Characters introduced in this chapter: Internet friends: phoenixlament - Jadea Dalziel, Watermont - Anne Lacey
Starting Classes 2
Wednesday morning saw the first year Hufflepuffs standing outside greenhouse one, waiting for Professor Sprout. Just moments before the door to the greenhouse was opened, the Slytherins came marching into view.
"Hurry, hurry! Into the greenhouse first years!" called Professor Sprout. She smiled warmly at all of the students as they filed inside. Once inside, the first years saw that many stations were set up around the room, grouped around small, potted bushes. Alice found herself at a station with Joseph and Josef.
"You won't need your dragon hide gloves this morning," said Professor Sprout, noticing a few students slipping gloves on their hands. "These flutterby bushes aren't really dangerous, but they need care. As you will notice, there are clippers at each station. Today, I would like these flutterby bushes to be edged. Two people can hold the bush while the third person clips." Sprout looked around at the students, as if expecting them to start working right away.
Steven raised his hand slowly into the air. "Yes Stouffer," said Professor Sprout.
"Um, Professor, why do we have to hold the bush?" he asked, a bit anxiously.
"Why, I thought that'd be obvious," said Sprout, approaching the nearest flutterby bush beside which stood three Slytherin boys. She snatched up the clippers, but as soon as she got them near the bush, it began to shake very violently, preventing her from snapping off any of its leaves. "Flutterby bushes shake whenever anything gets near them. It's a defense mechanism. If a creature which wants to eat the leaves comes near, the bush will start to shake, scaring the creature away. Most beasts believe an enemy to be hiding within the cover of the bush." The professor set down the clippers. Slowly, the flutterby bush's tremors stopped and it looked again like nothing more than an innocent bush from a muggle garden, however overgrown it had become since the last time it had been trimmed. "I would like all of your bushes to look like this by the end of class," said Professor Sprout, pointing at a bush near the front of the class which looked sickly and naked due to its recent and vicious trimming, "and you should take turns clipping and holding the bush so that you don't tire too much. You may start!"
Josef and Joseph volunteered to hold the bush first while Alice clipped at it with the clippers. First years let out yells and curses all around the greenhouse as the vicious shaking of the flutterby bushes riddled their hands and forearms with small cuts and scrapes. If imaginable though, the students holding the clippers were having an even tougher time than those trying to hold the bushes steady. Even with two people battling against the bushes, they continued to vibrate, and the people with the clippers had to work hard to clip off the excess leaves and twigs and had to also be careful to not get their clippers anywhere near the hands and fingers of their friends.
A little less than halfway through the double class period, Ava let out a shriek of a greater magnitude than any of the other yells around the room. Josef, who was then trying to snap at a branch which had been eluding him for a few minutes, set the clippers down and turned to look. Alice and then Joseph let go of their flutterby bush.
"I'm sorry! Oh I'm so sorry!" wailed Bella as Ava clutched her left hand to her chest, a few tears sliding down her face. Professor Sprout bustled over to their station. She took hold of Ava's hand, which was bleeding. The professor shook her head. "Cut by the clippers. You'll need to go to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey will set you straight in no time."
"Can I take her?" asked Bella. She looked near tears herself.
"Yes, Luciano. You can take her." The class watched as the two girls left, but then Sprout got their attention again. "McFarlane, you may work at this station now. Come on everyone, you still have flutterby bushes to trim!" Daphne, who had begun to look lost, joined the next station.
By the end of class, no one was without scratches and Alice could hear a Slytherin at the next station complaining that they should have been wearing dragon hide gloves after all. "Very good work, Boeker!" said Professor Sprout as she passed by Alice's station. It was true that Joseph was doing a very good job. Alice and Josef had discovered this during the beginning of class and had held onto the flutterby bush more than Joseph so that he could trim it. "Ten points to Hufflepuff!"
Alice smiled in spite of the fact that the bush was rattling so hard that her entire body was shaking. "I d-don't know how y-y-you do it," she said.
Joseph reached the clippers in and snapped down on a branch just before it could move away. "It's not that hard," he said.
"Alright class!" said Professor Sprout. "I believe that that will be enough. Let go of your flutterby bush and stand away please!"
Everyone obeyed, looking only too happy to do so. Within the next few seconds, all of the bushes had ceased their rattling. Looking around the room, Alice smiled happily. Except for the bush which Ava had been working at earlier, all of the bushes now looked severely maimed, but none so much as her own. As the class left the greenhouse, Alice clapped Joseph on the shoulder. "You're pretty good at this stuff! I'm glad to have you as a lab partner!" Joseph smiled shyly, but didn't say anything.
Ava and Bella joined the Hufflepuffs at lunch. Neither of them had as much as a scratch on them, and a few of the other first years made comments of how a trip to the hospital wing might do them good as well. None of them made a move though. After lunch, they would all be attending their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and none of them would have missed that if they didn't have to. Throughout lunch, they kept shooting glances up at the staff table. There, Professor Potter sat, cloak drawn around himself like usual. As soon as he stood though, the first year Hufflepuffs all clamored to leave as well. Alice noticed a similar behavior among the first year Ravenclaws at the next table.
The first years were at the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom before the professor even showed up. Professor Potter wasn't long in coming though. He emerged from behind a tapestry on the wall moments later and strode down the hallway to his classroom, opening up the door and motioning for the first years to enter. As Alice walked by him, she glanced quickly up into his face. It was in shadow, due to the hood over his head, but she was pretty sure that she had spotted his scar. A mixture of excitement and fear built up in her chest and she made her way toward the nearest seat. The desks closest to the teacher's desk were already full, so Alice found herself a few seats back from the front. No one chose a desk in the back of the classroom.
Once everyone was seated, Professor Potter closed the door and walked over to his desk. Each footfall seemed to be magnified in the tensely quiet room. The professor turned his back on the class, whipped his hooded cloak off his shoulders, and laid it on his chair. Then he turned to face the class.
Every student seemed to lean forward in their desks as one. The man before them had black messy hair with a few streaks of gray in it. His hair was covering his forehead too efficiently to detect a scar. His face looked like it had once been handsome, but pain and sorrow had changed it forever. He was of a solid build, but he still looked limber enough to be the wonderful seeker that Alice had heard he used to be. Most remarkable about his appearance though, were his eyes. They were a bright green, and staring into those eyes, Alice felt as if she were looking into an abyss of intense feeling. Those eyes had seen so much, but the man behind them had still lived to tell about it.
"Welcome to your first year of Defense Against the Dark Arts," said Professor Potter in a clear voice. "Can anyone tell me what Defense Against the Dark Arts is?" He scanned the room, apparently certain that there would be at least one student in the class who had all the answers to every question.
At first, no one moved, but then Blaine's hand rose into the air.
"Yes?" said Professor Potter.
"Defense Against the Dark Arts is where you fight against dark wizards and dark creatures. It's the spells that you have to know to do those things," said Blaine.
"Yes," said the professor, "and no." Blaine shifted a bit in his seat, a slightly annoyed look on his face. "Defense Against the Dark Arts is the study of defensive spells to use against dark wizards and dark creatures, just like Mr.…"
"Newcomb," supplied Blaine.
"Just like Mr. Newcomb said, but it is more than that. More than any other class which you will take at Hogwarts, this class combines all of your skills. When you're out in the real world, if you come up across something or someone who wishes to hurt you, just knowing all the spells which you will learn in this class won't help you. What if it's a plant that you come up across? You must know a bit about herbology. What if it's a creature that we don't study in this class? Care of Magical Creatures would help you to identify the creature and know how to handle it. But even memorizing every book in the library, though I doubt that's possible, still wouldn't be enough. Not everyone can do Defense Against the Dark Arts. Some people freeze up and can't think of what to do, other people forget everything they've ever learned, and some people are just too slow. No matter how well I teach you, I want you all to know, to always know, that Defense Against the Dark Arts is more than the wand waving that will happen in this classroom. Defense Against the Dark Arts, once you get out there, is you and your guts. It's as simple as that."
"Wow!" Alice heard someone say. She didn't know who it was.
"Today, we'll be learning a simple, but useful, spell. Please get out your wands." Twenty students scrambled to take out their wands. "But I warn you. It's not as spectacular a spell as you are all expecting. But, if you are flying through a storm and you lose your way, this spell will help you. This is called the Four-Point Spell." Professor Potter took out his wand and laid it flat on his hand. He said "point me" and the wand moved of its own accord to point toward the windows. The professor then pointed toward the windows with his free hand. "That way is north. If you do the spell correctly, your wand will always point north. This spell requires no special wand movements or weird pronunciations, so most of you should catch on very quickly. You can try now."
The classroom rang with the sounds of many people commanding their wands to "point me." The first time that Alice tried it, she was happy to see her wand move … until she noticed that, instead of turning to point toward the window, her wand was rolling off her hand. It clattered onto the ground. Blushing, Alice reached down to pick it up.
"Look, I did it!" said the girl beside her. Alice turned to look. Sure enough, the girl's wand was pointing at the windows. The girl turned her wand to point toward south, said "point me" and Alice watched as it swung around again to point toward the windows.
"Very good," said Professor Potter, walking between them. "What is your name?"
The girl lifted her steel grey eyes to look at the professor. "My name's Jadea Dalziel," she said.
"Five points to Ravenclaw, Dalziel. Keep up the good work." He continued to walk around the room, helping the students who were having trouble with the spell. He didn't walk back by where Alice was sitting, but thankfully, she got the spell on her own on the fourth try. It brought a smile to her face to say "point me" and to watch her short wand spin around to point north.
The next day, the Hufflepuffs joined the Slytherins in the Astronomy Tower for their astronomy class. The walls of their classroom were covered with pictures of constellations, planets, and the cross-sections of celestial bodies. Just like every other picture in the castle, these were moving. One poster behind the teacher's desk gave the students a look of Earth, as it would look from a spaceship circling around the planet. Another painting glided through the solar system, stopping briefly at each planet. Other pieces of artwork showed the movement of the stars over centuries of time.
The witch standing before the teacher's desk was Professor Sinistra. She had pale skin from lack of sun and limp, thin, blond hair. Her eyes were such a light blue that they often looked eerily white. Her robes were black, making her paleness only that much more striking and other-worldly.
"Find your seats," said Professor Sinistra softly. She was, by far, the most soft-spoken professor which the first years had encountered. She did not lecture to the class or give much instruction at all. She simply pointed up to the board where she had written out vocabulary for the students and the first years obeyed by pulling out their parchment and quills and jotting down all of the words and their definitions.
It was a fairly basic list of words and Alice became bored as she wrote down the simple definitions of astronomy, star, planet, satellite, asteroid, comet, solar system, star system, galaxy, cluster of galaxies, supercluster, and universe. None of these words seemed remotely difficult to understand to her. It was like a lesson in common sense. She didn't need it spelled out to her to understand that a supercluster was obviously larger than a cluster of galaxies which was itself larger than a single galaxy. And yet, the list of words continued. It took Alice awhile to realize that the first vocabulary word, astronomy, was no longer on the board. In fact, most of the first words were gone. Magic, she thought, the professor is magicking the list to make it longer as we write! Nothing Alice could do could change this though, so she simply continued to write, hoping that the constantly-changing list up on the board would not pass her up.
As Alice was finishing up her definition of light-year, Professor Sinistra said, "That will be all for today. I will be seeing all of you tonight on top of this tower for your first night of observation. Good day."
Many yawning students gathered together their things, massaged the cramps out of their hands, and shuffled out the door.
Finally, the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors were starting their last subject. The teacher who had first greeted the first years now welcomed them into her classroom and ordered them to their seats.
"Welcome to Transfiguration," said Professor McGonagall sharply. "In this room you will be doing some of the most difficult magic which exists. Transfiguration is both very complex and very dangerous, so there will be absolutely no messing around in my classroom. If you play around in here, then you will leave and not come back! I have warned you!"
McGonagall pulled out her wand, tapped her desk, and it became a lioness. A few students gasped and screamed, but the roar of the lioness covered up all other sounds in the room. With a wave of the professor's wand, the lioness turned back into a desk. Excited chatter broke out around the room, but a stern look from McGonagall quieted the room instantly.
"It will be years before any of you begin transfiguring furniture into animals," said Professor McGonagall. "But here is where you'll start." She pointed toward the board where a list of complicated-looking notes was written. The students hastened to write them down. Alice was at least happy to see that the notes didn't change as she wrote, so once she was done writing them all down, there was nothing else to write.
As the last few students set down their quills, the professor began walking briskly around the room, setting down a match before each student. "If you follow your notes," she said, "you should be able to transfigure these matches into needles. Please start as soon as you're ready."
About half of the students in the room began saying the Latin incantation for the transfiguration and tapping their matches, but without result. In fact, nothing happened around the room for about half an hour, but the first bit of action was not a successful transfiguration. A girl with shoulder-length black hair in the next row pointed her wand at the match on her desk, spoke the incantation, and the match, along with all of her notes, burst into flame. She yelped and pushed her chair back forcefully, nearly toppling over onto her back.
Professor McGonagall stormed over from across the room, putting out the fire with a wave of her wand. "Please, Miss Lacey, tap, don't stab, your match." She waved her wand at the desk and parchment, repairing it to appear unburned and recovering the notes of the young Gryffindor. "Are you hurt?" she asked, looking at the girl critically. Lacey gulped, but shook her head. "I'll get you a new match." The professor made her way back to the front of the room and returned with a new match. Then she looked around the room. Every student was staring at her and Lacey. "Did I give you permission to stop your work?"
Many startled students began trying to transfigure their matches again. Near the end of the double class period, the girl sitting next to Lacey gasped and then held up … a needle! "Look Anne!" she said to Lacey. "I did it! I turned a match into a needle!"
"Very good," said Professor McGonagall. "Ten points to Gryffindor, Ponte. Maybe you could help Lacey out."
Anne blushed a bit at this comment, but the freckled girl holding the needle turned toher and began helping her with the movement of her wand, obviously not taking the professor's comment as an insult at all.
"I'll never get this," said someone behind Alice. She turned around to see Bella, rolling her match back and forth across her desk with the tip of her wand.
"Well, you never will that way," said a Gryffindor next to her.
"But it's just so complicated," said Bella. Sure enough, her notes looked immensely complicated, covered in cross-outs and with some of the notes squeezed into the margins.
The golden haired Gryffindor pushed her own clear notes onto Bella's desk. "Look, I don't really get it either, but maybe we could both use my notes. My name's Laney."
"Hehe, I already knew that," said Bella. "We met in Charms, remember?"
"Oh yeah, that's right. It's Bella, right?"
Before Bella could say anything though, Professor McGonagall was standing over the two of them. "If you're already chatting, then surely you can both transfigure your matches. Let me see." Both girls attempted the spell again. Neither succeeded. "My classroom is not a social room. Luciano and Thornton, you have extra homework tonight. Practice this spell. I expect your matches to be turned into needles by next week."
Within a few more mintues, the class period was over. Only Alanna Ponte had succeeded in turning her match into a needle. Alice had no idea how many times she had tried the spell without success.
The ten first year Hufflepuffs all clustered around the portrait hole. Despite the late hour, they were all very awake and excited. This was the only time that they would be allowed out of the common room after hours. All they had to do was wait for the prefect who would escort them to and from the Astronomy Tower. At 11:30, a sixth year prefect walked down from the boy's dorms, stretched, and counted the first years before him.
"Good. You're all here. My name is James. I'll be in charge of you as you attend astronomy this year. Please stay together and keep up. As long as you're with me, you won't get in trouble. But if you start to wander off on your own, I can't help you. Mr. Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, are experts at finding students who are wandering the halls after hours." James exited the portrait hole and motioned for the first years to follow. They all hurried through the hole. Josef actually fell out of the hole in his haste to keep up. Alice put down her hand and helped him to his feet.
Halfway to the Astronomy Tower, Daphne clutched her hands together. "I forgot my telescope!" she practically squealed.
"Too late now," said James over his shoulder.
"Don't worry, Daphne," said Keri. "You can share with me. It's not like the stars are going to be moving so fast that we won't be able to keep up unless we watch them constantly." Alice and Ava began to giggle at this.
Arriving at the top of the tower, the Hufflepuffs found that the Slytherins were already there. "I'll be back after your observation is done," said James, waving farewell to the first years.
"Alright class," said Professor Sinistra in a whisper. Her black robes blended into the night, but her pale skin and hair seemed to nearly glow in the dark. "Tonight's lesson will not be that difficult. We will be finding the North Star. It doesn't move, so it is often a good place to start whenever looking for a certain star or constellation. After finding the North Star, we will be looking at Jupiter and Mars through our telescopes."
"Point me," Alice heard Keri whisper to her wand. Turning around to look, Alice smiled. She turned in the direction that the wand had pointed. At least the North Star shouldn't be too difficult to locate. While not the most exciting class, Alice figured that astronomy wasn't so bad.