All Pigswills attendies are 18+

It was the morning after the Reckoning Ceremony. The First Years, many nursing their first butterbeer hangover, descended from the Garmrdyrr dormitories to find the exit from the common room barred by one of the senior students.

"Verity Thistleby, at your service," she bowed. "I'm sure you're all excited to get out and familiarise yourselves with the grounds of Pigswills, but it's my job to ensure others don't familiarise you. It would be remiss to let you leave the safety of the common room without first teaching you a basic counterspell. Lessons may not officially start until next week but this may still be the most important lesson you'll ever have. So, wands out!"

The bleary-eyed First Years ignored her, shuffling towards orange juice on the breakfast table. The slip of a girl was clearly of no age to be bossing them around. Verity clucked her tongue and flicked her wand impatiently. "Flachetta!" An amaranth-colored explosion tore through the table, embedding triangles of buttered toast in the walls like throwing stars. The First Years dived for cover.

"Wands out, please," Verity repeated sweetly and this time they obeyed. She ushered them into a half circle around her. "As I said, this will be a crash course in counterspells. I will attempt to stun you. You will attempt to block."

"Is it... dangerous out there?" whispered one student. "I thought this was a school?!"

"I swear I saw ghosts walking the halls yesterday, plain as day! Scared the life out of me," said another.

"The dead are the least of your worries," Verity said. "It's the Skutterlyns you need to be wary of. You saw the animals that some of the students had with them yesterday, yes? A wizard's familiar has many uses. And a familiar that was once a wizard is the most useful of all. They are coveted. If another student were to hit you with a transfiguration spell, to familiarize you, you'd belong to them, and they could feed off you as they wished, drain you like an arcane battery. Your knowledge, even your life, all theirs for the taking. Now, First Years are supposed to be off-limits. Supposed to be. That doesn't mean some opportunist Skutterlyn won't try if he finds you wandering the corridors unawares."

She appreciated their hushed silence. It meant they were paying attention. She stood before the fireplace and some of them had noticed her portrait over the mantlepiece, dated to 1963. She hadn't aged a day.

Beneath her red and gold Garmrdyrr uniform, her Skutterlyn-green panties wriggled. Verity clenched her cheeks around the scrap of fabric, pinning it in place as she extracted another sliver of its lifeforce, her morning coffee. It had been sixty years since Verity arrived at Pigswills, a grey-haired, crooked-backed muggle-born, somehow utterly naive despite her advanced years. A Skutterlyn, a pure-blooded witch called Lavinia Burke, had considered her easy prey and it had been only pure luck that Verity's desperate deflection had rebounded her transfiguration spell back upon her attacker.

The first time she had worn Lavinia, tasted of her memories, had been an eye-opener to the casual cruelties of the wizarding world. A lifetime of feeding on Laviania's essence had granted Verity the ex-woman's appearance and as 'pure' a blood as any could claim, assuring her an elevated position in this insular society, but she preferred to remain at Pigswills to teach the next generation to defend themselves. Failing her final examination without fail each year, she had become one of Garmrdyrr's proudest alumni, despite never having graduated.

Verity filtered out the squirming of fabric against her privates and focused on her students. "Now, wands up! And repeat after me - protego."