AU: Oliver Wood has fallen for his new neighbor, who happens to be an American witch. Romantic fluffy fic taking place during CoS, but from the p.o.v. of Oliver's love interest, Laura.
Oh, and J.K. Rowling owns everything in the wizarding world, I've just set my character, Laura, into it. So please let her stay for a little while, she (and the author) mean no harm.
In this chapter, Laura attends her first Intro to Apparition lesson. Since this was written before HBP came out, and I'm too lazy to alter it now, it is not like the Apparition lessons in HBP.
Chapter 9
A Moment of Pride
The next morning came way too early for my taste, after sleeping in all summer. I pulled on my robes and grabbed my bag and my books. Entering the common room, I didn't see anyone I had met on the train, and was wondering who I could ask to show me to the Great Hall. I knew I couldn't remember the maze of staircases and passages between here and there. I was vaguely thinking of going and knocking on Oliver's dormitory door, though I didn't think girls were supposed to be on the guy's side and vice versa. Thankfully, Oliver had appeared at the bottom of the stairs, along with Percy the Prefect.
"Waiting for me?" he mumbled through a suppressed yawn.
"For anyone actually," I replied. "I don't think I can find my way to the Great Hall by myself yet."
"Ahh, I never thought of that." He smiled charmingly, "Come on, I'll help you get there, but I'm going to have you lead and I will only correct you when you go the wrong way."
So we went out through the portrait hole, and I at least knew to go back down the corridor that the Fat Lady was located at the end of. After emerging from the first hallway I went down the first set of steps I saw, which ended in another hallway. I turned left, but Oliver grabbed my arm and pulled me right. Now going in the correct direction again, I found my way to the main staircases. I was highly confused at first since the one I remembered going up the night before had moved, but Oliver waited there for a few minutes and it slowly rotated back into place. We went down several flights and again I took the wrong turn at the bottom. Oliver steered me in the right direction again and I got us to the grand marble staircase, which led down to the Great Hall.
"You only made two mistakes," commented Oliver, "that's pretty good for your first time."
The Great Hall was filled with noisy students eating breakfast and looking at their course schedules. We sat down at the Gryffindor table and I pulled a bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of bacon toward me and started heaping them onto my plate. The enchanted ceiling was a misty, gloomy gray, and I suspected it would soon be raining. Suddenly, with a great rushing sound, hundreds of owl swooped in through the high open windows, and flapped their way toward their respective destinations.
"Just the mail," explained Chloe, who had taken a seat alongside me. A large barn owl landed in front of her, dropping a newspaper in her lap. She put a sickle in the pouch on the bird's leg and it flew off again. "The Daily Prophet," she said showing me the front page. "I like to keep up on what is going on in the Ministry and what not. I hope to go into politics once I graduate. You know we have only had two female Ministers of Magic. I'm going to be the third."
Audrey, who was sitting across the table from us laughed, "She's been saying that since our first year. After hearing it so many times I believe she's going to do it, even if people want her in only because they want her to quit saying it."
Chloe stuck her tongue out at her friend and went back to her paper. Suddenly from down the table high pitched screaming started, "STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU. YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU. I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE."
"Ouch, someone's got a howler," yelled Audrey over the screaming letter, her hands over her ears.
"That would be my brother," said Percy, who was sitting a few chairs away. He didn't sound at all embarrassed or upset; in fact, it was more smug than anything. "Can't say he didn't deserve it, after all, he did hit the Whomping Willow, which is a one of a kind tree. And stole the family car and now Dad is facing…"
I found Percy was incredibly easy to ignore when he got to droning on. Oliver rolled his eyes at me as Percy continued his rant. The screaming had stopped, and the stunned silence of the hall was again building up to its conversational loudness.
Professor McGonagall slide her way along the table, handing out class schedules. Mine was pretty well staggered between the days of the week. First thing in the morning I had double Transfiguration, after that my Introduction to Apparition course, then lunch, then Herbology and the day ended with Ancient Runes. The next day I would start off with Double charms, then Defense against the Dark Arts, lunch, and Care of Magical Creatures. After finishing our breakfast, Oliver and I joined the majority of the other students in the school as we exited the great hall and made our way to our first classes.
Transfiguration was always a challenging, but satisfying course in which I had gotten straight A's in at home. Professor McGonagall, however, had provided us with a very daunting task for the first day. Obviously she wanted us to fully understand what it meant to be in a N.E.W.T. level class. Today we were learning the ever complicated methods of inter-species transfiguration. It was one thing to turn a living thing into an inanimate object, or even an inanimate object into a living thing. However, against logic, as one would think it would be easier since the thing is remaining alive, it was immensely harder to change one living thing into another. After scribbling notes for the first half of class and copying complicated charts and drawings, we were each paired up and given a white ferret, which we were to turn into a white rat. Apparently it was easier to start with a related animal, in this case a rodent to a rodent.
Oliver and I paired together. At first I had more fun playing with my ferret, who I thought was the cutest thing ever, before having to start concentrating on transfiguring it. With only a quarter of the class time remaining, neither of us were having any luck. Oliver was mumbling something about a bad idea signing up for this course, and that his O.W.L. scores must have been a fluke. I, on the other hand, had to keep fending off my cute charge, as every time I lifted my wand to cast the spell, it would spy my shiny watch and lunge for it. Finally outsmarting the thing, I put my watch in my pocket, and managed to do a half decent transfiguration. The rat turned out a bit lankier than a normal rat (and, as I found out when I took my watch out of my pocket to put back on) still retained it's affinity for shiny objects. Percy Weasley was across the room, being praised by Professor McGonagall for such an excellent transfiguration. His partner did not look very happy to be paired with him, as his attempts had gotten him nowhere.
The bell rang shrilly and we were off to Intro to Apparition. This course had no assigned teacher, but was taught by a staff member who did not otherwise have a class at the time. The class was also kept strictly to its own house, in order to keep the class small. Learning to Apparate was considered rather dangerous, since many fully grown wizards couldn't even do it, so the smaller the class, the more attention each student got, and the less likely someone would go and splinch themselves.
Oliver was just wondering who our teacher would be when he groaned loudly and whacked his head purposefully off the desk. Professor Snape had just swept into the room, causing much of the class to react similarly to Oliver.
Audrey was sitting behind me, and I could hear her mumbling, through her hands on which she was resting her head, "This isn't fair. I didn't take potions to avoid Snape, this isn't fair. This is so not fair."
I remembered what Oliver had said at the feast last night, about Snape always favoring his own house and giving out nasty assignments. However, since there were no Slytherins in this class, I couldn't see how he could favor people.
"Apparition is a difficult skill to learn," he began in a cold, yet attention grabbing voice. "Many wizards do not possess the intelligence needed and would rather take the lazy approach, through broom sticks and floo powder. So I have no doubt that many of you in this course will also decide it is easier to go with alternate methods of travel. All the better for me, as I will not have to clean up the mess left behind when you fail to Apparate successfully."
The class was staring at him, some frightfully, others with their mouths hanging open. A few looked like they were ready to take the alternatives at this very moment.
Snape paid them no mind and continued on. "As everyone knows, no one can Apparate on Hogwarts grounds. So we will be taking excursions to Hogsmead later in the term for practical labs."
Normally a field trip would have warranted great excitement from a class, but just the tone Snape used had sucked any joy right out of the statement.
"At the end of the year, I will be evaluating each of you and that will determine whether you obtain your Apparition License. For today, get out a quill and parchment and copy these notes." He waved his wand once and lines of neat writing appeared on the board.
For the rest of the hour we sat eerily silent and copied notes from the board, which scrolled away to reveal even more notes. They were all about what could go wrong with Apparition, and contained different terms for how badly splinched you had been, as well as the different methods used by accidental magical reversal squads to put people right again. It also contained a list of fines and warnings a person would receive for Apparating without a license.
As the bell rang signaling lunch, Snape barked, "I want you all to read the first three chapters for next class and write an essay summarizing the ten basic steps to a successfully apparition. It should be no shorter than twelve inches of parchment."
"Of all the rotten luck," Oliver exploded as we left the room and joined the horde heading for the great hall. "We'll work out butts off in that course and he'll still fail us just because we are in Gryffindor."
"I'm sure he won't fail us unless we deserve…" I stopped when I saw the look Oliver was giving me.
"You don't understand yet. I wish you didn't have to, at least one of us could have had a Snape free life here at Hogwarts, but that's all changed now. Consider yourself just initiated into the battle between Gryffindor and Slytherin."
After lunch was Herbology, outside in the green houses. Compared to my first two classes it was uneventful, consisting mostly of mixing a rather putrid smelling fertilizing mix to feed to the venomous tentaculas. The only partially exciting part of the class was to occasionally fend off a sneaky tentacle from over your shoulder. Next, I was leaving Oliver for the first time all day to go to Ancient Runes class. He showed me to the classroom, on his way to his own, and smiled sweetly before disappearing back into the crowd of students.
Ancient Runes was looking to be a challenging, but logical class, as I walked out of the classroom an hour and a half later. I tentatively made my way back toward the great hall for dinner. Half way there Audrey and Kitty joined me in the hallway.
"How was your day?" asked Kitty cheerfully.
"Not too bad," I replied. "How was yours?"
"Great except for learning that Snape was our instructor for Apparition," answered Audrey, sounding grumpy.
Kitty shrugged, "I can't take Intro to Apparition until next year. I only just turned sixteen a few weeks ago, so I won't be seventeen in time to take the test. But on the plus side, I don't have to deal with everyone's least favorite teacher."
Her perkiness on this matter seemed to be driving Audrey nuts, who promptly changed the subject. Unfortunately for me, she changed the subject to boys, and after talking a bit about the Hufflepuff fifth year she found rather cute (some kid named Cedric) she looked over at me and said bluntly, "so what's with you and Oliver?"
We had already sat down in the Great Hall and I nearly chocked on my pumpkin juice when she asked it. Forcing myself to swallow I answered, "Nothing, I moved into the house next door to him and he's been helping me get used to life here."
"Oh really," said Chloe, sliding over to sit next to me, "I heard that you and he sat together on the train."
"Yeah, so," I said defensively.
"Well, we were just wondering if there was anything going on between you tw…"
I cut Kitty off when I said too quickly, "No, we are nothing more than friends."
The three girls exchanged quick looks and I knew they didn't believe me. I was fighting to keep from blushing, and when I saw Oliver walk in my eyes automatically swept over to him. Audrey lifted an eyebrow at me, and when he sat down across the table from me and said hello they all giggled.
I tried not to talk too much to Oliver throughout the meal, only answering him curtly when he asked about my day. Eventually he too fell silent and after finishing his food got up to leave.
"Coming?" he asked me.
I saw Audrey, Chloe, and Kitty look over at me.
I hated what I was about to do. "No," I replied. "I think I'll stay here for awhile yet. Thanks for showing me around and stuff though today, I think I can find my way back to the common room now."
I definitely saw his smile fade as I said this, and mentally I was ready to kick myself, hard. He turned away, definitely disappointed, and walked off.
Even though I had stayed I didn't really talk much with the other girls, but followed them when they got up to leave. I felt horrible, and more than anything wished I had gone with Oliver instead of being so proud that I had to go and hurt his feelings. If I wasn't such an idiot I could be sitting right now with Oliver in front of the fire in the common room. I resolved to go apologize to him as soon as we got back to the common room, but Oliver wasn't there. After awhile of waiting, I finally went and asked Fred and George if they knew where he was, using the excuse that I had a question about some homework. They told me that he had gone to check out the conditions on the Quidditch pitch. So, quite unsure of where I was going, I headed back out into the castle, hopefully to find my way to the Quidditch field.