Chapter Five: The Herbology Mistress

The next morning, Mungo woke up, but not very fresh. As many of you female readers know, it is very uncomfortable to sleep in a ponytail, and even more uncomfortable dealing with it.

Mungo took out his brush, and stifled his yelps as he combed out the tangles. When he had finished, he went into the common room and started to read one of his books, Magical Drafts and Potions. Mungo paused to look at the cover and saw the name Arsenius Jigger.

"Hey, tha's me grandfather!" Mungo said excitedly. He started reading the book even more avidly for it. He started thinking on his heritage. One of his ancestor's had written one of the schoolbooks, who knows what other things they might have done!

Then Mungo remembered his hat. Shocked, he rushed to see if it was all right, and that he hadn't crushed it in his sleep.

To his immense relief, he saw the hat on the bed stand. Mungo had evidently thought enough to take it off before he crashed. Mungo picked it up, and gave a sharp exclamation. The feather, which before had been such a dull colour, had turned yellow, with black bars going across it.

"Shut up, Mungo, I'm trying to sleep." Duncan said drowsily. Mungo tiptoed out, his hat clutched in his hands.

Somehow, the feather had changed colour to match Mungo's Hogwarts House. Mungo looked about, and saw a box with badges. He looked into it, and stifled another cry of glee. It was full of Hufflepuff badges! Mungo took one, and pinned it to the front of his robes. As he did so, another badge replaced the one Mungo had taken. Mungo took that one too, and pinned it to his hat.

As more and more badges appeared, Mungo got wilder and wilder. He started impressing the badge's indentation on his books, and was trying to figure out how to affix a badge to his wand when Duncan got up.

"I say, what's with the mess?" Duncan asked, picking up a discarded badge.

"Well, erm, jus' decoratin'." Mungo answered uncomfortably.

"Hm. Oh well. We should probably go and eat breakfast." Duncan said. He looked at the badge, shrugged, and pinned it onto his chest.

"Aye, I'm starved." Mungo said, stuffing his wand into his pocket.

"How could you be starved? You ate about fifty pounds of food last night! You have enough food to last you a week!" Duncan said incredulously. Mungo smiled.

"High metabolism."

"No kidding," Duncan said, putting his hand on his head and moving it over to Mungo. It reached about his nose.

They both laughed, and exited the common room.

It took about half an hour to find the Great Hall. They had not been paying attention where they had been going when they were going to bed last night, so didn't know where to go. They followed some Hufflepuff girls for a bit, before they were asked why they were stalking them to the bathroom. Mungo and Duncan stopped following people after a while, and just went down any staircase they could find, sure that the Great Hall was on the ground floor.

It was tricky, though. The staircases moved, and Mungo and Duncan had to wait for the stairs to move back again before they could retrace their steps when they went the wrong way.

Finally, they found a corridor that seemed familiar from last night, and ran down it. They were only at the end when they realized that it was the hallway to the tower leading to the Hufflepuff common room.

"Gah! We need help." Mungo said, despairing.

"With what?" a voice said, coming down the stairs. It was the prefect who had opened the window last night. Mungo felt like throwing himself at the prefect's feet and kissing them.

"We're lost." Duncan said.

"How? You're barely three steps away from the way to the Hufflepuff common room." The prefect said, perturbed.

"He means we got lost, an' we managed t' git back here," Mungo explained. "We were tryin' t' find the Great Hall."

The prefect tried valiantly to hide a snicker, and said.

"Very well, I'll lead you there. But keep your wits about you, so I don't have to do it again."

When they arrived at the Great Hall, Mungo and Duncan sat at the far end of the table from the prefect.

"Snotty git." Duncan said. Mungo nodded, and turned his attention to his bacon.

Suddenly, a great whirring of wings came from overhead, and Mungo looked up, nearly snapping his neck.

Thousands of owls, white, brown, and yellow, were flying over the tables, dropping packages and letters, but mainly packages. Duncan gasped.

"Look! Look at that old dusty one!"

Mungo looked amongst the owls, but couldn't discern any individual owl from the midst.

"Where?" H asked.

"The one with the red envelope, it's got a Howler!"

"A Howler?" Mungo asked, curiously. "Who on earth could get a Howler this early in the term?"

"Oh, look, it landed on the Griffindor table!" Duncan said, pointing. Mungo looked, and soon an extremely loud woman's voice started roaring through the Hall:

"RONALD WEASLEY!"

"Now we know who its fer," Mungo said.

"I AM ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED!"

"About what?" Mungo asked Duncan. He furrowed his brow, and said,

"Last night Potter and his friend, Weasley, flew to Hogwarts on a flying car. I thought they had gotten expelled, but I guess they hadn't."

"YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, AND ITS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!"

"Gosh, she's gooin' light on 'im, isn't she?" Mungo noted.

"IF YOU PUT ONE MORE TOE OUT OF LINE, WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT HOME!" The Howler screamed, then it said something quieter. Then a huge raspberry sounded, and then it was silent throughout the Hall.

"Well, tha' doosn't happen every dee." Mungo said, returning to his bacon.

The rest of the day was spent in a hectic haze. Going to their lessons, introductions to the teachers, it was all rather blurry. Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a teeny little man, who only reached to Mungo's knee. However, he instantly earned their affection when he made his desk fly about the room, just missing the heads of the students when it got too close.

Prof. McGonagall, however, was a stern old lady. She started them off with a nice long lecture about how serious Transfiguration was, and mentioned that anyone fooling around would be dealt with harshly. She then told them to copy some rather complicated notes, and set them to work to try to transfigure a match into a needle. Mungo paired up with Duncan. They stared at the match together, and Mungo rolled up his robe sleeve and said, while waving his wand in a complicated fashion,

"Transformo facula acus!"

The match shimmered, and slimmed down to a point, forming a flawless needle.

"Wha', wha'," He said, speechless.

"Davy Jones' Locker!" Duncan breathed,

Professor McGonagall, seeing the commotion, came over and examined the needle. Her eyebrows raised about a sixteenth of an inch, and she said,

"Nicely done. Ten points to Hufflepuff."

Pleased with his success, Mungo watched the rest of his classmates. Most of them were looking enviously at his needle, but then they turned their attention to their own work.

"Er, mate, a bit of help." Duncan whispered. His match was twitching strangely, and flashing between brown and purple.

"You have t' put a wee bit o' a twirl at th' end, like this." Mungo waved his wand, including the twirl, and there was once again a perfect needle.

"You have a gift, chap." Duncan said, shaking his head.

The next class was being taught by Prof. Binns, the only professor that was a ghost. And, as a ghost, he had centuries to make his voice as boring and droning as possible. Within seconds, heavy thudding noises were heard throughout the classroom as heads hit the desks in sleep. Except for Duncan's, he seemed fascinated by the teacher and the subject. He kept prodding Mungo back to consciousness, a habit that got a bit annoying.

"Quit it!' Mungo said irritably after the third time.

"But don't you want to know how Bronze Age wizards lived?" Duncan asked, incredulous.

"I dunno," Mungo said indifferently, falling asleep again.

The sharp pains in his stomach waked Mungo up. He stood up straight and said,

"Lunchtime!" But the effort was wasted, as the bell rang just then.

The students flooded out of the classroom in droves, Mungo in the head. He paused outside the door, waiting for Duncan to catch up.

Duncan was looking rather miffed.

"It wouldn't have hurt you to pay a bit of attention. It's a fascinating subject, and dreadfully important to understand why we live the way we do." He told Mungo in a rushed, angry voice.

"It's na the subject, its jus' the teacher. I… alwees fall asleep when ghoosts talk." Mungo said, thinking quickly.

"Oh, all right then. Lets go nab some grub." Duncan said, mollified. They followed the mainstream of students to the Great Hall, telling each other certain features that should be noted.

After lunch was Herbology. Mungo and Duncan knew it look place in a greenhouse, so they headed outside, and looked about. The greenhouses weren't in sight. They walked about for a bit, until they ended up by the lake.

"How could we get lost outside?" Duncan asked angrily, throwing a stone into the water.

"Tha' was kind o' stupid t'say, Duncan. People usually get lost out doors." Mungo pointed out.

"I know. I suppose we'd better get back where we started." Duncan said. They walked until they got back to the entrance of the castle, where they saw a couple of prefects talking.

"Excuse me, but do you know where we could find the greenhouses?" Duncan asked.

One of the prefects muttered something about first-years wasting time, but he was elbowed and the Ravenclaw prefect said,

"Yes, you go left along the base of the castle. You better hurry, class is starting soon."

Mungo and Duncan ran in the direction indicated, and came up in front of a large series of greenhouses.

"Which one do we goo to?" Mungo asked.

"Let's try the first one," Duncan suggested.

They opened the door, and a smiling, rather squat witch in green robes greeted them.

"Ah! Come in, come in, we almost started without you."

Mungo and Duncan sat in front of a potted plant, which leaves were purple and trembling slightly.

"Today, we're just going to prune German Werebane. What does it do, Mr. Gorsson?" Prof. Sprout asked Mungo unexpectedly.

Mungo started. He really had no idea, if only it was used in potions.

"I doon't knoo, ma'am." Mungo said.

Several students laughed, and Mungo hid as well as he could behind his plant. Duncan patted him sympathetically on the back.

"All right then. German Werebane can be used in various venoms used in ancient times to kill werewolves, but in present times its used as a pesticide when the leaves are boiled with the roots. Now, for this lesson, I merely want you to snip the green bits off the leaves. Try to be careful not to cut the purple parts, it'll ruin the plant." Prof. Sprout said, handing out a large pile of gardening shears to the students.

Mungo carefully maneuvered his shears, but right as he was about to make a cut, his arm twitched and he snipped off half of the whole leaf.

"Oh, Mr. Gorsson! Clumsy, clumsy!" Prof. Sprout said, extremely distressed. She snatched the pot away from him, as though she was afraid he would cut it into pieces.

"That will be enough from you today, Mr. Gorsson. Go wait outside and think about what you have done.

Mungo got up and went outside. He sat on the grass and thought. It was just a clumsy mistake, why'd she go off like that?

A while afterward, the class filtered out. Mungo got up when Duncan arrived, and they walked back up to the castle.

"Oh, Prof. Sprout told me you got some homework." Duncan said as they walked to the Great Hall.

"What? But its oonly me first dee!" Mungo said, aghast.

"Its nothing much, just a little bit on how to properly take care of German Werebane." Duncan explained.

Mungo began to feel like this was going to be a bit harder than he had thought.

Author's note: Whoo, long chapter. It seems so disproportionate and all… Oh well, maybe the later one's will staighten out.