Chapter 3: In Which Eleanor Becomes an Independent Variable

"GOODMORNING," Indie thunders into the dorm, spraying toast everywhere, his robes hanging off him, pulled hastily over his pyjamas, "Classes start in…" there is a pause as he tries to read his watch and not drop the rest of the toast, a task at which he entirely fails, "Ten minutes," he concludes as he sets the empty plate down on the desk we'd stolen from a disused classroom in first year.

I groan as I watch him fling toast at the snoring lumps arrayed in various positions around the room, several beneath a mound of textbooks. A red haired boy raises his head and looks around in alarm, "You don't even sleep in here," Indie points out, nonetheless tossing him a fluff –infused slice of toast.

"I'm not getting up," someone announces loudly. It's Dorian. We aren't exactly sure why he was sorted into Ravenclaw. He has that languid, arrogant air we expect from Griffindor, and he just barely scrapes by in his end of year tests. Surrounded by, well, us, he seems especially unqualified, but he's nice. Nice is nice.

Indie rolls his eyes, "Of course you will or else you know what will happen?"

Dorian glares at him, his black curls sticking up vigorously, "What?" he snarls.

"I'll turn you into an albatross," Indie says primly, twirling his wand threateningly. Most of the time being around Indie gives one the distinct impression that one has wandered into the wrong part of town. Dorian snorts and flops back on his bed, reaching for his stash of miscellaneous contraband. Indie smiles his Cheshire cat smile and from the end of his wand there erupts a glowing whip, which he slaps experimentally on Dorian's bedpost.

"If you would stop appealing to your pop culture alter-ego," Dorian says grumpily, though he begins to pull off his pyjamas, "I might end up with a much more satisfying life."

Indie smirks, "Cry me a river."

"Physiologically impossible," the red haired boy says.

"Thanks Einstein," Indie snarls, "Now scurry on back to your own dorm."

"He's normally much nicer," I say as the last glimpse of red hair disappears through the door.

I stand and get dressed, trying to ignore the explosions coming from the common room as the morning round of ingredients are added to potions and experiments are prodded. I'm finished before the others, and I leave just as Indie is declaring that everyone is officially late for class.

I slip into Potions just as Professor Parkins is writing the instructions for Bartholomew's Elixir on the board in clumsy handwriting. Indie and I lug our cauldron over to the last available seat in the room, which is the last available seat in the room for a reason that becomes overwhelmingly obvious after roughly five seconds. "It's very unusual to get a puff-worm nest this big," Indie says, managing to sound both fascinated and revolted.

I'm mostly just revolted.

Ten minutes later Professor Parkins has declared our desk to be a preservation site and storms off happily to see Professor Longbottom as Indie and I squeeze onto an already overcrowded table. We're grilling spider legs when she appears in a flash of green. Her tie is a little wonky, I notice immediately, but she's brushed her hair today and tied it all in a knot behind her head. Indie elbows me painfully in the side, "Is that her?" he hisses very loudly. If Eleanor hears him she chooses to ignore him.

"Excuse me," she says, attracting the attention of about three people, none of whom seem inclined to indicate their attentiveness.

My voice shakes, "Can I help you?" I try to smile, but my facial muscles won't cooperate. I suspect that I look more like a beached whale than anything more elegant.

"I'm looking for Professor Parkins, obviously," she tells me, and my heart sinks as I see not the faintest hint of recognition in her eyes, "Do you know where he's gone?"

I notice then what any self-respecting Ravenclaw should have noticed long before. Each student wears the same set of black robes during the school day, but they are allowed one token of allegiance to their house, which changes with the seasons. In winter, it's generally a scarf, and when it gets warmer most students revert to wearing a tie. Eleanor's tie is green. Now generally Ravenclaws and Slytherins get along fairly well, apart from the realm of Quidditch, where almost every house tends to stand against Slytherin.

Normally, our relationship is quite amiable. Cunning is more or less a synonym for clever, and though Slytherins can be contemptuous of practically everyone who isn't one of them, I've had Slytherins climb Ravenclaw Tower with me when I struggled to carry twenty books up the stairs.

I stare speechlessly at her for a moment, not because I have anything in particular against Slytherin House, but because I distinctly remember Eleanor wearing orange and black – the Hufflepuff colours.

"Um," I sputter stupidly.

Indie sighs as though speaking to her is a privilege she could never deserve, "He's gone to see Professor Longbottom so that this classroom can be turned into a nature reserve." It's testament to Parkins' eccentricity that Eleanor-not-Eleanor doesn't even look surprised.

"Well could you tell him that I've got to talk to him about my thesis?" She doesn't wait for an answer, turning to scale the steps out of the dungeons with a flap of her robes.

I watch her leave, my face etched with bewilderment. Several how's are chasing several why's around my head and getting nowhere. Indie nudges me, "What was all that about?"

"What?" I snap defensively.

Indie's eyebrows shoot up, "Well, I know that you're usually socially impaired, but I thought we were past not being able to talk to people."

"It's complicated," I tell him.

"Nothing in your angsty teenage life is more complicated than the things we do on our dorm room floor after seven dodgy elixirs," Indie scoffs, "Now tell me, or I will hurt you."

So I tell him, and he's still laughing when Parkins arrives pouting into our midst and tells us mournfully that our desk is going to be relocated to the headmaster's 'stupid' herbology department.

Later that evening Indie, Dorian, Becca and I are sitting in a deep, dark corner of the library sharing a packet of Oreos and drawing up equations based on my personal life. We've calculated our way to the point where Eleanor is either a spy sent from Durmstrang, a shape shifter, a figment of everyone's imagination due to a school-wide pus worm infestation (they've been known to secrete narcotics) or a Dalek.

"I think it would be sort of romantic if she were actually a homicidal, genocidal character from Doctor Who," Becca says, stifling a yawn as she attempts to pry an Oreo apart.

"Weakling," Indie says, cramming an entire biscuit into his mouth.

Dorian is asleep on top of "Assorted Fungi and their Effects on the Human Mind", his snoring stifled with a Muffling Spell courtesy of Indie.

"We're ignoring the mutability of human memory," I remind them.

Indie snorts, "We're just failing to underestimate your self-obsession."

"Right," I say, "So back to the shape shifter theory."

Becca shrugs, "Shape shifters are known to fixate on certain people, but her apparent dismissal of you earlier today isn't typical shape shifter behaviour. They're less developed than we are, and they have no capacity to alter their behaviour despite their feeling for a human."

"What you see is what you get," Indie summarises.

We lapse into silence punctuated by faint whispers as the books in aisle 12 converse.

"Excuse me?" someone says. Dorian snorts loudly as he wakes, whirling around at the dust motes floating in the air. I turn to tell whomever the librarian has sent to rouse rabble-rousers from their shadowy corners to kindly bugger off, but my words catch in my throat.

Because Eleanor is standing there, smiling timidly from beneath a mass of unkempt hair, her Hufflepuff tie untucked from her jumper, swaying gently from side to side like the timepiece of a very confusing clock.