Sorry if that last
chapter sounded 'stuck' as Evenstar said, I know it was a bit
short, I had a case of writer's block… I hope this is an
improvement! Thanks for the reviews! Happy holidays to everyone!
'Help us out' ended up not being too bad. I looked up facts from the first chapter, sometimes aided by Megan, and the others wrote them down. Afterward, we all looked over the list of important points that I'd found in the first chapter and wrote our essays about them. I ended up having to explain a lot of the concepts to Sandy, Fiona and Megan, all of whom didn't really even understand most of the words the book was using, but over all it wasn't horrible. I didn't have to actually write the essays for them and Victoria, for the most part, kept pretty silent the whole time, only dropping a nasty comment on me, someone else in the library or one of the teachers about every five minutes.
Near the end of the forty-five minute break, when we were about to start on our charms work, several first year Gryffindors entered the library, Angelina among them. When she noticed me, she came over to talk for a few minutes before the bell rang. We mostly just chatted about the lessons and the confusing castle, but it felt good to talk to someone who acted like I was a normal person.
Potions was just as bad as was rumored. Fred and George Weasley were telling anyone who'd listen that their brothers had sworn Professor Snape, the potions master, was the meanest teacher on Earth. They had tons of stories about all the times he'd made them drink terrible potions they'd concocted and the multitudes of points that he'd taken for things like forgetting to tie your shoelaces.
The minute we stepped into the dark, damp, gloomy dungeon, he'd lectured us on what a difficult and altogether complicated subject potions was. By the time he'd finished describing the many horrible effects an incorrectly brewed potion could have, I felt rather sick to my stomach. After look around the room, I had the distinct impression that I was not alone in my queasiness.
He then proceeded to quiz the class with a lot of hard, tedious, questions no one could have possibly picked up unless they'd memorized their potions book, cover to cover, word for word. As no one had, he soon grew exasperated and started taking points left and right. Thankfully I managed to escape the lesson unscathed, but Sandy was not so lucky. All the way up to lunch she complained incredulously about how she couldn't have possibly known the difference between bat's breath weed and garrion leaf.
It seemed impossible at that point that the day was only half over and by the time I fell into bed that night, I was exhausted. Apparently the old defense against the dark arts teacher was taking a year off to travel. Our new one hadn't seemed too awful, she'd talked about what we'd be covering this year and hadn't even asked us to take out our books at all which was lucky, because I still didn't have mine. I knew I should have told her at the first lesson, but I hadn't. I still had a lingering hope that I might be able to somehow get a copy before the next lesson.
When I woke the next morning, I was still ridiculously tired and I didn't at all feel like climbing out of bed to go wander the castle in search of my breakfast. Also, I realized meekly as I dressed, I had to complete my history of magic homework from the yesterday before first period today.
Finding the Great Hall proved even more difficult than it had been yesterday and I was soon hopelessly lost as I had no one to follow. Finally I managed to find the library and I barely had time to finish my summary of my previous knowledge of history when I was forced to wander off, without any breakfast, in the hopes of finding my first class before the bell rang.
History of Magic was located on fourth and a half floor. This made it rather difficult to locate as you had to go up the exact right staircase at exactly the right time, otherwise, there would be no fourth and half floor and you would find that the thirty-odd classrooms located on it had simply disappeared.
Finally I managed to locate classroom twenty in the History Wing. I was a minute or so late, but the old professor barely noticed. He was the most boring, utterly monotonous teacher I'd ever met. He was a ghost and according to the Weasley twins, one morning he'd simply got up from in front of the staffroom fire and left his body behind. His voice was dry and dull and droning and his main focus of the lessons seemed to be simply lecturing on and on about various wars and trials. Luckily he didn't seem to much care whether or not his classes were paying him any attention at all, and I got a good bit of my charms homework done during his lesson.
After History of Magic, I had transfiguration and I managed to follow the other Ravenclaws to this lesson which was on the third floor, near the door with Christopher the Curious, but not behind it. Professor McGonagall sat behind her desk, consulting the attendance sheet and checking people off as they entered.
She quickly called the class to order and passed out buttons that were to be turned into coins. As I nervously drew my wand from my back pack, I made sure to concentrate carefully on not letting it explode or do any serious damage.
"Verto Lamnia!" I said quietly, sweeping my wand in the circular motion as Professor McGonagall had demonstrated. Today, I almost immediately felt the ominous buzzing that meant my wand was about to do magic. Hastily I dropped it, without really thinking, I hoped it might stop the magic. Quite to the contrary, my wand let out a stream of gold and silver and with a loud whooshing sound, the button flew into the air and erupted into a fountain of knuts and sickles which for some reason seemed to be about ten times as heavy as your average knut or sickle and went smashing about with deafening thuds and crashes. Several hit students on the heads, making sickening noises and causing their victims to slump, unconscious against the nearest piece of furniture.
When at last, the chaos ended and the last of the enormous coins fell, nearly splitting one of the desks in half, it took a minute for the dust to settle, but once it had, the destruction it revealed was horrendous. The remaining students were hiding under the remaining desks and many of the delicate instruments and the tanks that had lined the shelves of the room were smashed. I was the only one left standing and I quickly tried to duck under a desk, but there were no upright ones left anywhere near me. Besides, it was already too late. I was in full view of Professor McGonagall who was gaping at me as though I had just completely destroyed her entire classroom with a hail storm of coins, which, as a matter of fact, I had.
"Do you have any idea, any idea at all, why or how you just did that?" She asked, apparently too stunned to start cleaning up just yet.
I shook my head, I was too embarrassed, shocked, and terrified to say anything. Professor McGonagall sighed, "The rest of you are dismissed, please try and use the remaining time of this lesson to do something productive. Now then…" She quickly revived the people on the floor who had not already stumbled to their feet, rubbing their heads and looking surprised. She suggested they might want to visit the hospital wing to get something for the swelling and then ushered the last of the concussed victims through the door. Quickly, she shut it and turned to face me.
"Now, tell me exactly what happened. We are going to try and figure out what is going on," she said.
I nodded weakly and began to explain. There was no use in lying, so I told her everything, wondering as I did whether you could get expelled for accidentally knocking out half your classmates and destroying an entire classroom.
Afterward she nodded briskly and began straightening the mangled chairs and desks as she spoke, "I want to see if you can reverse the damage you have done at all, try this, it is a simple spell for mending things… reparo!" she said, aiming her wand at a bottle of ink that had been smashed. "Now you try it," she said.
I nervously took the wand from my bag and pointed it at a book whose pages had been ripped out. "R-reparo!" I exclaimed. Nothing happened.
"Keep trying," Professor McGonagall said, as she began vanishing the coins.
"Reparo!" I said again, concentrating. "Reparo!" I said, imagining the book's ripped papers flying back together and reassembling themselves, "reparo!" I exclaimed for the third time, this time I could feel my wand humming slightly, growing warm in my hand, there was a fluttering sound like the wind rustling through the pages of a book and suddenly not only this book, but all the others around the room and all of the broken glass and debris from other objects immediately righted themselves and reassembled, even neater then they had been before the coin explosion. I was momentarily thrilled, but then I thought of why these things had broken in the first place and I felt embarrassed and worried again.
"Good," said Professor McGonagall, "At least now we know that you can execute constructive magic, as well as reeking havoc and creating chaos." I thought I saw the slightest of smiles crease her face, but then it was gone and she was back to business.
"Either you have an overenthusiastic wand or poorly controlled magic. I would suggest that you use magic as little as possible until you have gained mastery over either your power or your wand. It will be necessary to perform charms and spells during your classes, but I must warn you to be careful. Now, in the meantime, I'm going to try to arrange an extra lesson or two every week so that I, or possibly one of the other teachers can help you. I will inform you when I have managed to do so. Now why don't you go and join your classmates in the library and try to get some homework done, alright?"
"Yes, Professor," I said, keeping my eyes on the floor. I was pretty ashamed, but also very relieved that I had managed to escape all punishment. As I slowly wandered the castle, consulting my schedule and trying to figure out if I should even bother going to the library or common room, or if I might be better off just attempting to locate my next class, I marveled at how I had left the transfiguration disaster without even detention.
Luckily none of my other classes that day required the use of magic and though we were assigned homework out of our Defense Against the Dark Arts book, I didn't need it during class and I was pretty sure I could answer most of the questions without the book and those that I couldn't, I thought maybe I would find answers to in other library books. I wasn't sure why I was so reluctant to approach Professor Kowen about the unlocatable book, she seemed fairly nice, but I had an odd feeling about the book, which kept me from revealing that I did not have it.
The next day dragged by. I wandered the corridors for what seemed like hours until I finally found the Hufflepuff dormitory where I managed to follow a group of second years to breakfast. I was rather nervous about this, first because some of the Hufflepuffs gave me odd looks, apparently realizing I wasn't in their house, and second because the people I was following turned out to be a boy called Cedric Diggory, and his friends, who was very popular and also really cute.
When I finally made it to breakfast I realized that I had passed the door to the Great Hall twice when I was trying to find someone to follow. After that, the day went well enough until transfiguration. We had a double period and I was so nervous, I was sure that people could see me shaking.
Amazingly, however, we spent the class reviewing the homework and reading chapter two in our books. I was feeling so relieved that I almost let myself be separated from my classmates as we made our way down to the dungeons for potions. The last class of the day was charms during which we finally began to try magic.
I looked at the feather I was supposed to be levitating nervously. Finally I decided to pretend to do the charm. I screwed up my face and made convincing swishes with my wand, but I carefully kept the magic at bay, only saying pieces of the incantation and not maintaining the firm grip on my wand or the concentration which I had discovered was essential for magic.
By dinnertime I was feeling quite proud of myself and I was entirely looking forward to my astronomy lesson that night. Victoria, who had not finished the potions homework that was due the next day, was late getting up to the astronomy tower and Megan and I actually had a perfectly pleasant conversation while we set up our telescopes and pulled out our star charts. All in all it had been a fairly good third day of school…