Welcome to the seventh chapter! All Harry Potter characters are owned by J K Rowling. Grace belongs to Grace, one of the authors of this fic, and Katie belongs to Katie, the other author. Tam belongs to herself. The plot belongs to Grace and Katie, and this story is still dedicated to Tam who's moved far far away from us *sniffles* we miss you Tam!
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Chapter Seven - Hoggy Warty Hogwarts
The next day at breakfast McGonagall approached the three at their tables and handed them a piece of paper each, which displayed their class timetables. Tam studied hers. Today's read:
MONDAY
9 o'clock - Double Potions
Half past 10 - Double Herbology
12 o'clock - LUNCH
1 o'clock - Care of Magical Creatures
Half past 2 - History of Magic
"What've you got?" Draco asked, snatching the piece of paper. "Oh, well at least that's good. You've got Potions first up. Professor Snape is such a good teacher. He makes sure all us Slytherin pass every year. Not surprisingly, I haven't failed Potions final yet."
At that moment, students got up as breakfast finished and started to make their way out of the Great Hall to their classes. Tamara noticed a group of Hufflepuffs who all looked like they were suffering from Mondayitis. She bumped into Oliver and Katie after waving goodbye to Grace who was on her way to Charms.
"I've got double potions with you, Tam." Katie said, and then turned to Oliver. "What've you got now?"
"Muggle Studies, so I have to go." He replied, rolling his eyes at the disapproving snort Tam gave when he'd named the lesson.
"Sorry." She apologised. "We'll help you with your homework, okay?"
"Alright." Oliver said and left Tamara and Katie to venture down the steps to the cold dungeons where Professor Snape was waiting to start his lesson.
When they entered the ice-cold classroom, Tamara and Katie saw that a few Gryffindor and Slytherin students were already seated with their cauldrons and books out on the tables in front of them.
Suddenly, their view of the classroom was blocked by a sweeping figure. Professor Severus Snape looked down his hooked nose at them, and Katie and Tam were able to get a good view of his sharp eyes, grease hair, and sallow skin.
"You must be the new Slytherin." He said to Tamara, stepping aside. He pointed to a table on the right-hand side of the room. "There is a seat for you right there. Please take out your books and equipment to begin the lesson."
Tam hurried off to her seat, and Snape turned back to face Katie. "As for you, Gryffindor, you're late and, therefore, expect five points to be taken off your house for the lack of respect for the punctuality Hogwarts prides itself on." And he went back to his desk, leaving Katie to talk down the rows of desks to find a spare seat while trying to avoid all the smirks the Slytherins were giving her.
She found a spare space next to a girl from Gryffindor who leaned over and whispered "Don't worry about it, he does that all the time to us. And I'll bet my wand he made up that load about punctuality."
***********************************************
Four floors up and two corridors away, Grace was listening to tiny Professor Flitwick as he explained the function of the Fidelius Charm to the class.
"The Fideluis Charm is a very complex spell," he said. "It involves the concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul. The person guarding the secret is called the Secret Keeper." He looked around the room. "Can anyone think of a time when the Fideluis Charm would have been constantly used?" Professor Flitwick asked in his little voice. A dozen or so hands went up in the air. "Um … let's see. Yes, Miss Chang?" he said, picking the Asian-looking Ravenclaw Seeker to answer.
"Was it used in the dark times when You-Know-Who was in power?" she asked.
"Yes, well done Miss Chang! One point to Ravenclaw."
Grace was sitting a few seats behind Cho and tried to get a better look at one of the coolest Quidditch players in the Harry Potter books, which involved Grace leaning over on her chair, and unfortunately falling off it with a crash too. Everyone turned around and some people started laughing.
"Dear Lord, are you alright Miss –," the professor looked through his roll book " – Miss Fowler?"
"Oh, I'm fine, don't worry about me," Grace said, blushing furiously. "I was just looking for my pen. I mean quill. Oops, here it is! On my desk the whole time! Fancy that." And she slid back into her seat with her eyes glued to the cover of her "Standard Book of Spells" textbook.
Professor Flitwick continued. "I'd like each of you to read up on the Fidelius Charm in your books and write a summary on it, to be handed in to me next lesson. For now, we'll practice our Sonorus and Quietus Charms until next lesson. Remember to point the wand directly at your throat, and don't go over board on the Sonorus Charm, I don't think the other teachers would appreciate our noise level interrupting their classes."
Everyone picked up his or her wands. A real swotty boy in the front row decided to be a prat and performed the Quietus Charm on his friend. "Simon, you little git, sod off!" His friend managed to squeak out.
***********************************************
Back in Potions, Professor Snape was teaching the Slytherins and Gyrffindors how to brew a Diminishing Draught.
"This potion, when used properly," he began, emphasising the second part of the sentence in the Gyrffindors direction. "Will shrink the size of an object. One drop or so on the object is enough for it to take effect, and I will remind you that it does not work on humans."
He turned and wrote its ingredients on the blackboard and then the students began to prepare the ingredients for when it was time to add them into their cauldrons.
Tamara worked swiftly away on one side of the room, picking the wings off her cicadas and dropping the wings into her standard size 2 pewter cauldron. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the room, Katie was staring, horrified, at her pile of still winged cicadas.
"You'd better hurry up and get a move on before Professor Snape sees you and thinks you're bludging." The girl next to Katie stated. She had already de-winged her own cicadas and was already on to sorting her boomslang skin shreds.
"Don't…like…cicadas…" Katie shuddered, pushing them away.
Snape's eyes scanned the classroom warningly and Katie hurried to hide her cicadas behind her Potions textbook.
"Please, you have to help me!" she begged the girl next to her.
"Will you crush my beetle eyes for me?" the girl asked.
"Sure! Anything! Katie agreed and switched their cutting boards. A minute later, Katie's cauldron safely contained five or six pairs of silvery cicada wings, and Katie was free to quickly finish the Diminishing Draught before Professor Snape made his rounds between the work tables, praising Slytherin for their potions (using Tam's for a successful demonstration), and passing snide comments to the Gryffindors for their "pathetic excuses and attempts at the draught" even though their potions were the exact same shade of grey as the Slytherins.
Ten minutes before the end of the lesson, Professor Snape got the students to wash out their cauldrons and pack up. Katie purposely splashed some of her Diminishing Draught over the wingless cicadas, reducing them to the size of the beetle eyes they had used, before joining Tam at the sinks to clean her cauldron.
"Hey, what lesson have you got now?" Katie asked Tam.
"Double Herbology with Grace and the rest of the Ravenclaws, you?" "Transfiguration with my head of house…" Katie replied, glaring over at Snape. "Oh, and Oliver." She added with a grin.
The bell went then and they picked up their re-packed bags and walked up to the ground floor of the castle. Katie departed up the stairs to Transfiguration, saying hi to Grace who walked down the stairs to Tam.
"How'd you go?" Tam asked Grace.
"Pathetic." Grace replied sadly. "I could barely perform a Quietus Charm. My voice didn't go nearly as quiet as everyone else's, and then it was somehow too quiet for me to do the 'Sonorus' bit and make it louder again. But anyway, what did you guys do?" she asked as they walked outside in the direction of the greenhouses.
"Potions was a cinch!" Tam exclaimed. "We made Diminishing Draughts and mine worked when Snape tested it!" And to prove it, she brought a miniature quill out of her bag. "Snape offered to change it back to full size with the antidote, but I said I'd rather keep it this way, as a reminder of my first Potions lesson."
Grace grinned and let out a cough that sounded like "Suck up!".
They reached the greenhouse with the other Slytherins and Ravenclaws, and they all went in as a group to find Professor Sprout as she finished watering some plants.
"Are we all here then? Good. Gather round, gather round." She instructed and they all surrounded one of the long potting benches. "I hope you all brought your dragon hide gloves today- that's right, put them on now- because we are going to be dealing with a few types of poisonous plants today." She pointed to a pot on her left, which held a spiny purple plant that also appeared to be growing thin tendrils from its base. On Professor Sprout's right lay pots of thick, viny red plants. "This one," she pointed to her left "is a Verniolet plant, belonging to the 'Verniolet Spillindae' family, as it is scientifically called. And these red ones over here are Venomous Tentaculas. Now, today I'll be separating you into two groups. One group will work on the Verniolets, one will work on the Tentaculas."
Tam leaned over to Grace. "Wow, this level of Herbology sounds hard." She whispered, out of Professor Sprout's hearing range. Grace nodded seriously and tightened her gloves.
"The poison in the Venomous Tentaculas is stored in its vines." She picked one off the plant, making it recoil sharply, and cut the vine in half with a pair of shears. A thick, clear liquid resembling glue seeped out of the broken vine and into a storing bottle Professor Sprout has provided each of them. She lay the now dead vine aside, and moved to the Verniolets. "To extract the poison from these, we must first pick off a handful of its tendrils, like so, and use a mortar and pestle to crush them." She demonstrated, and after half a minute, she was left with a mushy pulp. "The poison in the Verniolet is actually in the tendril's stalk. We wash and strain out the sap, like this…and then the left over matter is stored and dried. After a month or so, it will then be a dense powder until it is crushed into a thinner substance. Any questions?"
Grace and Tam stared, completely lost, but a few students put their hands up. Professor Sprout chose a Slytherin student who asked, "What good is any of the poison?"
"Ah, excellent question, Mr. Pucey." Professor Sprout declared. "The poisons from both these plants are used as pesticides on wild, unmanageable weeds, and in potion making for quite a few concoctions. For more detail, I'm sure Professor Snape wouldn't mind answering your questions. Right then, if half of you wouldn't mind moving over to the other tables, I'll bring the plants over shortly."
Tam and Grace divided from the other half of the group and were given a Venomous Tentacula to work on for the rest if the lesson.
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Inside one of the many Hogwart's classrooms, Katie and Oliver Wood were copying Professor McGonagall's detailed Transfiguration notes from the blackboard. "This is so hard…" Katie muttered as she wrote down the methods of transfiguring solid objects into liquids, and even more challenging, turning solids into gases.
"Yeah, well this is your first Transfiguration lesson, and you're not exactly starting from the basics." Oliver reasoned. At that moment, Professor McGonagall supplied them all with one small piece of marble stone. "To transfigure the rock into liquid, point your wand at it and say 'Altera fluo!'"
Katie blinked, fiddling with her wand as she stared at the small piece of marble in front of her. Casting a glance at everyone around her who was having a go, she glanced over at Oliver who was having a good go. "Altera fluo!" he exclaimed, swishing and flicking his wand at the small stone in front of him.
What an accent… Katie thought half dreamily before she snapped out of it. You're in class! Do your damn work! She snapped to herself in her mind. Trust me to get sent through a portal to a place full of guys with British accent's…how am I supposed to concentrate?!?
"Have a go at it Katie, you won't break it or anything." Oliver encouraged as he tried time and time again.
"Oh great, now you've done it. You've jinxed me and now I'm going to blow up the entire classroom…" Katie moaned, collapsing on her desk, resting her head on her textbooks.
Oliver laughed and pulled her up again. "Oh come on. Most of us won't be able to get it by the end of the class and we've been here for seven years. You've been here for a few days and that's it. Just give it a go."
Katie sighed. "Fine…Altera fluo!" she swished her wand at the small marble shard and blinked. "Uhh…where'd it go?" she asked, brushing her fingers over where it had been. "It disappeared…"
"Erm…that wasn't supposed to happen…I have no idea what happened to it…" Oliver replied, as confused as Katie was. He put his piece of marble on her desk, and she tried again, but the same thing happened. She raised her hand to get Professor McGonagall's attention.
"Professor, I've lost my marbles…No pun intended." She added firmly, as Oliver sniggered beside her. Professor McGonagall came over to her desk and sighed. "I can't keep providing more objects to you students every lesson. You'll need to be more careful with what you're given." she said, frowning down her green, rectangular rimmed spectacles.
Katie began to protest. "But it's my first lesson! I don't know how to do much, yet!"
Professor McGonagall seemed to consent to this, but then looked down her nose at Oliver. "Where's your stone, Wood?"
"Please, Professor. I gave it to Katie, she lost hers…It just disappeared." He told her.
"Well…all right, but next time keep your own supplies, Wood. And if you need help Katie, ask me first before you ask a student." And she gave them each another piece of marble. Before she went back to her desk, Katie got Professor McGonagall to help her a little, and by the end of the lesson, she was able to turn the marble into a dense liquid, though it still had tiny granules in it.
Katie and Oliver went down to lunch with the other Gryffindors. When the bell went to signal the resumption of afternoon lessons, Katie rummaged through her bag for her timetable. Yanking it out, she looked at it, highly confused. She tapped Oliver on the arm while not looking away from the piece of parchment.
"Oliver, there has to be a mistake… There's a blank space beside to the next time I should have a lesson! A blank space! What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?"
"Look, calm down Katie… and stop tapping my arm!" Oliver said.
"Oops…" Katie grinned sheepishly and put her hand down.
"If there's a blank space, it just means you have a free lesson. See, there's one exactly like that on mine."
Katie looked at his timetable and breathed a sigh of relief.
"And did I or did I not promise that I would give you a quick flying lesson in our next free lesson?" Oliver smiled.
"Do I just use one of the school brooms?" Katie asked apprehensively. She knew the school brooms were extremely old and therefore, not very reliable.
"Ha! I don't THINK so!" Oliver cried. "You'll be using my Nimbus 1000. It's a bit old, but it's like a Firebolt compared to those twigs they have for brooms here."
They picked up their bags and walked out the doors in the Entrance Hall that led to the Quidditch Pitch.
***********************************************
Ooooooo!!!!!! What'll happen next? Bugger if we know!!! Nahhh.actually we have a few ideas up here.*taps forehead* So be prepared!
***********************************************
Chapter Seven - Hoggy Warty Hogwarts
The next day at breakfast McGonagall approached the three at their tables and handed them a piece of paper each, which displayed their class timetables. Tam studied hers. Today's read:
MONDAY
9 o'clock - Double Potions
Half past 10 - Double Herbology
12 o'clock - LUNCH
1 o'clock - Care of Magical Creatures
Half past 2 - History of Magic
"What've you got?" Draco asked, snatching the piece of paper. "Oh, well at least that's good. You've got Potions first up. Professor Snape is such a good teacher. He makes sure all us Slytherin pass every year. Not surprisingly, I haven't failed Potions final yet."
At that moment, students got up as breakfast finished and started to make their way out of the Great Hall to their classes. Tamara noticed a group of Hufflepuffs who all looked like they were suffering from Mondayitis. She bumped into Oliver and Katie after waving goodbye to Grace who was on her way to Charms.
"I've got double potions with you, Tam." Katie said, and then turned to Oliver. "What've you got now?"
"Muggle Studies, so I have to go." He replied, rolling his eyes at the disapproving snort Tam gave when he'd named the lesson.
"Sorry." She apologised. "We'll help you with your homework, okay?"
"Alright." Oliver said and left Tamara and Katie to venture down the steps to the cold dungeons where Professor Snape was waiting to start his lesson.
When they entered the ice-cold classroom, Tamara and Katie saw that a few Gryffindor and Slytherin students were already seated with their cauldrons and books out on the tables in front of them.
Suddenly, their view of the classroom was blocked by a sweeping figure. Professor Severus Snape looked down his hooked nose at them, and Katie and Tam were able to get a good view of his sharp eyes, grease hair, and sallow skin.
"You must be the new Slytherin." He said to Tamara, stepping aside. He pointed to a table on the right-hand side of the room. "There is a seat for you right there. Please take out your books and equipment to begin the lesson."
Tam hurried off to her seat, and Snape turned back to face Katie. "As for you, Gryffindor, you're late and, therefore, expect five points to be taken off your house for the lack of respect for the punctuality Hogwarts prides itself on." And he went back to his desk, leaving Katie to talk down the rows of desks to find a spare seat while trying to avoid all the smirks the Slytherins were giving her.
She found a spare space next to a girl from Gryffindor who leaned over and whispered "Don't worry about it, he does that all the time to us. And I'll bet my wand he made up that load about punctuality."
***********************************************
Four floors up and two corridors away, Grace was listening to tiny Professor Flitwick as he explained the function of the Fidelius Charm to the class.
"The Fideluis Charm is a very complex spell," he said. "It involves the concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul. The person guarding the secret is called the Secret Keeper." He looked around the room. "Can anyone think of a time when the Fideluis Charm would have been constantly used?" Professor Flitwick asked in his little voice. A dozen or so hands went up in the air. "Um … let's see. Yes, Miss Chang?" he said, picking the Asian-looking Ravenclaw Seeker to answer.
"Was it used in the dark times when You-Know-Who was in power?" she asked.
"Yes, well done Miss Chang! One point to Ravenclaw."
Grace was sitting a few seats behind Cho and tried to get a better look at one of the coolest Quidditch players in the Harry Potter books, which involved Grace leaning over on her chair, and unfortunately falling off it with a crash too. Everyone turned around and some people started laughing.
"Dear Lord, are you alright Miss –," the professor looked through his roll book " – Miss Fowler?"
"Oh, I'm fine, don't worry about me," Grace said, blushing furiously. "I was just looking for my pen. I mean quill. Oops, here it is! On my desk the whole time! Fancy that." And she slid back into her seat with her eyes glued to the cover of her "Standard Book of Spells" textbook.
Professor Flitwick continued. "I'd like each of you to read up on the Fidelius Charm in your books and write a summary on it, to be handed in to me next lesson. For now, we'll practice our Sonorus and Quietus Charms until next lesson. Remember to point the wand directly at your throat, and don't go over board on the Sonorus Charm, I don't think the other teachers would appreciate our noise level interrupting their classes."
Everyone picked up his or her wands. A real swotty boy in the front row decided to be a prat and performed the Quietus Charm on his friend. "Simon, you little git, sod off!" His friend managed to squeak out.
***********************************************
Back in Potions, Professor Snape was teaching the Slytherins and Gyrffindors how to brew a Diminishing Draught.
"This potion, when used properly," he began, emphasising the second part of the sentence in the Gyrffindors direction. "Will shrink the size of an object. One drop or so on the object is enough for it to take effect, and I will remind you that it does not work on humans."
He turned and wrote its ingredients on the blackboard and then the students began to prepare the ingredients for when it was time to add them into their cauldrons.
Tamara worked swiftly away on one side of the room, picking the wings off her cicadas and dropping the wings into her standard size 2 pewter cauldron. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the room, Katie was staring, horrified, at her pile of still winged cicadas.
"You'd better hurry up and get a move on before Professor Snape sees you and thinks you're bludging." The girl next to Katie stated. She had already de-winged her own cicadas and was already on to sorting her boomslang skin shreds.
"Don't…like…cicadas…" Katie shuddered, pushing them away.
Snape's eyes scanned the classroom warningly and Katie hurried to hide her cicadas behind her Potions textbook.
"Please, you have to help me!" she begged the girl next to her.
"Will you crush my beetle eyes for me?" the girl asked.
"Sure! Anything! Katie agreed and switched their cutting boards. A minute later, Katie's cauldron safely contained five or six pairs of silvery cicada wings, and Katie was free to quickly finish the Diminishing Draught before Professor Snape made his rounds between the work tables, praising Slytherin for their potions (using Tam's for a successful demonstration), and passing snide comments to the Gryffindors for their "pathetic excuses and attempts at the draught" even though their potions were the exact same shade of grey as the Slytherins.
Ten minutes before the end of the lesson, Professor Snape got the students to wash out their cauldrons and pack up. Katie purposely splashed some of her Diminishing Draught over the wingless cicadas, reducing them to the size of the beetle eyes they had used, before joining Tam at the sinks to clean her cauldron.
"Hey, what lesson have you got now?" Katie asked Tam.
"Double Herbology with Grace and the rest of the Ravenclaws, you?" "Transfiguration with my head of house…" Katie replied, glaring over at Snape. "Oh, and Oliver." She added with a grin.
The bell went then and they picked up their re-packed bags and walked up to the ground floor of the castle. Katie departed up the stairs to Transfiguration, saying hi to Grace who walked down the stairs to Tam.
"How'd you go?" Tam asked Grace.
"Pathetic." Grace replied sadly. "I could barely perform a Quietus Charm. My voice didn't go nearly as quiet as everyone else's, and then it was somehow too quiet for me to do the 'Sonorus' bit and make it louder again. But anyway, what did you guys do?" she asked as they walked outside in the direction of the greenhouses.
"Potions was a cinch!" Tam exclaimed. "We made Diminishing Draughts and mine worked when Snape tested it!" And to prove it, she brought a miniature quill out of her bag. "Snape offered to change it back to full size with the antidote, but I said I'd rather keep it this way, as a reminder of my first Potions lesson."
Grace grinned and let out a cough that sounded like "Suck up!".
They reached the greenhouse with the other Slytherins and Ravenclaws, and they all went in as a group to find Professor Sprout as she finished watering some plants.
"Are we all here then? Good. Gather round, gather round." She instructed and they all surrounded one of the long potting benches. "I hope you all brought your dragon hide gloves today- that's right, put them on now- because we are going to be dealing with a few types of poisonous plants today." She pointed to a pot on her left, which held a spiny purple plant that also appeared to be growing thin tendrils from its base. On Professor Sprout's right lay pots of thick, viny red plants. "This one," she pointed to her left "is a Verniolet plant, belonging to the 'Verniolet Spillindae' family, as it is scientifically called. And these red ones over here are Venomous Tentaculas. Now, today I'll be separating you into two groups. One group will work on the Verniolets, one will work on the Tentaculas."
Tam leaned over to Grace. "Wow, this level of Herbology sounds hard." She whispered, out of Professor Sprout's hearing range. Grace nodded seriously and tightened her gloves.
"The poison in the Venomous Tentaculas is stored in its vines." She picked one off the plant, making it recoil sharply, and cut the vine in half with a pair of shears. A thick, clear liquid resembling glue seeped out of the broken vine and into a storing bottle Professor Sprout has provided each of them. She lay the now dead vine aside, and moved to the Verniolets. "To extract the poison from these, we must first pick off a handful of its tendrils, like so, and use a mortar and pestle to crush them." She demonstrated, and after half a minute, she was left with a mushy pulp. "The poison in the Verniolet is actually in the tendril's stalk. We wash and strain out the sap, like this…and then the left over matter is stored and dried. After a month or so, it will then be a dense powder until it is crushed into a thinner substance. Any questions?"
Grace and Tam stared, completely lost, but a few students put their hands up. Professor Sprout chose a Slytherin student who asked, "What good is any of the poison?"
"Ah, excellent question, Mr. Pucey." Professor Sprout declared. "The poisons from both these plants are used as pesticides on wild, unmanageable weeds, and in potion making for quite a few concoctions. For more detail, I'm sure Professor Snape wouldn't mind answering your questions. Right then, if half of you wouldn't mind moving over to the other tables, I'll bring the plants over shortly."
Tam and Grace divided from the other half of the group and were given a Venomous Tentacula to work on for the rest if the lesson.
***********************************************
Inside one of the many Hogwart's classrooms, Katie and Oliver Wood were copying Professor McGonagall's detailed Transfiguration notes from the blackboard. "This is so hard…" Katie muttered as she wrote down the methods of transfiguring solid objects into liquids, and even more challenging, turning solids into gases.
"Yeah, well this is your first Transfiguration lesson, and you're not exactly starting from the basics." Oliver reasoned. At that moment, Professor McGonagall supplied them all with one small piece of marble stone. "To transfigure the rock into liquid, point your wand at it and say 'Altera fluo!'"
Katie blinked, fiddling with her wand as she stared at the small piece of marble in front of her. Casting a glance at everyone around her who was having a go, she glanced over at Oliver who was having a good go. "Altera fluo!" he exclaimed, swishing and flicking his wand at the small stone in front of him.
What an accent… Katie thought half dreamily before she snapped out of it. You're in class! Do your damn work! She snapped to herself in her mind. Trust me to get sent through a portal to a place full of guys with British accent's…how am I supposed to concentrate?!?
"Have a go at it Katie, you won't break it or anything." Oliver encouraged as he tried time and time again.
"Oh great, now you've done it. You've jinxed me and now I'm going to blow up the entire classroom…" Katie moaned, collapsing on her desk, resting her head on her textbooks.
Oliver laughed and pulled her up again. "Oh come on. Most of us won't be able to get it by the end of the class and we've been here for seven years. You've been here for a few days and that's it. Just give it a go."
Katie sighed. "Fine…Altera fluo!" she swished her wand at the small marble shard and blinked. "Uhh…where'd it go?" she asked, brushing her fingers over where it had been. "It disappeared…"
"Erm…that wasn't supposed to happen…I have no idea what happened to it…" Oliver replied, as confused as Katie was. He put his piece of marble on her desk, and she tried again, but the same thing happened. She raised her hand to get Professor McGonagall's attention.
"Professor, I've lost my marbles…No pun intended." She added firmly, as Oliver sniggered beside her. Professor McGonagall came over to her desk and sighed. "I can't keep providing more objects to you students every lesson. You'll need to be more careful with what you're given." she said, frowning down her green, rectangular rimmed spectacles.
Katie began to protest. "But it's my first lesson! I don't know how to do much, yet!"
Professor McGonagall seemed to consent to this, but then looked down her nose at Oliver. "Where's your stone, Wood?"
"Please, Professor. I gave it to Katie, she lost hers…It just disappeared." He told her.
"Well…all right, but next time keep your own supplies, Wood. And if you need help Katie, ask me first before you ask a student." And she gave them each another piece of marble. Before she went back to her desk, Katie got Professor McGonagall to help her a little, and by the end of the lesson, she was able to turn the marble into a dense liquid, though it still had tiny granules in it.
Katie and Oliver went down to lunch with the other Gryffindors. When the bell went to signal the resumption of afternoon lessons, Katie rummaged through her bag for her timetable. Yanking it out, she looked at it, highly confused. She tapped Oliver on the arm while not looking away from the piece of parchment.
"Oliver, there has to be a mistake… There's a blank space beside to the next time I should have a lesson! A blank space! What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?"
"Look, calm down Katie… and stop tapping my arm!" Oliver said.
"Oops…" Katie grinned sheepishly and put her hand down.
"If there's a blank space, it just means you have a free lesson. See, there's one exactly like that on mine."
Katie looked at his timetable and breathed a sigh of relief.
"And did I or did I not promise that I would give you a quick flying lesson in our next free lesson?" Oliver smiled.
"Do I just use one of the school brooms?" Katie asked apprehensively. She knew the school brooms were extremely old and therefore, not very reliable.
"Ha! I don't THINK so!" Oliver cried. "You'll be using my Nimbus 1000. It's a bit old, but it's like a Firebolt compared to those twigs they have for brooms here."
They picked up their bags and walked out the doors in the Entrance Hall that led to the Quidditch Pitch.
***********************************************
Ooooooo!!!!!! What'll happen next? Bugger if we know!!! Nahhh.actually we have a few ideas up here.*taps forehead* So be prepared!