After last chapter, this one is a lot more fun!

Chapter 20

Charmed, I'm Sure

Cassie looked around the classroom, wondering what it would be like. There were about 25 kids in the class and from what she could tell they were from all of the different houses. The door opened and someone she definitely did not want to see walked through. He looked up and smiled at her. She met his gaze but didn't smile back. She knew it was rather petty to hold a grudge but she was still rather perturbed that he had spoken to Draco Malfoy about her. Not that he knew he was endangering her life, but still . . . . Niles approached her, moving quickly toward the empty seat on her left. Cassie grimaced slightly. Considering the difficulty of this class, she really was not sure she was up to the verbal sparring that would undoubtedly occur if he sat next to her. However, Rhiannon, who had been chatting with Ginny a second ago, slid into the seat just a moment before Niles reached it. He stopped and turned, sitting in a seat next to a Hufflepuff girl Cassie did not recognize. He glanced back at her and she forced herself to smile a little in apology. She did not need to make an enemy of this boy. After all, he was going to be in Potions with her for however long she was here.

Charms. She had asked Ginny what exactly Charms meant, but she hadn't really been able to tell her, well at least in a way that Cassie could understand. "Charms change what things do. Like you can put a laughing charm on someone. Or a silencing charm. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah. But you said that putting the lions on the nails was a charm and that doesn't change what something does - it added something that wasn't there . . ." They hadn't been able to finish the discussion because it was time to meet Hermione, Ron, and Harry for what Cassie thought of as their usual before-breakfast meeting. She had four classes today, two of them were going to be quite tricky. The other two should be fairly easy. Hermione had carefully explained to all of them how they were going to be able to fake the magic in the two where it would be necessary and Cassie had listened and hoped she could continue to be as successful in pretending to be a witch as she had up to this point. She had a feeling that this week was going to be much more difficult than Friday had been. And that thought did not make her very happy.

Cassie jumped as a head suddenly popped up in the front of the classroom at the teacher's desk. This was obviously the professor as everyone quieted down immediately and looked toward him expectantly. Cassie took her wand out of her sleeve and laid it on the desk next to her. She also pulled a piece of parchment out of her bookbag and laid out her quill and her ink bottle. The professor started lecturing and Cassie dutifully tried to write down what he was saying even though she was sure the spelling was completely wrong. He was very funny to listen to, keeping the class entertained with funny stories to illustrate what he wanted them to do, teasing various class members gently and keeping everyone smiling. Cassie shook her head as the assignment was finalized. This was going to be completely impossible.

She looked over the instructions carefully and heard the professor move out from behind his desk, preparing to come help them on a one-to-one basis. She looked up to where she thought he would be standing but didn't see anything. She looked around but then movement near the floor caught her eye. The professor was the shortest thing she had seen in the school, excluding the house elves. Even the first year students were taller than he was. She blinked in surprise and heard a distinct giggle from Ginny who had watched all this. She flashed Ginny a smile. "I never cease to be surprised around here."

"He's a great teacher, though. And he loves Christmas. I'm sure that's why we're doing this today. Around Christmas we do all sorts of fun things like this. He feels it is his duty to get us in the Christmas spirit."

Cassie smiled. Christmas. She hoped she was back home by then. She didn't relish the idea of spending it in some magically hidden house by herself. That did not sound fun at all. Well, she told herself, no use worrying about that now. Certainly they would have everything worked out by then, wouldn't they? The professor was helping the first few students and telling everyone else what they needed to do, also.

"Begin first by setting up your storm cloud and your cold field. That shouldn't be too tricky for you as we've all made lightning before and this is actually easier." Yeah. Right. They were supposed to make it snow. On their desks. And not just a few flakes either. A big snowstorm. Cassie picked up her wand and watched Ginny, who was sitting on her right. Ginny moved her wand quickly in a sort of circular pattern, almost like she was making a tornado. She said the words the Professor had told them would turn this energy into clouds. Cassie blinked as some wisps of what could only be clouds came out of the end of Ginny's wand and started to clump together. Cassie tightened her grip and started. No use procrastinating.

As Cassie moved her own wand in a circular pattern, she voiced the same charm as Ginny. A moment or two later, small wisps of clouds began to appear above her own desk. Ginny glanced over at Cassie's desk and grinned. She then stood up, pointed her wand at the small gathering of clouds and repeated another charm. The clouds began to turn darker and there was a definite drop in temperature around Ginny's desk. Ginny grimaced. This charm apparently took a great deal of concentration and effort. She was glad Ginny didn't have to do all the work for her, too.

Cassie followed Ginny's lead as she too stood and pointed her wand at her white fluffy clouds. She repeated the charm and watched in satisfied amazement as her clouds also began to darken and the temperature around her desk began to drop. Ginny again grinned at Cassie and gave her the thumbs up while Rhiannon gave Cassie a smile and told her she was really good at charms. Cassie blushed and thanked her and then turned back to her storm. She needed to really concentrate here or she was bound to make some stupid mistake.

She watched with pleasure as the first few snow flakes floated gently to the surface of her desk, noticing Ginny's back arch a little as if she had been suddenly pushed from behind. Ginny's face turned red as she half turned toward Cassie and whispered into the space between the two girls, "Stop it, Harry." Cassie's eyes grew wide as she realized what had just happened. He was taking advantage of his invisible state and had probably slapped his girlfriend's butt. Cassie started to giggle but then silenced herself. This was really not a good time for them to be goofing around. It was hard trying to do things in tandem with Harry, especially since she couldn't see him. He had assured her that he would follow her lead but Cassie thought that if he was paying attention to the way Ginny's robe moved when she stretched, he was probably not putting adequate effort into their storm. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed anything strange going on.

To Cassie's relief, the students were all busy with their individual storms. Rhiannon was working to keep the temperature low enough to change her sleet into definite snow. Further down the row, a Hufflepuff boy let out a minor curse as his storm produced a smattering of lightening and he had to duck from an errant lightening bolt. A Ravenclaw girl next to him was giggling as she too ducked. Across the room, a girl already had several inches of snow on her desk and Professor Flitwick was congratulating her. He slowly made his way toward Ginny and Cassie. By the time he reached them, both girls had several inches of snow on their desks.

"Oh, very good indeed, Miss Weasley. And, yes, Miss Spencer. I had wondered if you were enough advanced in your training to handle this. You obviously are. It must run in the family. I still consider Fred and George Weasley among my best students ever. Oh, yes, yes, I do. Their swamp was excellent. Absolutely excellent. Well, right then. Smashing. Carry on."

Cassie smiled and breathed a sigh of relief as he moved on to Rhiannon, whose sleet had turned to a definite rain. As he gave her pointers, Cassie turned to Ginny. "George and Fred made a swamp? Where?" Ginny gave a quick grin and told Cassie she would explain later.

"Most of you are ready to start making your snowballs. You've all done this, I know. Remember the snowball fight last year?" There were a lot of laughs around the room as the students started on the next part of the assignment. Rhiannon had finally managed to get snow but she didn't have enough yet to start actually making the snowballs. Cassie watched what Ginny did. She formed a small ball with her hands and then proceeded to roll it around in the snow using her wand. That didn't look too hard. However, Cassie and Harry had a harder time. The angle Harry was working from made it awkward for him to move the snowball around, Cassie guessed, because it wasn't tracking very well to the tip of her wand.

Finally she sat down and bent her head down to the desk like she was trying to rest. "Look, why don't you be in charge this time and I'll follow your lead, okay?"

"Yeah. Good idea." His voice was so low that Cassie was positive no one else could hear it. She stood up and stretched, like that moment's rest had given her a bit more energy. She picked up her wand and waited for the first snowball to start moving. It did and she was easily able to follow it around the desk with the tip of her wand. Finally, it moved to the side and Cassie made another one. It took about 30 minutes or so before all three of them were done.

Suddenly the medium one moved onto the large one and Cassie had to move her wand quickly to track it. "Locomotor snowball" she said fairly loudly as it floated across her desk.

"Sorry." His voice was low in her ear.

"That's all right." She walked a few minutes later with some hesitation up to Professor Flitwick's desk. He had said that the rest of the things they needed were on his desk and Ginny had asked her to get some for all three of them. Cassie picked up the items carefully, hoping they weren't enchanted or anything. They just laid in her hands passively, though, and she walked with a lighter step back to her desk. She handed one set to Rhiannon (who was moving quickly to catch up with them) and the other to Ginny. She kept her own set, moving carefully around her desk to sit back down. Not carefully enough, though, because she stepped right on Harry's foot and heard a muffled grunt. She coughed quickly to cover up the noise and flushed as she slid into her chair.

She smiled as she fitted the tiny twigs, pieces of coal, and the extremely adorable little carrot onto her snowman. This was fun. The kids she normally went to school with would die of envy if they could see that for her class work today she was making a snowman. They were probably sweating hard over some nasty math problem right about now. She sat back in her chair and admired her artwork. It looked really nice. And the gentle flakes of snow that were still falling onto her desk made it look like a movie or something. She realized with sudden clarity how the ice-cream shop in Diagon Alley had done their Christmas window display and thought that she would make sure to mention to George that she had done this. Well, okay. Harry had actually done the work. But George would still get a kick out of it.

"All right." The professor was back at his desk now, probably standing on a stool or something since his head was visible behind the desk. "How many of you have ever used the charm "Ennervate" before and actually had it work?" A few students raised their hands, including Ginny. "How many when it wasn't to nullify a stupefy spell?" A few students put down their hands but Ginny's stayed up. "All right, Miss Weasley. When did you use it last and why?"

"Friday night. Uh, I animated some decals on my roommates' fingertips for the Quidditch game. It worked really well."

"Very good. Very good. Could you tell the class how it works? It can be a rather tricky spell."

Ginny nervously stood up and told about how to get the best results with it. Cassie listened with interest. To her, it had looked like Ginny had just waved her wand and said the word but she was explaining about how you had to funnel energy into what you were trying to animate, etc. It sounded exhausting. Rhiannon was shaking her head and Cassie glanced over at her.

"This will never work. The poor thing is barely holding on as it is." Her snowman did look pretty bad. Its head was not quite large enough for its body and one arm kept falling off. Cassie smiled in a sympathetic manner. She felt guilty because of course a 7th year wizard (and a mighty powerful one at that) had done her work so it wasn't really fair for Rhiannon to compare herself to his work. But she couldn't say anything so she just glanced around at the other students' wondering if hers and Ginny's were the most normal looking. Okay. A foot-tall snowman on your school desk which you had just made from snow you had caused to fall would never be completely normal. Especially when you were going to bring him to life in a few minutes. But, no. There were many other students who had very nice looking snowmen. Someone had really gotten a little compulsive and was busily knitting it a cap. Where the yarn and knitting needles had come from Cassie didn't know. It was obviously magic. Someone else had wrapped a paper scarf around the neck of theirs and was busy making some paper mittens to attach to the end of their twigs. Cassie just smiled to herself as she watched the various students get involved in making their snowman its own little person.

"I think I'm going to name mine." Ginny said. "It may only live for an hour, but it deserves a name."

"How about Frosty?" Cassie suggested and heard Harry's quiet laugh. She didn't worry about being overheard at this point. The classroom was very noisy and no one would have heard even if he'd have laughed loudly.

"Um, no. I think I'll name him . . . Harry."

"What?" Cassie smiled broadly as she heard Harry make some quiet exclamation under his cloak.

"Ennervate, Harry!" The snowman moved an arm and Cassie couldn't help it, she gasped and backed up a step.

"It's okay, Pia. He's very nice."

Ginny tried again because after that first movement, there had been no other. "Ennervate, Harry!" She waved her wand a little longer this time, circling the snowman with it. It turned its head and moved its arms, and then scooted forward on the desk. Cassie stared in amazement at the little figure. It was somehow a lot more impressive than the fingernail trick even though it was the same spell. She took a fortifying breath and turned to her own snowman.

"I'm not sure I can do this."

"Oh, of course you can. Take all the time you need." The professor had come behind her to watch. "Don't worry. Let me watch and see if you need some pointers."

Cassie was suddenly panicked. She had no idea if this was even going to work and with Professor Flitwick watching there was very little room for error. She hoped that he wouldn't notice if the timing wasn't exactly right. She felt an invisible hand on her arm and knew that Harry was strengthening her. "All right, here goes. 1, 2, 3 . . . Ennervate, Snowman!" She waved her wand carefully around the entire figure, trying to duplicate Ginny's movements. Nothing happened, though. Her snowman just sat there, looking cute, but definitely not like Ginny's who was doing a series of cartwheels as Ginny guided it with her wand. The hand returned to her arm and she took another deep breath. "I'm going to do this. I can do this." She tried once again. She didn't know why Harry hadn't done it the first time. Maybe she hadn't done it right. She thought again about what Ginny had done and copied it as well as she could. This time, when she said the words, her snowman moved, stretched his arms above his head, and like Ginny's scooted more to the middle of the desk. Cassie laughed out loud.

"Very good, Miss Spencer. Very good. I'm impressed." The professor moved on to another student and Cassie let out her breath.

"Thanks, Harry." She muttered quietly and then felt the hand back on her arm, squeezing a "You're welcome."

Ginny suggested a snowball fight between the three of their snowmen and even though Rhiannon's was by far the underdog since the one arm had fallen off completely early on and refused to have it stuck back on, hers managed to hold her own. There was really only one incident that could have gotten them into any trouble and fortunately the chaos was so widespread that no one noticed. Ginny's snowman, Harry, threw a snowball toward Cassie's still-unnamed creature but it went wildly astray and hit the real Harry, who was still invisible. So the snowball splattered in mid-air against what looked like nothing. Ginny moved quickly and brushed the small bit of snow off his cloak and after a few frantic moments of looking around, they both relaxed. No one, not even Rhiannon, had noticed. They all felt sad when Professor Flitwick announced it was time to clean up and some of the students even asked if they could take theirs back to their room.

Cassie was tempted until Ginny reminded her that she would have to keep the cold spell on it constantly and that might be a little difficult. Ginny felt just as sad, though, Cassie could tell to leave "little Harry" to the mercy of the sudden heat that flooded through the room as the cold spells were simultaneously removed. Niles finished cleaning up his desk and then strolled over to Cassie. "How'd you do?"

"Good. I got it to move and we had a little snowball fight."

"That sounds fun. I should have brought mine over."

"Yeah. That would have been fun." Cassie was feeling a lot more magnanimous now toward the Slytherin boy because she was feeling pretty relaxed. After all, the next 2-3 hours would be pretty easy and she was going to enjoy it before the hard class in the afternoon. And it wasn't his fault that Malfoy decided to flirt with her. He probably would have noticed her eventually anyway - the school was small enough and her exploits in that first potions class had given her her 15 minutes of fame. So, there was no use blaming him.

As the students filed out of the class , Ginny and Cassie made sure Harry wouldn't be bumped by any unsuspecting students. Ginny led the way, with Harry right behind her and Cassie followed. As they exited the classroom, Cassie made sure to walk slowly enough to momentarily hold up the other students until Ginny and Harry were safely in the hallway and out of the way of the throng. The three ducked down a less-used corridor where, halfway down, there was a boys' toilet. The door opened and then shut and, a few minutes later, Harry came strolling out carrying his bookbag. He grinned at the girls. "That was great, Harry. Thanks so much."

"Hey, you're welcome. That was really fun. We don't do anything that exciting in our class. We're trying to get ready for our stupid N.E.W.T.s, though. I suppose we won't be tested on anything as lighthearted as animated snowmen. . . ."

"What are your stupid N.E.W.T.s?"

"Wizard tests. Big nasty wizard tests."

"Yeah. And I get to look forward to them next year. Ugh."

"At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about." They all laughed. Cassie, Ginny, and Harry made their way to the entry hall where they found Ron pacing impatiently back and forth as students hurried to and fro around him, a few scowling as he blocked their path. He didn't seem to notice. He gave a loud sigh of relief as they came into the entry. "Where were you? We're going to have to hurry or we'll be late for Hagrid's class. I'd hate to miss a moment of the fun." Cassie thought he sounded like he was being sarcastic, but she couldn't really tell for sure. She didn't ask, though. She personally was really looking forward to the Care of Magical Creatures class. Once the four were outside, the three filled Ron in on how Charms class had gone. He had a good laugh at the described snowmen and the snowball fight.

As they trudged through the snow toward Hagrid's hut, Cassie got more and more excited. Thoughts of the unicorns and how gentle and knowledgeable Hagrid had been last June made her anxious to see what he would have this time. "I'm really looking forward to this class." The other three gave her surprised looks.

Ron's was particularly incredulous. "Why?"

"Well, for one thing, it's a green . . . which means I don't have to worry about doing any magic. But mainly because he has such beautiful, magical animals."

"Oh yeah. Beautiful all right. Like Norbert; the little dragon Hagrid tried to raise like a puppy dog. What a nice little thing he was . . . until he bit me."

Cassie looked at him in shock. "He tried to raise a dragon?"

Ginny jumped into the conversation. "Uh, Pia. Hagrid really likes . . . um, interesting animals. Ones that most people would consider frightening. In fact, we're supposed to have a new animal today. I'm wondering what cute and cuddly name he'll give it. He once had a three-headed dog he called Fluffy."

Cassie stopped dead in her tracks, which made Harry run into her. "He had a three-headed dog? Is that possible?"

"I guess so," Harry answered, "because he had one. And it was nasty."

By the time they arrived at Hagrid's, they were almost late and the other students were already there. Cassie didn't recognize anyone in the small group of about 7 other students. Hagrid was out front greeting the students, who, Cassie was interested to note, all looked as apprehensive as Ron did. It was only at that moment that Cassie realized she might be in serious trouble. Hagrid had met her and she had been introduced as Cassie Robinson. She tried to grab Harry quickly to remind him but it was too late, they were standing in the group of the other students and there was no chance to catch Hagrid for a private work before he spoke to them. His loud voice suddenly boomed an affectionate greeting. "Hello Harry, Ginny, Ron. How are you today? And you must be the cousin, Pia Spencer. Nice to meet you. I'm Rubeus Hagrid, Groundskeeper and Professor here are Hogwarts." He winked and Cassie knew that he had obviously been warned in advance.

"Hello, Hagrid. Nice to meet you." Cassie held out her hand which was promptly engulfed in his huge one. She had never seen anyone as large as he was and she thought with a small start that she had now seen what had to be undoubtedly the tallest and the shortest professors in the school.

"All right class. Gather round, gather round. I'm sure you're all as excited as I am to meet our new magical creature today. And let me tell you, she's excited too. I chained her down, just to be on the safe side, y'know. She's a little nervous with it being a new class and all. Once she gets used to y'all, she'll settle right in. She's jes' as pretty as can be." The entire class followed Hagrid around his hut to the area of the paddock. Cassie walked right behind him but she noticed the others were falling more and more behind. Hagrid noticed, too.

"There's nuttin' to be 'fraid of, honest. Fer one thing, she's jes' ta baby, really, just a little one. Come on class, meet Shimmy." He stood aside and the class held his breath as they looked toward the middle of the paddock. It was a nondescript looking bundle at first, could have been anything, including an ugly big dog. Then it lifted its big head and looked up at them. And it didn't look like a baby, or nervous, and definitely not pretty. Cassie was staring at what had to be the ugliest thing she had ever laid eyes on.

Cassie let out an involuntary gasp. "What the hell is that thing?" She flushed in embarrassment, her hands clapped over her mouth. She rarely cussed but she felt like in this case, it was appropriate.

The entire class laughed sort of morbidly as they stared at the ugliest, most dangerous-looking animal she had ever seen in her life. The animal had a lion's head, goat's body and dragon's tail. It stood quietly staring at the cowering students with a vicious expression.

"It's a chimera. They're real rare . . I's lucky to be able to trade some of the thestral babies for this. Took me a lot of floo powder, let me tell ya' to seal the deal. Like I said, she's a little frightened now but she'll settle right in."

Harry's eyes were huge in his face and Ginny's weren't much better. Ron, on the other hand, had grabbed a book out of his bag and was flipping wildly through the pages. " They're a 5-X classification, Hagrid! A 5-X. See, right here?" And he was waving his book madly in front of Hagrid's shoulder. He was ignored.

"Aw, what's a book know, tha' I don't? Shimmy's a good chimera. No worries about her. Let me tell ya."

He proceeded to spend the next half hour talking about all the magical things chimeras could do. "They're really jes' misunderstood. Y' just need to be gentle and treat 'em with respec'. Anyone want to pet Shimmy?" Not surprisingly, there were no takers. Class ended early, apparently, as no one was willing to go into the paddock with the creature but Hagrid and no amount of coaxing would change the students' minds. Cassie spent most of the time hanging as far back from the chimaera as possible, listening with only half an ear as he discussed their diet, both in the wild and in captivity.

They actually did sound like sort of interesting creatures in theory (if not in living color) but she was relieved when the class ended and they could hurry back up to the castle. By then, all of the students had wet feet and were cold. Cassie's robes were wet from the knee down and her shoes were making squelching noises as she climbed the steps into the entry hall. "I think I'd better go change. There's no way I want to go to . . ." The rest of the small group they had crossed the grounds with were standing stock still staring at the ground. Cassie pushed forward, hearing her squelching shoes as she stepped onto the flagstone floor to see what everyone was looking at. Everyone's attention was focused on what had to be the second ugliest creature Cassie had seen today. It was sitting there mewling at the students. "That's a really ugly . . ."

"Shut it, Pia." Ron's voice was brisk. Cassie shut it.

One of the other students moaned loudly as she too stared at the mangy-looking thing. "Oh, no! I can't believe it! It's Mrs. Norris! We're in big trouble now!"