Chapter Three

After Potions, he and Erin walked up the stone staircase from the dungeons, and walked up to the sixth floor, standing outside the charms classroom. At last, they saw Adrian, sprinting up the hall and panting.

"Sorry-I'm-Late," he panted. "Got-Lost."

"S'alright," said Albus, and they walked into the classroom. The teacher was already there. She was a very small woman with a red face, and with her hair pulled up tightly into a bun. Examining her, Albus thought she looked like a niffler, her pointed nose sticking out into the classroom and a look of polite puzzlement on her face.

"Please have a seat," she said, in a very soft voice that Albus had to strain to hear.

"Good morning, class," she smiled. "I am Professor Weatherby. Today we will be talking about charms and why they are important."

At this, she smiled a very weak smile, which nobody returned. Seemingly unbothered by this, she began to talk to them about Charmwork. Albus was able to keep up with her, she talked at a very slow pace but her voice was extremely soft and hard to hear. He noticed Erin laughing.

"What's so funny?" he asked her.

"What is that…THING that she's wearing?"

Albus scanned the teacher and almost fell out of his seat. She was wearing extremely long shoes that, stood upright, were probably taller than her. They curled slightly at the end, and there was a pink lace on the side that ran all the way down. Albus had to bite his cheeks to keep his mouth straight.

When Charms had ended, Adrian and Erin accompanied him down to the Great Hall for lunch. They met Rulna and Rose down at the Gryffindor table.

"Oh! Oh! Albus! Guess what happened today?" said Rulna, her eyes bulging alarmingly.

"What?" he said, immediately sorry he had asked.

"We saw a pack or Wrathspurts harassing a demiguise."

"A pack of…what?"

"Don't ask," said Rose in an undertone, so only Albus could hear him. "This is right up there with Nargles and the Crumple-horn Snorkak."

Albus gaped at her. "More inventions of hers?" he said, utterly bewildered.

"I guess," shrugged Rose.

After lunch, he and Rulna said goodbye to the others and walked down to the greenhouses for herbology. Rulna was still going on about Wrathspurts and other ridiculous creatures Albus had never heard of. As they got down to the greenhouses, Albus was, for once, glad that another teacher was talking.

"Hello class," said the round-faced man. "My name is Professor Longbottom."

Albus waved excitedly to Neville, who waved back.

"Today, we will be learning about the properties of certain magical plants, such as gillyweed. Okay, gather round everyone, gather round."

Albus rather enjoyed watching his father's friend explaining the properties of gillyweed and as it appeared, so did Rulna.

"I liked that professor. He didn't laugh at me when I asked if Nargles infested any kinds of magical plants."

Albus kept himself from laughing but continually biting his cheeks and turning away from Rulna, who, it seemed, did not care that every person around her stared as they walked by. She seemed to be lost in thought. So lost, in fact, that she head-on collided with Petunia Parkinson on her way up the stairs.

"Watch it, yeh damn Gryffindor!" she said indignantly as Rulna passed by her, not seeming to notice that she had just fallen and whacked her head, and resumed her dreamy scan about the hall. She and Albus ran into Rose (literally) in the entrance hall. Rulna, again seemed to neither know nor care that she had just caused herself physical pain and drifted off down the hall, waving goodbye to them.

Finally, the day was almost over. Rose and Albus headed up to the fifth floor and into the room they were assigned for defense against the dark arts. Like in charms, the teacher was already sitting down at her desk. She was a tall woman, she wore her dark brown hair in a braid down her back and had a neat little blue ribbon in her hair. She wore a very wary expression on her face, scanning each student as they came in, as if to check for dark magic.

"Good Afternoon," she said, stiffly. "I am Professor Abbot. Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts." She cleared her throat and began: "Defense Against the Dark Arts is among one of the most dangerous subjects you will learn in the school. You will learn how to defend yourself from Dark Magic of the highest power, how to throw off curses without a counter-curse and how to use defensive magic. If you could please pull out your book "Basic Defensive Spells and When to Use Them", we will begin."

She set them to work immediately, and within minutes, they were copying down a diagram on "How to Block Jinxes and Hexes". Several people were scribbling down what looked like a drawing of Professor Abbot with buck-teeth and a large wart on her nose. Seeing these, Rose and Albus looked at each other and burst into laughter. Professor Abbot turned on them.

"What's so funny?" she demanded. "Do you think counter-jinxes and anti-hexes are funny? Do you think that this class is a joke? Or do I merely have something funny about me?"

There was a murmur around the room as Rose said "Nothing's funny…we just remembered something another Professor said. That's all."

Professor Abbot scrutinized them for a moment before stalking off to yell at two Ravenclaws for writing "Counter-Hexes" instead of "Anti-hexes".

After class, they all gathered in the Great Hall for dinner.

"Boy, that Defense teacher was a real wart, wasn't she?" scoffed Rose.

"Yeah," agreed Albus. "She yelled over nothing…but then again, what teacher doesn't?"

Rose nodded and continued to pile rice onto her plate.

At 7:30, they headed back to the common room. Albus was very tired but he had a lot of work to do. For transfiguration he had to draw a diagram of a lion turning into a teacup; for charms, he had to practice levitation; for herbology, he needed to describe the uses of gillyweed; and for potions, he had to memorize a recipe for Hyscerizo. He finished around 10:00 and went up to his dormitory.

Wow, he thought to himself. That was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

He soon drifted off to sleep.

"Where is it?" said an icy voice from the shadow. "Where have you hidden it?"

"Nowhere, it was just here…" said a large man with multiple chins.

"You lie!" said the icy voice. "…And liars deserve to be punished."

"No..I swear I'm not-" begged the man.

"AvadaKedavra!"

There was a flash of green light and Harry Potter sat up in bed next to his wife. He was drenched with cold sweat, shaking, scared out of his mind at what he had just seen. And something was definitely wrong.

No, he thought. It can't be…It's been nineteen years!

His scar started to prickle as he washed got up from bed.