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Where the Magic Happens

Summary:

In which Byleth Potter, the quiet girl who lives in the woods with her imaginary friends Sothis and Tom, gets a letter inviting her to a school for wizards and witches. More importantly, according to Tom, that school has a lake to fish in.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter Text

My tree was very nice.

It was big and round, and a lightning strike had hollowed a lot of it out, and I'd hollowed out the rest. I'd made a little roof inside out of deer hide, to keep the rain out, and a door using the leftovers, and I had other animal furs that kept me warm when the weather got cold. A whole nest of them, even, and it was comfortable to sleep in even when it wasn't cold. 

I had a little bow and arrow that I used to hunt that I'd made myself, and a large sharpened branch that I used as a spear, and a fishing pole that was my treasure, and a broken fishing pole that used to be my treasure and still was even though it had broken and I'd had to make a new one. I also had my favorite weapon, a wooden sword that I'd painstakingly carved over two or three or something years. It was the least useful of them all, but I still loved it, and every day after I'd finished hunting and fishing and making a fire in my fire-pit and smoking my spare meat and cooking and gathering berries and roots and things I would go out in front of my tree and practice with it.

I had friends, too. There was a snake who lived in a tree stump past the willow and the pond who didn't have a name and didn't want one but I liked talking to her. There was the robin that nested in my tree and raised her babies and sometimes I had to help the little robin family with injuries or food but I liked them a lot so it was okay. And I had two friends that were people, but they were both kind of imaginary and didn't like each other much.

One was named Tom, and the other was named Sothis.

Sothis looked a little older than me but she said she was a lot older than me. She had green hair and fancy clothes and said she'd been my friend for a very very long time, all the way from back when I learned how to use a sword and make a bow and skin a rabbit with a sharp rock, which was before I was born and was a different person, but Sothis said I wasn't that different now. She liked the robins. She was a little mean sometimes, but mostly nice, and liked to wander around or nap or remind me of things I didn't remember to do.

Tom was an adult, and he said he wasn't my friend at all, but he was my friend, he was just stubborn. He got mad at Sothis a lot, and also he got mad for no reason a lot, but he really liked when I showed him the proper way to skin things or gut fish or make swords, and he liked the snake that lived in the tree stump. I liked showing him things, too, and it made me happy when it seemed like he understood. Sometimes he'd imagine a sword for himself, a real metal sword, and he'd follow along with me when I practiced with my wooden one.

I used to have people that called themselves my family, but the one thing Sothis and Tom both agreed on was that they weren't really my family, because they were always mean. That was why I lived in the woods instead. I knew how to live in the woods, and Sothis didn't want me to stay with those people, and Tom said curses at them that weren't the same as the curses they said at me but he assured me that it was definitely cursing. I knew that cursing was bad. Tom was an adult, though, so it was okay if he cursed.

And then one day I had a letter.

On the front it said, "Byleth Potter," so I knew it was for me, and under that it said "The Lightning-Struck Elm," which was where I lived even though I hadn't known it was an Elm. I showed it to Sothis, who was worried, and to Tom, who seemed excited, and they started arguing as I opened it up and read what it said inside about a school called Hogwarts.

"She doesn't need to go to school!" Sothis yelled at Tom.

"So you'd rather she sit alone in the woods? She could be incredibly powerful, nearly as powerful as I was." Tom didn't yell, but he used the voice he used when talking to very stupid things. He used that voice a lot when he talked to my not-family, but they didn't hear him, because he was imaginary.

I liked school. Even when I went to school with my not-cousin who was mean to me, I liked school. People called me a lot of names, but it was okay because there were a lot of books and things to do and the teachers answered a lot of my questions about things. I'd tried to keep going after I'd stopped living with her not-family, but everyone had given me really strange looks when I forgot to wash the blood off my hands from making myself dinner the night before, and Tom and Sothis told me I didn't need to go anymore.

Tom had never wanted me to go, anyway, but it was the two of them being in agreement that was the important thing. Besides, it gave me more time to make my sword, and fish, and hunt. Mostly fish. I liked fishing.

I interrupted their fight because they fought a lot anyway, so they could wait for a moment. "Is there a place where I can fish at Hogwarts?"

They both turned to me, and Sothis was going to say something, but before she could Tom said, "There's a lake on the grounds."

I said, "I'll go."

Sothis spluttered. Tom said he'd show me where to get my school supplies. I took a piece of charcoal and wrote "Okay," on the envelope and put it on the tree, so whoever put it in front of the tree could find it again and take it back.

I followed Tom out of the woods. I brought my wooden sword, just in case.