First Days

Chapter Four

Nym woke in a long, somewhat thin room, all made of stone. For a moment she panicked. Where were her pale yellow walls, her posters of her favorite sports figures, the warm rose light from the stained glass window that fell across her bed each morning? Her panic didn't last long, but was replaced by depression. She was at Hogwarts, and the one friend she had – the one person she even knew – was now completely apart from her. She wouldn't even get to see him.

She lay in the neatly turned down hospital bed, dressed in the standard pin-striped pajamas, and tried not to cry again. She'd expected Hogwarts to be bad, but not this bad. In her imaginings, she'd always had at least one friend to talk to.

The matron bustled over, smiling. She had a large stack of neatly folded garments in her arms. "I'm so glad you're awake, dear. How do you feel?"

"Much better, thank you," Nym said as politely as she could. The woman had been very nice last night, but that didn't mean she wouldn't turn her into a frog this morning.

"That's good. Now here's your robes. Put them on, and I'll take you down to breakfast."

She placed Nym's traitorous robes on the chair next to the bed, and pulled the curtains around to hide her. Why couldn't you be yellow? Nym thought sourly at her tie and crest. She put them on and left the shelter of the curtains. She wouldn't let her disappointment destroy her first day at Hogwarts. Any more than it already was.

"Your Head of House, Professor Prewett, sent your things for the morning up. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to talk to him, child, or any of us. We're here to help." Her smile made Nym think that maybe, just maybe, if all the teachers were like Professor Prewett, Hogwarts might not be quite as bad as she thought. She handed Nym the black bag that Andromeda Tonks had spent so long picking out for her daughter.

After what seemed a long time, and many disorientating corridors, Madame Pomfrey ushered her charge into the Great Hall. It was lighter than it had been the night before, the conversation more animated, and it seemed all together more alive. She left Nym with the four other first year Gryffindor girls, who introduced themselves as 'Hope, Opal, Rose and Mary, the Lion Grlz', and broke into shrill giggles.

"Nym? You okay?" Nym spun in her seat, to find Rick looking down at her. Her relief at seeing him must have showed on her face, because he laughed in his kind way and said, "You didn't think you'd never see me again, just because we're in different Houses, did you?"

"Um…"

He smiled, as though to a child who's made a rather cute mistake, and slid into a spot next to her. On the side away from her still giggling dorm mates, she noted. "You might not see as much of me as otherwise, but I'm not just going to abandon you, Nym." She tried on a smile in return. "That's a girl. Now could someone pass the toast?"

According to the schedule that was passed around, Nym's very first class was Herbology. Which was, as far as she could tell from what Rick had said, something like Muggle gardening. How odd, she thought, as she made her way towards the greenhouses, whose glass sparkled in the sunlight. We never had gardening in regular school. Though, she allowed, this hardly qualified as a 'regular' school.

Rick had assured her that Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher and Head of Hufflepuff, was a very nice woman, and that she and Nym would get along well. He'd also made her promise about a dozen times to meet him after dinner and tell him all about her first day. She only hoped she'd be able to find her way back to the Great Hall for her meals. "You'll know your way around in no time," Rick had promised. She rather thought he had too much confidence in her.

Professor Sprout, a homely woman with fly away hair that was beginning to gray and soil all over her robes greeted them cheerfully. "Welcome to your first Herbology lesson, class. Let's get into it, shall we?" Rick was right, Nym thought as she paired up with a thin, timid Ravenclaw boy, who murmured that his name was Jerome and the only other person without a partner. She's a really good teacher.

Flying lessons began Wednesday, and they were what Nym dreaded most. In the course of the past few days, she'd tripped over the caretaker's cat four times, walked into two suits of armor, spilled a plate of food on an unlucky fellow Gryffindor and somehow set fire to three desks.

"I'm going to break something," she told Rick gloomily. They were sitting together at the Hufflepuff table, which they did often. Now Nym knew – and liked – several of the Hufflepuffs much better than she did her actual Housemates.

"You sound like my cousin Sybil. All she ever does is complain that bad things will happen. 'Inner Eye' my foot. She can't predict what we're having for dinner an hour before it's served." It was the first time Rick had mentioned his family, beyond the occasional vague reference to them, and also the first he'd said anything that wasn't positive.

"You don't get on with her?"

"No, no. We get along fine, I guess, except when she's doing her seer act. Just because we have a great-grandmother or something who was one, she thinks she can see the future. She just doesn't get it."

Nym nodded and didn't ask any more questions. Sybil was obviously a bit of a sore point for Rick, and she didn't want to upset him.

The Flying instructor, Madame Hooch, looked more like a bird than a human. She sat on her broom, surveying her students with her raptor's golden eyes, her cloak billowing out behind her like black wings. Even her nose, a thin, sharp affair with a slight hook, looked more like a beak than anyone's nose should. When her gloved hands gripped a hovering broomstick, Nym was reminded of nothing so much as a great black hawk settling onto a branch, its wicked talons biting into the soft wood. All fears of flying were forgotten in her terror of the teacher.

With a sharp, impersonal voice she instructed the students. Follow her direction, Nym put her hand out over her broom. "Up," she said as clearly as she could. Her voice trembled a bit anyway. She tried again. The broom seemed like it was considering lifting a little, but decided it was too much effort. Stupid piece of misbegotten wood, Nym thought angrily. All it has to do is lift itself off the ground, and it doesn't even have the decency to do that. She lost patience with it. "Just get up here, you damnable thing," she snapped, an expression which would have gotten her grounded at home. The broom seemed to realize she wasn't in the mood to put up with its foolishness, and jumped into her hand.

"Good, but do it without elaboration next time," Madame Hooch said when she passed. Nym blushed bright red, but she thought she saw the teacher give her a small smile, like she thought it was funny. Nym let out her breath in relief. She wasn't going to be in trouble.

When it was time for them to kick off, Nym forced herself to stop trembling. Getting the broom to jump into her hand was one thing, but getting off the ground was something else entirely. She tried to do as Madame Hooch said, but she hadn't pushed off hard enough. The broom came up a little, wavered, and dropped back to earth. Nym rolled off, muttering threats to broomsticks that didn't stay up.

Ignoring the others, who were doing a little drill that Madame Hooch had demonstrated, she kicked off again. The broom moved along, a little slowly, but it stayed in the air. Then it began to wobble, and Nym again found herself falling and rolling across the smooth green of the school lawn.

Third time's the charm, Nym thought, as she kicked off again. And for a while, it seemed it was. The broomstick soared, a good ten feet from the ground, responding as Madame Hooch had said it would, turning and dipping. Until Madame Hooch blew her whistle for them to come down. She pointed the broom slightly down, intending to come in at a shallow angle for a slow, easy landing. The broom had other ideas, and pointed itself almost directly at the ground. She heard the teacher yelling at her to pull up, pull up girl. She tried, but the broom gave a little shiver and kept going. Nym tumbled off, hitting the ground hard and driving all the air out of her lungs.

She lay on the grass, gasping. The broom had been working just fine. Why had it stopped, suddenly? Had she done something wrong? She didn't think so. She was sure she'd done exactly what Madame Hooch had said.

"Are you alright?" Madame Hooch was standing over her, her eagle eyes looking a bit more human because of the concern that filled them. Nym gasped and tried to answer, but her lungs refused to work. She settled for nodding. "That's something at least. No one else has been."

"Professor?" Nym asked weakly. What did she mean, no one else had been. They were all over there, maybe twenty feet away, talking among themselves.

"The brooms keep failing, Miss Tonks. They've already sent three students to the hospital wing, and not one of their brooms survived." She sighed. "I've asked the Headmaster for brooms, but we just don't have the funds. I can only be grateful no one's been seriously injured." She helped Nym to her feet. A few feet behind her were the remains of her broom, smashed now almost beyond recognition. "We can't even find out what's wrong with them." This last piece seemed the most distressing to Madame Hooch, and Nym had to agree. If you couldn't tell what was wrong, then you couldn't fix it, and there was no way to tell how many students would be injured. Suddenly, flying seemed terribly dangerous. Just not for the reasons she'd thought before.