Chapter Twelve
Herbology Hazard

"Let's see… first is Herbology out in the greenhouses, next Potions and, to our luck, it's with the Slytherins! They just seem to love us, don't they?" Rachael, Remus, and Sirius were sitting in the Great Hall listening to James read the schedule. "After potions is Transfiguration, then Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, lunch and finally, History of Magic."

"I heard Binns is such a boring teacher," Rachael said as she began piling bacon onto her plate. "Least that's what I heard a couple of fifth years saying."

They began eating their breakfast when the boy named Peter Pettigrew came over to them. "Can I see your schedule?" he asked politely. "McGonagall never gave me mine."

James handed it to him. Peter muttered a quick thank you and sat down besides Remus so he could read it. Lily was talking to Alice Gordon and Rachael was sitting with her brother, James and Sirius. They were all looking forward to the first day of classes, eager to learn some magic. Rachael and Remus were really looking forward to Defence Against the Dark Arts; they wanted to see their dad teach. The bell to signal the beginning of class rang and they hurried out of the building down to the greenhouses, where all of the Gryffindors were gathering with the Ravenclaw first years into greenhouse one.

The professor, Professor Sprout, was a squat little witch who was beaming at them through the dirt on her face. She gestured for them to follow her into the greenhouse. It was terribly warm and cluttered with all different plants, some moving, some snapping, and some just sitting there looking bored. They saw a long row of tables and for each three places was a small plant. They were small, human like creatures, much like the Mandrake plants, but much uglier. They were scrawny, skeleton like, fanged, dirt covered and their eyes were squinted and mouths wide open. All of the students looked at them disgusted, but Professor Sprout looked at them quite adoringly.

"Imp Bells!" she said brightly as everyone looked at her funny. "Oh come now, they're really fascinating creatures."

"Fascinating, yes," said a Ravenclaw whom Rachael recognised as Alex Anderson. "But ugly!"

The students snorted. They looked up at the teacher, expecting to see her looking a little disconcerted but, luckily, she was smiling. She cleared her throat and walked over to her Imp Bell. Rachael wondered why the word "bell" was included in the name, then she saw that the head was shaped much like an upside down bell. The head was a sort of cone with eyes, a nose and a mouth. She picked hers up, with extreme caution, and held its bottom in her right hand and its neck in her left.

"Now, I should warn you all," she began sternly, trying to keep her Imp Bell still, as it was fidgeting wildly, "Imp Bells are not the nicest creatures; you don't want to go doing something wrong. See the fangs?" She indicated the sharp fangs protruding from the plants mouth and going past its chin. "If you do something wrong you will become acquainted with them. So, they are very hungry, which is why you want to be cautious and it will be your task to feed them." There was a loud groan from the class. "Oh, don't be upset they are very good when being fed. Now to feed them you need to take the worms there in the pot."

All the students looked towards the tables and saw several clay pots filled to the top with wriggling worms. "You will feed them the worms for the entire class. They aren't easily full, so it will take time. Now I will break you up into pairs of threes."

Professor Sprout began shuffling through students, pulling them apart and sticking them with someone else and then finding three students standing by each other and naming them a trio. She went over to Rachael, who was standing next to Remus and Alex Anderson, and made them a trio. They walked over to a particularly calm looking Imp Bell, pulled on their dragon skin gloves and began to feed them.

"These things are nasty," Rachael muttered as she held a handful of worms in her hand. She took one and dropped it into the Bell's mouth. The Bell's eyes swiveled up to her and it spit the worm in her face. Wiping worm guts off her face, Rachael looked around at the rest of the class to make sure they hadn't noticed. Remus and Alex were talking quietly as they fed the Imp Bell, who was behaving for them at least. They seemed to be talking about the Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

"I hear that the first years don't do anything except learn about the creatures and stuff," Alex was saying.

"Well, maybe they'll let us do something," Remus added, wiping slime off his hands.

"Well, can't you ask your dad about that? He is the professor, after all."

"My dad can't do that. It's just his job; he doesn't make up what we learn."

They stopped discussing that topic.

Now when most think of worms their stomachs cringe, but feeding worms to a creature that's even more disgusting makes worms seem almost like a delicacy. The Imp Bells wailed and cried every time their mouths were forced open so they could be fed. They smelled like Dragon Dung and were just a murder to look at.

Peter Pettigrew's Imp Bell tipped the pot over and it fell to a floor with a smash and soil covered the greenhouse floor as the Bell made a break for the exit. All the students abandoned their own plants to go and chase it, but the Imp Bell was quicker. It soon had found its way onto the greenhouse roof and everyone tried jumping on top to get it back. All of the Ravenclaw students were too short, so the Gryffindors (who were slightly taller) tried to climb up. James attempted to give Sirius a leg up but it ended up that one of the worms had wriggled its way out of the greenhouse and crawled its way up James's pants leg and he freaked out, dropping Sirius to the ground.

Lily and Alice tried finding a way to make the Bell levitate down to the ground, but they ended up setting the roof on fire and Professor Sprout had to rush to put the fire out. Finally, Rachael managed to lift Remus onto the roof and he brought the Bell down, only after it bit Remus's hand and they had to bring him to the infirmary. Peter, as a punishment for being careless, had to feed all of the Imp Bells while the rest of the class spent their time outside. Rachael, Sirius and James accompanied Remus to the infirmary, where James and Sirius were startled to hear Madam Pomfrey (the school nurse) asking Remus if it was time yet.

"What's she talking about?" James asked as they walked to the dungeons for potions. Madam Pomfrey had been able to cure Remus's hand in a manner of a minute.

"N-nothing," Remus said warily. "I dunno what she was talking about."

Potions class could be put into a single word - torture. First off, the professor was rude, arrogant, slimy, horrible, and just about every other synonym you could find for mean. Professor Binstom, a hairy old man with no neck and small beady eyes, spent half the class lecturing them about the fine art of potion brewing, and then sprung a pop quiz on them, which all the Gryffindors were sure they had failed. Meanwhile, the Slytherins had gotten a heads up and learned about the quiz the night before and had time to study. After the quiz (which Professor Binstom had been kind enough to grade them in the blink of an eye and announced the Gryffindors' horrible scores to the entire class) they started brewing a Shrinking Solution in which Rachael had been paired with Snape, where he purposely added extra daisy roots to her cauldron so it exploded in her face, making it break out in boils.

After another quick trip to the infirmary, they were off to Transfiguration, where they were thankful for a calm, uneventful period in which there wasn't a disaster. Professor McGonagall gave them a strict talking to before handing them out a match which they were to turn into a needle. Of course they had to copy a whole board of the most puzzling notes they had ever seen in their life before they were actually able to attempt the transfiguring. By the end of class, several matches had disintegrated, some just stayed matches some rolled over on the desks and no one was able to get the match to change one bit. Professor McGonagall was displeased with the results, She had been hoping for at least one student to have some change in their match, and, as a result, she assigned them to practise for the night and she said she would know if they had practised or not.