He showed him how to get through the dungeons to Potions ("Do not ask Slytherins for directions."), other classes ("Like we told you last night, most of your classes are in this building, Transfiguration's down here. Mind that step, it vanishes during new moons. Charms corridor down through there.”), how to not get delayed (“If you hear Peeves the Poltergeist coming, run like the devil. He’s heard there’s an American here. Now he’s like a barghest with a bloody steak held in front of it.”1), the quickest route from the Charms corridor to the Transfiguration Courtyard ("Skip the main staircase, take this stone slide behind the tapestry with the hunting scene"), miscellaneous tips (“Be sure to go to the bathroom before Astronomy, the nearest bathroom is seven flights of steps down and it’s a girls room.”) and the best place to take a smoke between classes ("There's a nice little alcove behind the suit of armor on the second floor, hardly anyone knows about it").2
Jack took it all in, marveling at the sheer size and complexity of the castle. Ilvermorny’s academic buildings and grounds felt like a modest New Jersey townhouse compared to this. He felt a pang of homesickness, a longing for the familiar haunts and faces of his old school. But it was quickly overwhelmed by a thrill in his chest at all the history that was literally underfoot. Albus Dumbledore had gone here, and nearly every other wizard and witch worth reading about. Going down the same hallways, and attending the same classes. How many of his classmates would be blazing their names into history books for future Hogwarts students to read about, dream about, and seek to emulate?
By the time they circled back across the viaduct to the Great Hall for lunch, Jack was feeling much more confident about his ability to navigate the castle. His head was packed with new information. He felt energized, ready to tackle whatever challenges lay ahead.
Of course, his first challenges were the Potion and Transfig placement tests (he was already falling into the slang references for the course). After a hasty sandwich and another cup of tea, he bade Henry goodbye and made his deliberate way down to the dungeon classroom where the test was being held.
He was - as expected - the only student there, and Professor Vale gave him the special attention Jack was afraid of. Vale loomed over his cauldron like an ill-tempered white-wigged bat and made disapproving noises at his ingredient preparation technique. "American method," he muttered. "All shortcuts and flash. Where's the artistry? Where’s the precision?"
Jack was a split second late adding beeswing to his gently bubbling draught, prompting the Potions Master to tut loudly and add: “How delightfully typical, late to the war, late on your timing.”3 Jack finished in under 45 minutes, had his Ointment of Rheumatic Aid critiqued as “bland, insipid, mass-produced, and uninspiring”, and fled the dungeons after Vale had marked him ‘barely Acceptable’.
Professor Winterborn was marginally less threatening during the Transfiguration assessment upstairs back in the Academic Wing, though her rapid-fire questions about theoretical principles and the conservation of mass left Jack sweating and stammering. "Different foundation at Ilvermorny, clearly," she noted, after Jack had successfully changed the color of a glass paperweight all the way through the rainbow while keeping it mostly transparent, "but not unsalvageable. I’ll give you an Acceptable for now, but you'll need some supplementary reading to catch up." A yard-long scroll was conjured from the air and handed to him. “Mr. Ravenhurst can help you with some of the more intricate concepts.”
"Is that really necessary, ma’am?" Jack asked weakly, his spirit massively bruised by the ‘C’ grade. He thought he was good at Transmutation...
“Presumptuous, Mr. Semmes,” Winterborn pinned him with her beady eyes. "Or perhaps you'd prefer to be in my remedial section?”
Jack slumped in defeat. "No, professor."
Jack had a splitting headache and his hand was cramped from writing essays all afternoon by dinner time. Henry and his friends had saved a seat for him at the Gryffindor table. He collapsed onto the bench, air spilling out of him like a punctured balloon.
"How'd it go?" Henry asked innocently, though his twinkling eyes suggested he already had a good idea from Jack’s body language.
"Vale thinks I'm an idiot, Winterborn hates me, and I have a month’s worth of reading to do just to get ready for class on Monday," Jack groaned, reaching for a pork pie. "Tell me again why I transferred?"
"International magical cooperation, right?," Teddy offered cheerfully. "Blame the ICW.4 Cheer up Semmes, we’ve got Sunday off tomorrow. Can't get any worse, right?"
Oliver drained a glass of perry in one long swig, "You really shouldn't say things like that at Hogwarts, Marsh. The castle takes it as a challenge."
Jack looked up at the enchanted ceiling, where angry storm clouds were gathering dramatically.
After dinner, he walked with his friends back towards the common room, splitting off with them in the courtyard and headed in a roundabout way for the Owlery, refusing an offer from Henry to show him the way. Jack wanted some time to himself. His mother was probably already worrying about something or other, he had promised to mail them the day he arrived. It was inconvenient having to trek all this way, he thought as he picked his way carefully down the wet steps of the West Tower heading towards the Beasts Paddock. Maybe he should save his money up to get his own owl…have it deliver mail straight to his dorm room. They were expensive though. Maybe a new broom should come first. Jack turned up the hood of his robe against the rain, which had started to sheet down, and ran the two hundred yards to the owlery.
The circular stone building rose before him like a medieval watchtower, its windows glassless to allow the hundreds of owls living there easy passage. The storm made the whole structure seem forbidding, rain lashing against stones occasionally illuminated by lightning flashes.
The interior, by contrast, was a warm and stuffy ascending amphitheater of soft hooting and rustling feathers. Owls of every size and breed perched in the shadowed rafters: tiny scops barely bigger than Quopro balls, elegant barn owls preening their heart-shaped faces, massive eagle owls regarding him imperiously from the highest perches. The stone floor was thickly carpeted with straw and the evidence of several hundred owls' favorite pastime. Everything reeked of ammonia.
He picked his way carefully between piles of owl droppings and pellets toward the school birds, finally selecting a doughty-looking barn owl that seemed up for a long journey for a reasonable fee. His letter was already written and sealed in a watertight envelope:
Dear Mom and Dad,
Here at Hogwarts, safe and sound. Voyage was uneventful. The castle's very impressive. Got sorted into Gryffindor and already making lots of friends. Everything's going great. Classes start Monday. Don't worry!
Love, Jack
He'd rewritten it twice to capture the perfect amount of teenage insouciance, hiding homesickness between the lines and deleting any mention of Hightower.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“Snf!” The owl gave him a snort and an exasperated look. "I know, I know," Jack grumbled, "Sorry! I know it’s a long flight, but think about it from my perspective. I gotta pay transatlantic airfare!” He counted out a whole Sickle into its leather purse. “Highway robbery if you ask me. Could buy a nice dinner and a movie with that!"5
With a distinct huff, the bird snatched the envelope and launched itself into the tempest through the western window. Jack looked outside at the storm, figured that it wasn’t letting up anytime soon, and ran back to the West Tower as fast as he could, leather shoes slipping on the path. His socks were soaked through before he made it fifteen yards.
The journey back was a good review of Jack’s pilgrim prowess, and of Henry’s careful tutelage. Down the spiral stairs of the West Tower and through the echoing Academic Wing he squelched. Several portraits made impolite comments about good-for-nothing students wandering about late hours dripping water everywhere. The iron suspension bridge swayed alarmingly in the wind, forcing Jack to grab the rain-slicked handguard as he crossed high above the black abyss of the ravine. He trotted past Ravenclaw’s aerie, into Gryffindor Tower, up six flights of spiral steps, and finally (“Krugeri”) through the portrait hole.
Jack was attempting to dry himself with a combined heating and gusting charm in the entryway when they descended upon him.
“Mr. Semmes! Mr. Semmes!" A small boy with a mane of untamed brown hair and a sharp aquiline nose materialized at his elbow. "There’s a seat over here by the fire, Mr. Semmes, we saved it for you!” He politely but insistently tugged at Jack’s arm. "Could you tell us more about America?"
After his initial confusion, Jack recognized him. It was Palamedes Hitchens, the first-year from the reception hall who thought Jack’s Ilvermorny garb had been a guard’s uniform.
“Hey, listen pal-” Jack began exasperatedly.
“Yes, YES!” Palamedes lit up like a Christmas tree, “Please call me Pal! Way better than Palamedes.” He pulled Jack into the common room. “I had so many questions I didn’t get to ask you yesterday. Is it true you play Quodpot? Did you really ride a thunderbird? What's New York like? Is Superman a wizard?"6
"No, Superman isn't a-how do you even know that-" Jack began, but was interrupted by a second first-year, this one dumpy and clutching a massive book to his chest like a life preserver.
“Menelaus Gristwood, Mr. Semmes,” the boy adjusted his thick round glasses self-importantly, "But my da calls me Mel. I just got this book from the library and I've been reading about American magical education systems. Is it true that Ilverm-”
"Give him space, you two!" A third boy, ginger, freckled, and in pajamas decorated with moving golden snitches, shoved his way in between them. "I'm Wigbald Stoat, but I like Wiggy. Can you teach us American dueling?"
"Absolutely not," came Mina Mulholland’s ringing lilt. She pattered down the spiral steps from the boys dorm and marched up to them, looking slightly harried. "It's past your bedtime. Did you brush your teeth?"
Three guilty faces turned toward her.
"But Miss Mulholland!" "We just wanted-" "He's from America!"
"And he'll still be from America tomorrow," she said firmly, herding them back toward the dormitory stairs. "After you've slept, eaten breakfast, and done your homework. School starts in two days, and I expect-" her musical reprimands faded up the stairs.
"This is better than a wireless drama,"7 the irrepressible Henry Ravenhurst commented from a nearby armchair. Cigarette smoke coiled upward into the still air from an ashtray.
Jack hung up his wet robe on a coat tree and sat down in front of the fire to carefully dry his shoes. The common room was nearly empty.
"Are freshmen usually like that here?" Jack asked.
"Of course," Henry snorted. "You ask me, it's because we can't fag them anymore.8 Bloody post-war softness."
“They’re like excitable little puppies,” Jack remarked.
"Boys, be charitable. They're first-years," Mina returned, looking fondly up towards the dorms. "Everything's still magical to them."
"As opposed to us jaded old men," Henry grinned. He shook a cigarette out of his pack and gestured to the open armchair next to them.
"Not tonight," Mina rolled her eyes. "I need to head back to the prefects' tower. I’d like to store up some sleep before the year starts in earnest."
“So soon?” Henry asked.
“And you should both get to bed too,” Mina said, as if he hadn’t said anything.
“It’s only 10 o’clock-” Henry protested.
"Good night, Mr. Ravenhurst," she cut him off. "Good night, Mr. Semmes."
They watched her disappear through the portrait hole, waving a water repelling charm over her robes.
Jack returned his attention to drying and oiling his shoes. When they were cleaned enough he stood up, yawning and ready for bed.
Henry was still staring pensively at the entryway.
“She’s nice,” Jack offered. “Her accent is really-...neat.” He barely stopped himself from saying 'pretty', held back by an innate boyish code of honor.
Henry uncoiled himself from his seat like a spring. “She’s right too,” he said, bounding over to the stairs and taking them up three at a time. “Sleep deficit is no way to start the school year. Come along Semmes.”
“Were you waiting up for me?” Jack asked as they climbed toward their dormitory.
“‘Course I was,” Henry replied matter-of-factly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “What if you had gotten lost?”
Jack was taken aback. “That’s…really-”
Henry continued on, “I’m locking you out, Semmes,” he said over his shoulder as he reached the door without him.
Jack followed. They made their way to their beds in companionable silence.
1. A barghest is a spectral black dog of Northern English folklore, often associated with death and misfortune. Much like Peeves the Poltergeist, barghests are notorious for appearing at the most inconvenient times, usually to terrify or torment the unsuspecting.
2. Smoking was, of course, frowned upon in academic areas, but common rooms were more lenient. In the 1940s, male wizarding students who enjoyed a pipe or cigarette was the norm. It was slightly more uncommon for girls. Presumably Mr. Semmes and his friends used a vacuum charm - simple, yet effective - to remove all traces of smoke.
3. "How delightfully typical, late to the war, late on your timing", Professor Vale's barb is accurate, as MACUSA didn't join the Great Wizarding War until nearly six years after it had started. While Grindelwald’s forces swept across Europe in the 1920s, the Americans seemed more concerned with isolationism and internal politics. When they finally joined, their contributions were significant, but the delay still rankles, particularly among wizards who lived through those years.
4. The International Confederation of Wizards, which at the time nominally presided over the Magical World. The ICW’s authority was already precarious in the 1940s, and the post-war period saw further erosion of its influence. Decolonization destabilized traditional magical hierarchies in Africa and Asia, as emerging wizarding nations sought to establish autonomy. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's magical factions rejected ICW oversight entirely. By the mid-20th century, the ICW was struggling to maintain any semblance of global unity.
5. Adjusted for inflation, Mr. Semmes paid nearly 5 Sickles and 3 Knuts for that letter. Highway robbery indeed. Thankfully, the post-war expansion of the Mail-Floo Network reduced costs and improved accessibility for wizarding communication. Today, you’d only pay a few Knuts for the same service - though the reliability of Mail-Floo has been called into question ever since those Romanian dragon eggs ended up in the kitchen of the Muggle Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park back in 2008...
6. Superman debuted in 1938, the creation of two American Muggle comic writers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The character’s extraordinary powers - flight, strength, and near-invulnerability - were perplexing to wizards who couldn’t quite believe a Muggle could dream up such abilities without magical influence. Of course, now we know Superman’s powers are attributed to his fictional Kryptonian origins, but one can imagine contemporary wizards entertaining the notion that he might be a wizard hiding in plain sight.
7. Wizarding wireless dramas were the wizarding world's answer to Muggle radio plays: serialized stories performed live, complete with enchanted sound effects and magical music. Popular in the early 20th century, these dramas included everything from gripping tales of heroic Aurors to comedic sagas about bumbling potion-makers. Sadly, the advent of enchanted moving pictures has largely replaced wireless dramas, though aficionados still tune in to the occasional classic broadcast.
8. Fagging - a tradition where younger students were effectively servants to their older peers - was strictly banned at Hogwarts in 1946 after a Slytherin first-year fell off a parapet trying to escape from a group of upper years attempting to make him swim across the Black Lake in January.