Omninihil, Chapter 5 - Subjectivity

Dedicated to the little kid with the stuffed giraffe.



Kira was the first to enter the Charms classroom. She stopped short when she reached the threshold, leaving Odelia and Liam to look over her shoulders. Odelia muffled a sigh; after all of the pre-class panic, the Omninihils were early. The only other people in the room were a tall, dark-haired boy already seated at a desk and a tiny man with a look of enthusiasm on his face.

"Oh, do come in," the latter chattered. "I'm so eager to meet all of my new students. I'm Professor Flitwick, by the way, and you're - oh!" His white eyebrows shot upward. "You must be the Omninihils!" He trotted towards the trio of students, reaching out a short arm to shake Kira's hand. "How very exciting." The silent boy turned for a moment toward Professor Flitwick with a look of disgust, ran his fingers through his wavy hair, and rested his elbows on his desk, replacing his head in his hands.

Kira gazed down at the Professor, looking distinctly nervous at the wizard's exhilaration. "Hi," she managed. This thrilled Flitwick even more.

"What a sweet child! You know, you remind me of my granddaughter. You don't know a Lotus Flitwick, do you? Of course you don't; she lives in Tibet. Here, come find a desk…" Gesturing wildly, he led the group to the front of the room, somehow managing not to trip over his robes. "You sit here, and you there, and you right here… there!" Before they knew it, the Omninihils were lined up in a row - Liam, then Kira, and Odelia sitting beside Tall Boy, who pretended she wasn't there.

Odelia arranged her books, parchment and quills on her desk as several other students - Slytherins, Odelia remembered from her schedule - trooped in, Flitwick beaming blissfully at them. They seated themselves behind the Omninihils and Tall Boy. Kira looked rather uneasy at the prospect of people staring at the back of her head; Liam began doing origami with a piece of parchment. After a few moments passed with no more students entering, Flitwick cleared his throat.

"Well, then. Everyone here?" Silence greeted his inquiry.

"Everyone who isn't hear, raise your hand," Odelia suggested. Her classmates snorted or giggled at this; Tall Boy groaned.

Flitwick chuckled merrily. "That's a good one, indeed it is. I suppose I'll have to call roll then." He consulted a roll of parchment. "Edward Berry?"

"Here."

"Wallace Cunningham… Lucinda Engle…" He then came to "Garland Fairfax," and Tall Boy raised his head to face the Professor. Odelia noticed that the young wizard had a thin nose and languid yellow-green eyes.

"My name is Fairfax Garland." He enunciated each syllable with slow and painful accuracy. "Professor McGonagall made an error during the Sorting." After forcing Professor Flitwick to break eye contact, Fairfax let his head droop again, as if the effort of speaking were too much to bear. Odelia was intrigued; she had never encountered anyone with such mannerisms.

"Uh, right then. I'll correct that." With a somewhat less enthusiastic smile, Flitwick continued down the list of Slytherins and then Omninihils. As he did this, Odelia scribbled, "That must have been embarrassing" on a piece of parchment and slid it onto Fairfax's desk with the tip of her wand. Watching out of the corner of her eye, she watched Fairfax raise a chilled eyebrow, brush his quill against his chin, and write something under Odelia's words. The witch moved her hand nonchalantly toward the left side of her desk and felt the parchment being pushed under her pinky finger.

A downward flick of her eye showed Fairfax's message, written in neat jade script. "Yes. So?" Odelia shrugged her left shoulder and returned her attention to Flitwick.

"Does anyone here have a wand that specializes in Charms?" the little man asked brightly. Liam grudgingly raised his hand, as did Helen Morrow and Wallace Cunningham. "Excellent, excellent."

"Mine's good for Transfiguration," Kira whispered to Odelia.

"I don't know what mine's for. I inherited it," Odelia muttered back, gazing contemplatively at the length of white pine. A small ball of parchment landed on her desk, and she hastily unwrapped it to see, written in the familiar green ink, "I thought each person's wand only worked for that person."

Odelia continued, in a slightly louder voice, "After my great-aunt died, all of my cousins and such tried her wand out. It didn't work for anyone until I made sparkly bubbles come out of it." As she spoke, she folded the parchment into a little box and decorated the sides with swirls of ink. Then she flicked her finger at it, sending it skittering back toward Fairfax.

"Sparkly bubbles? That's cool," responded Kira. "A green spiral thing came out of mine. I thought it was a snake at first and I dropped the wand." Her face reddened at the memory.

"Confetti came out of mine," Liam added. Professor Flitwick glanced at the three Omninihils with a surprisingly suspicious expression on his normally benevolent face, and they wisely fell silent.

"The Levitating Charm is really quite simple; just concentrate on the way you wave your wand. Keep your wrist loose and your fingers tight, and let the wand /swish/. Here, try it." At Flitwick's command, the students dutifully swished. "Yes, yes, that's right! Very good, Kira! Put some energy into it, Fairfax! Oh, very nice, Helen! No, Odelia, it's not a conductor's baton. Liam, keep that wrist loose - that's better." He bustled about the room, looking extremely pleased. After circling the room counter-clockwise twice and clockwise once, he returned to his desk.

"Now you are ready to try the charm." The tone of his voice conveyed that this was a great honor. "Put your quill in front of you, point your wand at it, and repeat after me. Wingardium Leviosa!" Chaos ensued. Liam's feather went flying to the back of the room, where it nestled in Donovan Harper's hair. Kira's began to circle her wand like a miniature tornado. Fairfax induced his quill to rise a few centimeters, where it determinedly stayed suspended in the air despite his efforts to tug on it.

Odelia watched carefully, forehead creased in a frown, as her own quill levitated slowly. One centimeter, two, three - she felt her eyes getting tired but had a feeling that the feather would fall if she looked away. Four, five, six… the plume pushed its way through the air. Odelia held her breath and held her wand in a trembling hand. Seven, eight, nine. The feather hovered for a moment and drifted gracefully back to the desk.

"Nice job," commented Flitwick with a nod of approval. Most of the students had done better on their second tries. Liam and Helen Morrow were urging their feathers upward - both were close to the ceiling - to see whose would go higher, and Fairfax had gotten his feather to move one centimeter upwards.

Odelia turned to Kira, whose feather had calmed down slightly. "Didn't know these things had minds of their own," muttered the redhead, watching her quill turn cartwheels. "I'll think twice next time I pull one apart when I'm bored…" Her floating feather immediately tried to poke itself up her nose. "Aaah! Help!" Odelia moved two fingers like pincers and firmly pulled the feather away from her friend.

"Don't say things like that around an animate object," she advised. "You never know what ideas it might get into its head - I mean its mind - or whatever." Turning to her own quill, she touched her fingertip to the end of her wand for good luck and attempted the levitation spell again.

--

By the time class was over, each student had performed the levitation charm successfully. Odelia managed to float her feather twelve centimeters, nothing extraordinary but perfectly respectable for a first try. Liam and Helen declared a truce when both of their quills reached the ceiling, and the mysterious Fairfax rested his arm on his still-levitating feather and spent the remainder of the class staring off into space.

The next class was Herbology, held in a greenhouse and taught by a no-nonsense witch called Professor Sprout, who was also Head of Hufflepuff. When the Omninihils entered the warm green space, Professor Sprout's face lit up at the sight of Odelia.

"You must be Odette's sister!" she exclaimed with a gesture of welcome. "I've heard all about you."

"I'm sure you have," Odelia managed, smiling politely with her fists clenched inside her pockets. "Odette talks about you too." Professor Sprout seemed pleased at this and guided Odelia, Liam and Kira to a table with three other students.

"Hi," smiled a wide-eyed girl with her hair in two braids. "I'm Iris Brightling. Are you the Omninihils?"

"We're famous," Liam joked.

"Notorious," corrected Odelia.

"Elevated to the status of legends," was Kira's contribution.

A gracefully large boy with hands that looked as if they played an instrument tilted his head toward the notorious Omninihils. "Do you always complete each other's sentences?" The remaining student, a boy whose hat obscured his face, laughed.

"No, not normally," Odelia replied. "What's your name?"

"I'm Robert Axle," explained the boy with the hat, "And he's Devin Nero." He indicated the bigger boy. "We're in Hufflepuff; Iris is a Gryffindor."

"Iris can speak for herself, Robert," Iris interjected. "What are your names?"

"Liam Flynn, Kira Sellers and Odelia Delwin." Liam took the liberty of introducing his housemates. "Guess which one I am."

"Odelia," decided Robert, and narrowly avoided being hit with Liam's textbook.

"No, she's Odelia, right?" Devin gestured (he didn't point; Odelia figured that his parents were similar to her own) at Odelia. She smiled, bemused.

"Spot on," she assured. "How'd you know?"

The tips of Devin's ears turned red. "I, uh, met your sister - Odette." He spoke Odette's name as if it were poetry. "You kind of look alike, except - except she's older." The redness crept down the boy's ears, threatening to overwhelm his face.

Liam sniggered unabashedly. "You'd better watch out, Odelia; if he can't go with your sister you might be his second choice."

Odelia swiftly jammed the corner of her textbook into Liam's stomach. "No I won't; I'll do that to him if that happens. I'm never going to be anyone's second choice." She bit out the last two words harshly. "Got it?"

"Got it," replied Liam, rubbing his stomach.

After a few more minutes of idleness, Professor Sprout addressed the class from the middle of the greenhouse. "Herbology is an often under appreciated branch of magic, but magical plants and herbs have saved thousands of lives and are found in a great many potions. Much of the work we'll be doing in this class will be hands-on, which I hope will be fun, but I expect you to treat these plants with respect and caution. Understood?" The class murmured assent. "Good. For your first assignment, you'll be working in small groups to collect seeds from the Nipping Night-Bloom. Use pincers; they will bite."

"Why are we collecting the seeds?" queried Iris hesitantly.

"Very good question, Iris," replied Sprout. Odelia wondered if the Professor favored students named after plants. "The seeds of the Nipping Night-Bloom are very spicy and one of the main ingredients in Pepper-Up Potion. Many of the fruits of our lessons-" ("No pun intended," Odelia muttered) "- will be used to assist Madam Pomfrey in the Infirmary."

By unspoken consent, the three Omninihils worked with Iris, Devin and Robert. Robert waved his hat at the plant to distract it while Kira and Devin held it still and Odelia used the pincers to meticulously pluck each seed. Liam and Iris organized the seeds into neat piles and speculated as to how long it would take for the plant to get Robert's hat.

"This is so much better than maths," Kira declared, smiling benevolently at the plant that was attempting to bite her.

"Yeah," agreed Robert, "This place is the best - the food tastes like real food instead of cardboard. But I wish the castle had some of those statue things on it - what are they called again? Gargles?"

Odelia stifled a giggle, causing her to drop a seed. "I think you mean gargoyles," she corrected, rescuing the kernel.

"Them too," amended Robert.

"I see your eyes of hazel glow brighter than the stars… more beautiful than Venus, and more ruthless than cold Mars…" muttered Devin.

"Huh?" Liam shot Devin an "are you crazy?" look.

Devin grinned nervously. "Oh, sorry. Just thinking out loud. I do that sometimes. Do you ever do that? I've heard that lots of people do…"

"Keep your mind on the job and off Odelia's sister," instructed Kira. Devin meekly complied.

The class was over after what seemed like a short time; joking and collecting seeds was more fun than making feathers levitate. Iris and the other Gryffindors joined the Omninihils in traveling to the Transfiguration classroom back inside Hogwarts.

Professor McGonagall, the stern-looking witch from the Sorting, awaited the class at the front of her room. Odelia sat next to Liam and Nora Andrews, a Gryffindor, letting her mind wander as McGonagall gave a speech on the importance and difficulty of Transfiguration. Odelia smiled slightly, noticing that each teacher considered his or her own subject the most important.

"Just do your best; few students manage to turn it completely into a needle on the first day," McGonagall finished, passing matches around.

"Um, are we authorized to have matches in school?" a Gryffindor boy asked nervously.

"Well, nobody complains about Quidditch matches," Odelia quipped. A dangerous look from McGonagall quelled the students, and Odelia set to work on her match. She glanced from it to her wand and back again. Needle; needle… what was the difference between a match and a needle? A needle was silver. Odelia touched her wand to the match, willing the later to become the same silvery tint as the former. Slowly the brown wood turned gray, then argentine.

Good match. Odelia held the object in her left hand, wand still gripped in her right. Now it had to be heavier, more solid. Pack those molecules together, she begged the match. Change your elemental makeup. This took longer, but she could feel the match growing heavier in her hand. Smooth, she instructed, smooth and shiny. Command flowed from her mind to her arm to her hand to her wand to the match. Metal, metal… she remembered her mother's pep talk to Odette before the older girl's first year at Hogwarts.

"Show your mettle!" Mara Delwin had coached.

Metal. Mettle. Show your metal. Odelia's mind began to merge with her wand; needle metal silver pointy solid shiny cold sharp change change change!

"What," Professor McGonagall demanded, "Is that?" For a moment Odelia feared that she herself was being addressed, but it turned out that McGonagall was speaking to Kira. The curly-tressed witch drew back from the teacher's gaze. On Kira's desk was a fully Transfigured needle, but it was a wooden knitting needle.

"Um, sorry," Kira stuttered. "I, well, my dad knits, see, and when you said a needle, I thought of a knitting needle, not on purpose you know but it just happened."

"Your dad knits?" Meadow Yule, a girl with wispy hair and a voice to match, asked incredulously. A few other students chuckled. Kira turned to face them with a rare fire in her eyes.

"Yeah," she affirmed, daring anyone to respond, "He knits."

"Cool," sighed Meadow enviously. "I wish my da did something besides Transfiguring buttons all day."

"As much as I'm sure this is helping you bond, I'm afraid I must request that you stay on task," McGonagall reminded. Odelia didn't need a second command; the challenge of changing one thing to another with pure will was like nothing she'd encountered before. By the time class was over, she had a pointy piece of metallic silvery wood. "Not bad," commented McGonagall; Odelia beamed.

"Yes!" Liam exclaimed as he walked out the door, "Lunch!" Odelia rolled her eyes and did a McGonagall impression.

"If you paid the same attention to your lessons as you pay your meals," she lectured, "You could be a very promising student."

"I'd rather eat, thanks," replied Liam.

--

I know I promised Ignatius and Selena in this chapter, but it just didn't work with the schedule. I promise they'll be in chapter six, as will Aura. A plot will emerge eventually.