A/N: Harry Potter is MINE- only to enjoy. All due credit of the original series belongs to Jk Rowling.
Chapter 8, Classes
It was the morning after the feast. Sam had awoke to find a timetable and a pocket-watch resting on her bedside table. Cross-referencing these two tools, she realized she had plenty of time before her first class, Transfiguration, began. Astrid was snoring lightly from her bed beside Sam's and so she decided to find Flake, whose cage was empty. Sam dressed quickly in robes, and packed her book bag with texts, quills, parchment and ink.
The common room was empty save for a fat orange cat in an armchair and a painting that hung on the wall above the fireplace. The portrait was of a dignified, elderly wizard. Sam cleared her throat, clogged with sleep and disuse.
"Excuse me, but do you have the slightest clue where my owl could have gone?"
The wizard picked at his ruffled collar, disinterested, and replied in a muffled, careless tone that her owl was, presumably, in the owlery. When Sam asked where the owlery was, the wizard, annoyed, said rudely, "I'm not a map."
Outside in the Hall of Stairs, she found the portrait of the knitting witch. Sam scribbled directions on her arm in ink while the witch talked, thanked her for the directions and headed, hopefully, West.
A trap door, a low tunnel and a peculiarly tall spiral staircase later, Sam arrive in a drafty, dusty space with glassless windows and shelves with nests. A thunk spun her around and, emerging from the other side from a hole in the bookcase, was Lily Evans with a volume in hand.
Lily's eyebrows shot up into her hair. "Good morning. How did you find the attic?"
"Looking for the owlery." Lily smiled. Sam was surprised she hadn't laughed.
"How did you end up here, eh?" Sam returned. Lily blushed, sheepish.
"I was hoping to find the Astronomy Tower." The girls shared a chuckle. Lily gazed into the hole from which she'd entered.
"We should go, before we're late," Lily pointed out. Sam, staring into the maze, nodded. Reluctantly, she tore herself away from the splendid sight and followed Lily, still holding the book, down the staircase. They split up after they reached the East Wing, Lily running to join the Slytherins in Potions Class, Sam dashing to find Transfiguration and the Ravenclaws. She found some first years she recognized from the sorting in a chattery, teacher-less classroom and scurried down the isle to sit beside Astrid.
"Now would you like to talk about it?" It was then that Sam remembered she was supposed to tell Astrid about Mocha. In a hushed tone, she told her about the dog's entrance through the window in the bathroom and the teacher's reaction to the Frisbee.
"Ooh, it must be a Porkey!" Astrid deciphered excitedly. Envisioning the crash, Sam remembered Mocha had been carrying the Frisbee in her mouth when she flew through the window. The Frisbee was magic. But who had cast the spell?
"The dog belongs to my ex-neighbour in Australia." Sam, dumbfounded, didn't understand. Why was Mocha here at Hogwarts? Did her neighbour know something? In mid-thought, she realized that the entire class had gone as silent as night and every student had found the sight of Professor McGonagall.
She was a strict-looking woman with small, beady eyes framed by squared glasses. Her dark hair was pulled back into a painfully tight bun and her pointed witch's hat was neatly ironed. Her robes were bottle-green and floor-length. She rolled up her long, sweeping sleeves and wrote on the board, "Transfiguration".
"The work is difficult. Mistakes are dangerous. Any misusers of magic will be sent out and will not return. Do I make myself clear?" The students, some of backing away their chairs, nodded robotically. Professor McGonagall smiled and flicked her wrist. A wand fell from her sleeve and landed in her outstretched palm. She waved the wand at a cup, which turned into a rat and back again. A murmur spread; the students were impressed.
"We will begin with theory and later we'll see what you've learned." She talked at such a rapid rate and the chalk, floating behind her, printed every word as she spoke. The students took notes and an hour later, they had a guide of incantations and matching wand movements. Each student was given a marshmallow that they were instructed to turn into a stone. Sam managed to roast her marshmallow, but Grady Invertigus, a first-year Ravenclaw, managed to turn it into a beetle that scuttled off his desk and upset the Ravenclaw girls. Professor, amused, however slightly, told them to pack their things and expect the same lesson tomorrow but, she hoped, this time for better results.
History of Magic was an incredibly boring experience. Professor Binns was a bald ghost with a graying beard and a dull voice. The rumour was that, about a century ago, he had forgotten his body in the staff room. Sam imagined it had been a bit of a shocker when he'd glided through a wall into a room of unexpecting first-years. It was almost funny, yet it wasn't because the very thought of history made everyone...
She was an owl again, resting in a nest. Waiting...
"It's over..." Sam looked around, but the voice hadn't a source. Snapping sounds followed right in her ear. Panicked, she turned.
"You can wake up now." Sam closed and opened her eyes. She was still in a desk, though the majority of the students had left. Binns was gone, too.
"Class is over." It was Jen. Lily and Astrid stood behind her, each with a brow furrowed in concern. Sam stood, blushing and tightening her braids.
"I must have-"
"Dozed off?" Astrid finished with a giggle. She pointed to the back of the room, where a drooling Bertram was face-down in his textbook. Jen brushed Sam's "notes" off the desktop and into the bag and handed it to her.
Sam and Astrid accompanied their friends to the Great Gall, where they sat at the Gryffindor table. Jen grabbed a hot dog for each hand from the center of the table, taking a bite of each of them. Lily, who claimed to not be hungry, pulled out her notes from Potions and a spare sheet of parchment.
"Are you obsessive-compulsive?" Astrid wondered, examining her notes. The ones from before were scribbled and Lily was writing the new ones in a machine-like perfection. James, Sirius and Remus, across the table from the girls, nudged each other and smirked.
"I'm not!" Lily insisted, raising her quill in gesture.
"But how could anyone read this?" She held up the note, butchered with quill strokes.
"If you're rewriting it, you can read it," Sam reasoned. Jen chuckled. Astrid dared not, though a smirk was inaudible and Lily didn't notice.
Sam heard a screech from overhead. Expecting Flake, she looked up. She didn't see her owl, but thousands more were obscuring the ceiling as they flew above with parcels attacked to their legs or letters in their beaks. Now Sam understood what the shopkeeper at the Emporium meant about owls delivering post. Packages dropped from the sky onto the tables in front of their receivers. A large tawny one carrying a single slip of parchment landed on Jen's shoulder. Jen took the note and read aloud,
"Your brother told me you might need this: 'Katt finns'?" A spark of white light produced a tiny black kitten, which Jen immediately scooped up with a cry of, "Midnight!" James, shame-faced and reluctant, spoke up.
"I didn't know how to bring her back and I knew you were mad, so I mailed Mum."
Jen narrowed her eyes, then smiled. "Thanks, but because of the worry I went through, this does NOT make us even." James folded his arms across his chest and looked squarely at his cousin.
Jen grinned mischievously. "You know what I want. Let me borrow it."
James swelled indignantly, puffed his cheeks and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he gave, but he pointed a finger at Jen, who glared at him cross-eyed beneath her glasses. "Not tonight."
"What about tonight?" Sirius gave him a meaningful look and a forced smile, which just made him look a bit derranged. Remus, shaking his shaggy head, opened a book.
"How To Tame The Monster?" Sam muttered, reading the cover. It wasn't one that she had read, nor was it on the school list. Blushing furiously, Remus removed the book from the table and picked up a sandwich instead.
"You read!" Sam was delighted. Apart from possibly Lily, no-one shared her interest in books.
"Oh," realized Remus, staring at the book as though he'd never seen it before. "Yes, I read loads. You?"
"Tons," she replied with a grin. "Could I borrow it?"
"You may if I can borrow one of yours." Sam considered the bargain and opened her black book bag. All of the books she currently carried were school-related.
"I... left my books..." Sam realized. She was awash in the horror that she hadn't noticed before. She hadn't felt like she was forgetting anything, but those hundred books her mother had left in her possession had been her life for the past four years besides harvesting macadamia.
How was she going to get a book without a delivering owl?
