Little Ellen Ilkin squeaks audibly when the hat speaks in the back of her head. She was doing well, earlier-- well, maybe not well but fine when all this magic was keeping to its own space. Some of it even struck her as beautiful... floating candles had to be harmless, right? Even a talking hat might be... might be tolerable. But this was different. It spoke between her thoughts and she half expected a headache to spring up underneath it. She bunched her hands into the robes which all but swallowed her, clenched her teeth, tried desperately to come up with an answer. It wouldn't do to just... not answer. The schoolhouse taught her better than that.
'Just three?!' she squeaked back in her own head and bit hard into her bottom lip. Ellen had been scolded countless times for that. This time she didn't even notice. 'I-- uh. Father taught me to be hard-working...' Terrified, sick to her stomach, alone she did not say, searching desperately for those things she was always supposed to be. 'And honest. We were taught never to lie... and...and I. We're normal. Just normal folk... no magic, but...' Ellen forced a shaky little breath to stop herself tearing up. 'I guess I'm not much like my family.'
"Would you rather be able to change into an animal, change your appearance, or see the future?"
The very thought of seeing the future twisted Ellen's gut into knots. She didn't want to know... God no, now that she was here the very idea of what was to come took her breath away. Never again would she set foot in her childhood home. Never again would she spend Christmas with her parents by the hearth, or build snowmen in the front yard, or indeed so much as visit her beloved Dovecote...
'An... an animal, I suppose... i should like to be a cat...'
"If you could invent a potion, what would it do?"
'A potion? You mean eye of newt and... wool of bat and all that? Father would never--' No, he would never approve, but she was here now. There was magic in her blood and she had been assured there was no going back. 'Maybe... maybe I would make myself normal.' Ellen cringed as soon as she thought it. 'No, wait.' There had been excitement at the very first, before the consequences set in. What was it she'd thought about that very first night? That it would be so very much easier to clean up if the house cleaned itself? That there must be greater opportunities in so marvelous a world... what if girls could make more of themselves among wizards? She didn't really want to just be normal, did she? 'I don't know if a potion would work... you have to drink those, don't you? I doubt anything you have to drink could give me... give me somewhere to live.'
"Imagine you see someone cheat in class. What do you do?"
'Well I-- I would have to report them, wouldn't I? It's wrong.'
"Who is your enemy and how will you defeat them?"
Ellen paused, frowned a little more. 'My enemy?' She hesitated longer. So far as she knew she didn't have any enemies... though she supposed many of the village folk might disagree, now. 'People in Dovecote have never much liked magic. Papa was always so proud of us for being normal, and Mama... barely speaks to me anymore. So I suppose [i]I am the enemy...'[/i]