The morning seemed to come around mere seconds after Teddy had closed his eyes, and it was with great difficulty that he pulled himself out of bed the next morning. He crossed the room to the mirror and raised his eyebrows at his mop of blonde hair, which was a tangled mess from sleeping. He closed his eyes, screwed his face up, and then opened them again. Happy with his new, shorter, brunette hair, Teddy got dressed in his uniform and robes. Max and Giles were just stirring when he emerged from the bathroom, so he told them he would meet them down there, and headed to breakfast, somehow feeling very hungry despite how much he had eaten the night before.
The smell of fried eggs, bacon, and toast hung heavily in the air as soon as they crawled out of the barrel into the kitchen corridor. Teddy inhaled deeply and quickened his pace.
On his way to the Hufflepuff table, Teddy passed by Victoire, who was chatting happily with a group of friends.
"Hi, Ted!" she said as soon as she spotted him. "Looking forward to the first day of classes?"
"As long as I don't have Transfiguration," he groaned. There was an irony in the fact it was the subject he struggled most with, something that Professor McGonagall reminded him of on a regular basis. He looked forward to the end of the year when he would be able to drop the subject.
Victoire chuckled. "You mean it's not your favourite subject?" she mocked.
Teddy nudged her playfully with his hip. "See you in a bit, yeah?"
She spun back around on the bench she was sitting on and resumed her conversation with her friends. Teddy took his own seat at the Hufflepuff table and began loading his plate with sausages, eggs, and beans. He was just buttering a slice of toast when he was joined by Giles and Max, the latter of which was yawning.
"Why do they insist on starting classes so early in the morning?" he huffed as he sat down.
"Because if they started classes when you wanted them to we'd all be up until midnight," Teddy replied with a mouthful of breakfast.
"Still. Eight in the morning is a stupid time of day."
"Someone's full of the mulligrubs this morning," Giles quipped. Max rounded on him, frustration evident on his face.
"It means grumpy or low spirited," Teddy answered before Max could ask.
"I'm impressed, Teddy. Are my excellent linguistic skills rubbing off on you?" Giles asked.
"Nope. You used that one in third year."
"Bollocks. I need a different word for today then. I'll get back to you." And with that, he pulled out his trusty pocket dictionary.
Teddy was on his second helping of toast when Professor Sprout came around with their timetables, he was relieved to see that the day's lessons did not include transfiguration. "Double potions, History of Magic, free period, Charms. Not a bad day really."
They left shortly after and made their way down to the dungeons, wondering which potions fifth year would bring to them. Their potions teacher, Professor Pinkton was waiting for them when they arrived. New to the staff last year, Professor Pinkton was the youngest of the faculty, Teddy guessed she was only in her mid-twenties. She was a stout woman, with dark brown hair in a pixie cut that made her face look rounder than it already was. She was extremely well liked by the students due to her fun and friendly nature. Her youth brought a fresh enthusiasm to the school that had rarely been seen.
"Alright, folks," Pinkton said as she did at the beginning of all of their lessons. "We're starting on a bit of a serious note today."
The class exchanged nervous glances; that was not a sentence they had heard from her before. Usually she began the lessons with some sort of banter, often a potions related joke which were always extremely cheesy but her deliverance made them laugh nonetheless.
"I know this is the first lesson on the first day back but we really do need to get the OWL talk out of the way."
The class let out a collective groan. A Slytherin boy put his head in his hands.
"I know, I know," Pinkton said apologetically. "Business as usual as soon as I'm done, I promise."
She flicked her wand at the blackboard and the word OWLs appeared, chalked in bright green bubble writing. As she spoke, she kept aiming her wand at the board and the key points from her lecture appeared around the edges. She gave them a brief description of the potions they would cover that year, and the ones they were likely to be asked to brew in their practical exam. She talked through vital chapters in the books from their list that they must read, and homework tasks she would have them do throughout the year to help prepare.
Teddy's quill whipped back and forth across the page as he listened, copying down all of the Professor's key notes as well as some of his own. Potions was a subject he desperately wanted to take on to NEWT level, and as fun as she was, Pinkton accepted nothing less than an Outstanding owl for her NEWT students.
"Okay," she finished, clapping her hands together. "I think after all that we could do with something a bit more light hearted. Giggling potions!"
With a final flick of her wand, her OWL notes disappeared from the board and they were replaced by a set of ingredients and a method in the same loopy handwriting, this time in purple chalk. There was a scraping of chairs and a scrambling of students making their way to the store cupboard in the corner of the room.
Teddy was working with Talinda Ermstone, a fellow Hufflepuff. She was as good at potions as he was and so they made a good team. Teddy gathered their ingredients and by the time he returned, Talinda had already set up her cauldron and had the water inside bubbling nicely. They shared the ingredients between them that needed to be chopped or shredded or prepared in one way or another and set to work. They talked as they worked about the new information Professor Pinkton had given them about their upcoming exams, stopping only to concentrate when measuring out or adding ingredients to the cauldron. Professor Pinkton stopped by and complimented them on the perfect shade of Orange their potion was, leaving the two students beaming.
Two hours after the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins had entered the classroom in the dungeons, dragging their feet into the first class of the school year, they left with an entirely different demeanor. Max was practically hanging from Giles' shoulder, the pair of them laughing hysterically (Pinkton said that they had added too much crushed beetle eyes to their potion and it should wear off by the time they arrived at their next class) Teddy and Talinda, whose potion had received top marks, chortled at them as they walked behind, though Teddy couldn't know for sure if this was a result of their potion or the actual hilarity of the situation.
Talinda waved bye to Teddy at the top of the stairs as she headed off to ancient runes up one marble staircase, and Teddy went up another to History of Magic. He walked alongside his still laughing friends, not bothering to even attempt conversation with them. By the time they arrived in the classroom and took their seats, Giles and Max had calmed down considerably, though Max's bout of laughter had left him with the hiccups, much to his frustration.
As always with Professort Binns lessons, most of the hour was entirely boring and uneventful, with the small exception of Giles letting out an extremely loud, short burst of laughter mid-way through Binn's droning on about a goblin rebellion (he didn't notice or stop.) Giles, very red in the face, quickly tore a spare bit of parchment in half, scribbled on both pieces and handed one to Teddy and one to Max.
NEW WORD OF THE DAY-'GELASTIC' (it means of, like, or pertaining to or provoking laughter) As in, 'The potion Max and I made, was embarrassingly gelastic)
After lunch, Teddy, Max and Giles made their way to Charms class, eager to see what the new Professor would be like. They seated themselves in the middle of the class and took out their wands, parchment, quill and ink bottles as the other Hufflepuffs, and the Ravenclaws filtered in.
Professor Savage walked briskly into the classroom, closing the door behind him with a flick of his wand over his shoulder. A few of the students raised an eyebrow.
"Your OWL exams will be taking place exactly ten months from today. You are not prepared," he said curtly. "I have looked at your end results from last year and they are mostly abysmal. I see a few promising scores, I'm pleased to say they were from students of my own former Hogwarts house."
His mouth formed into what Teddy assumed was a smile, but looked more like the man was in pain, as he cast his eyes over the Ravenclaw students.
"I accept nothing less than Exceeds Expectations from all homework and practical assessments we will do between now and your exams. Anything less than that will have to be repeated. If you wish to continue with Charms for your NEWTs, which I assume most of you will as it is a vital subject for most magical career paths, then you will need to get an Outstanding in your OWLs. I do not accept failures."
As Professor Pinkton had, he then turned to the blackboard to display a series of bullet points he obviously intended to talk through. Max turned to Teddy and Giles while Savage's back was turned.
"I could use something gelastic right about now, this bloke is a total killjoy!" he whispered.
"Five points from Hufflepuff. You will soon learn that my hearing is exemplary, Mr Kellar."
'I'm not surprised with ears like those.' Teddy thought bitterly. He disliked the new Professor already.
He talked at the group for another fifteen minutes about his plans for the year, the workload, the importance of revision, and continually emphasised his Exceeds Expectations policy. Finally, he set them their task for the lesson.
"We're going to be working on Concealment Charms today. I don't expect any of you to master these by the end of the lesson, but the three foot of parchment on the different incantations for concealment charms should help familiarise you so that we are successful in them by the end of the next lesson."
He made his way into the store cupboard to retrieve the teacups they would be attempting to conceal. As soon as Teddy could no longer see him, he screwed his eyes up and felt the familiar tugging sensation of his features changing. He opened his eyes and turned to his friends.
"Hey, guys, guess who I am?"
At first sight of him, Giles and Max began laughing harder than they had under the influence of the giggling potions. Teddy had transfigured his ears to resemble enlarged versions of Professor Savage's already huge ears.
"My hearing is exemplary!" he managed to say between laughs.
"DETENTION LUPIN!" A furious yell came from behind Teddy and he immediately changed his ears back to the way they had been. He turned around very sheepishly to see Professor Savage was red faced and spluttering with anger. "Leave my classroom now, you disrespectful boy. You may return at the end of today with an apology, and you had better catch up on your concealment charms somehow before the next lesson."
"But, Sir, I-" Teddy began.
"OUT!"
Teddy knew better than to try and argue with a man so red in the face. He had only seen anger like this once before, when little Rose Weasley had drawn all over her fathers' limited edition, gifted to him from the designers, Firebolt X100, with her new crayons.
He quickly returned to his desk, stuffed his belongings back into them and dashed out of the room. He could hear Professor Savage mumbling furiously to himself as he walked by the teacher's desk at the front of the room. "How dare you…never been so insulted…perfectly normal size thank you very much."