Calliope Rivera manages to go unnoticed amongst her wixen peers for more than she thought possible ― and for that, she has Harry Potter and his little group of friends to thank. When third year rolls in and she's suddenly in the spotlight, she has n...
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Hermione Jean Granger is an only child because her parents haven't slept in the same bed for at least nine years. Or, at least, that's what Calliope thinks.
Not only is their daughter an incredibly annoying know-it-all, but they're worse than her. From what little she has seen of Hermione in school (that being the bushy haired girl bent over a book from first period to the end of classes) she can at least discern that the eleven year old girl is not that bad.
Hermione is silent and only speaks in haughty tones and math answers, but she doesn't sneer quite so obviously nor does she ogle at her mother's legs while she works. Oscar and Grace Granger, however, do. The few times she has helped her mother with cleaning at the Grangers' medical office she has seen them both being disgusting human beings. Oscar stares, a lot, and there are times when her mother comes home only to spend hours in the shower scrubbing the dirt off ― the dirt probably being some of his inopportune touches; Grage is just a bitch.
There.
The woman sneers and scrunches her noses as if they're less than the dirt beneath her shoes and the not-really-subtle comments on her mother's ethnicity never go unnoticed. Grace treats her mother as if she's doing her a favour, paying her minimum wage for a job that is so physically draining as cleaning an office that it's bigger than the two's apartment twice over everyday. When, really, the only reason her mother accepted the offer is because at least now she has something to do in the mornings.
It wouldn't kill them to be fucking nice!
"Stop glaring at the wall, Calli," scolds Tala Rivera, her brown locks being expertly tied up in a bun. The mother-daughter duo are sitting in a booth in their favourite diner (which, incidentally, is also her mother's second workplace), healthy smoothies that look anything but edible being occasionally stirred as they are lost in thought. The only reason Calliope is even thinking about the damned Grangers on such a warm summer day is because of the nasty surprise she received this morning.
Calliope Rivera woke up happy, eager to spend the summer's day in London as her mother worked a morning shift at Mocha & Mochi ― and then got the post. An ancient looking letter addressed to a certain Calliope Alon Rivera E!!=k##a? (the other name was scratched out so strongly that the sheet of parchment had a tiny hole), precise to the point of knowing where her room in the apartment is.
Calli has never cared much for her father; she doesn't know him and he doesn't know her: that's it. She assumes him to be a one-night stand of her mother's and is perfectly fine without any sort of contact with the man ― thank you very much. Her mother, apparently, isn't thinking on her same wave-length. Her pretty smile is out for show on her face and her brown eyes twinkle with an eagerness that shouldn't be there: after all, Calli has just handed her a letter that says she (if she accepts) is going to be away for ten months out of twelve. Which is also why her mind went off on a tangent regarding the Grangers, those despicable beings.
But Tala Rivera, instead of being rightfully unsettled, grins brightly at her daugher: "Calli, this is great!" The child doesn't comment on just how great this whole thing seems to her and instead sips at her smoothie, trying not to frown at the overly minty taste. "Aren't you eager to meet other people like you? And you have a way to feel closer to your father."
Has Calliope mentioned how she doesn't give a shit about the man yet?
"You sound like Mrs. Granger with the whole "people like you" discourse, y'know?" she mutters as she chews on the red, plastic straw. Her mother sends her a look, one that clearly spells stop-that-you-stupid-bitch but Calli feels like the day she stops hating on the woman is the day Death is knocking her door down. So, it's only natural for her to continue doing so ― survival instincts and all that.
"You know what I mean, Callie," sighs the woman, a hand waving distractedly in the air. For the first time ever, the witch finds herself wishing her mother's lunch break didn't last so fucking long. Who needs a full hour to eat, anyways, when they never even leave their workplace? "Whatever it is, isn't it better if you learn how to control it?"
No, Calli wants to say. She can control the... magic well enough, thank you very much! There's no need for her to leave the house (and her mom!!!!) for so many months a year and she really, really doesn't want to be near so many strangers. What can these people teach her that she can't learn by herself as she has done for so many years, experimenting?
"Yes," she says, instead. Because her mother looks so excited at the prospect of Calliope having a full-on scholarship to a magical school out of everything else, imagining her daughter making friends with people that will undoubtedly feel closer than the classmates she has now.
And just like that, a few weeks before she turns twelve, Calliope Rivera stands on platform nine and three fourths, her eyes gazing boredly at a big, red lacquered steam train. If the school is reachable by train, out of everything, then why did she have to risk slamming onto a wall to board it?
They could have used magic to keep the platform reachable even to parents' of people like hers, who were born from non magicals, and at the same time keep away all those that aren't supposed to know ― plus, if her mother (sweet, airhead Tala) noticed the various groups of wixen running through walls, she's sure everyone fucking else did too.
It's with a sigh and a set jaw that she boards the train, keeping as far away as possible from the bushy head she has seen in her classes for the past five years.
She succeeds too, for the most part, until two years later she's boarding back on the very same train and soul-sucking demons almost kill the Boy-Who-Lived.
