Flower Magic: New Beginning
Chapter 4: Education
Breakfast at Hogwarts is a loud affair at any time but is at its peak with the arrival of the post. Owls swooped in through the open windows of the Great Hall, carrying packages, parcels and letters to the students and teachers eating their breakfast. The first week back at school was always exceptionally busy with parents sending in items students had left at home, as was the case this morning for Marie and Peter.
The owl that Marie had sent to her mother swooped down in front of her, carrying a long cylindrical package. Her posters had arrived right when she had predicted they would. For Peter a fat, tawny owl carrying a heavy square package dropped it in front of him and nipped him on the hand, causing him to cry out in fright. He pulled back the packaging to uncovered three of his text books.
"Oops, I didn't even realise I'd left them at home." He laughed nervously and rubbed the spot where the owl had bitten him.
"Come here fella," Marie called the owl over and he hopped across, dragging her package through James's breakfast on the way. The owl held out its leg for her to untie the package before taking some of her toast and flying away.
"Finally." Marie grinned as she examined the package.
"What's that?" Sirius asked, his mouth full of bacon and eggs.
"My posters, I sent to mum for them yesterday." Marie replied excitedly and began attacking the brown wrapping paper furiously.
"Posters of what?"
"You'll see." Ripping off the last of the wrapping paper Marie uncovered a cylindrical cardboard tube, inside which her posters were held. Tipping them out carefully into her lap and a packet of Blue-Tack fell out. "Gees man, she even thought of blue-tack." Marie muttered to herself and sighed contently when she unfurled the posters.
"Who's that?" James asked over her shoulder, moving around for a better look. He was pointing to a poster of a group of four men standing in front of an aeroplane that was on top of the pile.
"They're Led Zeppelin man, see that guy there, that's Jimmy Page and over there is Robert Plant an-and there is..." Marie energetically pointed out the band members to a clueless James.
"Yea but who are they?"
"Who are they? Only one of the greatest bands of all time!" James still remained clueless and it clearly showed, "Fine then, you don't deserve to look upon the posters. Shame on you man." And with that she rolled up the posters and put them back into the container.
"What? What did I do?" But before Marie could reply the bell signalling the beginning of class rang out across the school and the few remaining students in the Great Hall grabbed their things and ran before they got into trouble for being late.
Though not daring to remove the posters from their container Marie checked the container was safe in her bag at intervals of around ten minutes throughout the day, much to the amusement of the Marauders, Lily, Mahdi and Siobhan. She could hardly wait for the end of classes so she could rush back to her room and put them up. As sad as it is this is probably the thing I've looked forward to the most since coming here, Marie thought as the bell rang to signal the end of Herbology. She pushed all her equipment into the already overloaded arms of Siobhan and fled the classroom at a pace most believed her incapable of.
She had Herbology with the Ravenclaws and from what she knew of those Ravenclaws she had met they were a generally decent bunch. The girl Mahdi had introduced her to in Divination, Siobhan, was in her Herbology group along with Mahdi and Lily as the Marauders were at a workstation of their own.
She hurried past a group shocked Hufflepuff first years standing in the Entrance Hall as she dashed up the stairs, determined to get to her dormitory with ample time to set up her posters before dinner. She was one of the first people back into the common room with the exception of a couple of seventh years who had had no classes last period.
They gave her a few strange looks as she leapt the last two steps and landed on the landing with a thud, nearly rolling her ankle and losing her balance. Finally Marie pushed open the door and collapsed onto her bed, slightly exhausted from the exertion of getting there so quickly.
After a moment or two's pause she rolled over and pulled out the container holding the posters her mother had sent that morning. Reverently she removed them, careful not to harm them unnecessarily as she examined them for new creases or tears that could have occurred since she had left for Hogwarts. To her amazement there were in the same pristine condition she had left them in and breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn't have to complain about her mothers handling methods. Marie carefully placed each of them on the wall next to her bed and was tacking up the last one, a large poster of The Who, just as Mahdi and Lily walked in.
"Someone was in a hurry." Mahdi said as she walked over to examine Marie's handiwork, "You nearly knocked Siobhan over when you threw all your equipment at her."
Marie laughed, "I asked her to put them away for me."
"Yea, after you'd thrown it all at her." The dark girl laughed and started to examine a poster of a black man dressed in a similar fashion to what Marie usually wore and was holding an electric guitar. "Who's he?" She spotted another poster of him on the other side of the bed, "You have two of him."
"That's Jimi Hendrix." Marie smiled as she took a step back to make sure all her posters were exactly as she wanted them. Just as it should be, I can proudly claim this area as my own. "He was an amazing guitarist, man, really, like, amazing. There never was and never will someone quite as good as him."
"So does he just play guitar or does he sing or something as well?" Mahdi had walked to the other side of Marie's bed to get a better look at the other poster of him, it looked like it a pop art drawing of his face in black and white on a red background with his name written above it.
"He was a singer, songwriter and guitarist, he was just… wow, man, like, wow." Marie sighed, "I would give anything to play even half as good as he did."
She looked like she was drifting off into her own fantasy world and Mahdi continued to gaze at the poster, "Well I don't know about you but I think he's hot!"
Both Marie and Lily laughed at this, "Don't worry man, I agree wholeheartedly."
"Have you met him?"
"Met him? Oh I wish… No I was like, eleven., when he died man." A sad looked crossed Marie's face and Mahdi looked crestfallen.
"He's dead!"
"Yea, man. Died four years ago. It was such a loss." There was silence for a moment as the girls mourned the loss of Jimi Hendrix until Lily broke the silence.
"Oh my god! You have a Woodstock poster!"
"It's one of my most prized possessions. I was on holiday in America with my mum and dad a couple of years back and found it in a vintage shop in New York." She smiled almost smugly at the memory.
"Err… sorry for sounding like and idiot but, what's Woodstock?" Mahdi inquired innocently.
From then on the rest of the time before dinner, throughout dinner, and after dinner was spent educating Mahdi on the world of Muggle music (and its festivals), muggle traditions and basically how muggles lived in general.
It was assured that by the end of that night the poor witch knew exactly who the bands on Marie's posters were, the names of all the members, and could list virtually every song they had ever written, let alone recorded. It was safe to assume she was now the first of Marie's soon to be long line of converts.
Well sorry this chapter is kinda short. I wanted to leave it here instead of have this chapter and the one after it one long combined one as I originally planned. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!!!
Pagan