The Morrigan, Mysterious Goddess
The Mórrigan, usually referred to with the definite article, was a great warrior-queen goddess in Irish-Celtic mythology. She was most associated with inciting war, then stirring up the fury and frenzy of battle, and...
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"There, look."
"Where?"
"Next to the tall kid with the black hair."
"Wearing the kitten heels?"
"Did you see her face?"
"Did you see her scar?"
Whispers followed Morrigan from the moment she left her dormitory the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at her or doubled back to pass her in the corridors again, staring. Morrigan simply rolled her eyes, as she remained by Regulus's side, leaning into his embrace, as they made their way to their classes, luckily, they were in the same places that Regulus remembered them to be, so they never got lost.
Morrigan had come to learn there were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other.
The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!"
He was clearly hated by Morrigan, who Peeves had begun to fear, especially when she was able to wrap her magic around him and threaten to make him crossover. Sebastian and Ominis laughed from a different corridor seeing and hearing the girl's threat.
Even worse than Peeves if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-coloured creature with bulging, lamp-like eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.
Morrigan and Regulus were the ones Mrs. Norris never worried about, the two were good in her eyes, especially when they gave her chicken to eat.
And then, once they had gotten to their classes, there was the classes themselves. Morrigan was instantly bored, her and Regulus, were the only two able to do the magic and spell on their first try. They truly were the number one student in all their classes. On Wednesday they had to study the night skies through their telescopes at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. Something which Morrigan and Regulus enjoyed as they snuggled together on those freezing nights.
