiet voice arising from her other side.

“Oh… I see. I slipped in just to check, but Malleus really skipped the ceremony, did he not?”

Yuu turned and nearly jumped out of her skin. The measured baritone had come from a hooded student even smaller than she was, and when he turned to peer around the room, she saw the pupils of his large magenta eyes slit like a dragon’s.

Unconsciously, she held her breath, an unexplainable shiver running up her spine.

“It seems that the ceremony’s invitation did not reach him… Again,” the small student with the deep voice crossed his arms, no emotion visible on his face.

Azul spread his arms, a comically sad expression erasing his business-like smile. “I deeply apologize! It wasn’t as if I wanted to exclude our fellow Dorm Head…”

“However, it’s true that it’s almost impossible to speak to him,” Riddle said flatly, fist clenching and unclenching as if restraining his temper. It seemed that despite Grim’s exit stage-left, his anger had not abated in the slightest.

“Well, be that as it may.” The small student shrugged, his low voice clashing horribly with his childlike features. “I will take charge of the Diasomnia dorm’s children. …Hopefully, that boy isn’t sulking because of this.”

It seemed that there was much more going on within the walls of this castle than her brain could understand at the moment, but even Yuu could tell that this absent person was famous… Or infamous, judging by the reactions his mere name could inspire. For a moment she could not suppress her grimace of sympathy, but it was obscured by the streams of students beginning to depart the Mirror Chamber for their respective dormitories.

Crowley glanced subtly in her direction as people started to exit the chamber. Yuu got the hint and stayed put.

Kalim frowned at her on her other side. “Hey, uh… What are you gonna do? Wanna come over to my dorm for now?”

“Huh? Oh, no… Don’t worry about it, Kalim-san. I’m gonna talk with the Headmaster and hopefully go back where I came from. Since this whole thing was a mistake.” Yuu smiled reassuringly at him. “Thanks for talking to me. You’re in charge of some of these people, right? Don’t worry about me, I’m sure you’re busy.”

“…Well, if you say so.” Kalim frowned briefly before he erased it with a smile. “It was good meeting you, uh…”

“Yuu,” she finished for him. He seemed to have forgotten it in the space of a few moments.

“Right,” he grinned. “Good luck!”

Yuu waved at him. It had been a surprisingly pleasant interaction with another human. How long had it been since she could think that way…?

This had to be a dream. In real life, Yuu would never speak with someone who smiled at her this way, and she would never be able to smile back or wave.

And the more she thought of it as a dream, the less all this confusion mattered.

“—Well then, Yuu-san.” Crowley waited until the last student had exited the hall before he turned to her again, cutting an impressive picture against the ethereal backdrop. “It is with my deepest regrets that I must inform you that you also need to exit the premises.”

She nodded. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to her. “Right. Doesn’t make sense for a non-magical person to attend a magical school.”

“I am glad to see I speak to someone reasonable for the first time in recent memory,” Crowley nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m sure that the Mirror of Darkness will send you back to your hometown in a snap. Now, please stand in front of the Gate.”

Obeying, Yuu jogged over and faced the open, upright coffin from which she had fallen out of. Unlike the other ones, it was not glowing, though it floated above eye-level. The lid had been reattached, giving her a view of the goldleaf pattern painted over it, the fist-sized gem in its centre and the golden lock gleaming in the light.

“So… Does this mean I’m not dead?” she asked.

“Dead?!” Crowley seemed exaggeratedly surprised. “Of course not, dear child. If you strongly focus on the place you came from, you should travel back right away.”

Whether it was the truth or not, right now it didn’t matter. Yuu shut her eyes briefly, opened them again, and decided not to focus on her Ravenclaw dorm but on her room in muggle England. Who knew if this unfamiliar magical interference would let her travel into the Hogwarts grounds?

“O Mirror of Darkness! Return this one to their rightful place!” Crowley spread his hands wide, the raven-feathered cape floating around him majestically. Yuu squeezed her eyes shut tighter this time, waiting for this strange experience, this unusual dream to end.

Perhaps she wouldn’t remember it anymore when she awoke, because Yuu had never recalled having a dream so lucid…

Though she didn’t care about such things, for some reason, that thought left a strange empty feeling in her chest.

The face in the central mirror was silent. After a moment without anything occurring, she opened one eye and glanced at it, but there was no sign of it speaking.

Crowley cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the empty hall. “Ahem. Let’s try this one more time. O Mirror! Return—”

“Nowhere.”

“Huh?” Crowley and Yuu emitted simultaneously.

“The rightful place for this one does not exist,” the mirror repeated. “…Not in this entire world.”

Not in this entire world, it echoed in her mind.

“What!?” Crowley lifted both metal-tipped gloves in exasperation. “That’s impossible! Aah… Today has been stuffed full of impossible things… This has been the first time such a thing has occurred in my entire tenure as Headmaster! Just what to do…”

She didn’t belong here. But neither was it so simple to go back to her life. Yuu shifted around, distantly realizing that once again she was not surprised nor disappointed. In the first place she didn’t know if she was in ‘reality’ or dreaming or hallucinating or dead.

It wasn’t like it mattered either way. Just because she returned to her world would not mean she ‘belonged’ there. In the end, nothing changed, and nothing mattered.

“Yuu-san! Which country are you from? At least tell me that!” Crowley turned to her rather desperately.

“Born or raised?” Yuu asked dully. “I was born in County Durham, England, though I spent a few summers in Japan. Oh, but my school is in… Er, Northern Scotland. I think?”

“……I hope you realize I have no idea what you just said,” Crowley returned blankly. “I have memorized the names of every country that my students hail from, but I’ve never heard of any of those.”

“You might have books on any of them in that huge library of yours, where we were before,” Yuu suggested, “with the floating books.”

“Yes…I suppose that is the logical next step, isn’t it?” Crowley sighed. “All right, follow me, please.”

Yuu decided not to tell him that she was betting against them finding anything useful. As they left the darkened room and the stern-looking, eyeless mask floating in the Mirror, she glanced back briefly and thought that maybe it was staring directly at her.

—

“Nothing!”

Yuu, whose legs dangled off the floor as she perched on a library chair, dodged down just in time to miss Crowley’s hands flying into the air over her head.

The Headmaster, who sat beside her, slammed a huge book closed. “Not only do your country’s names not exist on the world map—no historical record shows any of the names. None!”

“What do I do,” Yuu sounded singularly unhurried, eyes scanning over a book titled The History of Twisted Wonderland.

Crowley rounded on her. “Yuu-san. You really do come from that…”

“England.”

“…Yes, that place, right? You’re not lying, are you?” he leaned in so that the beak of the raven mask almost bumped into her nose. Up close, Yuu watched in fascination as an unearthly light glowed from his golden eyes to illuminate the eyeholes of the mask.

“Not lying,” she confirmed. She was beginning to doubt this Headmaster was human. Several of the eye-colours, the hair-colours of the students she’d seen today were far too bright to be natural (in her context, anyway), but none of them had the eerie power to his golden eyes.

He had put her on edge earlier—yet now, for some reason, they made her feel calmer when she looked. For he was proof that this world was still continuing. Whether it was a dream or reality, death or life…

It was not yet over.

“Now we must consider the possibility of your arrival from a second planet… Ah, or from a separate universe,” muttered Crowley, glaring her down.

The magicians of this world were a lot more scientifically advanced than hers if they were speaking about planets and the theory of parallel universes. Yuu, who happened to be thinking along the same lines, blinked and queried, “Is that even possible?”

“Being summoned from another world?” Crowley leaned back thoughtfully. “Why, nothing is impossible, child, though it would be overwhelmingly difficult to assemble all of the requirements for such a feat. In fact, we haven’t heard of anything like that happening in this school for its entire history.”

One point against the ‘it was all just a dream’ theory. But that wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. After all, it was far better for her to be hallucinating than for her to actually have broken the barrier between worlds.

She was not ready to deal with the consequences of ripping holes in space like that.

Crowley was still muttering. “Let’s see… Do you have anything you brought with you that can prove your identity? For example, a magical practicing license, or a shoe?”

Yuu swung around and wiggled her socked toes at him.

“…It seems that isn’t the case.” Crowley sighed.

She decided against showing him her wand. Just in case the Trace was effective in different worlds, erring on the side of caution never hurt anyone. She’d heard the story from her famous classmate, James, about his father going through that hellish trial in 1995 along with the rest of the eagerly listening students in the Great Hall. Caution was always best.

Crowley was still muttering. “This is rather troubling. I did say I couldn’t leave you here, but throwing a young child—”

“—I’m not a young child,” Yuu felt the need to put in, “I’m fifteen.”

“Fifteen! You’re not even at the standard admitting age! I can’t throw a fifteen-year-old child out into the world without a single Madol or contacting your parents. My teacher’s heart would be stricken with worry! Because, of course, I’m a nice person.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they wouldn’t really care.” Yuu put in helpfully. “Though my mother might screech a little.”

He ignored her. “Hmm. Hmmmmm.”

“Uh, Headmaster? Really, it’s all right—”

“I’ve got it!” Crowley put his fist in one hand. “There is an aban—ah, a building within school grounds that used to be used as a dormitory. If we tidy it up a little, I’m sure it can be used as a place to rest your head. And if it's that building, I wouldn’t mind lending it to you for a while. In return, you will be tasked with searching for a way back home during your stay!”

Yuu blinked at him several times.

“Ahhh… What a nice and kind person I am!” Crowley pressed a glove to his forehead. “The very epitome of a wonderful teacher.”

“Headmaster Crowley,” she started.

“Hmm? Anything else you have to add? Ah! Did you find your wallet in your pocket, or—”

“I thought you were a really suspicious person at the beginning,” Yuu told him frankly.

“Why, how rude! I’ll have you know this cape is—”

“But suspicious or not…”

“You’re supposed to apologize there.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to lend me room and board.” Yuu smiled up at Crowley. “Thank you, Headmaster. I will definitely search for a way back as soon as I can, but I will keep your, ah, kindness in mind.”

Curiously, Crowley put his hands down, the pomp and fluttering disappearing from his movements. He looked at her with not a trace of emotion visible on his face or in those golden eyes.

“…Headmaster?” Yuu tilted her head in confusion.

“…Ah, I apologise.” The moment was gone. Crowley’s eyes curved in a smile. “It must have been a mistake that you came here, is what I was thinking. After all, Night Raven College is…”

“Is…?” Yuu prompted when he stopped speaking.

“Well, never you mind. It shouldn’t matter if you’re leaving soon. You are quite welcome, Yuu-san, for I am a wonderfully nice person! Now, time is of the essence. Shall we go?”

—

Crowley seemed to view her as a ‘small child’—which was rather difficult to accept for Yuu, who had been on her own from the day she was born and liked to be seen as independent and mature. Hence, she would never admit to him how comforting it was in this unfamiliar world that when Crowley walked, he made it a point to hold onto her wrist or her hand to lead her. Like a teacher, or a parent. Not that she knew what parents should be like.

Either way, Crowley was—for some incomprehensible reason—likable. Maybe it was because she hadn’t fully accepted that she wasn’t dreaming yet, but Yuu wanted to trust Crowley despite knowing how much she shouldn’t rely on this stranger.

—Do not let go.

Yuu kept a firm grip on his glove, fingers warming the cold metal tips that extended like false claws from his fingers. Her whirring mind slowed down a great deal when she was in contact with him, enough for her to categorize her surroundings curiously.

The grounds were completely dark by this point, the sky gloomier than its dusky colour when they had entered the library. Clouds slowly passed over the moon and hid the surroundings from view. Yuu’s steps slowed in caution, but Crowley didn’t even seem to notice the cover of night and tugged her forwards without hesitation. As they passed the front building, Yuu looked back to see a huge, silhouetted castle fade into the darkness. Perhaps it was as large as Hogwarts.

“Wow,” she muttered.

“It is a sight, isn’t it?” Crowley agreed.

Across the grounds was a large expanse of open grass which he called the ‘Magift Practice Field’, and the outline of several other buildings that Yuu presumed were the other dormitories. Crowley then told her they were buildings for physical education and storage, and she decided she should stop presuming things.

Yuu walked in comfortable silence beside him for nearly twenty minutes, examining the cobbled stone lit on both sides by orange torches, until they reached a looming structure rising up from the distance.

Crowley waved at the magnificently wrecked mansion with a metal-tipped glove. “What do you think? Quite a delightful appearance, no? It’s got atmosphere.”

A gust of wind blew against the boarded-up windows, which creaked ominously. Yuu’s eye twitched. “A little too delightful, maybe,” she said weakly.

“Isn’t it?” Crowley’s smile widened. “Well, come inside. Welcome to the Ramshackle Dorm!”

“Couldn’t they find a better name?” Yuu muttered, but he still had a hand on her wrist, so she followed him inside obediently.

The interior of the so-called Ramshackle Dorm did not betray her expectations. Although there was a curious resemblance to her muggle England bedroom in the wallpaper and décor, Yuu could see that the entire lounge they had stepped in was covered in a sparkling layer of dust and decorated liberally with spiderwebs. Paintings on the wall, weathered into illegibility with age, hung at odd angles, and the remnants of broken furniture were tipped over across the carpet and creaky wooden floor.

“Well! At least with this, you won’t be caught in the rain.” Crowley let go of her wrist. “I have some things I must search up about your situation, but I’ll leave you to it for now. Please do not! And I repeat do not! Wander around the school unattended! A normal human like you should not go anywhere without my say-so. Understood?”

Yuu was staring at the stairs, which were missing several steps.

“Yuu-san! Your answer?”

“Yessir. I won’t go anywhere,” Yuu replied, standing at attention.

“Very well. I will check up on you later! Good evening!”

The door shut behind him with an ominous thump.

Yuu sighed and looked around. “I could mistake this for a winter wonderland, the dust is so sparkly.”

Delightful or not, it didn’t change the fact that the state of this building was currently unliveable even for Yuu, who had survived in all manner of places. It was time to see how good she really was with wandless Charm work.

—

It turned out that Yuu was still as proficient at Charms as she had been before the summer holidays began. Being her favourite subject involving practical magic, Yuu tended to fiddle around with the standard set of magical spellcasting even outside of class, which lent ease to her handling and feel of the spells she found in the library but also made her a target of ridicule by other students. She was far from as diligent as Hermione Granger, her hero and the soon-to-be Minister for Magic, but all the same her fascination made what seemed like an insurmountable task seem almost fun.

First the floor needed to be scrubbed. A slightly overly strong shout of Aguamenti took care of that rather quickly and had the added effect of pushing all of the broken furniture, sopping, into a corner of the room. Yuu jumped a little when a few spiders scuttled out of the woodwork and blasted them away reflexively with water. She still could not get over her slight illogical fear of bugs after that Blast-Ended Skrewt experiment gone awry in her third year.

Next was the dust piled up thick along the walls and paintings, which an uncontrolled gust of wind was effective in cleansing. Yuu pushed all the windows open manually, ripped the boards off the open ones and clumsily directed all of the dust outside. She still wasn’t up to par with fine-tuning these spells wandlessly.

Lastly was the light. Incendio put fires into the fireplace and into torch brackets, although some were stubborn. After the lounge was visible in the flickering light, Yuu went around straightening the paintings and dusting off the couch with a flew blasts of air.

She hadn’t quite mastered a nonverbal Reparo yet, but managed to affix the legs of the broken chairs and table, setting them wobblingly in the middle of the carpet she dragged straight and pushing the couch before the fireplace together with its coffee table, only for one chair to go straight through the old wood.

Great. At least it was good practice for her Repairing Charm.

Yuu decided she didn’t really care if the high level of magical activity alerted her to the Ministry anymore. This place was too fricking messy. In fact, she was surprised it hadn’t completely collapsed on her head already.

Perhaps doing something felt so nice because it gave her a semblance of control over her immediate situation. To bury the feeling of being plunged into an utterly foreign and enormous world beyond her ability to handle, Yuu banished her ever-racing thoughts and furiously worked to rid the dust as if it could rid her worries, too.

By the time the rain started, Yuu had finished her first-floor cleaning. Wiping a hand across her forehead, she began to spell the windows back shut against the needles of water—

“—Why is it raining so hard!?”

Until she was met with a face full of Grim.

Yuu yelped and fell back on her butt, making the fragile floorboards under her creak ominously. The sweet smell of citrus and peaches flooded her nose as she inhaled reflexively, followed by a softening of clean soap.

Grim, who’d flown in through the window haphazardly, bounced off her face and landed in her lap with an ungainly squeak. He was quick to scramble up and stand on her legs, forked tail waving about playfully as he teased her. “You look like you’re a bat that just got water-bombed!”

What a strange comparison. But she had been surprised. “You’re Grim,” Yuu greeted, wiping water droplets from her nose. “Hey, were you all right after that happened a little while ago? They didn’t do anything too cruel to you, did they?”

“You…” Grim blinked in surprise, stopping whatever he had been about to say. “Were you… Worried about me?”

“Well… You could put it that way.” Yuu pushed herself up, carefully setting him on her shoulder, and went to close the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. “I thought you got thrown out?”

How did he get back in the school grounds? Surely there was some form of security around here, even if it wasn’t as strong as the enchantments splitting Hogwarts off from the rest of Scotland.

“Please. As if it was difficult for the Great Lord Grim to sneak back in here.” Grim puffed out his chest proudly, figure visible in the darkened window. “If they think that just flinging me out of the school would make me give up, they really are stupid!”

Yuu carried him over to the newly cleaned couch and sat him down, where she regarded the slightly damp figure curiously. “Why do you want to come into the school that much? I’m guessing that the reason you wanted my clothing was to pretend you were me, or something. What’s so good about getting into a school like this?”

“You don’t know?!” Grim widened his blue eyes at her and grinned, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth. “It’s simple, human!”

Suppressing a shiver in the drafty environment, she sat down beside him and crossed her legs, feeling the warmth of the fire set in with a sigh of relief. Glancing around, she subtly Repaired a crack in the wall across from them. “Okay, let’s hear it, Grim.”

“I was born with the talent,” Grim explained eagerly, not noticing. “A once-in-how-many-centuries talent to become a Grand Sorcerer! I’ve waited for the black carriage to come get me for, oh, you don’t even know how long.”

Yuu thought Grim’s eyes were beautiful when they sparkled with excitement like that. She nodded along.

“But… But…” the eyes filled with tears. Yuu wondered whether cats could cry as Grim sniffed and puffed out his cheeks. “That stupid Mirror of Darkness doesn’t know talent when it sees it! So I came all the way to the school myself, instead.”

However rude or irreverent Grim had been before now, the longing in his voice was real—in fact, it was the first moment she had seen the loud and brash creature vulnerable.

Unbidden, Yuu remembered Fred II telling her about the Squibs in his family and winced. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like to yearn so much for magic, for a letter, for acceptance, only for it to… Just never come. Not her, who had been born with nothing, yet had magic sweep in to save her from an eternity of void.

Grim yelped as a gust of wind rattled the dorm and sent a few drops of rain through the creaky old roof. “Fugya! The roof is leaking! My charm point’s going to disappear!”

“Charm point?” Yuu asked dumbly, emerging from her thoughts.

“My ears, you dumb human!” Grim pointed to the fire burning in both ears.

“They are rather cute,” she nodded, subtly directing a Reparo at the ceiling. Thanks to today’s cleaning episode, she was feeling like she’d gotten rather good at it. “I think the leaking stopped.”

“…? You’re right. Whatever, then.” Grim squinted at the no-longer-leaking ceiling. “But you should fix it, you know, with magic. Oh wait! You’re a human that can’t even use magic! Ha ha! You’re pretty useless, aren’t you?”

Yuu tried not to laugh, since she had done just that. “Yeah, yeah. Then since you’re such a great magician, Grim, why don’t you fix it?”

“You kidding me? No way!” Grim snuggled into the no-longer-dusty couch and gave her a dismissive glance. “I’m just a passing Monster waiting for the rain to stop. There’s no way I’d work for free! You gotta at least give me canned tuna or some reward.”

“Well then, come with me at least, and we’ll go see if there are any more holes in the ceiling. Or buckets to gather water. Oh, don’t look at me like that… I’ll carry them, but I’m going to use your charm point as my flashlight.” Yuu picked him up. “Also, you’re warm.”

“Humph! You really are a useless human.”

Grim snuggled in her arms comfortably. Yuu grinned down at his flaming ears and thought he was just like one of Norberta’s children—warm, alive, and anchoring her to this world.

—

The hallway was similarly broken—abandoned—dilapidated. In a way Grim wouldn’t notice, Yuu strode down the creaky corridor casting small Repairing spells at the walls and floor and ceiling while he dozed in her arms like a real cat. Therefore, when three comically proportioned ghostlike figures dove out from the corner, she was unprepared and let out an ungainly squeak.

“Hee, hee, hee!” the thin one giggled, adjusting his top hat.

“Ah ha ha!” laughed the round one.

“Ho ho ho!” the big one echoed. “It’s the first guest we’ve had in a while!”

“Time for us to show off!” the thin one added.

“Th-they’re not very silver,” Yuu commented, straightening from her instinctive cringe. These Dixney-like creatures looked nothing like the Bloody Baron; even the brightly coloured poltergeist Peeves was scarier. Unlike the all-too-realistic figures of Hogwarts ghosts missing limbs and stained with silver blood, these new arrivals were misty, round, marshmallow-white, and wore vivid blue top hats and bow-ties, capes fluttering out behind them. They seemed like they’d come straight from an old animated cartoon.

Still—non-human creatures in a different world meant trouble. It was best not to let her guard down.

“Why is it so loud?” Grim grumbled sleepily. He cracked open an eye and then leapt out of her arms with a shriek. “Gyaaaah! Gh-gh-gh—Ghosts!”

“The guys who lived here before got soooo scared of us, they all ran away!” the round one did a flip, showing a wisp of white that took the place of his legs.

“We’ve been looking for a new ghost companion for a loooong time,” the big one leaned forward with a wide grin, displaying two rows of white teeth.

“How about it, kids?” the thin one asked, flying in a circle. “Why don’t you jooooin us?”

“Forever!”

“Ha ha ha!”

“Ho ho ho!”

“Hee hee hee!”

“H-help!” Grim gasped, diving back into her arms when one got too close.

Yuu realized she couldn’t really show off her magic around so many witnesses and took a reluctant step back. “You’re… Not trying to kill us, are you?” she said, still rather shaken by the sudden threat.

She had squeezed Grim a little subconsciously. His trembling stopped. “Th-the… The Great Magician Grim isn’t scared of some little Ghosts!” he mustered out.

“Grim!” Yuu managed just as he waved his paws and sent a stream of blue fire at the big one. He missed spectacularly.

“Pfft! Where are you looking?” giggled the thin one.

“Over here, over here! Ha ha ha!” the round one waved.

“Come on!” Grim growled. His next shot went even wider and set a painting ablaze. Blue fire crackled at the already-fragile wall, giving off a plume of heat that staved off the chill in the hallway.

Yuu frowned in consideration. “Grim, are you closing your eyes when you attack?” No wonder his aim was terrible.

“Shut up! When I puff out my cheeks, my eyes close by themselves,” Grim bit back, inhaling again.

“Try turning your head to the side a little,” she suggested, “so you don’t set the wall on fire this time.”

“Don’t tell me what to do! Let’s hurry and g-get outta here!”

Minerva McGonagall had once said it’s easier to calm down once you find someone even more frightened than you. Yuu experienced this in action now—with Grim trying so desperately not to shake as he spat fireballs everywhere, a strange sort of calm had settled around her.

Yuu adjusted him in her arms and thought about a way to get out of this predicament. She looked up at the three floating figures making loops in the air with their white bodies and giggling at them.

If she thought about it calmly, these ghosts (?) didn’t seem that threatening—more playful than anything. Maybe a counterattack would be enough to get them to quit bothering them. The only issue here was Grim’s aim, which meant…

“Hmm… Grim, if you manage to stave them off, then how about I try to find a way for you to speak with the Headmaster? About the, you know, enrolling in school thing,” she tried. Maybe appealing to his wish would be effective in this situation. At least, it might give Grim some extrinsic motivation.

“—!?” True to her predictions, Grim stopped struggling. “Well… I am a genius.”

“A genius couldn’t be confounded by one or two little ghosts,” Yuu encouraged, trying not to laugh.

“There are three of us!” the thin one protested, doing flips around them.

“We’re not little. And we won’t get got by some little flames!” the round one cackled.

“Grr… That’s cowardly!” Grim cried out, ears pressing down low on his head in reluctance.

“Umm. Then I’ll find you one of your tuna cans after this too?” Yuu tried.

“Grrrrrr… Funa…” Grim visibly debated with himself, and then popped out of her arms to perch precariously on top of them so he could meet her eyes. “Hey, you.”

She favoured him a brief grin. “My name is Yuu.”

“Stop making bad jokes! Fine, Yuu! Tell me where those guys come out, got it?” Grim puffed up. “And I’m not going to forget what you promised earlier!”

“Leave it to me,” Yuu said confidently. “Being in the fine arts club means I have to have competent observation. What do you think? Wanna give it a shot?”

“…Well, I guess it’s the only way out since you can’t even use magic,” he relented after a visible struggle. “Just so you know, this is only a temporary partnership, got it?! Don’t get full of yourself!”

“Partners for now,” she agreed with a grin before they both turned to face the nearing forms of their enemies.

—

“Huh,” Yuu emitted a few minutes later. “I didn’t know your fire could even work on those guys. Aren’t they supposed to be incorporeal?”

“You really are a magicless human if you know nothing about anything.” Grim sniffed, blowing a stream of smoke out through his nose. “Well, I suppose your directions were a little useful to the Great Grim, so I’ll let you off this time.”

Yuu lifted an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Let me off of what? Do you know why they got hit?”

“Shut up!”

They both turned to observe the quickly retreating ghosts, all of whom were shielding what looked like ‘missing’ patches of white where their bodies used to be. It seemed almost like someone had taken a large hole-puncher to them and erased parts of their body in the spots Grim had managed to strike with his magical (?) fire. But how on earth did the flames hurt them when they were incorporeal? The question nagged at her curious mind insistently.

Although interested, Yuu decided it wasn’t worth pursuing right now. It seemed that those ghosts weren’t serious about making them ‘companions forever’ if they ran away so quickly, shouting comically about burns. Could Ghosts feel pain?

“Well, congrats, Grim, you’ve secured us a victory,” Yuu said, relaxing her grip on the long piece of pale yew hidden in her sleeve.

“We really won…?” Grim squinted.

Yuu bent down to where he was standing and pet his head. “Thanks for kicking them out. Honestly, you’re a lot more powerful than I thought. Pretty amazing, if you ask me.”

“…I-it was s-sca…” Grim became a little teary eyed. “I mean it wasn’t scary at all!”

“Aww, come here,” Yuu said helplessly. She really was a sucker for animals—dragon, hippogriff, and now this unidentified fireball-spitting creature in front of her.

“Mmmphh!” Grim emitted as she hugged him. “I said I wasn’t scared! The great Grim can’t be scared of some Ghosts!”

“There, there. Thanks for protecting me.” Yuu said, petting him behind his flaming ears until his throat started rumbling in a purr. “Good boy, good boy.”

“Hello-o!” Crowley’s cheerful voice sounded down the hallway. “I brought you dinner because I’m so nice!”

“Hah!” Grim gasped when she heaved him up into her arms again. “I got caught off guard… How can one measly human be so good with grooming…!?”

Yuu ignored his muttering in favour of jogging down to the lit lounge as Crowley opened the door. “Headmaster!”

“Oh, there you are. I see you really cleaned up the place, no?” Crowley smiled over at her, his thin dark-painted mouth the only demonstration of emotion on his masked face. “Come eat some—wait a second! That’s the Monster that was causing trouble at the opening ceremony! What is he doing here!?”

“Hmph!” Grim turned around without wriggling out of her arms, still purring a little. “I’m the one who drove away all those Ghosts. You should thank me!”

“Hm? Ghosts? What on earth does he mean?” Crowley set a tray on her recently fixed table, looking flabbergasted.

As Yuu gathered them around the creaky table and explained what happened, sharing bits of food with Grim, Crowley threw back his cloak and sat gracefully atop the uneven rocking chair, listening carefully. “Come to think of it, the reason students stopped coming to this dorm was the poltergeists that had took up residence here. I completely forgot.”

“You forgot? And put me, a non-magical student, in there?” muttered Yuu, feeding Grim bits of tuna. Luckily, there had been fish in the warm meal Crowley had brought over.

“Give me some of that too!” Grim nudged her hand towards the chicken.

“That was the reason why it became an abandoned dorm…” Crowley put one hand on his chin again.

“Mmm! That’s really good! Hey, one more! Hurry it up, human.”

Yuu swallowed her mouthful of soup and followed Grim’s directions with her free hand. “Um, Headmaster. Don’t worry, we managed to drive them away.”

“I am most surprised that you could team up and take care of them so efficiently,” admitted Crowley. “Those Ghosts have been causing trouble for a long time now.”

“Don’t say we teamed up! Yuu just sort of stood and ordered me around!” Grim protested, opening his mouth for her to feed him the next piece of chicken. “And I just did it for the tuna, so we were only partners for a few minutes, got it!”

Yuu rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, sir, the Great Lord Grim, sir.”

“Hey, there’s no real emotion in your voice at all!”

“…Well, if you say so. But this is indeed an interesting… Perhaps… Hmm. Very well! After you eat, may I have the both of you drive the Ghosts out one more time?” Crowley straightened suddenly, leaning forwards in seeming excitement.

“Huh!?” Grim nearly choked on his chicken.

Yuu, who had finished her soup and was now halfway through the plate of chicken and fish she had shared with Grim, swallowed with difficulty—she was, for some reason, really hungry despite this being a dream—and echoed him. “Huh? Aren’t they already gone?”

“Oh, not them. I, your very nice Headmaster, will personally act as the Ghost.”

“What!?” both of them chorused.

“I ain’t doing anything if I don’t get more tuna!” Grim added.

“I have no idea why you’re doing this,” Yuu was more concerned about his reasons.

“…Very well! If you manage to win against me, I will give you a can of tuna,” Crowley acquiesced. He narrowed his golden eyes in good humour. “Since I am such a nice person.”

“But I don’t wanna!” whined Grim. “It’s a drag and I have to be ordered around by this kid…”

Crowley wasn’t listening. “Well then, to change my form… Down goes the Transformation Potion!”

“The what?” Yuu gaped.

Before she could see clearly what he had done, the Headmaster disappeared entirely into sparkles of light. From the light, a Dixney-style Ghost wearing his mask floated out and towards them in his place, though she was too busy to see the specifics as Yuu had begun to shovel down her food in anticipation of the task they were given.

The sudden directions were something she had gotten used to—eccentric professors and tasks given without warning were all in a day’s work for the average Hogwarts student.

She swallowed and whispered over to Grim, “If you really wow him, you might get into the school. Plus, canned tuna. Think of the canned tuna!”

For now, it was probably best to listen to the Headmaster who had the ultimate authority over Grim’s staying or going.

Grim seemed to be wavering back and forth, but eventually threw his paws up. “Grrr. I’m not that easy to… Argh! All right! But this is the last time, you hear? And you better hand the canned tuna over right away, you hear!!”

Grim was, she realised, so cute. Yuu decided she’d try her best to prevent him from crying again. And if that meant earning him a spot in this strange Night Raven College, then listening to Crowley’s strange demands wasn’t so bad.

—

“I didn’t know he could move that fast,” Yuu remarked, subtly putting out the smouldering paintings with an Extinguishing Charm. It looked like this Charm would be getting a lot of use when Grim was around.

Ghost Crowley appeared by her, not seeming fazed at all. A moment later he had transformed back into his regular humanoid form without so much as an incantation. “Indeed.”

That includes you too, Headmaster, Yuu thought privately, wondering how powerful Crowley was as a magician. This time she was not foolish enough to ask him to his face, but changing forms—creating potions that could transform him so easily without discomfort—was not an easy feat that could be accomplished by just any wizard or witch, let alone with the ease that Crowley had shown.

She remembered the surly portrait she often talked to in the dungeons sneering at her and telling her that Polyjuice Potion was far out of her league to brew.

If Crowley was a skilled magician, had he perhaps noticed her spell-casting? But he did not make any comments; nor did he seem taken aback. Yuu decided to play dumb.

“Hey Yuu! Why you gotta be so hard on me!” Grim growled over at her, panting a few steps away from them. “Treat me a little more gently!”

“But then you’d get haunted or something,” Yuu shrugged, coming back to the present. “I was just telling you where to spray fire.”

“You’re way too fast!”

“The Headmaster was fast.”

“Yuu-san is quite adept at reading my movements,” Crowley murmured, reaching over to pat her head. “Well done, the both of you.”

Unused to being on the receiving end of positive contact, Yuu squirmed a little embarrassedly. First Kalim al-Asim, now Crowley…

“…Thank you, but I didn’t do much. Good job, Grim!” Yuu crouched down as he leapt over and picked him up, stroking the fuzzy head. “Actually, you moved way faster than I expected.”

“Obviously! Who do you think I am?”

“The Great Grim?” Yuu guessed, scratching him behind the ears. Grim started rumbling again.

"Good heavens,” Crowley was staring at the two of them and mumbling. “That there could be a magicless human that could make a Monster listen to them…”

Yuu shifted uncomfortably as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Er, Headmaster?”

“You know, from the whole racket at the opening ceremony, my teacher senses have been tingling whenever I looked at you, Yuu-san.”

“Me? Not Grim?” Yuu blinked in surprise.

“You seem to have a… Hmm. Yuu-san. Do you like animals?”

“Well, yes—how did you know?” Yuu gaped again. Her number one favourite class was Care of Magical Creatures—overwhelming even Charms, her best subject, and Ancient Runes, the most interesting one—so much so that over the summer before fourth year, she had spent every scrap of free time she could scrounge up together with famed Dragon Tamer Charlie Weasley, managing some of the less dangerous ones in an internship she had only obtained after persistent begging.

“Well you see, I detect a sort of affinity… No, potential for you to become a trainer or a wild animal tamer or something of the sort. So I was thinking… But how can a human this tiny be able to control Monsters or magical creatures at all? Still…” Crowley descended into unintelligible mumbling.

Yuu paused in scratching Grim under the chin, remembering her promise. “Um, Headmaster. I have something I’d like to ask of you… Grim really wants to attend this school. How about letting him stay in this building… This dorm with me for the time being?”

Grim snapped out of his purring. “Yuu?! You’re vouching for me?”

“What?!” Crowley seemed astonished. “This Monster?”

Grim looked up at her with those big blue eyes.

“Please!” Yuu added, and lowered her head for good measure.

Crowley frowned. “…It’s true that leaving you alone here with only Ghosts for company hurts my delicate conscience. Very well!”

“Really!?” Grim brightened up.

“However! Leaving him here is one thing, but he was not chosen by the Mirror. In addition, he is a Monster! I cannot admit him as a student.” Crowley glanced at her. “You, too, Yuu-san.”

“That rhymed,” Yuu said, unconcerned.

“Stop that!” Crowley cleared his throat. “Yuu-san, you are staying here without doing anything for the time being. In other words, you’re nothing more than a loafer.”

“Um, I’m planning on finding a way back,” she mentioned. “Like you said?”

“Aw man, I got excited for nothing,” Grim sighed, ears dropping. “If I can’t be a student…”

“Listen until I finish!” Crowley stared at them until they both shut up. “That your body and soul were dragged over to this school is part of the responsibility of the school that houses the Mirror, Yuu-san. Never mind the fact that you’re a vulnerable minor… Which means it is my responsibility to see to your safety. So don’t worry about food and board.”

“Headmaster,” Yuu said, a little touched. Although McGonagall would probably do the same, she wasn’t used to treatment like this. Usually the professors had eyes only for James Potter the second and purebloods like Fred Weasley the second and people like Scorpius Malfoy (for a different reason entirely). Someone as unpopular as her was ignored at best, and at worst…

Yet Crowley had been nothing but a gentleman the whole time to her, a castaway without a penny to her name.

“For now, I will permit you to stay here without a fee. But clothing, extra snacks, and personal necessities must come out of your own pocket.”

“Yessir.” That was reasonable.

“Though it is obvious that you have nothing on you worth selling, hmm… I have it!” Crowley smiled rather suspiciously. “Fu fu fu. Let’s do this.”

Yuu waited patiently, allowing the suspicious laughter to float by unchecked. This Headmaster sure liked to put on airs.

“I’m thinking of making you take up the odd jobs and chores around the school.” Crowley’s smile widened. “Your cleaning abilities seem to be quite strong, seeing as you’ve made this lounge liveable and even fixed much of the leakage in the hallway. How about pairing you both up as the Miscellaneous Chores Crew for the time being?”

Yuu blinked. “So you’re giving me an excuse to be inside the school grounds by doing chores, so I can look for clues back home,” she deduced. “Can I use the library too?”

“I am glad I have a quick learner on my hands! Of course you can. After all, I am a very nice person. However! You must finish your tasks before engaging with such a task. No work, no reward! Understood?”

“Huuuuh? I don’t wanna!” Grim started to struggle in her arms. “I wanna wear that cool school uniform and be a student here! Working is lame.”

“Very well, then you shall be thrown out right away,” Crowley replied without missing a beat.

“Funa!? Wait a sec—okay, fine! I’ll do it! Good enough for you!?”

“Don’t worry, Grim,” Yuu pet his little head again. “I happen to like cleaning.” Or practicing wandless Charm-work.

“If only the best of my students were half as good of a child as you…” Crowley muttered, and then shook his head. “That’s impossible for Night Raven College, I suppose. Well then, tomorrow marks the beginning of your odd jobs role here on campus! Understood?”

“Yessir,” Yuu nodded, wondering just what kind of people attended this school. “Um, Headmaster Crowley…”

“Yes, Yuu-san?”

The both of them ignored Grim’s muttered complaints. Yuu smiled up at the masked Headmaster. It was good social manners to try and be pleasant to someone who was doing so much for her—Yuu, who was not used to anyone being ‘kind’. And he was the person she needed most in this world right now, someone who could supply food, board and all other manner of clues.

So Yuu was extra polite when she lowered her head this time. “Thanks for letting me stay here. I really have no idea what to do or where to go, but I really appreciate it. I’ll do my best as your errand runner.”

Once again, she saw the overblown emotion fade eerily fast from Crowley’s tall frame. He seemed to stare through her with those yellow eyes glowing behind his mask.

“…Yuu-san,” he said after a moment. “I advise you to be careful within Night Raven College. I am a wonderfully, unusually nice person, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the school.”

“Oh… Okay?” Yuu frowned, confused. Their sentences didn’t seem to be connecting.

“You seem like a very intelligent child, but trusting others so easily is dangerous,” Crowley crossed his arms; for once, he was not smiling. “The students… The people attending this Night Raven College are chosen for more than just their talent. They are all hungry—starving and yearning, my child. Be sure you are not devoured without even bones left to mark your corpse.”

—

The first night Yuu slept in the Twisted Wonderland, her dreams were wild and uncontrollable. Visions of magic, light, heat, blood filled her vision. Colours burst unchecked, almost painful in their intensity, rushing past her and through her and filling her.

She saw a great multitude of scenes tumbling through her mind. A portly queen wielding a spectre and shouting with all she had. A lion’s desperate roar widening its snout as claws dragged against rock above a yawning chasm. An undersea castle and a cave in which a dark cauldron bubbled and smoked, bottles gleaming upon shelves. Yuu frantically tried to keep her bearings as she fell through the seawater cave… Before her vision was swept up into the night sky facing a desert kingdom. Phantom wind rushed through her hair above an enormous castle’s pearly white balcony, from which a dark-skinned, beautiful girl and fearsome tiger sat together, both gazing up in her direction.

“Magic mirror, on the wall,” someone was chanting, but the mirror was splintered against a clenched fist, a scarlet apple rolling across the floor into amber liquid that kept growing in volume, hissing against the ground like acid…

A cool hallway in metallic shades of blue emerged from the darkness. The slow beep of a machine cut off that chanting voice. Turquoise-coloured lines reading an electrocardiogram monitor flashed slowly across a dark screen. Hundreds of identical cubic pods lined the dimly lit room, all with the same machines linked to them by cords; the furthest one stood apart from all the rest before it sunk down, down, down a tower out of sight. Yuu then saw a ball of blue fire the same colour as the flames sprouting from Grim’s ears—it burned slowly within the room as the cubic pods descend into the abyss, left by itself in an empty blue-lit area.

Down below, a multitude of voices were crying out in a cacophony of noise. The loudest one was the youngest. Don’t leave me, it was crying out. Don’t leave me.

Black liquid dripped from her vision. Yuu’s hair stood on end.

Someone was calling her insistently, and she looked up and saw a great dragon with black scales towering over her. Yuu loved dragons, but this one was not the same kind she knew, and its green, fluorescent eyes burned into her vision unbearably strongly.

“I’ll save you,” It promised.

So don’t let go.

Yuu reached forwards in the night and her arms curled around a snoring Grim.

—