Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Gundam Wing Goes to Hogwarts ❯ Settling In ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3: Settling In

“Do I really need a wand, Professor McGonagall?” Roku asked. He was standing in McGonagall's neat office with Hermione. Quatre and Duo were also there, but everyone else was waiting outside for McGonagall to take them to the quarters Dumbledore had assigned.

“All Hogwarts students are required to have a wand,” she replied, “and robes as well. You'll need to go to Diagon Alley to get these. You'll also need to go there for your textbooks. That's the nearest place that sells school supplies, other than quills and parchment, which may be purchased in Hogsmeade.”

“Where is Diagon Alley?”

“In London, of course.” McGonagall pursed her lips at Roku. “Haven't you ever been to London?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, I suppose the easiest thing would be to travel there and back by Floo Powder. The day after tomorrow is the weekend, so that would be the best time to go. I will accompany you. We can leave from the fireplace in your common room. Be sure and get money from your, ah, parents before we go.” McGonagall's face got a puzzled look when she said `parents' and her eyes flicked to Quatre and Duo. “You can exchange it at Gringott's bank.”

“Ok.”

“Is it all right if we accompany you, Professor?” Quatre asked. “I would like to see this place.”

“Of course,” McGonagall nodded and then clapped her hands briskly. “Hermione, please take Roku to the Gryffindor common room. I'm sure Percy will have a bed assigned to him by now.”

Hermione nodded with a self-important smile.

“Tomorrow,” McGonagall continued to Roku, “you will meet with Professor Dumbledore so he can decide what year to place you in. This will determine what textbooks you will need to buy on the weekend.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Very well,” McGonagall shooed them toward the door. “You two youngsters be off so I can get our new residents settled.”

“Good night, Professor,” Hermione said. She caught Roku by the arm as they stepped back into the hall. “This way.” The two of them scurried off.

McGonagall faced the others. “Those of you teaching classes have offices where the students may come to you with questions. Your sleeping quarters are accessed from your offices. Since you're all family,” again her face got that puzzled look, “we found three offices together with access to a common room, to which several bedrooms are attached.” She led the way briskly down the hall, up a flight of stairs, along another hall, up another flight of stairs, and down a hall which had tall windows on the left and a row of unevenly spaced doors on the right. She stopped in front of the last three doors in the hall. “These are your offices. If you need any additional furniture or supplies, or oil for the lamps, just tell Mr. Filch.” She pushed open the first of the doors.

Inside was a comfortable room with dark oak paneling and ornate light fixtures set in the walls. There was a large fireplace on the right and several bookcases on the left. A large desk sat in the middle of the room with a couple of slender chairs in front of it and a larger, more comfortable looking chair behind it. There was a closed door behind the desk.

“The common room is through that door,” McGonagall said, pointing at the door at the back. “You'll find the other offices are similar. You may decide among yourselves who will use which one. Bathrooms are down the hall and around the corner to the right.” She backed out the door. “I'll leave you to get settled.” She closed the door behind her as she left.

“There's only one problem,” Duo said as soon as she was gone. “Roku's got half of our luggage.”

“Half?!” Quatre exclaimed. He stared around at the assortment of bags and cases collected at their feet.

“Well, maybe not half,” Duo said sheepishly.

Trowa opened the door into the common room. “Hey! This is nice!” The common room was quite deep, with windows in the far wall and two wide fireplaces on either side with comfortable looking groupings of overstuffed chairs in front of each one. Four doors in the left hand wall gave access to four bedrooms, each containing a single large four-poster bed with an armoire on one side and a window in the far wall. Another door in the right hand wall gave access to another larger bedroom with two four-poster beds and two armoires. This room had a window in the left hand wall. A second door in the right hand wall opened onto a windowless storeroom.

“Not bad,” Duo said with a nod.

After some discussion, Alexa and Jett got the room with two beds and everyone else divided into their usual groupings and took the other rooms. Hadeya got a room all to himself and he grinned a little gleefully as he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

“I miss Roku,” Alexa pouted.

“I'm sure we'll get to see him every day,” Quatre assured her.

“I guess they'll assign us classrooms tomorrow,” Wu-Fei said. “I should get started on my curriculum. Who knows how many topics I'll need to cover?”

“Don't overwhelm them,” Trowa cautioned. “Your class is an elective. If it's too hard, no one will take it.”

“It should be mandatory,” Wu-Fei muttered. “Magic and social studies! Sheesh!”

“What will you teach in your Wandless Magic class, Quatre?” Treize asked curiously.

“I'm not sure. I'll need them to demonstrate their magic first so I can see what they know. I can probably figure out what to teach them after that.”

“That seems a little haphazard,” Zechs murmured.

“Well, I wasn't really expecting to teach a class!” Quatre exclaimed. “I'd be more prepared to teach music.”

“Well, I think this is going to be fun!” Duo said cheerfully. “That was a mighty good dinner we had tonight and I hear the food is plentiful like that at every meal.”

“Leave it to Duo to jump right to the most important aspects,” Heero muttered sarcastically.

“Hey, knowing where your next meal is coming from is important!”

Jett gaped a huge yawn.

“Oops, looks like it's time for bed!” Duo said affectionately. He scooped Jett up in his arms. “But we need to brush teeth first.”

“Too sleepy,” Jett mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

“I'll brush them,” Duo said. “You just keep your mouth open. Come on, Alexa. You need to brush your teeth too. Heero, grab their toothbrushes.” He left with the two little girls to find the bathroom.

Heero began rummaging through suitcases grumbling to himself.

Back in the Gryffindor tower, Hermione led Roku to the portrait of the fat lady. “This is the secret entrance to our common room,” she said. “You say the password and the portrait will swing open to reveal the entrance.”

As she spoke, the lady in the portrait smiled at Roku. “Password?” she said in a melodic voice.

Roku smiled back as Hermione spoke the password in a clear voice. The portrait swung open to reveal a passage into a brightly lit common room filled with comfortable chairs, tables with shapely legs and a large fireplace. There were two stairways leading up on either side of the room. The common room was also crowded with students, who greeted Roku cheerfully. Ron and Harry pushed to the front.

“How'd it go with McGonagall?” Ron asked quickly.

“Fine, of course,” Hermione replied. “She's going to take Roku to Diagon Alley on the weekend using Floo Powder.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Yuck! I hate Floo Powder!”

“That's just because you can't speak clearly!” Ron snickered. He grinned at Roku. “The last time Harry used Floo Powder, he missed where we were going by three fireplaces!”

“It wasn't funny!” Harry insisted. “That shop where I ended up was a bad place.”

“What's Floo Powder?”

“It's a magic powder that lets you travel anywhere you want to go that has a fireplace.”

“Oh. Wouldn't it be easier to just fly there?”

“Yes,” Harry said instantly.

Ron rolled his eyes. “No, because you can't risk being seen by Muggles. All kinds of trouble heaps up around you if you get seen by Muggles while doing magic.”

Roku nodded. “That makes sense. Mama is always telling me not to do things in front of people because it upsets them when they don't understand.”

“Exactly!” Ron said with a firm nod.

“Is your mother a witch?” Hermione asked.

“Yes. He's going to teach one of the elective classes.”

“He?” Hermione frowned in confusion.

“Yes. Mr. Quatre is my mother.”

Now all three stared at him in confusion.

“How can your mother be a man?” Ron demanded.

Roku shrugged. “He wasn't a man when he got pregnant with me.”

“What?!”

“Mama was a woman when he got pregnant with me. He turned back into a man later.”

“That's… not possible!” Hermione choked out.

“Not usually, no.”

“So did your mother start out as a woman and then turn into a man?” Harry inquired, clearly hoping for some kind of clarification.

“No. Mama has always been a man, except for a few weeks when he was a woman and that's when he got pregnant.”

“How did he get pregnant?” Ron asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact but failing miserably.

“The usual way,” Roku said. “He and my papas were being naughty and Mama got pregnant.”

Hermione's eyes opened so wide her eyebrows climbed up into her hair. “I think…” she said faintly, “that maybe we shouldn't be having this conversation.”

Ron and Harry blinked at her and nodded quickly. “Good idea. Let's just drop it.”

“Ok.”

Trying to recover some kind of dignity, Hermione turned to Ron. “Where's Percy? McGonagall said he was going to assign Roku a bed.”

Ron swallowed. “I think he's upstairs. Come on, Roku. I'll take you up. Girls aren't allowed in the boys' dormitory.” He led the way up the staircase on the left with Harry trailing along behind. They found Percy and he took them to a room with five beds arranged in a circle. Four of the beds had large trunks at the foot.

Percy pointed to the fifth bed. “That will be your bed, Roku. This room has first years in it, but they're about the same age as you, even if you end up in a different year. Do you have a trunk?”

“No, I keep everything in my storage space.”

“Storage space?” Percy's brow wrinkled in annoyance. He obviously did not like not understanding. “What's that?”

“Where I keep stuff,” Roku replied. He produced a thick book and held it up. “I've had this book since I was little.”

Percy stared. “Where did you get that?”

“From my storage space.”

“You just pulled it out of thin air!” Ron accused.

“It only looks that way,” Roku said.

“Do it again!” Harry said eagerly.

Roku produced a large green apple and grinned sheepishly. “I keep snacks in there too.”

“That's amazing!” Harry exclaimed excitedly. “I've only seen full wizards magic items out of thin air like that!”

Percy looked mightily offended. “Well, I'll ask Filch if there are any spare trunks you can use. You should not be using magic for such trivial things.” He stamped off, his robes flapping.

“What other snacks have you got?” Ron asked, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had just finished a rather large dinner.

“All kinds of stuff.” Roku's gaze turned inward. “Let's see… There are three more apples, some crackers, six bars of chocolate, a roast chicken, two loaves of sourdough bread, half a wheel of Swiss cheese, a boneless ham, two carrots, a box of raisins and a bag of cherries.”

Ron's mouth fell open. “No way!”

“Do you want something?”

“Not right now.” But Ron had a reverent gaze on his face.

Harry began to laugh. “I think Ron's in love!”

“What?!” Ron spluttered. “I just… that's just really…”

“Admit it!” Harry teased.

“Oh, shut up!” Ron turned on his heel. “Let's go back down to the common room.”

Harry followed him, still snickering.

The next morning at breakfast, Roku bounded over to greet Quatre and the others as they straggled in.

“Mama!”

“How did you sleep, Roku?”

“Just fine. I share a room with four other boys. One of them snores a little; one talks in his sleep and the other two roll over a lot. What's your room like?”

“Quite nice. You can come and visit us after you meet with Professor Dumbledore.”

“Ok.” Roku went back to the Gryffindor table.

“Is that your, um, mother?” Ron asked, a little too casually.

“Yes.”

“Which one is your father?” Harry asked, gazing curiously at the Gundam pilots as they took seats at one end of the teachers' table near Hagrid.

“The four on the end.”

“Excuse me?”

“The four shorter ones on the end.”

Hermione swallowed. “You can't mean you have four fathers. That's not possible.”

“Well, normally that's true, but since Mama was a woman at the time and was naughty with all of them and there was quite a bit of magic bubbling about, he thinks that sperm from all of them combined with his egg and recombinant DNA happened resulting in me. The same thing might have happened with my sister Jett except Papa Duo is her momma. Papa Duo is the one with the long braid like mine.”

Ron stared with his mouth hanging open.

Harry's brow wrinkled as he struggled to grasp all this. “So was Mr. Duo a woman or a man when he had your sister?”

“Oh, he was a woman then. But he turned back into a man after Jett was born.”

Hermione put her head in her hands. Ron looked a little green.

Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, revealing the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. “This is really weird. I don't have any parents and you have five.”

“Yeah, I'm pretty lucky,” Roku agreed.

“But if none of them is a woman now…” Hermione began uncertainly.

“They're still naughty all the time,” Roku confided, “they just don't get pregnant when they're men.” He paused. “Although Uncle Zechs was pregnant while he was a man, but that was different because Mama made the baby in his laboratory and we used magic to put her inside Uncle Zechs. He was kind of mad about that, until Alexa was born.”

Hermione blinked rapidly several times. “Um,” she said slowly, “you used magic to…” She stopped and licked her lips, and then tried again. “You used magic to put a baby inside a man? Wouldn't a woman have made more sense?”

“Maybe, but Mama made the baby from Uncle Zechs and Uncle Treize, so we put her in Uncle Zechs because she was theirs.”

“I, ah, suppose that makes sense.” Hermione did not sound like she thought it made sense.

“Wait a minute!” Ron interrupted suddenly. “Did you just say all those men have…” his voice dropped to a scandalized whisper, “sex with each other?”

Roku nodded.

Harry scratched his head. “Is it because they don't know any women?”

“No, they just like each other a lot.”

“Oh.”

“You mean they're… they're… gay?” Ron whispered hoarsely.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Good heavens, Ron! You act like you don't know any gay people here at Hogwarts.”

“I don't!” Ron stated firmly.

“Oh, get your head out of the sand!” Harry snapped. “I could probably point out half a dozen right now just off the top of my head.”

“I'm not listening!” Ron said loudly. He turned to his breakfast and began eating noisily.

Hermione, her cheeks turning bright red, also began eating.

Roku picked up his spoon, but instead of eating, he looked over his shoulder at the Slytherin table. “That Draco person is looking at us again.”

Harry groaned. “He's the bane of my existence!” he grumbled. “He's always staring at me and making comments and stuff. I wish he'd just drop off the face of the earth!”

Just then, several ghosts floated into the room. One ghost, a man in medieval clothing with a bloody gash across his neck, sprawled on his hip in the middle of the table, making the serving dishes look like they were floating in a fog bank.

“Is this the new Gryffindor?” he said, gazing intently at Roku.

“Yes and get out of the food,” Harry responded irritably.

“You're Nearly Headless Nick!” Roku exclaimed delightedly.

“Indeed I am!” the ghost acknowledged. He rose to his feet and bowed, the motion causing him to float up above the table and his head to tip off to one side.

Roku stood up and returned his bow. “I'm Roku Winner. I'm very pleased to meet you.”

“Well met, sir!” Nick replied. “I'll be seeing you around the castle!” Nick floated off and Roku sat back down.

“I like ghosts,” Roku said, “but they taste kind of funny.”

“Taste funny?” Harry said, surprised.

“Um-hmm.” Roku began spooning porridge into his mouth. “I used to chase them in one of the places where we lived. They were always breaking things and it made Papa Duo mad so I'd chase them back to the attic, but sometimes I'd catch them. Mama wouldn't let me keep any, though, although I don't think they could get out of my storage space.”

“I see,” Harry said, but his tone of voice made it sound like he did not.

At the teachers' table, Trowa and Hagrid were deep in conversation.

“So this here's me first year teachin',” Hagrid concluded, “and I'm a bit nervous about it, I'll tell yeh. Them students can be tough, with some of `em being hoity-toity an' all.”

“Well, I look forward to assisting you,” Trowa said. “I've only met a few magical creatures so I think this will be a great opportunity for me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hagrid perked up. “What creatures have yeh met?” He leaned forward eagerly.

“Well, there was a giant slug, a giant dog, a truly giant snake and a dragon.”

Hagrid's eyes lit up. “Ye've met a dragon? That's luck, there!” He stroked his fingers through his thick beard. “I hatched me a dragon egg one time, but I weren't allowed ter keep it.” He sighed wistfully. “I still wonder how poor Norbert's doin'.”

“Well, if the dragon I met is awake, maybe we can get him to drop by. Gift is always a delight to talk to.”

Hagrid stared. “Yeh met a dragon that can talk?”

“Certainly. According to Gift, dragons are the most intelligent creatures in existence.” Trowa chuckled as he said it.

“Well, I'll be!” Hagrid exclaimed. “I ain't never heard of a talkin' dragon. They're all just dumb beasts.”

“Really? Gift would be very disappointed to hear that. We'll definitely have to see if he's awake. Quatre can look for him.”

“That'd be somethin'!” Hagrid said excitedly.

As breakfast ended, students left to go to their classes and Roku approached the teachers' table.

Dumbledore smiled widely at him. “Ah, Mr. Winner!” he exclaimed. “It's time for our interview.” He stood up. “If you'll accompany me back to my office, we'll talk there.”

“Ok.”

As they left, Professor McGonagall rose. “I have your classroom assignments,” she said. “If you'll please come with me, I'll show you where you will be teaching your classes.”

With an angry snort, Professor Snape jumped to his feet and stamped out of the Great Hall, his robes flaring out behind him.

McGonagall sniffed. “Pay him no mind,” she said as she led the way from the Great Hall. She took them first to Quatre's classroom. It was a large room with a very high ceiling and tall skinny windows. Rows of tables that would hold two students each faced a desk at the front of the room.

Quatre nodded. “Very nice.”

Next was Wu-Fei's classroom. Individual desks with attached chairs were packed tightly into a circular room with bay windows three-quarters of the way around. The rest of the wall was taken up with an enormous chalkboard.

Wu-Fei looked around approvingly. “This should work.”

Last was the training room that Treize and Zechs would use. Completely empty except for two long benches on either side, it was a long room with windows up near the ceiling on one side and a row of skylights down the middle.

Treize strode into the middle of the room. “The light's good,” he said. “We'll need swords, though.”

“Roku may be holding one or two for me,” Heero said in a neutral tone.

Quatre glared at him.

“Well then,” McGonagall said. “Let me show you where Mr. Filch's office is since you'll need to speak to him if you need anything.”

Filch's office was a dark, cluttered place and he was still scowling. His cat was sitting primly in the only extra chair. “So, you lot are staying on in Hogwarts, are you?”

“That's right, Mr. Filch,” McGonagall answered for them. “And these two gentlemen have offered to assist you with security.”

Filch eyed Duo and Heero suspiciously. Duo tried to look harmless, but Heero returned Filch's scowl.

“Long's ye don't get underfoot,” Filch muttered.

“Oh, I think you'll find we can be quite useful,” Duo said brightly.

“Ye think so?” Filch growled. “Well, just come along then and we'll check the grounds; make sure none of them damn dementors are trespassin'. Seems like folks just walk in whenever they want…” He trailed off, continuing to mutter and grumble under his breath, as he led the way back out the door. Duo and Heero followed him.

McGonagall turned to the others. “I have a class to teach,” she said briskly, “so I'll leave you to it. I recommend staying on the grounds for the time being, especially your little girls.” She smiled at Jett and Alexa, the expression softening her rather severe face, before hurrying off.

“Hagrid's class is today,” Trowa said, “so I'll be busy for a while. I may hang around and see his other animals afterward. Later.” He strolled off.

Quatre pursed his lips. “I think I'll go back to my classroom. I need to think about what I'm going to teach.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Wu-Fei agreed. “Why don't you come with me, Hadeya?”

“All right.”

“We need to get our swords from Roku,” Zechs said.

Treize nodded. “Let's go wait for him. He's probably still in Dumbledore's office.” He took Jett's hand. “Since Duo is busy, Jett, why don't you come with us and Alexa?”

The little girl nodded gravely.

“You know,” said Quatre, “this isn't so bad. Being in a book seems no different from being in the past. I think everything is going to be just fine.”

The others all stared at him.

“Since Heero's not here,” Wu-Fei finally spoke up, “I'll say it for him: what the hell are you smoking, Quatre?”