Through a Half-Breed's Eyes
Classes are back in session. Unfortunately, I've been sorta busy, and it's been two days before I've been able to stop and write.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with my class choices this year: should definitely be more interesting than the last.
Let's start with the more exciting ones first.
The DADA teacher this year is potentially the most suspicious looking man I've ever seen. He also looks like the sort of person that, if you had a problem, you call immediately. Not because they are good people, no, but because they get the job done. And then you call in a team of about fifteen mages to start cleaning up the rubble.
He goes by the name Mad-Eye Moody. He walked and talked like a serial killer's worst nightmare. I fully expected him to start rambling about 'The War', and how he did 'Horrible, horrible things. Things man is not meant to know'.
Note to self. Cut down on the amount of movies I watch during the summer.
I mean, this poor bastard looks like he's been shredded apart by magic, had what was left of his body pulped and mixed with broken glass, and then the mix was hastily beaten back into the vague facsimile of a man by a gorilla.
He's definitely got at least three instances of pretty serious necrosis going on, if the smell of rotting flesh is anything to go on. He's got a magical eye where his left would normally be, a peg leg, three fake fingers, and a face even his mother would be unable to love. His eye spent more or less the entire class spinning around like a windmill in a hurricane. I think it has connectivity issues.
Not to mention that his magical signature is extremely messed up: it honestly feels like he's being held together by someone else's magic. His current form, if you even call it that, isn't entirely compatible with the magic beneath. I've seen him drink a potion from a flask several times. I'm willing to bet that it's a healing or stabilizing potion of some sort.
Besides the fact he looks like a demon slayer, and an effective and experienced one at that, he's definitely miles ahead, combat wise. We entered the classroom directly into an ambush, where he fired into the crowd from cover.
To put things into perspective, I was so surprised by the ambush, that I wasn't able to feign falling over from the Stunning Spell correctly. It was only after the second barrage that I wised up and fell over until he started dispelling people. I definitely felt the spell too: first one was enough to stagger me, second one was enough to make my vision swim.
He then revived us all, basically flat out stated that if we're not on our toes, we're going to all die horrific, murder-y deaths, and then began immediately launched into casting and combat drills.
He also said, more or less that his eye is able to penetrate any magical illusion.
While staring at me. Well, his good eye was staring into the crowd. His magical eye was staring at me.
Considering how he didn't kill me on the spot, I'm just going to say that his eye can't penetrate a semi-transmutation, and pat myself on the back for not dying, first class of the year.
Go me.
Anyway, the ambush served a decent second use: it knocked Ginny down a peg, and she's back to being reasonably calm. Being destroyed that badly tends to do that to a person.
Next on the list of interesting classes was Ancient Runes. Teacher's name is Babbling, no joke. Luckily, she knows her stuff.
Sadly, we're not going directly into Infernal or Deep runes: we're sticking to standard Egyptian and Greek for the first couple of months.
In addition, we're using some bastardized number system, which is still counts like the Latin base-ten system, but it just uses different symbols for the numbers themselves. You'd think they'd use a base-seven or base-thirteen instead.
First assignment was essentially 'draft an array for a small defensive ward.'
My response, was a five-point runic circle consisting of Protect, Slow, Weaken, Magic, Hunger, a more-or-less standard magic-draining ward.
Wouldn't do much to an adult spellcaster, but it'd slow a student down, for sure.
Hopefully we'll start getting into real wards soon enough.
I can't wait before I can start filling circles with Pargon runes.
That'll be funny, to say the least. Assuming I don't blow myself up, or summon some unspeakable horror. That's definitely a possibility when working with Pargon runes.
Potions, on the other hand, is about the same as last year: we're again given a couple of ingredients, vague instructions, and left to our own, extremely dangerous, devices. Snape's not too great at explaining, so I've basically spent a couple of weeks over the summer learning as much potioncraft as I can.
Ginny's figured out by now that her best chances at passing are to try and do whatever I'm doing. In exchange, she's giving me copies of her History notes, but I apparently still owe her one. I don't care. You can't pay me to deal with that ghost.
We're with the Slytherins this year, and thus the amount of thrown ingredients has increased, respectively.
Snape once again sauntered his way over to me once the class started, and once again began grilling me, right when I was in the middle of a rather difficult step of mixing
Right. It was a hair restorative potion. I don't know what he'll be doing with this much botched/shoddily crafted hair restorative, and frankly, I don't really want to know.
Hair restorative, and again the questions began. It wasn't exactly fun having to answer, while also making sure I didn't burn the damn cauldron. Or y'know, overcharge it with magic. That'd also be bad.
While I watched, he reached into my bag, and pulled out the new reinforced-plastic carrying case I picked up over the summer. He hastily unlatched it to slowly pull out each item within, smirking wider with each extracted item.
It was actually pretty funny to watch, as I had chosen the case for two real reasons: it was sturdy, and it had an over-powered space expansion charm on it that I was quite happy to abuse. As such, that little case was better stocked than it had any right to being.
I was asked about whether I had replaced several of my more perishable first aid supplies, (I had), but also why, in god's name, I was carrying around a pound-and-a-third of sealed muggle Swiss Military Chocolate.
Yeah, as if I'm going to use anything less than the heavy-duty crap if we run into Dementors again. Plus, it's by definition a good emergency ration. We picked up a good seven pounds of it from an army surplus store when we were in Switzerland this summer: the rest of it was placed into storage for emergency use/restocking.
Anyway, the interrogation took a bit longer than last time, what with my new chocolate, antiseptic mixes, and the two rather large bottles of olive oil-and-sulphur-based rash salve I was eyeing up by the end of the class.
I really do need to thank Professor Lupin for that suggestion, by the way, the stuff works bloody miracles.
I ended up being quietly awarded two points, before Snape immediately turned to the back of the classroom, and took five from someone else. Apparently, someone was mixing their potion with the wrong end of the spoon.
I'd have turned around to check it out myself, but I was too busy bottling mine, while simultaneously trying to figure out what exactly Ginny had done to hers.
I'm pretty sure she just made it activate too easily, if the hairy spoon she removed from the mix was any indication.
Ah well, if we grab some sturdy enough cardboard, we can brew ourselves a new throw rug.
Ginny just got back from History. I, being me, chose to instead write in my diary. Since History is the last class of the day for us today...
Judging by the look on her face, I missed absolutely nothing of value. She handed me her sparse notes with a groan, and then collapsed into her bed. I think I'll wake her up in an hour or so. Even though she looks comfortable, I don't think she wants to sleep in her robes.
So a bit of info about the situation:
It only took a little bit of explanation earlier to convince her that, whatever this tourney is, Potter's going to be involved.
I mean, her reasoning was a little bit different than mine, but either way, we're in agreement about this.
Anyway, besides the tournament, I've finally received something close to a real explanation from Ginny about the severity of her little freak-out. She had been hedging her bets last year when she selected her courses, and chosen relatively few electives. She expected to devote most of her time to Quidditch.
And now, with Quidditch being cancelled, she has far too much spare time, and not much to do with it.
I'm
Goddammit. I'm going to need to keep an eye on what she's doing: if she starts brewing Love Potions…
Well, if her brewing is any indication, I'd be more worried for fatal side effects, rather than it actually doing what it's intended to do.
Last thing we want is for her to start brain-damaging people.
Well, it's getting late.
Since I'm now officially in Ancient Runes, I finally have an excuse to practice carving runes in things. Thus, I've gathered a bunch of chunks of wood, which I plan on attempting to enchant over the next while.
Hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll be able to start enchanting my robes and tools. I don't really have any real expectations, though.
Will write more tomorrow. Charging runes makes me tired. Hopefully I won't blow myself up.
Herbology has finally reached the point where I'm able to care. The plants this year are sorta weird, sorta dangerous, but for the life of me, I still can't remember their names.
Either way, I got sent to the hospital wing when a particularly-uppity plant decided to snap my wrist with one of its vines. It was a lot stronger than I thought it'd be.
It wasn't easy having to explain the wrist's complete recovery by the time I arrived at the hospital wing, but the medical kit certainly helped get rid of some of the suspicion. I merely had to blame using a few of my healing creams on it, which was supported by the fact that I had actually used my supplies on it.
I knew carrying it around would be good for something.
Anyway, I ended up sitting in the wing for about ten minutes, before I was cleared to go back to my dorm.
Stupid plant.
Transfiguration has finally reached living-to-nonliving, which honestly unnerves me way more than it should. Do the living creatures feel it? We haven't started it yet, and probably won't till mid-spring, but really
Summoning living creatures from non-living objects makes sense. I've done it, in fact.
But there's just something wrong about temporarily killing things for a transformation.
But wouldn't botching the transmutation cause more pain?
I don't know.
Honestly, I don't want to know.
It's just… it's sorta horrifying to imagine: I keep mentally associating that kind of magic with soul-traps and sealing magic.
Okay
I will never mention that connection to Ginny.
I guess I'll just keep going.
Charms is just more of the same, but honestly, it's sorta… unfocused.
Between the occasional combat spell, a majority of it is utility, but there's defense magic, anti-curses….
It just feels weird to be as jostled around as it is.
Maybe if they split it into different classes it'd be easier to do.
Speaking of disorganized, Ancient Magic is both miles ahead, and miles behind Charms.
Flitwick was also teaching this course, but… well…
The curriculum was a bit idiotic.
We were given a couple of old, heavily-censored texts, and told to examine them, find a spell that has fallen out of use, and give a reason when, and why the spell fell out of use.
And by heavily censored, I mean large portions of the texts are flat-out missing.
I am willing to bet quite an amount that it was the censored portions that were worth learning.
As is, I ended up just researching a rather inefficient precursor to the Knockback Jinx, which ended up being dropped some time in the Middle Ages because it was nearly impossible to aim.
Reasonably strong, pretty efficient, but an absolute mess to prevent friendly fire with. The only reason it was ever used, was because it was extremely effective against people on horses.
Oh, and it was terrible on the wand too: it was designed to use with a metal staff.
I doubt I'll ever get any real use from the class anyway: it's just there as an excuse, in case I need to start pulling out any of my spells.
Finally, Astronomy
Worthless. Just worthless.
Huh?
Ginny stopped by, rather out of breath. Turns out, she sprinted up from the front gate: a couple of fifth, fourth, and third-year Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students were getting antsy about the lack of Quidditch, and had begun organizing a pick-up game.
Lacking a personal broom herself, Ginny had quickly signed up, before running up to me to borrow my broom.
Needless to say, I lent her it. Hopefully, that'll help some of her stress, and it'll help curb some of her destructive impulses.
Actually, I might just give her that broom and get another. If I do, I'm going to have to send a letter to mom at some point.
I think I'll go enchant some more wooden discs.
Goddammit!
Note to self. Do not put Fire and Area runes beside each other, unless there's a containment rune too.
Ginny just came back, more or less pumping her arms in triumph. Turns out her team had stomped their opponents pretty damn badly, thus inadvertently condemning me to death via horrible, horrible victory dance.
Her biggest fear right now, is that the teachers will find out, and shut the little club down.
I couldn't help but smile back at her. I don't really see a problem with it, and I don't think the teachers will mind much either.
The year's looking up!
But why do I keep feeling this sense of impending doom?