VII
Rhys
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on, what do you mean we're in danger?" Nolan poked Emma in the arm as they sat opposite each other at the tables in the hall. Students were filing in and out of the room, sporting new robes and school equipment. As per usual, the hall was decorated for the first day of school, with large tapestries of the four school houses hanging on the walls. The vast carvings of Ilvermorny sat beneath them as they ate waffles and spooned cereal into their mouths for breakfast.
"It's simple. We wouldn't need to learn about Hogwarts if we didn't need to." Emma took out her Arithmancy books, stacking them neatly on the Thunderbird table. "Only a big threat would force the two of us to merge." She took a bit of her fruit before opening the book and finishing the ending. Out of the three of them, Emma was the only one who took Arithmancy, Study of Ancient Runes, and Alchemy. Her workload exceeded that of Nolan and Rhys, though she seemed to always have time to badger them about homework.
Some seventh years passed down their schedules and Rhys groaned just looking at it. "Why do we have double Transfiguration first thing in the morning? Then Potions? Just kill me now." He stuffed the schedule into one of his old Chadwick's Charms books, trying not to look at the rest of the day.
"Ooh, I've got Arithmancy after. Plus, Professor Athens isn't that bad. Come on, Rhys." Emma neatly folded her schedule and opened DEFEND: An American Wizard's Guide to Defense Against the Dark Arts by Alfredo Albertson. She buried her face in the book, ignoring everybody else.
"She favors the Horned Serpents, it's horrible." Nolan replies. "You don't see it because all teachers are perfect to you." Emma didn't answer, so he turned to Rhys.
"I agree. Athens is a great teacher and all, but she gave me a detention last year because I failed to transfigure my tortoise properly." Rhys explained.
"No, you got a detention because your tortoise turned into a giant teapot that sent three students to the hospital wing." Emma's muffled voice came from behind her Defense book.
"She made me organize every year's textbooks by amount of damage done to the book."
"So?"
"There were over four hundred books!" He argued, loudly enough for several third years to jump in their seats as they inhaled their cereal. "Sorry, Ems. I know you like her."
"It's okay." Emma buried her head once more in the thick, molasses-like writing of DEFEND.
"We're going to be late." Rhys said, looking at his watch. "Professor Athens isn't going to be pleased." Nolan stuffed the last of his sausage into his mouth and grabbed his bag. Emma scooped her Arithmancy book, and Rhys pulled all of his belongings towards him. They headed through the doors of the main hall and into the hallways that led towards the magical, wooden stairs that took them from one floor of the school to the next. He saw several first years jumping from staircase to staircase, and a couple of third years were trying to get their friend out from a trick stair. A couple of pukwudgies made their way around in groups, looking incredibly suspicious of all the new students who weren't from their own house.
"Well, say it ain't so. Rhys Grayson, my man!" Harrison Lord, in all of his Wampus glory, came striding out of absolutely nowhere, talking in his hideous Southern accent. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his pants, and he carried his wand in his left hand. Harrison's straight dark hair flopped over his forehead, right up until his brows. He had a long nose and a small mouth with high cheekbones. Some girls thought he looked handsome, but all Rhys saw was a liar and a cheat who looked vaguely like an under grown pig.
"Harrison." He muttered, getting more and more disgruntled by the minute. "What do you want?" He strutted next to them. Two other Wampus students followed behind him, both of them sneering in the trio's direction.
"My father told me a funny story about you over the summer vacation." He said, jumping over a trick stair. "You've been avoiding MACUSA ever since school got out in June."
"Harrison, you're an idiot." Emma said to him as they entered the Transfiguration classroom. Professor Athens, with her shoulder length blonde hair and small face, looked just as she has looked for the past five years: suspicious and vaguely annoyed. She ushered them in, her nose sticking up in the air at the sight of Rhys.
"Miss Kaur, Mr. Caldwell, and, ah, Mr. Grayson. How wonderful to see you." The way her voice sharpened at the sound of his name made Rhys think that she feels the exact opposite. "Please, take your seats."
The square Transfiguration classroom had stone walls, with portraits of various teachers and wizards from the past lining the walls. A giant blackboard stood in the front of the room, right behind Athens's desk, covered in all sorts of scribbles and drawings for the lesson. The desks were neatly arranged in rows, and Emma headed to sit in the front, while Rhys and Nolan sat behind her. Harrison Lord was sat near the back of the classroom, right next to a cage filled with rats that rattled the metal bars.
"Hurry up, sit down, sit down." Professor Athens sounded impatient as she bustled to the front of the room, her blue robes trailing behind her. "Now, have any of you studied over the summer? Anybody do the essay on N.E.W.T level transfiguration? Ah, Miss Kaur, thank you." Emma pulled out a roll of parchment from her bag and handed it to the professor. A couple of students from Horned Serpent handed in their scrolls, while the majority of the class was sat empty handed. Rhys silently cursed himself for not doing anything over the summer, and he saw Nolan tapping his quill against the graffitied school desk.
"Professor, I didn't have time to finish the essay." Someone said from the back of the classroom, but Athens tutted.
"I do not have room for excuses, Mr. Holmes. Perhaps if you'd spent less time reading horoscopes under the desk in the back of the classroom, you'd have time to write my essays." Her smile pierced through everybody as she turned to face her students. "Transfiguration is not easy feat, and my N.E.W.T class is challenging, to say the least. So, for Mr. Holmes and the rest of you who did not have time for my homework, you can see the door is behind you and to the left. Use it, but only today. Do I make myself clear?" Her slammed her fist against her desk.
"Good. Let us begin to review Switching Spells." She turned around, and the lesson began. Nolan and Rhys gave each other a look as Emma wiggled at the edge of her seat, just waiting for the moment to show her intellectual prowess.
Throughout the entirety of the monster that was double Transfiguration, Thunderbird earned forty points, all from Emma, Nolan succeeded in transfiguring Rhys's ears into cacti, and Emily Hawbaker got kicked out of class for laughing too loudly when Rhys stumbled around, unable to hear anything.
All in all, it was a productive lesson.
"What a shame, I missed the end of Switching Spells." Emily said to them as they exited the classroom, still laughing as she tossed her black hair over her shoulder. Emma rolled her eyes at the girl, but the two of them hurried off together, leading the way down to Potions. Rhys self-consciously touched his ear, which elicited a snort out of Nolan.
They traveled down the hallways to the darkening staircase that led to the dungeons, where Potions classes were held. These stairs were rickety and damp, making it far more difficult to maneuver without falling. Professor Rupert Rhea taught the class, with his wiggling mustache and tufts of white hair. He greeted them at the door with a smile on his round, bulgy face, and they entered, grumbling about the faint smell of gone-off potions.
"Merlin, if we have to learn about that," Nolan pointed to a simmering, black cauldron with a thick, murky potion inside that was sat on the front table. "I might just puke."
"God, you're right." Rhys felt an assault coming upon his nose as he sat next to Nolan at a table. Emma and Emily stopped to talk to Professor Rhea about something or another, and Rhys watched everybody file into the classroom.
"Welcome, welcome!" Professor Rhea shut the door, and Rhys slumped back in his chair, waiting for death by disgusting potion.
"Ready?" Nolan asked as they packed up their belongings to head back to the common room before dinner. The rest of the school made their way back to the commons, with the Thunderbirds and the Horned Serpents headed up to their respective towers, the Wampuses to the dungeons, and the Pukwudgies near the kitchens. Rhys dumped the Potions book (which he had spilled a good bit of Draught of Living Death on) into his bag, and said, "Let's go." Emma followed them up several hallways and staircases until they reached the tower. A great, wooden door with a gold knocker shaped like a Thunderbird marked the entrance to their commons, and Rhys knocked it twice, then said, "Mimbulus mimbletonia."
"Indeed!" The door squeaked, then let them in. Nolan made a beeline for the most comfortable chair, which was sat right beneath the golden fireplace, right next to an identical one. Above the fireplace, a portrait of Chadwick Boot, the house's founder, was hung. Rhys saw that Emma was sat down with Emily and several other sixth years beneath the wall of house presidents. Georgia Caldwell's name was the most recent of the list (though a long line of the immense Caldwell family have been house president prior to her).
"It's been such a long day, and it's only the first." Nolan leaned back in his chair as Rhys flopped into the one right next to it. The two of them were sat there for a moment, relishing in the softness of the chair and the warmth of the fire. Professor Macintosh, though a talented Charms teacher, simply didn't understand the concept of windows, or specifically how to close them. The mountainous region of Ilvermorny might protect them from peering no-maj eyes, but the biting winds started right around the first of September. "And, we have an entire Potions essay to write." He pulled out a roll of parchment and began to scribble down a bit of Golpalott's Third Law.
"We didn't get any homework in Arithmancy." Emma relished as she sat on a chair in between them, pulling out her Potions textbook. "Plus, I read up about Golpalott's Third Law in the fourth year. This is going to be a breeze." She unraveled one of her own scrolls and began to write at top speed.
"If you know so much, why don't you write mine for me?" He held out his parchment, and she only stopped writing to roll her eyes at him.
"Nice try."
"It was worth it!"
"Right." Rhys pulled his own book out, but didn't open it just yet. He saw a portrait on the wall of someone who looked oddly familiar to him, and his books and papers fell out as he squinted. A portrait of a dignified woman with a small, fair face and dark, curly hair and Ilvermorny robes smiled at him, waving her wand above her to create a colorful mass of sparks. The portraits around her clapped and gasped in awe, and she smiled modestly. A little nameplate was nailed to the wooden frame that said Adrianna Moss. "Mom?"
"Oh, Rhys." Her voice sang, just like it used to when she had read him books or sang him little rhymes about Merlin and Morgana. "How you've grown!" As he looked at it, he didn't know whether he would cry or smile with joy. Seeing her, like this, made him think she was lying under the ground, dead, instead of in a white hospital bed with her brain too addled to remember whether he was her son or just another patient at St. Mungo's.
"Mom." He reached to put his fingers up against the paint of the canvas when a first year came barreling under him, eager to join some of his other friends. His fixed stare on the painting broke, and he saw that Nolan and Emma were standing right behind him, looking at him curiously.
"Rhys, is that your Mom? Oh, she was a wonderful witch, wasn't she?" Emma gushed in a way that made him proud and angry. "I mean, she is a wonderful witch." The portrait smiled at him once again, her blue eyes twinkling with happiness. They resembled Rhys's own eyes, after all, one of the only attributes that they shared. As he had grown older, he started to look awfully like another man, a foreign man. Someone he had seen in his childhood and had just ended up forgetting.
"You okay?" Nolan patted him on the back. "If you want, we can get the painting taken down. We can talk to Constantin or something." Emma nodded fervently.
"No, no, I think it should be here." The painting sat in the middle of several smaller ones, and Rhys knew for sure that it had not been there long. The way she was painted and the way the other inhabitants looked at her made her seem more like the hero she used to be.
The hero that Rhys knows she still was.
"She belongs here." He watched her create rings of flame with her wand, bewitching each to float around each other each other like bubbles of flame.
"Who put her there?" Emma stared up at the portrait, her head cocked to the side. "And why?"
