Chapter 5) School Days Part I

Selected Listening: Gilderoy Lockhart- John Williams

When the girls arrived with the rest of their classmates in the Great Hall, Harry and Ron were still missing. When McGonagall called Ginny to the sorting hat and she took her place in Gryffindor, Harry and Ron were still missing. When dinner turned into desert and the near-dozing students shoveled pudding into their mouths without an idea of where to pack it all, Harry and Ron were still missing.

But at about the time Albus stepped up to the podium to deliver his term-opening speech, there was an ungodly commotion of thrashing and screeching outside the castle windows in the direction of the grounds. Anastasia turned to Hermione with wide eyes and mouthed, "the whomping willow."

When the sound came to a stop, Albus looked back at the students.

"Well, that sounded quite unpleasant. A simple warning to all students. There are many great and dangerous things on these grounds. Snape, will you go fetch our lost second years and bring them to my office?"

Snape rolled his eyes as if this was the last thing he wanted to do, but rose from his seat, flipped his hair, and turned in the direction of the back door to go fetch the boys.

"Well at least they've made it safe?" Anastasia shrugged hopefully.

"We don't know that!" Hermione said.

Ginny looked as if she may faint.

Albus wrapped up his speech with a "pip pip." And the students were sent with their prefects to their houses.

On the way up the stairs, Hermione asked Percy the new password—wattlebird—grabbed Anastasia's arm and pulled her back in the crowd, further and further until they were at the tail end of the Gryffindor group. At the last hallway cut off before the last staircase to the Fat Lady, Hermione tugged her away down the hall.

"Are we seriously going to the library on the night before term starts?" Anastasia asked but allowing her feet to carry her that direction anyway. "And when our friends are in danger?"

As much as she didn't approve of Hermione's over-studying (she considered herself a work-life balance kind of person), she knew it would be worse to leave Hermione alone in her intellectual endeavors.

"We are. I owled Madame Pince yesterday and had her reserve all of Lockhart's books that weren't on our reading list," she said with a heaping spoon of adoration.

Anastasia stopped short.

"Hermione are you serious? Lockhart is a—" Anastasia didn't know how to finish her sentence. She didn't want to admit that grandad hired a man he suspected to be a fraud. "I'm not sure he's all that he says he is."

Hermione glared over her shoulder.

"How can you say that? Lockhart is amazing. He's saved so many villages by fighting the dark arts. Besides, your dad hired him, didn't he?" She asked and kept walking towards the library. Anastasia grumbled because it was much too late in the evening to explain that Voldemort put a curse on the teaching position, which is why Albus had such a crummy pick of instructors and sometimes only hired people for the sake of serving up karma.

"Anyway, how would I even going to sleep with those two still missing?" Hermione asked. The way she said "those two" told Anastasia that the boys would be receiving a cold shoulder from her for quite some time.

It took half an hour for Hermione to check through the pile of books Madame Pince had retrieved for her and inquire about multiple editions that she could have missed. All the while, Anastasia stood aside, tapping her foot and staring at the ceiling, wishing she was in bed. After forty-five minutes had passed, she looked back to Madame Pince, who seemed equally exhausted and put out as Anastasia and mouthed the words "help me."

Madame Pince picked up on Anastasia's queue, reassured Hermione there were no other editions of Magical Me available, and shooed the girls out the door because technically the library should have been closed by then anyway.

"That was quite rude of her, wasn't it?" Hermione asked as they reached the staircase they evaded earlier.

"Well—" Anastasia began

"There you are!" Hermione shouted and dashed forward to grab two boys by the hoods of their robes. They stumbled back and caught themselves one step below.

"Thank Merlin you're alright!" Anastasia exclaimed and hugged them both, but Hermione folded her arms.

"What were you thinking flying that car!" She asked.

"Oh, come off it. We've already heard enough," Ron said, looking gloomy and battered alongside Harry.

"The platform sealed off and wouldn't let us in, so we flew the car," Harry explained, looking away and scratching at a cut the whomping willow had given him. Hastily patched bruises and cuts dappled the boys. Anastasia frowned concernedly.

"It can't do that, can it? Seal up before the train has gone?" Hermione asked directly to Anastasia, forgetting her official cover as a muggle-born student. She frowned back at Hermione.

"How should I know? If anything, you've read more than I have," Anastasia emphasized so that Hermione would get the hint.

"Oh!" Hermione gasped. "Yes, you're right it doesn't. My mistake. They should really put that in the next edition."

"WHAT'S THE PASSWORD?" Bellowed Ron, having enough of the girls' banter for the night.

"Wattlebird," they said in unison, and the fat lady swung aside to allow them into the common room.

Anastasia looked forward to some peace and quiet after a long day of searching for friends, avoiding others, and talking to many, but as the common room opened, she realized that was the last thing that would happen that night.

The common room buzzed with excitement. Lee Jordan dragged Harry and Ron in and congratulated them on a job well done. Anastasia and Hermione shared a disgruntled look and ventured into the crowd of mostly overexcited boys. They fought their way over to the stairs, but before they ascended, a flash of red distracted her.

Ginny had curled up on the window seat with her book from earlier, which Anastasia now realized was a journal. She walked over to the Weasley girl and tapped her on the shoulder.

Ginny jumped and clutched the journal to her chest.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, but it's late and you should go to bed soon. We'll have a long day tomorrow as well."

"Oh, um." Ginny stared straight ahead as if half-asleep. "Did Harry ever come back?" she managed to ask. Anastasia smiled.

"He's right over there. Why don't you go say hi?" she suggested, but Ginny blushed crimson, jumped up, and scurried up the stairs, cutting off Hermione on the way.

"A little jumpy, isn't she?" Anastasia asked.

"A little boy crazy," Hermione retorted disapprovingly and climbed the stairs to bed.

In the morning, Anastasia tucked her mother's necklace into the collar of her shirt and went downstairs with Hermione. The Great Hall greeted them with a grand breakfast of toast, jam, fruit, milk, orange juice, and clotted cream. Hermione and Anastasia arrived at the table first along with Neville and they began talking about their summers. When the girls told Neville they went to Australia, Neville claimed that he would "die instantly upon setting foot in Australia" considering his poor luck and Australia's large population of poisonous and well-toothed animals. Face turning green with nausea, he changed the subject.

"That's a nice necklace, Anastasia," Neville said, "where'd you get it?"

Anastasia gasped and tucked it in. Not even two minutes into the semester and it had come untucked.

"It's um, nothing. A present from my mother," she muttered.

"Well, it's very pretty," he offered.

Soon after, Harry and Ron arrived, and the tables filled with every student in the school. As the year went on, less and less people would attend breakfast, especially elder students as they slept in after late nights studying, but nearly no one missed breakfast on the first day.

The unmistakable sound of owl shrieks rang throughout the hall and owls soared through the windows in a frenzied cloud. Letters dropped down from the ceiling, and one even fell into Anastasia's hand. Anastasia opened it.

Dear Child

I request your presence at Sunday evening dinner, this coming weekend at 8 o'clock, and Sundays thereafter. You may use your normal excuse that you are assisting Professor McGonagall with classroom cleaning. Destroy this note post haste after reading.

Happy Start-of-Term!

Anastasia folded the note and tucked it into her pocket. She looked up to make sure the boys weren't going to question her about what her "parents" were telling her, but they were a bit preoccupied with the howler Ron held with trembling fingers.

"Open it Ron," Neville suggested, "ignored one from gran once. It was horrible."

And it was. The whole hall heard Mrs. Weasley's well-justified rant. According to her, Mr. Weasley was going through the ringer because of the boys' impulsivity. As they walked through the halls to class and the other students laughed, Harry and Ron hung their heads much lower than they had the night before.

The four entered Greenhouse III with the other Gryffindor second years and took their place on one side of the table next to the Hufflepuffs. The Ravenclaws and Slytherins sat on the other side, and as if he was trying to make her miserable, Draco ended up directly across from her. Professor Sprout began to call roll, and she vaguely heard some Hufflepuffs introducing themselves to Harry and Ron down the way.

"Well, Dumbledore's favoritism strikes again!" Draco exclaimed. Anastasia froze, eyes wide. How had he discovered her identity so quickly? "They should be expelled. Muggles saw them using magic. They broke wizarding law."

Anastasia relaxed. He meant Harry and Ron, not her. Hermione looked to Anastasia as if she were supposed to answer.

"Um, well, there was sort of an incident at the train station. It wasn't their fault," she said vaguely.

"An incident? What kind of incident results in stealing a car?" he asked.

"I mean, I agree they could have waited and requested a floo, but—"

She couldn't finish her thought because Sprout cleared her throat and began the lesson. They were repotting mandrakes today. Hogwarts always kept a fresh stock each year because they were useful for healing potions, but incredibly difficult to raise. Anastasia felt nervous about being entrusted with them as second years. When the time came, she grabbed her pair of earmuffs and squeezed them over her head as tight as they would go, and the shrill noises began.

Anastasia plunked her first mandrake into the new pot and filled in fresh soil around the screaming being. She wiped her brow and made a grab for the second mandrake, plucking it free from the soil with more rage and anger than the first. She swept it across the table to the large new pot and went to plunk it down, but something caught the back of her neck and tugged.

The mandrake had grabbed hold of her necklace and pulled the chain violently with it's doughy fist as it's shriek emanated from its shrunken head.

"No, no!" she shouted, gaining the attention of several bystanders. The chain of the necklace snapped, and the pendant sailed over the table to the other side of the greenhouse, landing on the gravel with a clunk.

Anastasia finished repotting the beast and sprinted to the other side of the room, bending down to pick up the pendant when another hand shot out from underneath her and grabbed it. Anastasia looked up to see Draco holding her necklace.

"Ah, Malfoy, kind of you to fetch that for her," Sprout said with a little smile, but then ran off as Neville had collapsed from loose earmuffs.

"Thank you—" Anastasia started to say, expecting him to give it back, but Draco swiped it away and tucked it into his pocket, a wide smirk on his face.

"Get me the inhaler and you can have your necklace."

Anastasia's nostrils flared.

"It was my mother's. Give it back," she growled.

An expression of slight disbelief crossed his face, but it quickly faded into a content smug.

"You better work fast then," Draco shrugged and returned to the worktable.