Felix had his head bent over his books and parchments, writing away with his quill as he tried to finish his homework on Muggle studies. Next to him Emerick doodled away in his seminar's notes, bored out of his skull and constantly looking at his watch. There wasn't much from this first of Irina's seminars that any sixth year wouldn't know about keeping notes, or much of anything new or interesting to learn, and as Felix and Emerick had learned, as much as she was a world class reporter, teach she could not.
The seminar in one of the Herbology tower's classrooms had ten more minutes to go. Felix sat up pressuring his neck left and right, wanting to purr from the cracks, his back and neck stretching after the uncomfortable posture he had assumed for forty minutes straight.
He slowly started placing the stuff in his backpack, almost lethargically so as his hands moved in autopilot and his eyes scanned around the classroom. Most students who were older than year three were either asleep or doing something else. Lisa and Anneke seemed to be intentionally paying attention, trying to ascertain out of the corners of their eyes left and right without moving their heads if anyone was watching them paying any attention.
"…and with this we can conclude our today's introductory seminar. As this is an introduction to the methods and techniques I'll be teaching you all in the coming weeks you won't have any homework for Thursday. Class dismissed", the quiet was broken as in an instant the students from across all seven years hurried to leave.
Felix and Emerick made their way out of the classroom.
"Twenty-five more times of this…hopefully by the end we'll have learned something?" Emerick whined stretching his arms above his head.
"Maybe for first or second years…"
Anneke interrupted him. "I say, Lisa dear, let them believe that. Our NEWTs grades will be better than theirs if we follow Madam Irina's super cool lessons, I'm sure."
"Well, you see my notes-taking system and studying method earned me straight O's in OWLs. So, I'm not even remotely worried. You had…one? Maybe two O's? I don't remember!" Felix shrugged with a sardonic smirk and left pacing slowly but deliberately.
"It's amazing, the more people try to put you down the more they end up humiliated and you looking good", Emerick laughed catching up to him.
"I'm just doing my thing and being myself, running after no one. They are chasing after me, logical they'll keep losing", Felix shrugged sly smiling.
"You have a point there…are you doing anything this afternoon?"
"Yeah, I have plans", Felix looked back at the classroom with the Professor's office in an adjoining room.
"What's her name?" Emerick sniggered.
"Irina, I want to sneak in her office and see what I can find out about who her "benefactor" giving her information and what that is", Felix replied lowering his voice.
"That can go wrong on so many different levels…" Emerick replied in a hushed, worried voice.
"I know, why I didn't tell any of you anything earlier. Like that only I get in trouble, if caught", Felix nodded his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
"That's good and all, but why tonight?"
"I heard her tell Professor Owens earlier how she and every other faculty are having dinner at the Headmistress' office tonight."
"Don't get expelled."
"Not my intention, no", they continued to chat on the way to their next class and the day moved on. Autumn was well on its way with cold winds arriving from the north and the leaves turning auburn, yellow and brown as they slowly fell from their trees. Soon winter and snow would come.
The days were shorter now as well, the sun setting earlier in the day while hiding behind thick cloud cover. Rain was their nigh-daily visitor. Felix stood atop the Herbology tower, wearing his school robes' hood to protect him from the pouring rain. He transformed into his eagle and flew down to Irina's office window which was closed but unlocked.
Prying it open with his talons he entered the office and took human form. Piles of books and parchments of notes were everywhere, on the desk, on the floor and on the green-red velvet sofa. What Felix failed to understand, even if two years prior he had been on the opposite end in Elysion's library researching the Charon's Path, was that while the room was chaotic, it was structured so.
He went through every pile, book and scrap of paper he could find as fast as he could with his wand casting Lumos so he could see. Just as he heard footsteps coming closer from the outside his eyes fell upon an envelope on the desk. The only thing on the envelope was "To Irina Jockovich" written in a calligraphy handwritten font. Felix opened it hastily, retrieving the letter within.
Professor Jordan, Professor Horsewood before and after her ascension to Headmistress and others in the staff have knowingly and willingly placed students' lives in direct mortal peril. Ask Professor Jordan about the Headmistress' daughter. Ask Professor Horsewood of how Professor Jordan was rescued. Ask Professor Hudson how he is torturing kids during detention. There is a scandal for you to write on. More details in future correspondence.
G.J.R
The owner of the footsteps was right outside the door, fumbling for the keys to the office. Felix shoved the letter back inside the envelope, left the envelope on the desk where he had found it and took eagle form. With a whoosh of his wings he was out the window.
He flew back up the Herbology tower's top and took human form. Twenty minutes later he entered the Hufflepuff common room, picked up Professor Jordan's book he had borrowed from his dorm room and sat down in one of the common room's couches practicing jinxes, hexes and curses from it on a wooden dummy a boy from wizarding arts class had given him.
He liked to study, practice or read in the common room during this hour as most Hufflepuffs were either eating their dinner in the Great Hall or studying in the library or using the time to hang out with their friends, so it was quiet and comfy with the fireplace burning behind him providing him with ample warmth.
He used a spell to dry his hair and clothes and went at it reading from the book, keeping notes and practicing the various spells.
Studying and practicing spells had become sort of a meditative thing for him, he would become oblivious to the outside world, lost in his world of learning as scribbles in parchment became ordered sentences in a variety of shapes and colours, each subject its own shape and colour.
"Dilaceo", he moved his wand in a spiral and then a counterclockwise square and tore the wooden dummy to shreds. "Reparo."
"Wow! That's so cool!" A young male voice squeaked near him breaking him from his state of concentration. Felix snapped out of it, his eyes searching for the voice's owner.
"It's dangerous, not cool. If someone was to cast this at you your intestines would liquify. If neither you nor anyone nearby knew how to heal you you'd suffer a most excruciating death. It is not a toy, but a weapon to brandish in battle", Felix replied calm yet firm.
The boy's face lost its grin, his freckled cheeks, pink lips and green eyes gaining a more serious appearance.
"If it's so bad, why learn it?"
"It is neither good nor bad. It is a spell, a tool. Why learn it? Because you might find yourself having to protect either you or those you love and care about, and because the people who have ill intent will learn it and will use it against you. Knowing something doesn't make you bad or evil, how you come to use the knowledge can or may", Felix told the boy in a gentle tone.
"I guess so…my name's Liam McCormack, I can't believe a sixth year is giving me the light of day!" Liam replied impulsively instantly regretting it, his freckled cheeks now acquiring a faint crimson colour.
"Felix Burton, I didn't know Nate had a younger brother", Felix tried not to laugh and give the wrong message to Liam.
"Fe-Felix Burton! Uhm…..no, cousins on our fathers' side. I'm a first year…it's all a bit overwhelming…" Liam replied, his earlier bravado fleeting him fast.
"Hey boss. I see you've met me cousin", Nate had entered the common room and leaving his backpack on the floor near them he shook Felix's hand before letting himself sludge on the sofa next to Liam. "Yeah, it can be at first, but once you make some friends and learn the basics, settle in and find your way around Hogwarts is an amazing place and a second home. You'll get there, just give yourself some time, okay?" He told his cousin passing a hand over the younger boy's shoulders.
"Hey Nate! Okay!" Liam grinned encouraged by his older cousin.
"What do you think Nate? Liam Quidditch material? Will he succeed you in the team next year?" Felix cracked a wicked grin.
"I dunno, he sure loves smashing things", Nate chuckled kind heartedly.
"That vase wasn't my fault!" Liam protested in a high-pitched voice pushing his hand against his cousin's.
"Suuuuure! As wasn't the windows, the fence, the glass…" Nate laughed recounting the times Liam had broken something.
"Oh no, the glass was, seeing as I threw it at you for mocking me", Liam cracked a sly, impish grin.
"Like I said, he sure loves smashing things. He'd be great with a bat and a bludger."
"Well, with Nate graduating we'll need a new beater next year, join the tryouts and maybe you'll make the team. I do like me a beater with an object-smashing proclivity", Felix told Liam seeing his face brighten up like the sun beamed through him.
"For reals? That'd be amazing!" Liam cried nearly jumping up and down on the sofa.
"Yeah, you up on a broom smashing an iron-wrought ball going at fifty miles an hour…your mother's gonna be absolutely ecstatic, I can see it!" Nate ruffled Liam's medium length brown hair.
"I agree with dad and Uncle Ian, she worries too much. I am a healthy young boy and I am just merely letting off steam in a productive and meaningful way", Liam scrunched his eyes as if trying to remember the exact word for word way he had heard this analysis of his object-smashing tendency.
"Perhaps too healthy….one might think", Nate teased him.
"Right, at worse you might break a bone…or two…"
"Or three…" Nate interrupted Felix.
"You didn't specify whose! So, not mine", Liam teased them back.
"Yours too, your cousin can attest to that…and so can I", Felix threw the ball back at him.
"All for the team boss, bones, sweat and all", Nate nodded turning serious, as if somehow loyalty and team-spirit was ingrained in his genetic code.
"Right…well I better make the team then", Liam said going back to his potions book.
Felix took a peek in the first year's book. "Gooseberry berries?"
"Hmm? Yeah?" Liam rose an eyebrow unsure of why Felix was asking.
"Says grind, yeah? But if you slice if open and squeeze the juice before grinding you get less of a sour taste after. Less sour taste means more potency for the bewilderment potion. And that should give you a few points for Hufflepuff", Felix winked at Liam.
"Oh! Thanks!" Liam replied beaming before stuffing his head back in his studies.
"Nate, may I test some stuff on you? Nothing dangerous, promise", Felix asked him trying not to laugh diabolically just for the fun of it.
Nate had no problem laughing at his captain's request. "Why do I have this intense feeling that saying yes will be unpleasant for me? Do you at least know how to undo what you'll do?"
"Maybe? Worse comes to worst the Hospital Wing is just a flight of stairs above us", Felix tried to sound certain in his knowledge of undoing what he wanted to try on Nate.
"Oh goodie, sure Guinea pig me away cap'n!" Felix and Nate stood up, standing over at the center of the room. "There's three things I want to test…where is it…" Felix mumbled as he turned the pages in the book until he found what he was looking for and nonverbally cast it at Nate whose eyes and ears immediately shut sealed after a bubble jet of white colour hit him square in the face. "Blinding Silence jinx…I'd say", Felix waved his wand again and ended the jinx.
"Well, that was flipping weird! It was as if I did not even have ears and eyes! I've never seen suck black before…or…whatever let's move on."
Next Felix made a movement mixing a π with a hook, this time there was no obvious evidence the hex had worked, other than Nate staring at the void confused out of his wits and incapable of forming a single coherent sentence while his legs had sprung to life with a brain of their own dancing uncontrollably.
"Okay, let's not do this again!" Nate panted Felix having ended the spell. "That was…profoundly uncomfortable…"
"Nice exercise though", Felix teased him. Nate flipped him the finger laughing.
"Well, final one", Felix stabbed his wand at Nate before twisting it around mid-air. A black-orange jet escaped its tip and an instant later Nate dropped on the floor sleeping, completely rigid.
"Binding sleep…unoriginal name but I guess it works nice blending sleeping curse with full body bind…finite incantatem", Felix mumbled to himself.
"Wh-what happened? How long was I asleep?" Nate stuttered getting on his hands and knees to steady himself.
"Not even two seconds, why?" Felix asked, slightly concerned.
"Oh, just because I have this amazing feeling of having slept for like ten hours" Nate stood up.
"Any side effects? Feeling okay?" Felix asked him hiding away his wand.
"Only my pride…nah I'm fine boss."
They shook hands, Felix returning to his studies where he remained for the better part of the night, and Nate headed to his dorm.
Morning next groggy eyed with few hours of sleep, Felix was eating breakfast in the Great Hall wishing the weather would stop raining as the enchanted ceiling above their heads was enchanted to display the sky outside, his head propped on one hand too tired to do otherwise, when Irina entered the vast chamber and walking over to the Hufflepuff table stood over him stern and serious.
"Come with me", she demanded from him and just pivoted on her heels and started walking again. Felix groaned and followed her, there was no point replying or saying no.
He fast paced after her through the various corridors and staircases to her office in the Herbology tower. She slammed the door behind him and sat behind her desk.
"Clever not going through the door where I had alarms in place, how did you do it?" She asked him in a very crossed manner.
"Do what?" Felix feigned ignorance, his teenage instincts dictating a deny-until-it's-no-longer-possible policy.
"Break into my office last night."
"I did not, I was…" Felix replied tensing up.
Irina, looking furious, tapped her wand in one of the two sole mirrors in her room, on her desk. A blurred-out video of him rummaging through the various piles of books and parchments on the floor and desk.
"Find what you were looking for? Now, how about you cut the bullshit and tell me the truth before I drag you and that record-pane to the Deputy Headmaster's office and let him ransack your brain before expelling you?" Felix knew when to disobey his teenage instincts, and by Irina's slow-seething voice he knew this was one of those times.
He pointed his wand at him taking eagle form for a second or two before retaking human form. "Like this."
"Interesting, why?"
"Your benefactor, informant, whoever it is, he wants to wreck having in Hogwarts. I wanted to find out who it was", Felix told her the truth.
"George Jaybird Rutherford, Governor and servant of two masters. Joymother and another", she told him calmer than before.
"And how many Masters do you serve?"
"One. Me."
"What's the story here, then? Because I fail to believe that staff endangering students' lives is a story you'd run with, it's beneath you."
"No story is…"
"Who is bullshiting who, now?"
"I can obliviate you, you know?"
"You can, and I can make your wand explode. Want to test who is faster or tell me the truth like I just did?" Felix made eye contact trying his best to maintain his calm exterior look, even though his heart was pounding in his ears and his hand was firmly, tightly around his wand, ready to spring into action.
Irina kept the eye contact for two moments before relaxing back into her chair. "You don't flinch, I like you. I'll tell you the truth then. I'm trying to find out if the Headmistress is after Mr. Fairbanks' job, and if she'd use students to get Wizarding public opinion on her side."
"The Minister of Magic? He just got his job…and I don't think she wants his job."
"And my sources are telling me there might be something there. She sure seems to be able to make him do whatever she wants, and that is a story all on its own, but I can multitask."
"the Governors have wanted her gone ever since before she became Headmistress. Whatever they're telling you, they are lying, using it to manipulate you."
"Loyalty, typical Hufflepuff trait."
"And I thought stubbornness was a Gryffindor trait. If I find you a better story will you stop this one?"
"Like?"
"Like…dirt my father had on the Governors to blackmail, intimidate and bend to his will", Felix bluffed, he had yet to find anything from his father's dirt on the Governors.
"You don't have that. But…that would interest me. Tell you what, when I'm ready to publish I'll send an owl, if you have this I'll publish this, otherwise I go with whatever I have. Deal?"
What choice was there anymore? Felix knew he had none, now more than ever he had to find whatever his dad had on the Governors, he had nothing else to bargain with. "Sure, how long do I have?"
"Christmas at the latest."
"Lovely", Felix left without waiting for her to excuse him.
He headed over to Herbology class in a hurry and his mind racing on where his father could have hidden and if it would still be there. He knew not what Azrail might have done until he was kicked out of all family property last year, with the House-hold spell.
Running late he entered the class. "Sorry sir, Madam Irina had me in her office."
"Very well, take your seat, Mr. Burton", Professor Knightwell told him before resuming his lesson on the Venomous Tentacula lying in pots around the work bench, trying to grab people by the arms, waist or thighs.
He sat next to Emerick on one side and Uriel on the other with Claudia, Ethel and Socrates a little further away. "Everything alright?" Emerick mouthed to him looking worried.
"Yeah, we'll talk after", Felix mouthed back with a nod.
Venomous Tentacula, a green, toothsome magical plant with mobile, extendable vines was one of students' least favourite plants the sting from getting bitten by it hurt for days after but its leaves and pods were used heavily in mixtures, tinctures and potions as well as its seeds as pets.
Felix was in no mood to entertain the plant, or to allow it to try and strangle him so using the severing charm he cut off its vines at the root, he knew they would grow back in time and the plant felt no pain by it.
After the class ended, they remained behind so they could talk in private.
"You look more worried than usual, what happened, Bernadette dumped you?" Claudia asked him, clearly irritated still.
"Yes, but that's not the point", Felix told them about him sneaking into Irina's office and his discussion with her earlier.
"Of course you did, like you want to get expelled…" Claudia remarked less than surprised by what she'd heard.
"No, I want a day to go by without someone trying to kill us, screw us over, or develop a need to be sarcastic at me. But apparently that is too much to ask for", Felix snapped at her.
"Uh…so, how do you intent to pull that off? Find your father's files on the Governors?" Emerick tried to steer the conversation away from Claudia and Felix sensing the tension.
Claudia crossed her hands in front of her chest, looking pissed.
"I need to apparate in father's study in the Manor I grew up in, but obviously I can't wait until Christmas or summer…" Felix started explaining.
"You can apparate in from Hogsmeade?"
"Yeah, but I can't be missed, who wants to become very bored tomorrow?" Felix continued from Socrates' interruption.
"We are not going to like this, are we?" Emerick tried to joke.
"What do you think?" Claudia carried on the same mood.
"Tomorrow's Irina's second seminar of the week, it lasts forty-five minutes, so…" Felix was interrupted again.
"No, I've got studying to do, I'll see you all later", Claudia barged out of the greenhouse.
"Grand, I already attend so I can't do that, and Socrates can't impersonate, lie or act if his life depends on it…no offense", Emerick tried to laugh.
"None taken, friend. It is the truth. I can't", Socrates replied with both boys' eyes going over to Uriel and Ethel.
Ethel was faster. "Sorry guys, I have a thing tomorrow, can't."
"Grand, at least you don't taste as bad...that sounded so much infinitely better in my mind…I meant the Polyjuice potion!" Uriel blushed a heavy crimson hue.
"Oh, the multitude of witty remarks I can make…but, no I am going to savour this one slow", Felix grinned like a fool.
"I am going to be regretting this one for a long, long, long time, aren't I?"
"Let us assume you are going to be regretting this well after we graduate from Hogwarts…assuming I do graduate from Hogwarts."
"Grand…"
"Only problem is, I don't have any Polyjuice potion ready, used it up for Professor Jordan's rescue, and we don't exactly have a month either for me to make more…" Felix stated.
Ethel glanced at Emerick who remained emotionless. "I may be able to help you out there, I'll let you know later."
"That's not cryptic, nope!" Uriel exclaimed.
"It was rather, wasn't it?" Ethel smiled mischievously just as an owl with silver-grey plumage and intense yellow eyes entered the greenhouse landing on Felix's shoulder with a small envelope attached on her right claw.
She gave an impatient hoot sound almost as if urging Felix to get on with it and take the letter it had for him.
Felix retrieved it, opening it while his friends chatted amongst themselves. "Uhm…guys…"
"What is it?" Emerick turned his head to him, as did the other three.
"Is it from Azrail?" Socrates asked.
"Headmistress?" Ethel asked.
"No, worse! It's from Joymother…"