Book 1 in the Screams Trilogy
Calliope Doge doesn't speak. This is a fact that the entirety of Hogwarts knows full well.
She doesn't answer the questions that teachers ask in lessons, she doesn't speak to people over dinner in the great hall and sh...
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Calliope stood on shaky legs amongst the gaggle of first years gathered at the front of the Great Hall before the sorting hat, waiting as a girl named Katie Bell was sorted.
Despite having the hall described to her on numerous occasions by her grandfather, no words could quite do the place justice. The ceiling showed the starry night sky in all of its splendour; Calliope could easily pick out and name all of the constellations from the many times that she had gazed out of her bedroom window and drawn the stars that she could see. The four house tables were intimidatingly long and packed full of students, all of whom were gazing up at the gaggle of first years.
"Gryffindor!" The hat declared for the hall to hear. Katie Bell jumped up from her seat, and hurried to the table which was clad in red and gold, and was applauding loudly.
"Doge, Calliope," the witch in emerald green robes, who stood beside the stall that Katie had just vacated, said.
Calliope made her way to the front. She hadn't put much thought into which house she would end up in, she knew that her father and grandfather had been Gryffindor's. But that house prized bravery and Calliope had never felt particularly brave.
Before she knew it, the world had gone dark, as the hat was placed upon her head, and fell to rest on her shoulders.
Calliope Doge, the voice of the sorting hat spoke in her head, surprising Calliope so much that she almost fell off of the stall, you are quite different. You hold a lot of guilt for one so young. You have a natural affinity with death, I can definitely see that. But such sadness haunts you. The hat paused for quite a long time, leaving Calliope to wonder if it were broken, she was almost about to take the hat off of her head to see what was wrong, when the hat spoke again. Where to put you? Not Slytherin, not Gryffindor. But I can see you fitting into either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. I think it had better be "Hufflepuff!" The hat shouted the last word for the whole hall to hear.
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Calliope was quite pleased to find that there was no requirement for a password in order to enter the Hufflepuff common room. However, she was not so pleased with the concept of spell work.
Calliope had not spoken for four years, for one simple reason. She did not want to hurt anyone else. She didn't understand the power behind her voice, or what in it had led to the death of her father, but she did not want to risk doing that to anyone else. Casting spells would require her to speak, something that she downright refused to do.
Her salvation had come that summer when she was reading through a textbook and found a mention of non-verbal spells. She had spent the summer since purchasing her wand practising some of the spells that first years would learn as non-verbal. Knowing that 'the trace' would be ineffective for her, as she lived in a house with an overage wizard, who was always performing the summoning charm to find his glasses. It was very difficult at first to perform the non-verbal spells, which were normally only performed by much older wizards. But Calliope was working with pure determination, and that seemed to be a useful tool, as she was able to perform some of the simpler spells in 'The Standard Book Of Spells: Grade 1' without murmuring a word.
Calliope was pulled from her thoughts as she entered (along with the other four Hufflepuff first years) the dormitory that they would share for the next seven years.
"Wow this place is amazing!" declared the loud and bubbly girl who had sat beside Calliope at dinner, and had spent the entire time talking her ear off about everything and anything. "You just wait until my mum finds out that I'm a Hufflepuff! She'll be so proud! You know my mum and my grandparents were all Hufflepuffs, my dad is a Slytherin though, but still, a family legacy has to count for something."
The girl stopped rather abruptly when she saw Calliope staring at her. "You don't say much do you." The girl observed, "I mean, you didn't say anything all through dinner, so I just kept talking. I tend to do that, I just keep talking until someone stops me, so feel free to interject at any time, really I swear I'll listen to anything that you say. I'm Natalie by the way, did I mention that? You can call me Nat if you want to. What's your name?"
Natalie blinked at Calliope. When she got no response, she frowned slightly, "it was something like Caterpillar, wasn't it? I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names. No, it wasn't Caterpillar, it was Calliope! I remember now!"
Calliope smiled at the girl and made her way over to the bed which her trunk had been placed by.
"Are you not going to say anything?" Natalie asked, "I mean that's okay, but I just want to establish if you can speak or not. So can you speak?"
Calliope nodded.
"Do you speak?"
Calliope shook her head.
"Well that's okay, I can speak enough for the both of us. Can I call you Callie? I mean Calliope is a bit of a mouthful..."
Natalie continued to speak to her dorm mates' ears off for quite some time, and Calliope fell asleep already feeling quite at home at Hogwarts.
