In the morning, Melissa woke me up with one of her great laughs.
"Get dressed," she ordered, "or we'll be late for our first breakfast in the Great Hall!!" I got up and pulled on a brand new set of robes and washed my face and brushed my teeth. After I thought I looked pretty good and the morning hair had gone away, we went downstairs, leaving Trella Longbottom, Benny's sister, wailing at the loss of her toothbrush, to be helped by Tori. She'd come in to all of the girls' dormitories to check on us.
As we stepped down into the common room, Benny was stretched out on a crimson couch. He smiled when he saw us.
"Been waiting for you guys!!" he said. "Let's go eat." Just then, Tori came down with Trella and offered to lead us all to the Great Hall, which we were grateful for. Today I tried to pay more attention to which ways the winding staircases led, but I didn't have much luck. Oh, well.
The enchanted sky of the Great Hall was a clear blue today, and breakfast was a pancake extravaganza. I took blueberry, buttermilk, and cornmeal pancakes, and decided that my favorite was blueberry. Looking across the Gryffindor table (with Tori at the head of it), I noticed another Weasley...but he wasn't as happy as Melissa. He kept his head down the whole time, and I wondered why all through breakfast. Finally, I had to ask.
"Melissa, who is that kid that was sitting diagonally from us?" I queried as the three of us left the Great Hall.
"Oh, him...he's my brother, John. He's a second year."
"Why's he so depressed?"
"Angry he didn't get on the Quidditch team...James did, though. They're twins."
"Oh." I wondered who else was on the Quidditch team, and if I'd have a chance. Seven players and about eighty Gryffindors...not much chance for anybody. Still, I felt sorry for John, if he was as nice as his sister.
I forgot about it and glanced down at my schedule, which Professor McGonagall had just handed to all of us. Herbology first, then Defense Against the Dark Arts this morning.
"I know who all the teachers are...Mum told me, she's the nurse," Melissa told us proudly.
"I didn't know that!! Cool, Meliss...who's Herbology?" I wondered.
"Who's Defense Against the Dark Arts?" Benny echoed.
"Professor Seedling, she's been here for a few years, and Professor Ferrell, she's new this year. Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers always are," Melissa answered. "They run through one every year..." However, she couldn't answer any questions about how the teachers were...we had to see that for ourselves.
Luckily, Herbology was just in the greenhouses, so all we had to do was go outside from the entrance hall next to the Great Hall and we'd see them. Professor Seedling looked like she was already there, a tall, thin, woman with long auburn hair.
"I wonder if the teachers'll like me..." remarked a girl who I recognized as the one who had been talking loudly about her Gryffindor efforts over the summer on the Hogwarts Express.
"Welcome, welcome, first years!! I'm going to be teaching Herbology to you for the next seven years," Professor Seedling greeted us. "First of all, I'll have you know that I'm not really strict about plants unless it involves hurting them..please remember that they are living things too." Nobody snickered at this, which I liked...I really liked her, she shared a lot of my feelings about plants. "And when we start working in greenhouse two on up, never do anything with the plants that you haven't cleared with me first. They can be dangerous!!" All of us nodded. "Okay...today we're going to start with jipeters...jumpy little plants. All you have to do is weed them, but still, please be very careful that they don't jump out of their beds. If you need anything, just call me. Gloves are on the shelf, and there's a list on the door of who should be at which flowerbed. I'll be right outside working with you. Right, I think that's everything. Good luck!!"
I grabbed a pair of gloves from the shelf for myself, Melissa, and Benny, and all three of us went to our flowerbed. Fortunately, we were all assigned to the same one, so we could talk.
Time flew fast. After a while, Professor Seedling told us all to pack up and get to our next class-Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Ravenclaw first years. We followed the rest of the Gryffindors, hoping we'd find our way there, and after a few small blunders and dead-end corridors, we got to the huge Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Professor Ferrell, a small woman with a red beret and a friendly face, greeted us cheerfully.
"Welcome, class!! I hope you've had a good first class and a good first day so far. This is my first time teaching at Hogwarts, and I'm honored to be here with all of you, teaching you how to block and defend yourself from evil forces," she said, grinning, as students filed in. "We're starting the term with a 'trivia' day, so I can see where all of you are in this subject. Let's see...Miss Weasley and Mr. Longbottom, could you come up here, please??"
I watched carefully as Melissa and Benny walked up from the back of the room to the overexcited Professor Ferrell, wondering what the "trivia" would be like and whether I knew any of it.
"Now, am I right in thinking that you two are relatives of the great Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom, friends of Harry Potter??"
"Yes..."
"Mm-hmm."
"So, surely, you must know a lot about them!! Quiz the class while I get a quick drink," Professor Ferrell left the room, and she didn't return until half an hour later, when the entire class was laughing uproariously at a funny story Benny had just told about Hermione Granger putting the Full Body-Bind curse on his great-grandfather. She looked quite displeased, making her face look unnatural.
"I have been waiting outside the door all the time, and I am most annoyed at the way you behaved. I asked for trivia, not a story session," she said quietly and seriously, making us all feel guilty. She turned around to face the blackboard full of disorganized writing, then quickly turned back to us with a shining, excited face.
"Okay, class, let's get to work!! Open your textbooks to page 2!! I plan to get through the first three chapters in class, and whatever we don't finish is for homework!!"
All of us groaned under our breaths as she tapped her wand on the blackboard to clean it, but we had no time to even breathe for the rest of the period. Her maniac energy forced us to take down blackboards and blackboards full of notes about the three chapters. Flipping rapidly through our textbooks, we speed-read each lesson and, since we got done "so quickly," she let us have the last three minutes of the class to study for the test the next day.
Author's Note: People have
been begging me for a third Jade, so I went ahead and wrote it:)
This is a bit longer than the others, and I'm glad of it, because
my writing goes really fast. So review this one, tell me what
you think, I'm *dying* to hear whether I should write more, I
write for you guys!! Oh, and to answer a question one reader had
about the Second Jade: she knew his toad was called Neville because
she knew her Hogwarts history. Remember, everyone in Harry Potter's
year is pretty well-known around Hogwarts!! Anyway, thanks a million
for reading and enjoying these...means a LOT to me, really!!