Chapter Ten: A Day in the Life

When the First Year Gryffindors woke up the morning after the Feast, the four boys began to realize that they could get on quite well with one another. Especially James and Jeremey, who were so similar that Andrew complained it was like having two James's, or two Jeremey's.

As it turned out, James was wrong when he said that he was never going to learn how to navigate the Castle, as the four managed to find their way down to the Great Hall the next morning in only half an hour. Admittedly, this was after getting lost and asking portraits for directions four times. Although they did learn a valuable lesson, in that not all of the portraits were friendly, as they were misdirected several times by some of the nastier ones.

However, by the end of their second week at Hogwarts, the boys were finding their way around the Castle very well. If only the same could be said for their finding their way around their class work, as all four boys were proving to be a menace to every classroom they entered.

It wasn't that the boys were bad at their classes, as a matter of fact James was top of the class in Transfiguration, and Jeremey was making Charms Class look easy, but more that they found goofing off more interesting than whatever it was that they were actually supposed to be doing.

Transfiguration, which had proven to be the only class that James could get through without wanting to jinx someone, was taught by a tall witch with flaming red hair by the name of Professor Decandio. And like her hair, her temper would instantly flare up at anyone who broke one of her many rules, and boy did she have a lot of them.

"How on earth does she expect us to get anything done when we're not allowed to speak." Andrew whispered, when Professor Decandio's back was turned. They had been instructed to transfigure the sticks of hay on their desk into needles, something that none of them were certain how to do.

But of course, they could not ask questions either, as that was forbidden as well. And so the First Years were left to sit there and try to work out what they were supposed to do in silent misery. True, she had given them instructions, but no one had quite understood her directions because she had spoken so fast that everyone was still writing down her first set of instructions when she had concluded with her speech.

No one had been able to have even the slightest success with this assignment, except for James, who had proven to be a natural at Transfiguration. "It's not that hard Andrew." James muttered, "You've just gotta…" but James immediately fell silent as Professor Decandio had turned back towards them, and was once again patrolling the rows between their desks.

By the end of the lesson, not even James had been able to make much of a difference to their hay, but James insisted that he had pricked his finger on the end of his. Although, as Zach pointed out, this could have just been because he was such a wimp, not because he had made the hay any sharper.

Andrew, on the other hand, favored Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class which was taught by the kindest teacher in all of Hogwarts, Professor Wilkins. The joke around the Castle was that if you didn't like Professor Wilkins, then a Dementor must have sucked out your soul long ago, because she was impossible not to like.

Even when you had absolutely no idea what you were doing, and constantly screwed up, Professor Wilkins was always very patient and kind with every student. Not even James had the nerve to dare goof off in her class, because no one wanted to do anything to upset a teacher that was so nice.

But aside from Professor Wilkins, Defense Against The Dark Arts also had one of the most interesting curriculums, as classes were taught practically at least once every week, and often even more than that.

Jeremey did exceptionally well at Charms, a class that was taught by the quirky and forgetful Professor Lund, who often changed the lesson midway through because she could no longer remember what it was she had originally been teaching them. Several times, students convinced Professor Lund that she had told them to leave class early.

Aside from Professor Lund's forgetfulness though, Charms was a class that was never boring. They had practical lessons even more often than Defense Against The Dark Arts, and though it wasn't what they were supposed to be learning, James had learned a very good way to start and put out fires from that class.

Potions was taught by the oldest teacher in the entire school, Professor Slughorn, who was also one of James' least favorite people in all of Hogwarts. The man was always spouting stories about James' parents and grandparents, and James found his self-praising almost unbearable. The fact that Professor Slughorn seemed to really like James made things even worse.

None of the boys were particularly good at Potions, and Jeremey seemed to find the class to be a complete and utter waste of time. Hardly a day went by it seemed without Jeremey making some kind of joke about how pointless Potions Class was. A sentiment that was shared to a lesser degree by Zach and Andrew.

Herbology was taught by Neville…that is Professor Longbottom, one of his father's old school friends. James always felt afraid to act out during Herbology, in fear that if his father found out he would berate James endlessly for giving his old school-friend trouble.

However James was dead awful at Herbology, a class that he viewed as pointless and dreadfully boring. What did he care about plants? Maybe they would have been a little more interesting if they were trying to kill him from time to time, but sadly First Years were generally not permitted to handle such dangerous plants.

History of Magic was by far the worst class in the entire school, and was taught by the one teacher who didn't care if you were listening to him or not: Professor Binns. Professor Binns was a teacher who, the story went, had been brutally stabbed to death by a student who had hated the man's boring lectures so much he could no longer stand it. Unfortunately, the man's actions had failed to stop the man's endless droning, and hundreds of years later he still taught the same subject in the same boring drawl.

Although, James remembered, his father had mentioned in a letter that he'd heard a far different explanation about Professor Binn's death, and that he should not believe everything that he heard. The one good thing about History of Magic was that Professor Binns wouldn't bother to stop them when they started murmuring to themselves about things completely unrelated to his subject.

Lastly was Astrology, which was held in the dead of night atop the Astronomy Tower by the tall and leering Professor Cooley. Professor Cooley was a rather queer fellow, who never went anywhere without his suit, no matter how hot out it got. Some students were under the belief that Professor Cooley wore the same suit every day and never changed or washed it, but James found that very hard to believe.

For the most part though, the classes were quite interesting, and James found that despite his best intentions to the contrary, he was actually learning things in just about all of his classes. When he pointed this out to Jeremey one day, the other boy had shrugged and said "Yea well, at least it's all useful stuff that you're learning. You have no idea the useless stuff that they try to teach kids at Muggle Schools. Jocelyn was showing me."

James found that rather hard to believe, until Jeremey showed him something called 'algebra' which was without a doubt the most pointless thing he'd ever seen in his entire life. "Why on earth do they bother to learn that junk?" James asked, dumbfounded.

"Search me." Jeremey said, "Muggles are weird."

Thankfully, First Years were not given all that much homework, and so James and his friends had plenty of free-time in which to pursue more important activities: such as laying around on the Grounds and doing…well, nothing. But that was what made those times special. It was the fact that they didn't have to do anything that made those moments the ones that James cherished.

On one of those days, they had been lying near the lake, and James had been sure that he had seen something creating splashes near the surface of the Great Lake.

"Hey guys." James said, sitting up to get a better look, "Do you guys see that?" Pointing towards the Lake he said "Look over there, there's something over there."

"I don't see it." Christian said, straining to see over Dwayne's big head, which was seated directly in front of him, obscuring his view of whatever it was that James was pointing at.

"It's right over there, what are you blind?" Jason said, pointing a good ten feet to the right of where James had been pointing, to which Nick and Paul nodded in assent.

"Nah, you're looking the wrong way you dolt." Erin said "It's over to the left." She corrected, pointing even further from where James had been saying in the first place.

Jeremey and Andrew both insisted that they couldn't see anything, and so the group decided to head down to the lake to see if there was anything to see from closer up. It was a rather big group to be storming across the grounds: James, Jeremey, Andrew, and Zach from Gryffindor, Nick, Jason, Paul, and Erin from Ravenclaw, and Christian, Dwayne, and Jocelyn from Hufflepuff. Absent only, was a Slytherin representative in their group, but that was because James and Zach were not as trustful of Leon as Jeremey and Andrew were.

As the group approached the shore of the Lake, they began spreading out along the shore, looking for any sign of what James had been pointing at. Unfortunately, by this time, the surface of the Lake was perfectly smooth and undisturbed.

"Isn't there supposed to be a Giant Squid in the Lake?" Jocelyn asked, nervously backing away from the water every few seconds. "Nah, that's just an old rumor!" Nick said coolly.

Sadly, they were unable to find anything by the end of the afternoon and were forced to conclude that there had been nothing there.