december 14th, 2021
tuesday, morning
wc: 800
@Asteria Nagla
asteria gave me permission to godmod her character for this thread

Scout was excited. Today was a Tuesday, which meant she was supposed to be in school- but she wasn't! Her and her father were on a train to go visit her aunt and uncle and her favoritest cousin in the world, Asteria. Asteria wasn't Scout's only cousin, but there was something thrilling about Asteria.

She had just found out she was a witch.

For her entire life, Scout had been kind of forced to keep both her 'witch'y-ness and the fact that she was a Dhampir to herself. Obviously her dad's parents and a sibling or two knew that Baishu was a wizard, but he had to keep it on the down low. Scout wasn't entirely sure why the magical world had to be kept a secret, but she listened to her dad when he told her not to say anything.

That would all be changing today, though. Scout could finally talk about how excited she was to go to Hogwarts, how she hated not being able to learn magic now, how the gaps in her teeth were actually fangs- she was so excited! It wasn't like she had absolutely no magic friends, but her mother was a busy woman, and her father mostly interacted with muggles when he wasn't taking care of Scout. She had only ever had one or two sleepovers before, and those weren't the most... well, they were with friends from her muggle school.

Asteria was also the only cousin Scout had that was close in age. All of her other cousins were either small babies or already adults, and they weren't fun to hangout with. Scout's 妈妈mama was an only child, so she didn't have any cousins close by besides Asteria, anyway. And close was a bit of an overstatement, Asteria lived almost six or seven hours away, but luckily that was only an hour or two flight. Her dad never really used the floo, and considering his siblings were muggles, they definitely didn't know about it. Planes were easier, in his eyes.

"Why isn't 妈妈 coming with us again?" Scout asks, looking up at her dad as the short train from the airport to her cousin's house was coming to an end. "She's working, 宝宝baby, she said if she finished early she might floo over and walk." Baishu wasn't even sure where the closest place with wizards might be, but his wife knew much more about the wizarding world than he did.

"Is Asteria excited to see me?" She asks again, but her eyes are focused on the flashing colors from the surroundings. "I'm excited to see her, does she know about Hogwarts? Or magic- I mean she knows about magic, obviously. Does she know what the houses are in Hogwarts? Is she gonna keep going to a muggle school until she's ready to go to Hogwarts? Do I have to?"

Her questions are a flurry of words, but Baishu has raised his daughter for years. "I'm sure she is excited. You can be the one to tell her about the houses, and I think she does know about Hogwarts. Will the two of you play while 叔叔uncle and I talk?" Scout hums a 'yeah', and goes quiet. Can she be taken out of school already?

It's only a five minute walk from the train station to Asteria's house, and Scout only brought a small backpack with some things in them. Her parents don't permit her to have a cellphone, and her 妈妈 said it messes with her magic, so there's some chalk and an old school IPod in her bag. Her dad had given it to her from when he was a young boy, and deleted all of his music on there, loading it up with music that Scout liked.

The door to the Nagla residence opens, and the smell of pork knuckles and huangjiu overwhelms Scout's nose. But those dishes are her father's favorite, and Scout missed her uncle Tao's cooking. He makes xiaolongbao unlike anyone else, it even tops her own father's cooking!

The smell of food isn't the only thing that Scout notices, and she practically drops her bag at the front door to go greet her cousin. "Asteria! You're magical, like me!" Scout exclaims, hugging Asteria tightly. Scout's strength is average for a nine-year-old, but she tries to squish as hard as possible to convey how excited she was. She hadn't seen Asteria in a while, after all!

"Ow..." Asteria grumbles, but she hugs Scout back anyway. "Have you seen- oh, come on, let's go play outside! I wanna tell you about magic! You know what Hogwarts is, right? I'll tell you all about the houses!"