Thanks to Silverly and Proto for Proofreading. I own nothing.

Prologue VII

May 3, 1987

The end-of-the-year exams were fast approaching Waver as he sat in his dorm room on the Saturday morning, looking over his notes from the past year.

It had taken a while, but he finally felt acclimated to the magical world. He could retort when someone insulted him, point out that he outperformed in class and they just were coasting off their fathers' coattails instead of learning.

He didn't feel like an outsider anymore, even if he'd never admit to feeling that way.

Waver's greatest asset seemed to revolve around a well-above-average ability to grasp theory. His essays were perfect, even when he had been unable to properly cast. Which only got more frequent as the year went on, if not notably so.

The boggarts were becoming more common lately, which Waver had avoided personally crossing again. No need to potentially let anyone else hear a boggart insult him other than the prefect and Figg.

Waver had little time to study on his own today, as he'd already told some Hufflepuffs as well as Figg and a Ravenclaw girl named Harriet Snow that he'd explain the mechanism of Forgetfulness Potion to them in the library at noon, since Professor Snape never did. It was useful for both them and for himself, as a sure sign that one understands something is the ability to teach it to someone else, so Waver did not complain about the arrangement. Now that he thought about it, helping some of the new first years with potions next year might be a decent way to earn a bit of spare money. He couldn't charge a lot, but it'd make him less reliant on the school for books and ingredients.

He hated relying on others.

He should get back to studying the knockback jinx. The Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor's perpetual uselessness resulted in a lot of extra study for the course, not helped by the fact that, unlike Potions, Waver was frustratingly useless at defensive magic. Whenever the class was paired off to practice on each other, Waver was inevitably on the receiving end of plenty of humiliation. The exercises just made him far too nervous about being hit or accidentally injuring the other person, resulting in being unable to focus on properly countering. It was frustrating. He could do the spells, he was sure, he just could not apply them even in a situation as mild as a group of eleven and twelve year olds firing at each other for educational purposes.

Waver glanced at the clock hung on the wall in the back of the room. There wasn't much time until noon, when he had to meet the Hufflepuffs, Figg, and Snow in a largely unused classroom on the third floor. He supposed he had to leave then.

Packing some of the Potions textbooks he had checked out of the library, Waver headed for the third floor.

The group of students waiting there smiled when he arrived. Waver nodded in acknowledgement, taking a seat at the circular table they had surrounded. "Well, I suppose it's convenient you all got here before me," he noted as he counted the other students present. "But… who are you exactly?" The group of five students Waver had agreed to meet were all Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. He hadn't been expecting a sixth head from Gryffindor to catch wind of the makeshift Potions lecture and decide to tag along.

"Oh, Rachel told me during Herbology on Friday," the student said, blushing. "I'd told her I was worried about my Potions grade and she suggested tagging along. I'm her sister, Mary."

"Oh." Waver idly wondered why Rachel hadn't brought Mary with her sooner than May. She'd been asking him for help since October, after all. Maybe she just assumed Mary's grades were fine and hadn't brought it up.

The explanation of why Forgetfulness Potion was made the way it was was rattled off rather quickly and still took a good hour. He'd spent ages looking up the specific magical properties of the ingredients before doing this, the difference between clockwise and counterclockwise stirring, what exactly was in Standard Ingredient and the magical properties of that, all to be one-hundred percent sure that he would be able to remember the actual recipe. And hopefully, be able to teach these six (formerly five) how to remember the recipe. He had notes on it with him, just to make sure he didn't forget to mention anything important.

The original five peers seemed to have understood most of Waver's explanation, though Mary Green's reaction was that of surprise. "Why didn't Professor Snape mention any of that?"

"No idea," Waver answered truthfully. "I get the feeling this stuff just comes easily to him, though. He just doesn't get that not everyone is going to immediately know it." Waver sighed. "Who knows, though, really? He could just not want to actually teach it."

"Maybe you should just replace him then." She grumbled. "It's so easy to forget things if you're just following directions. So thanks."

"Well, obviously, this is simple stuff." Waver stated proudly. "You can find basically all of this information in the library, though, if you know where to look. A lot of it is in the Herbology or Magizoology sections, and inorganic ingredients like the Lethe River water can be researched in the sections on magical substances and sometimes magical locations. The effects of various methodologies can, of course, be found in a Potions book." Waver deliberately ignored the idea of replacing Professor Snape. He wouldn't mind, if it meant Professor Snape could go do whatever he actually wanted to do after Waver graduated and would thus no longer be bullying and belittling students. He doubted he'd be allowed to teach immediately after leaving school anyway.

"So, do you want us to help you with Defense Against the Dark Arts in return? Rachel told me you're not good at it," Mary asked.

"No, I've been practicing on my own." He wasn't in the mood to embarrass himself with his poor reaction time and tendency to get caught up on the dangerous aspects of the drills any more than necessary. He had enough of that in class. Besides, defensive magic just wasn't something he found particularly interesting, except for the theory involved. And the theory was essentially just an extension of the theory behind Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions.

Confident they'd understood Forgetfulness Potion, Waver turned and marched out of the classroom before they could say anything else about his ability to defend himself.

Yay, tutoring.

Sorry about the delay, Proto really procrastinated on reading the chapter... So I decided to delay the schedule by a week to accommodate that + some writers block I had on Prologue X.

Review Replies:

PasiveNox, alexc123: Thank you

Warpwind: What's a Waver Worm?

gabe. d. clark. 1997 (sorry, FFN doesn't like your UN because it looks like a URL I guess): It's all in HP world, where nothing makes sense and Rowling never elaborates on the stuff that matters! ...or something like that.

As for the Iskandar thing... I dunno, it still sounds a bit contrived. Like, I can't disturb the status quo of Magical Britain at all in this story. Waver gets an ordinary life for the most part (not completely so, that would be boring, but you get the idea).

I feel like something like that would be a pretty big Statute of Secrecy breach and require some pretty big contrivances to make him meet Waver at all, because as far as I'm aware Alexander the Great had never gone to the British Isles, so he'd need a reason to either go there himself (before Statute of Secrecy enforcement comes after him), or for Waver to leave the UK... and then just happen across each other... and start talking... Like, I'm pretty sure the main reason Waver spent time with Rider at first was they were literally magically tied to each other by the way Servants work, considering he initially found him pretty annoying.

I dunno.

-Glace