Chapter Text
Deny thy father; Refuse thy name
Annie gets her letter on her eleventh birthday.
It’s no surprise, of course – she comes from a long line of witches and wizards, and she’d known magic before she’d even learned how to speak. The Leonhardts are an old family; a pure family – she can’t even imagine the shame her father would feel if her letter didn’t arrive today – but it comes as expected, and everyone is pleased, and everything is fine.
When she’s alone later, she clutches the parchment and studies it under the candlelight with a sigh.
Miss Annie Leonhardt, it reads, and she runs her fingers over the letters of her last name.
Today is the beginning of the rest of her life. A life planned for her by her father and mother, with no room for error or speculation. She will go to Diagon Alley in the morning to buy her wand, her books, and her robes; she will go to Hogwarts and be sorted into Slytherin like the rest of her family; she will do magnificently in all her classes; and she will gain a seat in Ministry of Magic. She will marry a Braun or a Hoover to keep her bloodline pure, and her children will rinse and repeat.
“You’re lucky to be a Leonhardt,” they tell her. “You are lucky you were born to a family with such prestige.”
Lucky, they say. Annie doesn’t quite think it’s the same word she would use.
She meets a boy in Ollivanders.
He’s only just taller than she is with a shock of yellow-blonde hair and sky blue eyes. He looks nervous but curious at the same time, and he smiles at her while the witch he’s with chats amicably with Mr. Ollivander.
“Hello,” he greets. “Are – are you getting a wand too?”
Annie nods and studies him. He’s not wearing robes – he’s in a pair of jeans and a jumper that’s slightly too big. Muggle clothes, she thinks. She figures he’s muggle born. “Is it your first time here?” she asks carefully.
He seems to understand. “Yeah,” he says, glancing around the shop. “I – uh – I didn’t know I was a wizard. I live with my grandfather, and he never really said anything. I guess he didn’t know either because Professor Zoe had to come and explain things to us after I got my letter.” He grins shyly. “I’m Armin, by the way. Armin Arlert.”
“Arlert,” she repeats, running through the names of wizarding families in her mind. It doesn’t sound familiar at all. “Were either of your parents magic?”
Armin shrugs. “I don’t know, to be honest,” he says. “They died when I was little.”
“Oh.” Annie pauses and studies her shoes. “I’m Annie, I guess. Leonhardt.”
“Leonhardt?” Ollivander peers past Professor Zoe and hurries out from behind the counter. “My apologies, Miss, I didn’t realize it was you! I haven’t seen you since I fashioned a new wand for your father. My goodness, you’ve gotten tall. You won’t be telling him I didn’t recognize you, will you?”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine, Mr. Ollivander,” she says, almost disgusted at the way he speaks her last name like it’s even remotely important. “I guess I’ll see you at Hogwarts?” she adds to Armin.
Armin nods eagerly. “Yeah. Um. See you later, Annie.” And he grins at her one last time and lets Professor Zoe lead him out of the shop.
She asks her father about Armin’s last name when she gets home.
“Arlert?” he scoffs. “The only Arlert I know of was a mudblood boy when I was at Hogwarts. He and his wife died in some accident some ten years ago. Good riddance, I say. We don’t need more dirty blood tainting pure blood lines.”
“Oh,” says Annie shortly. She says nothing else.
“Annie!”
Annie sets her trunk down to catch her breath and glances up to find cheerful sky blue eyes peering into hers. She searches her mind for his name. “Armin,” she says at last, offering him a polite smile. “Hello.”
He grins, pleased that she remembers. “I’m glad I saw you. I don’t know anyone else here. Do you need help?”
“Er – no –”
“Don’t be silly,” he says, moving to help her with her end. “Your trunk’s almost as big as you are – let me help.” He starts heaving it up the steps and onto the train before she has time to consider it a second time.
He’s not much bigger than she is, and she starts heaving again if only because he’ll hurt his back if she doesn’t. Together, they lug it into the carriage and into an empty compartment at the end. He grins at her and wipes the sweat from his brow when they manage to get it under the seat at last.
“Thank you,” she says, offering him a grateful smile.
He shakes his head. “It’s no worries. Like I said, I – uh – don’t really know anyone else here. I – I was wondering if it was okay to hang out with you for a while, actually. If that’s okay with you, of course.”
She hesitates and glances out the train window at her father. He’s busy, of course – he looks as if he’s having a rather aggressive conversation with a witch about her son’s owl. Mr. Braun and Mr. Hoover – his friends from the ministry – are standing on either side of him like bodyguards, while their sons – Reiner and Bertholdt, she thinks their names are – snigger stupidly behind them.
Annie scowls and turns away, figuring it’ll be much easier to pretend she’s not related to him when she’s all the way at Hogwarts. “Yeah,” she says, pointedly refusing to look at the Braun and Hoover boys. “That’s fine. I don’t really know anyone around here either.”
The train ride is nice.
Armin doesn’t feel the weight of her name, and for once, neither can she. They’re joined by a couple of other kids just before the train lurches into motion. One is a half-blood boy – Eren Jaeger – Annie remembers her father fuming about some healer with the same name who refused to see him before an elderly half-blood witch. The other – Mikasa Ackerman – has an uncle who teaches Transfiguration. Annie knows her name too.
They both know hers. They’re weary of her at first – Eren makes a joke about how family called Leonhardt would be a family of Slytherins when it makes far more sense for them to be a family of Gryffindors – and their eyes soften at the way she cringes at her name. They seem to understand, and the weariness dissipates as the train gains speed.
The castle is magnificent.
Its shadow looms over the lake, and the light from the windows looks like bright yellow stars against the night sky. Annie has never seen anything like it in her life, and she stares up at with so much wonder in her eyes that she probably looks like a muggle born. Her father would probably scold her for looking like such a fool, but he’s not here and she couldn’t care less. Beside her, Armin’s grin is so wide that it’s infectious, and she can’t help but grin too.
They clamber into little rowboats and glide across the lake, listening to the other first years whispering in excitement. When their boats bump against the harbour on the other side of the lake, they file onto the dock, scurry up a flight of stone steps and come to a rest outside a pair of gigantic oak doors.
They creak open. Annie holds her breath.
Professor Ackerman – Mikasa’s uncle, Annie presumes – leads them up and through the castle. They go up a couple of flights of marble stairs, and through a brightly lit entrance hallway, and, finally through a second pair of oak doors and into a hall full of three or four hundred other students. Annie knows the ceremony. Her father talks about it how pointless it is if only they stopped admitting non-pure blood students.
Suddenly Annie feels sick. She knows what house she’ll be in. Pretending not to be a Leonhardt won’t work in a house that knows her name. Her legs feel heavy and her chest feels tight.
“Ackerman, Mikasa!” calls Professor Ackerman. There’s a pause. And then.
“GRYFFINDOR!”
Annie wants to puke.
“Arlert, Armin!”
Beside her, Armin takes shaky breath and starts up the steps. For a moment, there’s a glimmer of hope, and, maybe, by some strange twist of events, he’ll be sorted into Slytherin too – but the hat barely touches his head before it shouts “RAVENCLAW” out to the rest of the school.
Annie hangs her head.
“Bodt, Marco,” goes to Gryffindor; “Braun, Riener,” to Slytherin (Annie’s not surprised); “Braus, Sasha,” goes to Gryffindor too, and it goes on for what feels like forever before “Leonhardt, Annie!” is called and Annie stumbles to the front of the crowd of first years on wobbly legs.
Professor Ackerman drops the hat on her head, and the crowd of students is replaced by rough black material. She nearly jumps when a voice starts to whisper in her ear.
“Another Leonhardt?” it says with what sounds like a chuckle. “I know what I should do with you and yet… I feel like I shouldn’t, just to shake things up. I remember your father, girl, and you don’t seem at all like him. I see a ready mind, and loyalty, and a heart that suits the true meaning of your name. But what to do with you…”
Annie shuts her eyes. Armin’s face bursts into her mind and then –
“RAVENCLAW!”
And Professor Ackerman removes the hat from her head and Annie sees a table of Ravenclaws applauding, and a table of Slytherins watching her with dumbstruck eyes and dropped jaws.
Annie stumbles off the stool and moves to join the Ravenclaws with a lump in her throat. Her father will not be pleased. Her father will demand that she be resorted, she just knows it. But she takes her place next to Armin – looks into his eyes and his grin – and she feels the weight leave her shoulders and a smile creep onto her lips.
Let her father come.
As long as Armin is her friend, she couldn’t care less.