Disclaimer: You know the drill. Don't own, not making any money, etc.
#####
Jeffrey Lancer and the First Year
#####
Chapter One
It happened during Drama class.
The teacher was young and inexperienced and she had no control over the mob of thirty seven-year-olds, all of whom darted around the room like yelling pinballs. All except for Jeffrey Lancer, who sat out of the way under the grand piano, wishing that everyone would just shut up.
And then he heard nothing. And continued to hear nothing, even after school was over. His mother took him to an ear, nose and throat specialist, and the man found no illnesses, no injuries to his ears.
Three days later, without warning, Jeffrey's hearing returned.
#####
Chapter Two
One weekend Jeffrey's mother let him watch the original trilogy of Star Wars films. He enjoyed them, except for the part at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back where Han cuts his tauntaun open with Luke's lightsaber. It put him off eating pasta-with-egg-and-garlic for years.
A couple of days later he was playing Star Wars by himself in the back garden, making whooshing noises as he wielded an imaginary lightsaber against imaginary enemies. He swept his left hand around, pushing more imaginary enemies away with the imaginary Force.
At that moment something invisible knocked all of his mother's potted plants over.
#####
Chapter Three
It was a weekday morning in July. Jeffrey was eleven years old, more or less. He climbed out of bed, went to the toilet, walked downstairs and made himself breakfast.
Jeffrey blinked when his mother handed him a letter during breakfast. Getting a letter was unusual for him, and the letter itself was even more unusual, with its green ink and highly textured paper. And a wax seal.
He passed it to his mother after reading the contents. She read it and decided it was a joke. A bizarre and rather pointless joke, but a joke nonetheless. She let Jeffrey keep the letter.
#####
Chapter Four
Jeffrey didn't get up from the computer when he heard his mother answer the door. He was engrossed in typing commands to make the turtle on the screen draw a triangle made out of triangles without retracing its steps.
There were voices from the doorway. Jeffrey's mother came into the study and brought him to the living room, and he sat next to her on the sofa and they listened to the severe-expressioned, black-haired woman explain that magic really did exist as something other than ideas in people's minds and how Jeffrey could learn to use it at a school called Hogwarts.
#####
Chapter Five
Jeffrey asked Professor McGonagall questions all the way to Gringotts. Questions about how magic could hide such a huge area from all the normal people, about flying on broomsticks, about the number of wizards living in the United Kingdom, about long robes and parchment and writing with quill pens, and a bunch of other things. Most of the answers he got were simplified-for-children.
The goblin teller at Gringotts was unwilling to answer many questions about the bank and goblins in general, since Jeffrey wasn't opening an account. Jeffrey's mother wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible.
Mr Ollivander at the wand shop made Jeffrey try out between ten and twenty wands before he found one that worked. It was made out of ebony, with a dragon heartstring core. Jeffrey thought it would be funny if Mr Ollivander had a set of levers and buttons under his desk for teleporting the shop to various convenient gaps in bustling shopping districts.
#####
Chapter Six
Jeffrey sat alone in a compartment on the train. He watched bits of countryside go past. Before long he took a book out of a side pocket on his luggage and read it.
At one point a lady with a trolley carrying an assortment of sweets stopped at the door and asked him if he wanted to buy anything. Jeffrey stood up and looked at the selection. He asked the lady if the chocolate frogs were crunchy. On hearing they weren't, he bought a couple.
Later, Jeffrey had eaten the frogs and looked at the cards. A boy and a girl stopped by to ask if he'd seen a toad. He hadn't. The girl asked him what he was reading. He told her the book was about an illiterate farm-boy who had to save the world because destiny and his aunt and grandfather said so. The girl and the boy left to look for the toad elsewhere.
#####
Chapter Seven
The enormous hairy man left and Jeffrey listened to Professor McGonagall talk about houses. Jeffrey thought about the forms at his previous school. A couple of ghosts passed by a minute later. Jeffrey thought about life after death.
Jeffrey walked up to the stool, put the hat on his head and sat down. He heard a voice muttering in his ear about trouble and headaches and seven years of riddles and then the voice yelled "RAVENCLAW!" Jeffrey walked to the Ravenclaw table with his ears ringing.
After the food that appeared out of nowhere was all eaten up, Jeffrey heard the headmaster tell everyone to stay away from the third floor corridor. Or they'd die. Painfully.
#####
Chapter Eight
There was no denying it; Professor Binns was the most boring teacher Jeffrey had ever experienced.
Nevertheless, Jeffrey acknowledged that it could have been worse. At least the ghost kept the class quiet. At least he didn't read the textbook to them; he spoke entirely from memory. At least he wasn't vindictive or sarcastic. As long as Jeffrey kept these facts in mind, he could deal with boredom.
Being able to take notes with half his attention and read the book hidden behind his textbook, the book with the stories about the things robots do when they break in the head, also helped.
Later that day, Professor Snape strode into his classroom and started talking at some length. Then he asked the class a few questions. Nobody put their hands up, so he asked different questions at individual people. He didn't ask Jeffrey any questions and Jeffrey didn't answer any.
As he left the classroom, Jeffrey wondered what would happen if Professor Snape met Miss Hardbroom, whether they'd fall madly in love or try to kill each other.
#####
Chapter Nine
It took Jeffrey a few weeks before he could navigate the main paths through Hogwarts without losing his way. That achieved, he slipped out of the Ravenclaw tower one night and crept to the third floor. There he found a locked door at the end of an unlit corridor. It didn't open no matter how he fiddled with the lock, so he went back to bed.
The next day he searched in the library for a spell to unlock things. He found one in a second-year textbook.
That night Jeffrey went back to the locked door and tried the spell. It worked. He opened the door and looked inside. Then he closed the door and used a spell he'd found next to the unlocking spell to lock the door again.
The next day he was back in the library, looking for information on enormous three-headed dogs. On finding the Cerebrus entry in a book on monsters, he decided to abandon his investigation, at least until he had improved his spellcasting skills.
#####
Chapter Ten
Jeffrey was chewing a mouthful of chicken when Professor Quirrel ran into the hall and yelled that a troll had got into the dungeons. Then the professor fainted.
Later, while finishing the feast in the Ravenclaw common room, Jeffrey thought about fainting Defence Against The Dark Arts teachers and their incompetence, about trolls and their danger rating, about what magical creatures might live in the lake and the forest, about Professor Snape rushing off somewhere without escorting his house back to its dorms first, about who would win if a troll fought a Cerebrus, about who would win if either fought Cerebus the Aardvark, and about what monsters the hypothetical lower dungeons and catacombs of Hogwarts might contain.
Jeffrey went to bed thinking about skeleton warriors, carnivorous treasure chests and daemons.
#####
Chapter Eleven
Jeffrey sat in his seat on the stands and read a short story about a man who shot a colossal spaceship down with a single shot from a plasma pistol. Everyone else was very loud. Professor McGonagall yelled "JORDAN!" every now and then, more loudly than the rest. Jeffrey supposed that Jordan must be the boy who was talking all the time only slightly less loudly than the professor's shouts.
Someone next to Jeffrey shouted words to the effect that Professor Snape was on fire. Jeffrey looked up. Snape was somewhat on fire, mainly his lower half. Next moment, another professor waved his wand and Snape was no longer on fire. Jeffrey went back to his book.
#####
Chapter Twelve
Getting into bed on Christmas Eve, Jeffrey wondered whether Santa Claus had been a wizard. If brooms could fly, reindeer and a sled wouldn't be too much more trouble. Would they?
#####
Chapter Thirteen
Jeffrey had chosen the Fat Friar as the ghost most likely to answer questions put to him by a curious twelve-year-old. Questions such as whether ghosts could affect physical, non-sentient objects in any way, or possess people. Questions about the process of dying, the existence of an afterlife or the possibility of reincarnation, and psychopomps. For example, an attractive teenage girl with elaborate eye-makeup, or a robed skeleton who carried a scythe AND SPOKE IN A VOICE THAT SOUNDED LIKE THE SLAMMING OF COFFIN LIDS.
The answers were: no, no, hardly noticed it because he was sleeping, unknown, and no. The Friar was, on the other hand, rather more knowledgeable on the subject of Peeves.
#####
Chapter Fourteen
It was a Saturday afternoon in April, and Jeffrey ran steadily along the border of the Hogwarts grounds. He'd been running almost every day on his own, regardless of unfavourable weather conditions, since Hogwarts only offered one sport, which was non-compulsory.
As he ran past Hagrid the Gamekeeper's hut, he heard thuds and smashes from inside the structure. He stopped, breathing heavily, and saw a flash of reddish light flicker along the edges of the closed curtains in the windows. Hagrid spoke loudly and rapidly at someone or something, using many terms of endearments and exclamations of pain.
Jeffrey resumed his run. He didn't want to pause for too long and have to work out a cramp.
#####
Chapter Fifteen
Gryffindor had lost one hundred and fifty points. Apparently it was the fault of Harry Potter and three of his friends. Therefore, they were losers. Everyone thought so, including the Slytherins, who were nevertheless grateful for being put back in first place in the house cup running.
Jeffrey heard the gist of these topics, in passing, on the edge of various group discussions. He thought about school houses and competitions and peer pressure and what he'd read about this Harry Potter person in various books on recent history.
Jeffrey didn't envy the guy.
#####
Chapter Sixteen
The boy focused all his attention on the creature in front of him. He'd prepared for this moment for months. Hours of revising the theory, more hours of practise. He told himself: this was doable. No problem.
He raised his wand. With a smooth wrist movement and a few steadily spoken words, he cast the spell. Magic flowed through him, across the empty space and into the creature.
The mouse was now a silver snuffbox with curly ornamental engraving on the lid. Professor McGonagall gave Jeffrey a rare smile.
#####
Chapter Seventeen
Jeffrey listened to the headmaster award Gryffindor one hundred and seventy points. Then he watched the old man alter the hall decorations by waving his hands. He thought about dramatic timing and how people loved to cheer for things.
But mostly he thought about the rumours he'd heard. About the late Professor Quirrell and the Philosopher's Stone. Right there, in the same building, in a school for teenagers, all year long.
In the midst of a general uproar, Jeffrey thought hard.