Author note: This story, like all my Percy-Penelope-Samantha stories, is based on the original 1997 edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which placed Penelope one year after Percy at Hogwarts.

Muggle-Born

The door is unlocked, two inches ajar. Samantha slips in and shuts it behind her. She nods to the tattered photograph pinned to Penelope's corkboard and says, "Hi, Percy." Percy waves back to her.

Time was, this was the only photograph of Percy in the house. Time was, this was the only wizarding photograph of any description in all the Clearwaters' rambling multi-storied rowhouse, and Penelope was under strict injunctions to keep it hidden. But now they've been dating for over a year, and Penelope has many photographs of Percy, most of which she took to Rennes with her for the summer. This one somehow got left behind, and even though it's not supposed to be out in plain view, Samantha pinned it to the corkboard in her sister's room, so that she would have someone to talk to in Penelope's absence.

Percy is the only one who really understands about missing Penelope.

Samantha flops down on the fluffy white rug and sniffs the clean, cold scent of her sister's bedroom. It's the scent of a shrine, a clean, cold, uninhabited room in which the windows are always open and the books and pictures commune undisturbed by any higher forms of life. Samantha runs her hand over the thick leathery spines of the volumes on Penelope's bookshelf. She selects a primer on calculus and The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, and sprawls out on the floor to read them.

Within minutes, she sees that The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, is too hard for her. Samantha worked her way meticulously through Grade 1 and Grade 2. Not that she can actually work any of the spells—she's a Muggle— but she memorized the books from front to back, just as any Hogwarts student would. She stood in this room, on the fluffy white rug, in cold shafts of sunlight in the summer vacation and warm shafts of lamplight in the winter vacation, grasping Penelope's wand and manipulating it deftly as her sister tutored her in just the right grip, just the right angle, just the right flick of the wrist. She got to be very, very good at the wandwork, though of course she never worked the spells.

But the years passed, and the spells got harder. Grade 3 is hard for her, Grade 4 is harder. Grade 5, which she is examining for the first time this morning, is simply beyond her ken. She used to understand the principles, though she never could work the spells. Penelope explained all the theory underlying Grade 1 and Grade 2 very carefully, and she was starting to explain Grade 3 when Dad shipped her off to Rennes for the summer to learn French. In her first four years at Hogwarts, Penelope sent Samantha many, many owls bearing many, many detailed letters of explanation, not just of spellwork but of everything. But there haven't been so many owls this year, because Penelope's dating Percy now, and she's got someone else to talk to, and something else to do with her spare time. There haven't been so many owls this year, because Samantha goes to Roedean now, and too many owls to the dormitory where she lives would raise eyebrows and questions. So they waited until the summer vacation to start working on the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3, and then when vacation came, Dad shipped Penelope off to Rennes.

Samantha understands why Dad is angry about Penelope's not having taken a foreign language at O-levels. She just doesn't understand why she couldn't have taught Penelope French herself. Samanatha gets very good marks in French, at Roedean. Samantha doesn't really understand why she and her sister could not have spent their precious short nine-week summer vacation breakfasting daily on chocolate croissants at Louis Patisserie in the village of Hampstead, discussing Percy, spellwork, and Hogwarts generally in French. That would have made Samantha happy, and she rather thinks it would have made Penelope happy too. But Dad didn't even listen to this proposal. He just packed Penelope off to Rennes.

It seems to Samantha sometimes that her parents want to see less and less of her magical sister. It seems to Samantha sometimes that her parents are afraid they'll stop loving Penelope if they see too much of her difference.

Samantha doesn't mind the difference. She sees being Muggle-born as one more dimension of Penelope's magic, one more dimension of her genius.

But what's the good of having a magic sister if you never get to see her?

She lies prone on the floor, missing Penelope.

Samantha was eight, going on nine, when the witch came for her sister. The witch was not, as in fairy tales, an elderly woman with a hook nose, clad in a grubby black hat and cape. She was a middle-aged woman with an ordinary nose, clad in good faux pearls and badly cut tweeds, graceful in movement, plain in repose, quite indistinguishable from some of the more eccentric female dons of Mummy and Dad's acquaintance. Her name was Vespasia Vector, and she introduced herself as a professor of Arithmancy, which she described as an unusual branch of algebra. This was a good move strategically, as Dad is possessed of almost unrestrained enthusiasm for exotic branches of algebra, the more obscure and the more useless the better.

But the strategy failed. Mummy and Dad and Penelope sat in a mute incredulous row on the faded red silk sofa and stared at the witch, just stared, Penelope looking fearful and Mummy looking dazed and Dad looking annoyed that his time was being wasted by this mysterious woman who seemed like a harmless old bird but had apparently escaped from a lunatic asylum called Hogwarts in a region of Scotland that she refused to pinpoint precisely. Samantha, sitting cross-legged on the floor at Penelope's feet, thought that someone really ought to take the witch to Mummy's tailor and wondered if Arithmancy was like arithmetic and why anyone would get a professorship just for that.

Two days later, they received a visit from a funny-looking, slant-eyed little man who announced himself to be Filius Flitwick, professor of Charms. For some reason, this made Mummy very angry, and she shouted, "You are not sending my daughter to a charm school! Not when her great-grandmother beat the Senior Wrangler in the Tripos!" It was very, very unusual for Mummy to get angry—it was usually Dad who did that—but this time, it was Dad who calmed Mummy down and banished Samantha from the living room as Professor Flitwick hastily explained that Charms was not the same thing as charm school, not at all, also he was the head of Ravenclaw which was quite the brainiest house in Hogwarts and Penelope was Ravenclaw material, at least that's what Minerva—at this point Mummy cringed. Mummy liked classical names—Mummy was the one who had been responsible for naming all three classically named daughters—but Samantha, peeking in from the hall, could almost see her thinking, "Minerva!"

She would probably have preferred "Athena."

So Mummy sat taut and miserable on the sofa as Dad explained to Professor Flitwick, with a certain tense forced calm, that Penelope was a nice, bright, ordinary girl, and she was going to Roedean. Professor Flitwick listened good-humoredly, with a worried expression on his face, and said at last, shaking his head, "Albus. I'll have to talk to Albus. I'll have to talk to Albus Dumbledore."

He left the house without prodding, shaking hands all around, and Dad breathed an audible sigh of relief.

Two days after that, they received a visit from Albus Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore looked even less like a normal person than Professor Flitwick did, and his clothing was stagier than any costume in any production of Macbeth any of the Clearwaters had ever seen. He scarcely said a word. He just asked for Penelope and, when she was duly presented, shook her hand and folded her unwilling fingers over his wand. She took the tool uncertainly in her clenched unhappy fist and jerked it tentatively. The vast blue-and-white Ming vase—the one that everyone in the family hated but which they nevertheless had to keep because it made Great-Aunt Enid happy, and which Penelope laboriously and lachrymosely dusted every Saturday morning—shattered into a thousand pieces and crumbled to dust where it stood. Mummy and Dad stared at each other open-mouthed. Penelope dropped Albus Dumbeldore's wand and burst into tears.

Samantha removed her head from between the spindles of the staircase and came rushing into the room and hugged her sister. Professor Dumbledore picked up his wand and brushed it off and gave Penelope a chocolate bar to make her feel better and Samantha another chocolate bar for being a good sister and Samantha and Penelope's parents a list of Penelope's school things and a book about how to be the Muggle parents of a wizard child. Then he disapparated.

Mummy and Dad and Penelope and Samantha were still sitting stricken in the living room, speaking spasmodically, when fourteen-year-old Alan came in hot and sweaty from playing football on the Heath. He poked his head in the door and said, "Quid agis?"

"Penelope can do magic!" exclaimed Samantha.

Alan looked skeptical but shrugged and murmured philosophically, "Nil mortalibus arduum est."

"It was brilliant!" enthused Samantha. "I've never seen anything like it!" Mummy winced.

"Nil novi sub sole," asserted Alan.

"Samantha, Alan, go to your rooms," said Dad.

In the end it was Mummy who took Penelope to Diagon Alley to get her school things. Mummy was always the one who ended up doing whatever it was that Mummy and Dad didn't want to do. Samantha offered to go with them, but Mummy said no, absolutely not, not a chance in hell, so Samantha stayed at home and did a jigsaw puzzle of Mont St. Michel and read the book about how to be the Muggle parent of a wizard child.

When the front door banged to several hours later, Samantha whipped down three flights of stairs and met her mother and sister on the first floor landing, laden with packages. Penelope was wearing the tight miserable expression that menstrual cramps tended to induce in their eldest sister Helena, but as far as Samantha knew, Penelope hadn't gotten her period yet, so it must be some of other kind of pain. Mummy's face was an iron mask. Mummy is, for all her fascination with Third World democracies, a daughter of the race that built the empire—the race that survived the Black Hole of Calcutta, Sevastapol, the Somme. In the face of catastrophe, she stands up straight and dons a mask of iron.

Mummy handed Samantha two or three packages and Samantha trailed wordlessly after them, up to the fourth floor, where her bedroom and Penelope's faced one another under the eaves. Mummy dumped the bags she was carrying in a heap on the floor, muttered, "I'll let you know when the trunk is delivered," and disappeared without a word to Samantha.

"Tell me everything," said Samantha.

Penelope looked puzzled.

"Everything," prompted Samantha.

"It's a very strange place," said Penelope slowly, "full of very strange people, and some of them don't look human. There's no maths in the school curriculum, and no science except astronomy, and no English either. I got some little brass scales and a wand that makes all sorts of strange things happen even when I don't want them to. It's made of willow and supposedly it's got a unicorn hair inside it, but don't say that in front of Mummy, because she said that unicorns—"

"Wasn't it enthralling?" urged Samantha, drawing out "enthralling" with a bookish child's pleasure in a lengthy word. "Wasn't it enchanting?"

"Well, the owls were cute," said Penelope guardedly. "But I'm not getting one. Mummy says they're disgusting. They regurgitate their prey."

"What does regurgitate mean?" asked Samantha.

Penelope explained. It was a little disgusting.

They opened the bags and unpacked the boxes one by one. Samantha tried out Penelope's wand, but it didn't do anything for her, and Penelope refused to touch it herself because she still felt bad about the Ming vase even though everyone (except Great-Aunt Enid, who hadn't been told yet) was glad it was broken. Indeed, Dad had said that the breaking of the vase was the only redeeming merit of the situation. Then Samantha tried on Penelope's school robes and, after much coaxing and cajoling, Penelope did too. Samantha thought they looked bewitching but Penelope cringed when she heard that and said that Mummy thought they looked like hijab.

"What's hijab?" said Samantha.

Penelope explained.

"Is Iran where they had the revolution and shut down all the universities when you were a baby?" asked Samantha.

"Yes," said Penelope shortly.

Samantha could see why Mummy was a little worried. But she said, "Don't worry, Penelope, Hogwarts is in Scotland, like Professor Vector said, and you get there from King's Cross, and when you get there, you'll ring me up—"

"They don't have telephones," said Penelope.

"Or send me a postcard—"

"They don't have normal post," said Penelope, "and I don't have an owl." She pulled off her brand-new shiny black school robes and threw them on the floor—which was exactly what she was always telling Samantha not to do with clothes—and said in a stage whisper, "I don't want to go! Samantha, I don't want to go!" And she burst into tears.

Samantha hugged her sister. She fetched her a glass of water and a handkerchief. Then she sat down on Penelope's bed and started organizing her robes and her books and her parcels. She looked at her short, skinny, fragile eleven-year-old big sister, sobbing and hiccupping in the center of the room, and she thought, why couldn't it have been me?

Penelope was still sniffing five minutes later when Alan poked his head in, hot and sweaty from his daily summer afternoon game of football on Hampstead Heath, and said, "Cras credemus, hodie nihil."

"Go away, Alan," snapped Penelope.

"Credo quia absurdum," said Alan tauntingly. "Credo quia impossibile," he added as Penelope slammed the door in his face.

No one wanted Penelope to go to Hogwarts. No one.

Nevertheless, she went.

In Penelope's bedroom, Samantha sighs and shuts the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5. She rolls over to grab the calculus primer. Dad bought this for Penelope last winter to compensate for the fact that the only maths she was doing at O-levels (or, as Penelope calls them, OWLs) was arithmancy, which is a sort of math Dad doesn't care for much. Penelope already spent all of last summer vacation working through a book on trigonometry to make her father happy. As long as Penelope had to do it, Samantha did it too, and they had a good time together, the sisters, because this is a family that embraces mathematical study with an attitude roughly approximating that with which their virtuously entrepreneurial Victorian forebears embraced Christmas parlor games. Dad is a number theorist and their Clearwater grandfather was trained as a mathematical philosopher before he became provost of his college and it was his mother who beat the Senior Wrangler in the Tripos, back in 1890-something. So Samantha and Penelope put their heads together and solved the trigonometry problems and studied the proofs and made jokes and periodically ended up eating chocolate croissants at Louis Patisserie. All in all, they had a very happy, very educational summer.

The trouble came in September when Samantha went to Roedean and announced that her maths class was boring and she had already done not just algebra but also trigonometry. The deputy headmistress was astonished and, well, a little indignant. She claimed that she had never previously met a thirteen-year-old who had already done trigonometry. She claimed never to have met a thirteen-year-old who wanted to do trigonometry. She claimed that Samantha would have to be put in an A-level maths class, and putting a thirteen-year-old in an A-level maths class would send the timetable to rack and ruin.

In the end, Samantha was put in an O-level maths class, which wasn't much less boring than the one in which she had originally been placed, but it was easy and the absence of struggle left ample time for writing fantasy stories about a magical school called Pigspots for Roedean's literary magazine. She didn't get very far with these stories, because the English teacher who advised the literary magazine said they were ridiculous and Samantha ought to try her hand at writing something realistic, while Penelope, reading them over winter vacation, said that they were disconcertingly accurate and she was going to get in trouble with magical security if her sister published stories like this. So Samantha stopped writing and went back to trigonometry.

There's nothing wrong with trigonometry. It has a certain transparent elegance. She explains all the theory very carefully in the infrequent owls from Roedean, in the letters from Hampstead to Rennes. There's nothing wrong with trigonometry, except the dearth of wandwork.

There's nothing wrong with Samantha's life, save that she doesn't have a wand.

Sure, the world is awry. The Clearwater girl who's a witch wants to be a physicist, and the Clearwater girl who's going to be a mathematician—or so Dad keeps telling his friends—wants to be a witch. And they're not going to get what they want, either of them, because the world isn't made that way.

Sure, the world is awry.