There was... There was something about Hogwarts that made Jo pucker her brow as Kolya curiously shifted in her arms.
Hogwarts, she noticed, was teeming with magic. Magic that made her warm, tingly and full—more than yesterday.
Jo needed something something to do. To occupy her mind this early and dreary morning. Accordingly, she ignored the voices of the portraits to study the movements of the moving staircases and the swooping reactions of her magic in her middle.
While she recognised the need to learn which steps made one sink, needed skipping, a few doubles worth avoiding altogether, they didn't jostle her like she'd seen them do with a group of higher years on her way to potions yesterday.
Jo had tested repeatedly for around ten minutes when a control had come in. Or passed by her, in fact.
Was it rude to refer Professor McGonagall as a control?
Jo dismissed it but not without a curt greeting ('Good morning, Professor.') and brief explanation why she was stationary ('to watch the stairs move') and up so early.
It was only half past six. There was so much of Lavender's snoring she could take. And Jo's shoulders slouched slightly at the reminder, biting back a small yawn. She'd been the only one awake to hear it.
Again.
Jo was stuck in her thoughts when, in the corner of eye, she caught the stairs just below her, carrying Professor McGonagall, swerve every so slightly. A wave of elation and burgeoning curiosity engulfed her.
The young witch took steady breaths to calm herself as much as possible. Her magic thrummed within in her, and she willed it to flow through her blood vessels like sunlight stroking a landscape. She imagined its intensity like a dial, and her thumb twitched—a tick whenever she mimicked it.
Sparse tethers settled in her fingertips and Jo locked her jaw, because while she was proficient after so many years of observance and playing—a glaring indicator, really—she was far more comfortable with her wand.
A few discreet glances over her shoulder told her except from the moving portraits, she was alone.
Jo blinked when the stair beneath her smoothly transitioned across the floor and slowly leaned over, pretending to examine it closer. A few moments later she turned around and regarded the moving portraits carefully. Her mind raced with possibilities as she contained the urge to crack a cheeky grin.
"May I ask you for directions to the Great Hall? And all my other lessons, for that matter?"
In return they would green-light which students she could subject to her mischief.
Jo's steady gait almost faltered when she spotted the Scottish witch silently eating her breakfast from the High Table.
Perhaps she was too early.
"How do you carry him on your shoulders all the time when he's so heavy? Is he overweight?" Parvati asked as she picked him out of her arms.
"7.1 kilograms is not overweight," Jo replied cuttingly as she cuddled him. "And Kolya's weight is perfectly fine, in fact relatively low compared to others."
Only a person without a heart could dismiss their beloved Kolya.
"You haven't forgotten the bet, have you?" Hermione whispered into her ear, brown eyes gleaming with mirth.
"Professor McGonagall was in the Great Hall when I went," Jo murmured, mood now considerably sour. "How could I forget?"