My first day of classes flew by swiftly. All of the teachers knew me and
were impressed with how quickly I'd learned over the summer. Except for
McGonagall, that is. James and I walked into class and took seats in the
middle (I wanted to sit in the front and he was a fan of the back row, so
we compromised). I sat up straight, but James slouched a bit, talking to a
boy named Matt that we'd only just met. When Professor McGonagall walked
into the room, everything got quiet. She took out a piece of parchment and
called role. Once we had all responded, she surveyed the room; some of my
classmates actually flinched under her piercing gaze. James whispered a
joke and I chuckled a bit, but soon I realized that I'd made a huge
mistake.
"Potter! Weasley!" James sat up straight immediately, cowering under her stare. She continued, "There will be no fooling around in this class. That goes for the rest of you as well."
Welcome to Transfiguration.
She began to speak again, but was interrupted by the opening of the door. In walked Charlotte Bronte. But she was placed in Hufflepuff, this class was a Gryffindor and Ravenclaw class, why was she here? She handed a note to McGonagall and waited for her to finish reading it. The professor nodded and Charlotte took a seat in the front row.
"Class," McGonagall said, "I'm sure that you all recall Ms. Bronte's turn of events with the Sorting Hat last night? The Headmaster and Professors Weasley and Snape have determined that Ms. Bronte shows the exemplary characteristics of a Gryffindor, and she will be joining that house."
I groaned a little too loudly, for McGonagall shot me another look. If there was one person (other than Mum) that I didn't want to piss off, it was Minerva McGonagall.
"Will someone define Transfiguration for me, please?" she asked the class. I raised my hand high at such a simple question, and found that someone else knew the answer as well. "Next time, Mr. Weasley," Professor McGonagall said to me. "Ms. Bronte, can you answer the question, please?"
Charlotte put her hand down and smugly said, "Transfiguration, Professor, can be defined as the manual change of an object from one state to another by an outside body." She turned around and shot me an "I'm-better-than-you" glance.
"Five points to Gryffindor," McGonagall told her.
Indeed, I did answer the next question. Charlotte answered the one after that. I answered the one after that. And so ensued the intellectual battle between Charlotte and I. I could see that I would clearly have a run for my money on my way to the top of the class, but I was up for the challenge. I walked out of the classroom, fuming.
"This is war, Weasley," Charlotte said as she passed me, purposely bumping into me and making me drop my books. I didn't bother to pick them up.
Instead, I looked her in the eye and narrowed my gaze, hoping to intimidate her. That didn't work, for she only did the same. "Bring it on," I told her, emphasizing every syllable. She turned away and stomped off down the hallway as I bent down to pick up my books.
"I dunno, mate," James said as he clapped my on the shoulder. "Either I want to kill her, or I'm starting to like her. I rolled my eyes at my cousin. He had girls on the brain, sometimes. We walked back to Gryffindor tower and exchanged our books before going to Defense Against the Dark Arts.
I was especially looking forward to her class; she had never let me sit in on one. Everyone liked her because of her energy, and she made learning fun. All of her students looked forward to the moments when she would forget and tell a story from her Auror days, or (better yet) her school days with Dad and Uncle Harry.
We tried to arrive at the classroom early to beat the mad scramble for front row seats, but the door was locked and everyone was lined up outside. Mum could be seen down the hallway, heatedly talking with Professor Delacour, the new Divination professor. It appeared as if they were both on the brink of exploding into a shouting match. We all looked on intently, hoping that Mum would just haul off and curse her.
"Come on, give it to her, Professor!" Jessie was muttering next to Fiona.
Professor Delacour, though, stomped off huffily and Mum walked collectedly toward the classroom. It appeared that she had won the row, which wasn't a surprise. In a battle of the wits, no one could beat Mum. Dad could give her a run for her money in shouting matches though.
Mum tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. She rummaged around in her briefcase for her wand, and whispered an opening charm, but the door still remained stolid.
"Sorry, dearie, but I don't know who you are," the door said in a cheerfully shrill voice. Some of the Muggle-born students jumped and gasped here and there. "I can't let you in if I don't know who you are. What if I was letting a criminal in this classroom? Now, come on then, tell me your name and your business, or I won't open up."
"I'm Professor Weasley, now-"
"Sorry, what's your full name?" the door asked.
Mum sighed exasperatedly before impatiently saying, "Hermione Granger- Weasley. Open up please?"
"What's your business inside this classroom, then?"
"I have to teach my class, so you'd better open up within the next five seconds, or I'll have to blow you into thousands of tiny pieces. I've given you fair warning, now."
"Sorry, I'll have to know a little bit more about you before I can do that," the door said again.
"That's it," Mum said. "Class, stand back, please? Esau-"
The door swung open before she could utter the rest of the spell.
"Thank you," Mum said as she put her wand back into her briefcase and we followed her inside. "New classroom this year," she explained to us. "They have to get to know you before they really trust you. Sorry about that."
We all took our seats. There was one left in the front row, but wouldn't you know, Charlotte beat me to it. She gave me a haughty little look as I took a seat next to James in the third row. Mum called role, as all teachers did at the start of class.
As if she couldn't help it, one Hufflepuff named Anna raised her hand before Mum could even speak or sit down.
Mum looked a little surprised, but said, "Yes, Anna Marie?"
"Just 'Anna' is fine, Professor, but…could you tell us about when you were in school? I've heard so much about you, and I'd like to know how much was myth. Could you tell us a story about you and Ron Weasley and Harry Potter?" Anna asked, all very fast.
Mum rested her hands on her desk, leaning forward on them. "Well, Anna, there was this one time when the three of us ran into the Forbidden Forrest under the orders of the Headmaster. And the strangest things started happening. First, we started remembering things that we didn't even know that we knew."
"Like what?" asked a boy named Douglass as the class leaned forward in suspense.
"Well, we remembered that…" (A gasp from the class) "Defense Against the Dark Arts Class is very important and for learning, not stories," she said as we all sat back in disappointment. Mum caught my eye and winked at me before continuing with her class expectations, rules, and curriculum. She assigned our homework (Read Chapter One and take notes with a summary of fifteen inches of centimeters of parchment by tomorrow) and told us that we need not worry about bringing books to class the rest of this week, only our wands.
Mum's class was a bit of a disappointment for all of us. We were expecting exciting stories about Death Eaters, or even about some of their battles with Voldemort. I had heard the story of his death many times, though, so it really wouldn't have been entirely fascinating:
Voldemort had been betrayed by one of his own followers who had previously been under the influence of the Imperius Curse- my uncle, Percy Weasley. Uncle Percy claimed to have been controlled by Voldemort during his sentence in Azkaban after Mum had convicted him. In his appeal, he said that he would prove his innocence by telling the Ministry the whereabouts of the Dark lord. The Ministry took this gesture to mean that he was innocent. He led the most powerful team of aurors- Sirius Black, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore- to Voldemort's hideout. They captured him and brought him to Azkaban where they debated his fate. Mum and Dumbledore stopped the Ministry from acting on what they had proposed: they had planned on bringing in the living families of his victims to watch him tortured until he succumbed to death. Mum and Dumbledore convinced them not to torture him, lest they yield to the cruelty that had destroyed the life of Tom Marvolo Riddle. They had let him live long enough for the screams of his victims echo in his ears as they killed him while the entire wizarding world watched from their fireplaces as Uncle Sirius, Uncle Harry, Mum, Dad, Mr. Lupin, and Professor Dumbledore said the curse that would kill the most evil being in all the world. The word of Mum's mercy spread and the people loved her even more…but that's another story entirely.
Although the story was familiar to me, not everyone had heard it; after all, it had happened long before we were born. Since then, Mum had retired as an auror, occasionally working as an attorney on the Ministry's more challenging cases. Dad was a doctor of Magical Animal Research and Biology, and head of the Magical Creatures Department in the Ministry. Uncle Harry, now retired from Quidditch, was Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports.
Quite often, I think that Aunt Ginny knew how I felt. She had to grow up with "The Three Musketeers", as they were often called. Well, I wouldn't be like Aunt Ginny. I would probe to everyone that I was much more than Ron and Hermione's son. Everyone would remember Landon Ronald Weasley that was for sure.
I set down my goblet of pumpkin juice with resolve, causing my cousin to look at me oddly. He shrugged and went back to flirting with Alice Patil, a third year who was, by far, out of his league.
There was a rumble of voices in the Great Hall as whispers flew throughout. A tall man with killer sunglasses, a briefcase slung over his shoulder that was covered by a designer leather jacket, a suit (minus coat and tie) and flaming red hair walked in between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff house tables and ruffled up my matching hair.
My dad was the coolest.
Everyone in the school knew him; he came to just spend time with Mum (for being married for awhile they sure were in love), take her out to lunch, or just take his regular seat at the staff table. He kissed her on the cheek (oblivious to the fact that the entire Great Hall was watching), and gained a particularly nasty glare from Professor Snape who despised every emotion that wasn't hatred or cynicism.
Dad was still unaware that the entire school was listening when he told Snape, "Look, just because you haven't gotten any in the past three hundred years doesn't mean that you have to take it out on those of us who have, thank you very much."
We all gasped, alerting Dad to our continuous eavesdropping. His ears turned a bit red, and under normal circumstances, Mum would have been the first person to yell at him for setting a bad example. Not today, though, for her hand was clapped over her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle her laughter. The Headmaster, of all people, began to chuckle softly, and soon we were all doubled over in laughter.
"Way to go, Dr. Weasley!" someone yelled.
"Awesome, Uncle Ron!"
Of course, I had to put in my six pence, "Yeah, Dad!"
The laughter subsided after a bit, and Dad sat down at his seat and pulled a folder out of his briefcase that he and Mum began pouring over. I went back to trying to convincing James that Alice Patil was most definitely not interested. James, ever the optimist (or just full of himself, I sometimes wonder about that), refused to listen.
"Chill, Landon, I can handle this. It's all under control. Check this out, I saw it on a Muggle fellytision-"
"Television."
"Whatever, I saw it on a Muggle TV show." He turned to Alice, who had previously ignored all of his futile advances (rightfully so, if you ask me), and said to her, "How you doin'?"
I nearly sprayed pumpkin juice all over the table. He forgot that my Mum was Muggle-born, and we had a television, thank you very much. Alice Patil looked at him as if he'd sprouted a third nostril before going back to her conversation with our cousin, David (Uncle Bill's son).
"Sorry mate," I told him.
"What do you mean, sorry? She looked at me, dude! She's caught in my tractor beam, now! Why, any day now, she'll be in the clutches of James Potter- the chick magnet, the manly man, the babe machine, and the studliest of the wudliest!"
"What's a 'wudliest'?" I asked, but my question was ignored when Charlotte Bronte walked in carrying an armful of books. She dropped them on the table with a thud and sat down in the only available seat. I was having such good luck today, that it turned out that the only empty seat was next to James.
"Whoa, Bronte! What are you trying to do, read the entire library?" James asked.
"Actually," she replied while helping herself to a biscuit and apparently not catching his sarcasm, "I have a few goals. First, I'm going to beat Weasley here to the top of the class. Second, I'm going to break all of those records that his mother set."
"No one can beat my Mum," I said, my dander rising.
"I don't think that she was that smart, if you ask me," Charlotte said with disdain.
Weasley hair brings Weasley temper. Granger brains bring Granger wit.
"Well, you know what? No one did ask you. And if you weren't a girl, I'd hit you so hard that when you came to, you'd be the oldest first year in Hogwarts history!"
Case in point.
Charlotte stood up, as if to challenge me, and I stood up as well. She opened her mouth to say something in rebuttal, but someone could be heard calling my name, making me turn away.
"Oy! Landon!" Dad was calling. I walked up to the staff table and he handed me the aforementioned folder. Inside was a picture of a huge house, as well as pictures of room upon room and every angle of landscape that you could ever ask to see. I looked up.
"What do you think?" Dad asked me.
"What would you think if we moved there?" Mum asked me.
"I like it; we're moving?" I asked.
Mum and Dad exchanged a glance before Dad said, "We're thinking about it. Would you like to live there?" In Dad language- we're moving, so you'd better get used to it.
"Awesome! When are we moving?" I said. In Landon language- well I have to, so I'd better make the best of it.
"Don't get to excited," Mum said, "It's in Italy." In Mum language- it's going to suck. That would mean that I would have to leave my friends, my family, and everything that I had ever known. It didn't cross my mind that Mum and Dad would be making the same sacrifices. Even though Mum and Dad were asking my opinion, I knew that the decision had been made. I also had a feeling that there was something that they weren't telling me, but hey, that was Mum and dad.
I put on a grin anyway, and said, "It looks great! When are we moving?"
"In two weeks," Mum answered, confirming my suspicion that this decision had been made quite some time ago. Something was up, then. Never had I once heard them say anything about moving; or about moving to Italy, no less.
The students began to file out of the Hall, and I followed after saying goodbye to Mum and Dad.
Dad apparently didn't realize the impact of his little comment to Snape that was made at lunch. I had Potions next, and Snape made my hour and a half a living hell. He split James and me up, and partnered me with a Luke Adamson, a Slytherin. That wasn't as bad as James, though. He got stuck with Charlotte. He didn't really seem to mind, though. They were laughing it up over something or other. So, James had sunk to an all-time low in my mind. He was chatting up the girl who was steadily becoming my arch nemesis. But then again, James could chat-up anything female that moved.
Snape circled the room, sneering at the students' work. It turned out that Luke Adamson was a step away from being a squib, so I ended up doing the majority of the work on our Melting Potion (a rather hard potion for the first day of school, if you ask me). The class went by painfully slowly, and I was so thankful to be out of the soggy smell of the dungeons.
James and Charlotte were walking in front of me, and I head snippets of their conversation:
"That class wasn't so bad," Charlotte said. "I heard that Snape was horrible. Oh, and he is, of course, but I had fun."
"Me too," James said.
Honestly, you'd think that they'd just come home from a date the way they were talking.
"I have to be honest, you're not as bad as I thought that you would be. It's a shame that your friend isn't more like you."
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"Yeah, well," James said, "Landon's like that sometimes. You get used to it. But he's a pretty cool guy, cut him some slack."
My own best friend was barely defending me. I took out my timetable to see that we had a free period. There was no way that I was going back to the Common Room to watch him and Bronte flirting all period. So I did the next best thing; I went to the library.
I threw my bag down by a comfy armchair, getting a wart glance from Mister Redman, the librarian, but I didn't care. I went to the bookshelf containing "Hogwarts: Yet Another Revised History" and flipped it open to the index to find Mum's name. There was a whole chapter on the "Three Musketeers" I found, and sat down to read all of it. I saw that Mum had set the school record for O.W.Ls (20- the highest was previously 15) and N.E.W.Ts (175, previously 160). So now I had my goal. I would get a 25 on my O.W.Ls and a 180 on my N.E.W.Ts.
Take that, Hermione Granger.
For me the next few weeks of school, I studied more than anyone on the face of the planet. I spent every waking moment in the library. On the night of the Halloween Feast, I ran to the library to avoid questions from my cousins. I found that the library was closed, but I saw a light flickering inside. I pushed open the door as quietly as I could and found Mum sitting at one of the tables, engrossed in a gigantic tome. The old floor creaked, alerting her to my presence.
"Landon? Darling, what are you doing here? Why aren't you at the feast?" she asked me.
"Oh, I came to study," I said proudly, hoping that she would be euphoric about this revelation. Instead, she laughed at me.
"Landon, please, I'm your mother. I know when something is bothering you," she said, closing the large volume and disappearing into the restricted section to deposit it on its proper shelf.
"Really, I want to study," I said as she reappeared. She gave me one of those skeptical Mum looks, saying quite plainly that she in no way believed me.
However, she answered by saying, "All right. The library is closed, though."
"Well…" I said, hopefully, "If I had special permission from a teacher and I was supervised…"
"Sorry," she said, putting her arm around me, "I'm off to meet your Dad and Uncle Harry for dinner."
"Why do you always go out on Halloween without Aunt Ginny, Mum?" I asked her.
She smiled rather wistfully. "It's our anniversary," she said. "We became friends on October the thirty-first…let's see, twenty-five years ago today."
I didn't get it, but I nodded anyway. I walked down to the Feast and took a seat next to James. Much to my dismay, he was sitting with Charlotte.
"Nice of you to join us, dude," he said. "I thought that you'd died or something." He went back to talking to Charlotte about something, or someone- I'm not sure which, and I realized for the first time how much I had missed while in the library. I asked myself then- are grades, records, and such as important as friends?
I noticed, also, that James and Charlotte had become quite popular for first-years. Everyone seemed to know them…and not just in Gryffindor, either. People from other houses would come over and say hello to them. That rather upset me, because James had always been my best friend. Now I was sharing him with some girl that I hated with a passion.
Charlotte…she was just infuriating. She was showing me up in class, humiliating me sometimes, trying to prove that she was better than me. Now she was taking my best friend, too. Worse, my Mum liked her a lot! She was always praising her in class, and would call me up to her desk after class to ask why I wasn't working to my potential. She was stealing my mother! All right, so maybe that was a little melodramatic, but I was in quite an overreacting mood at the time; give me a break! I couldn't take it anymore, and shoved away from the table, walking up to my dormitory.
I picked up one of my favorite books- not a textbook, either, but a real novel. It was about a wizard who lost his powers and got trapped in the Muggle world. A pair of socks that the house-elves had just washed rolled off of my bed, and under James's. I crawled down to pick them up, and saw something etched on the bottom of his bed.
'Harry Potter' was carved in the wood. This had been Uncle Harry's bed. I looked under mine, and saw 'Ron Weasley' as well as 'RW+HG'. Weird. Of course, I scrawled a rather untidy 'Landon Weasley' underneath of Dad's name. Now my name would always be a part of Hogwarts.
James came in while I was under my bed, and screamed when he saw only my feet sticking out. I came out and he laughed.
"Dude! That was creepy!"
I laughed at him.
"I've got to show you something," he said, walking over to his trunk. "Look what my dad sent me!" He picked out something that was long and silvery and draped it over his shoulders. My eyes grew wide. "I know!" James exclaimed, before I could say anything. "It was his when he was in school, and his dad's before him. It probably goes back in our family generations before that. He said that I could only tell you- he only told your Dad." He took off the invisibility cloak and dug further in his trunk before pulling out a piece of rumpled parchment.
"What's that?" I asked.
James smiled mischievously, and took out his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said. Lines appeared like spiders all over it. "The Marauders Map," he announced. "Created by…ready for this? Created by James Potter- not me, but my grandfather- Peter Pettigrew, whoever the hell he is, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black."
"Awesome! We know who made it!" I said, looking at it closely, and seeing the labeled dots moving back and forth.
"I know!" James said. "Here's my idea. When did our dad's have their first adventure?"
I rolled my eyes. "In their first year," I said. "On Halloween."
"Right!" he exclaimed. "Grab your wand! Let's go!"
"What are we doing?" I asked, pulling on my sneakers and picking up my wand.
He shrugged. "We're having an adventure."
"Potter! Weasley!" James sat up straight immediately, cowering under her stare. She continued, "There will be no fooling around in this class. That goes for the rest of you as well."
Welcome to Transfiguration.
She began to speak again, but was interrupted by the opening of the door. In walked Charlotte Bronte. But she was placed in Hufflepuff, this class was a Gryffindor and Ravenclaw class, why was she here? She handed a note to McGonagall and waited for her to finish reading it. The professor nodded and Charlotte took a seat in the front row.
"Class," McGonagall said, "I'm sure that you all recall Ms. Bronte's turn of events with the Sorting Hat last night? The Headmaster and Professors Weasley and Snape have determined that Ms. Bronte shows the exemplary characteristics of a Gryffindor, and she will be joining that house."
I groaned a little too loudly, for McGonagall shot me another look. If there was one person (other than Mum) that I didn't want to piss off, it was Minerva McGonagall.
"Will someone define Transfiguration for me, please?" she asked the class. I raised my hand high at such a simple question, and found that someone else knew the answer as well. "Next time, Mr. Weasley," Professor McGonagall said to me. "Ms. Bronte, can you answer the question, please?"
Charlotte put her hand down and smugly said, "Transfiguration, Professor, can be defined as the manual change of an object from one state to another by an outside body." She turned around and shot me an "I'm-better-than-you" glance.
"Five points to Gryffindor," McGonagall told her.
Indeed, I did answer the next question. Charlotte answered the one after that. I answered the one after that. And so ensued the intellectual battle between Charlotte and I. I could see that I would clearly have a run for my money on my way to the top of the class, but I was up for the challenge. I walked out of the classroom, fuming.
"This is war, Weasley," Charlotte said as she passed me, purposely bumping into me and making me drop my books. I didn't bother to pick them up.
Instead, I looked her in the eye and narrowed my gaze, hoping to intimidate her. That didn't work, for she only did the same. "Bring it on," I told her, emphasizing every syllable. She turned away and stomped off down the hallway as I bent down to pick up my books.
"I dunno, mate," James said as he clapped my on the shoulder. "Either I want to kill her, or I'm starting to like her. I rolled my eyes at my cousin. He had girls on the brain, sometimes. We walked back to Gryffindor tower and exchanged our books before going to Defense Against the Dark Arts.
I was especially looking forward to her class; she had never let me sit in on one. Everyone liked her because of her energy, and she made learning fun. All of her students looked forward to the moments when she would forget and tell a story from her Auror days, or (better yet) her school days with Dad and Uncle Harry.
We tried to arrive at the classroom early to beat the mad scramble for front row seats, but the door was locked and everyone was lined up outside. Mum could be seen down the hallway, heatedly talking with Professor Delacour, the new Divination professor. It appeared as if they were both on the brink of exploding into a shouting match. We all looked on intently, hoping that Mum would just haul off and curse her.
"Come on, give it to her, Professor!" Jessie was muttering next to Fiona.
Professor Delacour, though, stomped off huffily and Mum walked collectedly toward the classroom. It appeared that she had won the row, which wasn't a surprise. In a battle of the wits, no one could beat Mum. Dad could give her a run for her money in shouting matches though.
Mum tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. She rummaged around in her briefcase for her wand, and whispered an opening charm, but the door still remained stolid.
"Sorry, dearie, but I don't know who you are," the door said in a cheerfully shrill voice. Some of the Muggle-born students jumped and gasped here and there. "I can't let you in if I don't know who you are. What if I was letting a criminal in this classroom? Now, come on then, tell me your name and your business, or I won't open up."
"I'm Professor Weasley, now-"
"Sorry, what's your full name?" the door asked.
Mum sighed exasperatedly before impatiently saying, "Hermione Granger- Weasley. Open up please?"
"What's your business inside this classroom, then?"
"I have to teach my class, so you'd better open up within the next five seconds, or I'll have to blow you into thousands of tiny pieces. I've given you fair warning, now."
"Sorry, I'll have to know a little bit more about you before I can do that," the door said again.
"That's it," Mum said. "Class, stand back, please? Esau-"
The door swung open before she could utter the rest of the spell.
"Thank you," Mum said as she put her wand back into her briefcase and we followed her inside. "New classroom this year," she explained to us. "They have to get to know you before they really trust you. Sorry about that."
We all took our seats. There was one left in the front row, but wouldn't you know, Charlotte beat me to it. She gave me a haughty little look as I took a seat next to James in the third row. Mum called role, as all teachers did at the start of class.
As if she couldn't help it, one Hufflepuff named Anna raised her hand before Mum could even speak or sit down.
Mum looked a little surprised, but said, "Yes, Anna Marie?"
"Just 'Anna' is fine, Professor, but…could you tell us about when you were in school? I've heard so much about you, and I'd like to know how much was myth. Could you tell us a story about you and Ron Weasley and Harry Potter?" Anna asked, all very fast.
Mum rested her hands on her desk, leaning forward on them. "Well, Anna, there was this one time when the three of us ran into the Forbidden Forrest under the orders of the Headmaster. And the strangest things started happening. First, we started remembering things that we didn't even know that we knew."
"Like what?" asked a boy named Douglass as the class leaned forward in suspense.
"Well, we remembered that…" (A gasp from the class) "Defense Against the Dark Arts Class is very important and for learning, not stories," she said as we all sat back in disappointment. Mum caught my eye and winked at me before continuing with her class expectations, rules, and curriculum. She assigned our homework (Read Chapter One and take notes with a summary of fifteen inches of centimeters of parchment by tomorrow) and told us that we need not worry about bringing books to class the rest of this week, only our wands.
Mum's class was a bit of a disappointment for all of us. We were expecting exciting stories about Death Eaters, or even about some of their battles with Voldemort. I had heard the story of his death many times, though, so it really wouldn't have been entirely fascinating:
Voldemort had been betrayed by one of his own followers who had previously been under the influence of the Imperius Curse- my uncle, Percy Weasley. Uncle Percy claimed to have been controlled by Voldemort during his sentence in Azkaban after Mum had convicted him. In his appeal, he said that he would prove his innocence by telling the Ministry the whereabouts of the Dark lord. The Ministry took this gesture to mean that he was innocent. He led the most powerful team of aurors- Sirius Black, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore- to Voldemort's hideout. They captured him and brought him to Azkaban where they debated his fate. Mum and Dumbledore stopped the Ministry from acting on what they had proposed: they had planned on bringing in the living families of his victims to watch him tortured until he succumbed to death. Mum and Dumbledore convinced them not to torture him, lest they yield to the cruelty that had destroyed the life of Tom Marvolo Riddle. They had let him live long enough for the screams of his victims echo in his ears as they killed him while the entire wizarding world watched from their fireplaces as Uncle Sirius, Uncle Harry, Mum, Dad, Mr. Lupin, and Professor Dumbledore said the curse that would kill the most evil being in all the world. The word of Mum's mercy spread and the people loved her even more…but that's another story entirely.
Although the story was familiar to me, not everyone had heard it; after all, it had happened long before we were born. Since then, Mum had retired as an auror, occasionally working as an attorney on the Ministry's more challenging cases. Dad was a doctor of Magical Animal Research and Biology, and head of the Magical Creatures Department in the Ministry. Uncle Harry, now retired from Quidditch, was Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports.
Quite often, I think that Aunt Ginny knew how I felt. She had to grow up with "The Three Musketeers", as they were often called. Well, I wouldn't be like Aunt Ginny. I would probe to everyone that I was much more than Ron and Hermione's son. Everyone would remember Landon Ronald Weasley that was for sure.
I set down my goblet of pumpkin juice with resolve, causing my cousin to look at me oddly. He shrugged and went back to flirting with Alice Patil, a third year who was, by far, out of his league.
There was a rumble of voices in the Great Hall as whispers flew throughout. A tall man with killer sunglasses, a briefcase slung over his shoulder that was covered by a designer leather jacket, a suit (minus coat and tie) and flaming red hair walked in between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff house tables and ruffled up my matching hair.
My dad was the coolest.
Everyone in the school knew him; he came to just spend time with Mum (for being married for awhile they sure were in love), take her out to lunch, or just take his regular seat at the staff table. He kissed her on the cheek (oblivious to the fact that the entire Great Hall was watching), and gained a particularly nasty glare from Professor Snape who despised every emotion that wasn't hatred or cynicism.
Dad was still unaware that the entire school was listening when he told Snape, "Look, just because you haven't gotten any in the past three hundred years doesn't mean that you have to take it out on those of us who have, thank you very much."
We all gasped, alerting Dad to our continuous eavesdropping. His ears turned a bit red, and under normal circumstances, Mum would have been the first person to yell at him for setting a bad example. Not today, though, for her hand was clapped over her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle her laughter. The Headmaster, of all people, began to chuckle softly, and soon we were all doubled over in laughter.
"Way to go, Dr. Weasley!" someone yelled.
"Awesome, Uncle Ron!"
Of course, I had to put in my six pence, "Yeah, Dad!"
The laughter subsided after a bit, and Dad sat down at his seat and pulled a folder out of his briefcase that he and Mum began pouring over. I went back to trying to convincing James that Alice Patil was most definitely not interested. James, ever the optimist (or just full of himself, I sometimes wonder about that), refused to listen.
"Chill, Landon, I can handle this. It's all under control. Check this out, I saw it on a Muggle fellytision-"
"Television."
"Whatever, I saw it on a Muggle TV show." He turned to Alice, who had previously ignored all of his futile advances (rightfully so, if you ask me), and said to her, "How you doin'?"
I nearly sprayed pumpkin juice all over the table. He forgot that my Mum was Muggle-born, and we had a television, thank you very much. Alice Patil looked at him as if he'd sprouted a third nostril before going back to her conversation with our cousin, David (Uncle Bill's son).
"Sorry mate," I told him.
"What do you mean, sorry? She looked at me, dude! She's caught in my tractor beam, now! Why, any day now, she'll be in the clutches of James Potter- the chick magnet, the manly man, the babe machine, and the studliest of the wudliest!"
"What's a 'wudliest'?" I asked, but my question was ignored when Charlotte Bronte walked in carrying an armful of books. She dropped them on the table with a thud and sat down in the only available seat. I was having such good luck today, that it turned out that the only empty seat was next to James.
"Whoa, Bronte! What are you trying to do, read the entire library?" James asked.
"Actually," she replied while helping herself to a biscuit and apparently not catching his sarcasm, "I have a few goals. First, I'm going to beat Weasley here to the top of the class. Second, I'm going to break all of those records that his mother set."
"No one can beat my Mum," I said, my dander rising.
"I don't think that she was that smart, if you ask me," Charlotte said with disdain.
Weasley hair brings Weasley temper. Granger brains bring Granger wit.
"Well, you know what? No one did ask you. And if you weren't a girl, I'd hit you so hard that when you came to, you'd be the oldest first year in Hogwarts history!"
Case in point.
Charlotte stood up, as if to challenge me, and I stood up as well. She opened her mouth to say something in rebuttal, but someone could be heard calling my name, making me turn away.
"Oy! Landon!" Dad was calling. I walked up to the staff table and he handed me the aforementioned folder. Inside was a picture of a huge house, as well as pictures of room upon room and every angle of landscape that you could ever ask to see. I looked up.
"What do you think?" Dad asked me.
"What would you think if we moved there?" Mum asked me.
"I like it; we're moving?" I asked.
Mum and Dad exchanged a glance before Dad said, "We're thinking about it. Would you like to live there?" In Dad language- we're moving, so you'd better get used to it.
"Awesome! When are we moving?" I said. In Landon language- well I have to, so I'd better make the best of it.
"Don't get to excited," Mum said, "It's in Italy." In Mum language- it's going to suck. That would mean that I would have to leave my friends, my family, and everything that I had ever known. It didn't cross my mind that Mum and Dad would be making the same sacrifices. Even though Mum and Dad were asking my opinion, I knew that the decision had been made. I also had a feeling that there was something that they weren't telling me, but hey, that was Mum and dad.
I put on a grin anyway, and said, "It looks great! When are we moving?"
"In two weeks," Mum answered, confirming my suspicion that this decision had been made quite some time ago. Something was up, then. Never had I once heard them say anything about moving; or about moving to Italy, no less.
The students began to file out of the Hall, and I followed after saying goodbye to Mum and Dad.
Dad apparently didn't realize the impact of his little comment to Snape that was made at lunch. I had Potions next, and Snape made my hour and a half a living hell. He split James and me up, and partnered me with a Luke Adamson, a Slytherin. That wasn't as bad as James, though. He got stuck with Charlotte. He didn't really seem to mind, though. They were laughing it up over something or other. So, James had sunk to an all-time low in my mind. He was chatting up the girl who was steadily becoming my arch nemesis. But then again, James could chat-up anything female that moved.
Snape circled the room, sneering at the students' work. It turned out that Luke Adamson was a step away from being a squib, so I ended up doing the majority of the work on our Melting Potion (a rather hard potion for the first day of school, if you ask me). The class went by painfully slowly, and I was so thankful to be out of the soggy smell of the dungeons.
James and Charlotte were walking in front of me, and I head snippets of their conversation:
"That class wasn't so bad," Charlotte said. "I heard that Snape was horrible. Oh, and he is, of course, but I had fun."
"Me too," James said.
Honestly, you'd think that they'd just come home from a date the way they were talking.
"I have to be honest, you're not as bad as I thought that you would be. It's a shame that your friend isn't more like you."
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"Yeah, well," James said, "Landon's like that sometimes. You get used to it. But he's a pretty cool guy, cut him some slack."
My own best friend was barely defending me. I took out my timetable to see that we had a free period. There was no way that I was going back to the Common Room to watch him and Bronte flirting all period. So I did the next best thing; I went to the library.
I threw my bag down by a comfy armchair, getting a wart glance from Mister Redman, the librarian, but I didn't care. I went to the bookshelf containing "Hogwarts: Yet Another Revised History" and flipped it open to the index to find Mum's name. There was a whole chapter on the "Three Musketeers" I found, and sat down to read all of it. I saw that Mum had set the school record for O.W.Ls (20- the highest was previously 15) and N.E.W.Ts (175, previously 160). So now I had my goal. I would get a 25 on my O.W.Ls and a 180 on my N.E.W.Ts.
Take that, Hermione Granger.
For me the next few weeks of school, I studied more than anyone on the face of the planet. I spent every waking moment in the library. On the night of the Halloween Feast, I ran to the library to avoid questions from my cousins. I found that the library was closed, but I saw a light flickering inside. I pushed open the door as quietly as I could and found Mum sitting at one of the tables, engrossed in a gigantic tome. The old floor creaked, alerting her to my presence.
"Landon? Darling, what are you doing here? Why aren't you at the feast?" she asked me.
"Oh, I came to study," I said proudly, hoping that she would be euphoric about this revelation. Instead, she laughed at me.
"Landon, please, I'm your mother. I know when something is bothering you," she said, closing the large volume and disappearing into the restricted section to deposit it on its proper shelf.
"Really, I want to study," I said as she reappeared. She gave me one of those skeptical Mum looks, saying quite plainly that she in no way believed me.
However, she answered by saying, "All right. The library is closed, though."
"Well…" I said, hopefully, "If I had special permission from a teacher and I was supervised…"
"Sorry," she said, putting her arm around me, "I'm off to meet your Dad and Uncle Harry for dinner."
"Why do you always go out on Halloween without Aunt Ginny, Mum?" I asked her.
She smiled rather wistfully. "It's our anniversary," she said. "We became friends on October the thirty-first…let's see, twenty-five years ago today."
I didn't get it, but I nodded anyway. I walked down to the Feast and took a seat next to James. Much to my dismay, he was sitting with Charlotte.
"Nice of you to join us, dude," he said. "I thought that you'd died or something." He went back to talking to Charlotte about something, or someone- I'm not sure which, and I realized for the first time how much I had missed while in the library. I asked myself then- are grades, records, and such as important as friends?
I noticed, also, that James and Charlotte had become quite popular for first-years. Everyone seemed to know them…and not just in Gryffindor, either. People from other houses would come over and say hello to them. That rather upset me, because James had always been my best friend. Now I was sharing him with some girl that I hated with a passion.
Charlotte…she was just infuriating. She was showing me up in class, humiliating me sometimes, trying to prove that she was better than me. Now she was taking my best friend, too. Worse, my Mum liked her a lot! She was always praising her in class, and would call me up to her desk after class to ask why I wasn't working to my potential. She was stealing my mother! All right, so maybe that was a little melodramatic, but I was in quite an overreacting mood at the time; give me a break! I couldn't take it anymore, and shoved away from the table, walking up to my dormitory.
I picked up one of my favorite books- not a textbook, either, but a real novel. It was about a wizard who lost his powers and got trapped in the Muggle world. A pair of socks that the house-elves had just washed rolled off of my bed, and under James's. I crawled down to pick them up, and saw something etched on the bottom of his bed.
'Harry Potter' was carved in the wood. This had been Uncle Harry's bed. I looked under mine, and saw 'Ron Weasley' as well as 'RW+HG'. Weird. Of course, I scrawled a rather untidy 'Landon Weasley' underneath of Dad's name. Now my name would always be a part of Hogwarts.
James came in while I was under my bed, and screamed when he saw only my feet sticking out. I came out and he laughed.
"Dude! That was creepy!"
I laughed at him.
"I've got to show you something," he said, walking over to his trunk. "Look what my dad sent me!" He picked out something that was long and silvery and draped it over his shoulders. My eyes grew wide. "I know!" James exclaimed, before I could say anything. "It was his when he was in school, and his dad's before him. It probably goes back in our family generations before that. He said that I could only tell you- he only told your Dad." He took off the invisibility cloak and dug further in his trunk before pulling out a piece of rumpled parchment.
"What's that?" I asked.
James smiled mischievously, and took out his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said. Lines appeared like spiders all over it. "The Marauders Map," he announced. "Created by…ready for this? Created by James Potter- not me, but my grandfather- Peter Pettigrew, whoever the hell he is, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black."
"Awesome! We know who made it!" I said, looking at it closely, and seeing the labeled dots moving back and forth.
"I know!" James said. "Here's my idea. When did our dad's have their first adventure?"
I rolled my eyes. "In their first year," I said. "On Halloween."
"Right!" he exclaimed. "Grab your wand! Let's go!"
"What are we doing?" I asked, pulling on my sneakers and picking up my wand.
He shrugged. "We're having an adventure."