Revision

I kept true to my word to Snape and attempted to avoid drawing attention to myself. My Charms work got slowly better again but in Transfiguration, I drew attention of the most unpleasant kind. We started animal Transfiguration and things didn't want to work the way I wanted them to at all. I grew more and more frustrated and the mouse I was supposed to transfigure started to squeak in pain instead. Professor McGonagall noticed right away of course.

"I told you that I do not tolerate this kind of thing," the Head of Gryffindor said standing over my desk.

"I'm really sorry. I really didn't want to cause this."

"You're taking your frustration out on the animal. This mustn't happen. You can do better and you have to control yourself. Ten points from Ravenclaw and detention. I want to see you in my office at 8 o clock on Friday."

This seemed to be a popular time for detention, I thought. Snape's had been at the same time, right after Neville's remedial potions. This time, I was really ashamed though. I knew this wasn't supposed to happen and it still had. I was very careful now which resulted in nothing happening to the mouse at all.

Mandy and many of my classmates managed to change their mice into something that at least resembled a snuff-box. It was rather frustrating.

Transfiguration was the most problematic subject for me in the upcoming exams. We had to pass every subject so we could move on into the next year. I knew that Professor McGonagall would make me fail if something like this happened again. I really didn't feel like repeating Potions, Charms and everything else where I had done okay because of Transfiguration.

Dora however told me that it was almost impossible to fail the normal end of year-exams if you weren't completely inept.

"Everyone has trouble with Transfiguration," she said when I asked her about the exams. "McGonagall doesn't expect that much there. I'm sure you'll do fine." She sighed. "It's different with the NEWTs. I have to get Es in Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts and one other subject if I want to apply for Auror training. Those Ministry examiners don't cut you any slack."

"I'm sure you'll do well," I said. "If you really want it, you'll make it."

Dora definitely spent much more time in the library than she usually did. It wasn't her favourite place to be while at Hogwarts normally. She was going to stay at Hogwarts during the Easter holidays because it was easier to revise here so we did the same. If we returned to the orphanage, practising spells would be impossible.

Mandy and Padma tried to help me with Transfiguration in our common room where almost everyone was busy revising for something. With their advice, it slowly got better but it was still far from the results they achieved and I would have liked to have. I was able to help my fellow Ravenclaws with Potions though which was the subject many of them worried about the most.

"You can't be perfect at everything," Mandy said one evening. "No one is."

"I know." I did but I still would have liked to achieve good marks in all my subjects.

Neville was extremely worried about the exams as well. "I'll probably fail everything. I simply can't remember what I learn. I don't know how I'm supposed to prepare for the exams."

"Well, you need to repeat it often enough," I said.

It was the only thing I could think of. Neville's potions skills improved but nowhere nearly as quickly as I had hoped they would. His forgetfulness was the most frustrating part of it all. After working with him on several Fridays, I started thinking that this couldn't be normal. Was it possible that something had happened to him which had damaged his memory permanently? If only I knew more about this kind of thing. I really thought he should get professional help with this but I didn't know who could offer this kind of help here in the magical world and I didn't want to offend him. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know what a professional might find out about Neville. Maybe my parents had tortured the little boy as well to get his parents to talk. After everything I had heard, there wasn't much left I believed they wouldn't do.

Therefore, I kept silent and put up with Neville forgetting his ingredients, searching for him because he didn't remember where we met and telling him everything countless times because he couldn't remember it for a few minutes. His brain seemed like a sieve where most things simply ran through. At least, he had never forgotten the time of our meetings though.

When things went well and Neville did remember what he was supposed to do, he could be quite fun to talk to. In these moments, he reminded me of his father in my photo album. I didn't tell him that though, me talking about his father probably wouldn't go down too well. I was quite sure that Neville didn't want to see a picture of his father playing Quidditch against his future torturer.

"My Gran will be really angry when I fail my exams," Neville said miserably towards the end of our meeting. His attempt at making Cure for Boils on his own had failed once again. There had been no explosion or melted cauldron which was an improvement but the potion had the wrong colour. With the help of one of the books in the room I had been able to salvage the potion by adding some additional ingredients that undid the mistakes. The potion's magic felt right now. This was a useful skill to have if something went wrong with my own potion during my exam. With my growing nervousness, I wasn't sure that this wouldn't happen at all.

I had learned this while working with Neville. At the moment, it looked as if I gained more from these extra lessons than he did. Having to explain everything made me understand it much better myself. This wasn't the plan but there was nothing I could do to make Neville improve more quickly.

"You won't fail. These end-of-term-exams aren't that hard," I told him. "My cousin's told me that almost no one fails. We aren't expected to do it perfectly."

"Well, almost no one might just include me," Neville said. "I don't think there are many people who are as untalented as I am."

"I don't think your magic talent is the problem," I said. "If you started being more self-confident it would surely be better soon."

This was self-fulfilling prophecy of course. As long as he didn't get his work done properly, he didn't think he could get anything done either. A really bad combination for a wizard.

"I don't know. There simply are people who don't have any talent. How old were you when your magic showed for the first time?"

I tried to remember. The magic that caused pain to people that wanted to harm me had already been there when I had arrived at the orphanage. I had done it to some older boys who were pushing me around. I couldn't remember any magic I had done before but I didn't remember that I hadn't done any either. My memories of this time were very incomplete and I didn't want to remember that anymore. Not after everything I knew about the people who had taken care of me back then.

"I'm not sure. The first time I really remember was when I arrived at the orphanage. I was three then."

"You see. I was eight. Eight. Everyone thought I was a Squib and I almost am," Neville said.

"What happened then?" I asked him.

"Well, I fell out of a window, it was an accident. Everyone started to panic but I simply bounced off the ground and didn't get hurt at all."

"That was rather powerful magic though," I said. The growing sense of unease I felt since my illness was back. Neville's magic had shown itself in a normal way too, just like Mandy's. I wondered if there was anyone else who had shown his or her magic by hurting someone else.

This issue reminded me of something else. "I'm sorry Neville but I have to leave now. Detention."

"Did you get into trouble with Snape again?" Neville asked.

I sighed deeply. "No, it's not Snape this time. Professor McGonagall. I messed up in Transfiguration this week."

"And she's putting you in detention for this?" Neville asked surprised. "If she did that with me, I'd be in detention all the time."

"Well, she thinks I'm not taking the things she's telling me seriously enough or something." I really didn't want to go into details.

"It's strange," Neville said. "Professor McGonagall's usually really fair. Not that there's much good to say about me. I'm really rubbish in Transfiguration."

"Stop using this word," I told him. "You'll need to ask someone else for help in Transfiguration though I'm afraid."

"Hermione maybe. I don't really want to waste her time though. She always seems so busy with Harry and Ron. The others already think I'm studying with her when I'm in fact studying with you."

"It's probably better that way," I said remembering Snape's words.

Professor McGonagall unlike Snape was polite enough to respond to my "Good evening." She also held her detention in her office which was in the upper parts of the castle, probably like the Gryffindor rooms as well.

"I want you to copy the first chapter of the Treatise on Ethical Treatment of Animals in Magic," she told me when I had sat down. She put a relatively thick book on her desk in front of me. "I hope you do not intend to follow in your father's footsteps. He had to copy the entire book ten times until he had finished his fourth year here."

I took a deep breath. Her remark about "following in my father's footsteps" had made me feel a jolt in my stomach. I was a bit relieved when I heard the rest though. She wasn't talking about the things he had done later, was she?

"So my father was bad at Transfiguration too?" I asked. The book had eleven chapters which meant that he must have been put in detention for this more than a hundred times. Or maybe he had to copy more than one chapter.

"He has lacked the discipline and diligence to control his magic," Professor McGonagall said. "Preferred to blame other people or said it wasn't his fault. Very strange how these problems suddenly stopped when he decided to make an effort."

"He must have been quite good to be able to become a Healer in the end," I said. Normally, I didn't feel like defending my father anymore and I wasn't going to do it as far as morality was concerned but I wouldn't let Professor McGonagall diminish his talent.

"Rodolphus Lestrange changed profoundly during his time here at Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall said. "He seemed to be a hopeless case as far as wand work was concerned during his first four years but finished Hogwarts with top marks."

I definitely wasn't a hopeless case in anything to do with a wand but Neville definitely felt like that. He wouldn't want my father as a role model of course but my father had proven that it was possible to improve profoundly and make it from hopeless case to Healer.

"The way your magic is made up doesn't make learning very easy," Professor McGonagall said. "You've already done relatively well but I've noticed a decrease in control after the Christmas holidays."

I sighed. "Yes. I've noticed it as well. I had Dragon Pox during the holidays. It was quite bad."

"I see. This kind of disease might hinder your efforts of course. I expect you to practice well so you can undo this effect."

"Yes, Professor," I said. "I've already begun revising for the exams. My classmates who are better in your subject are helping me."

"That's good," Professor McGonagall said. "You should not nurture those darker aspects of your magic or else they might have negative effects on your character. Let me put it that way, in people from your family, the window to the darker parts of the soul seems to be wider open than in most others. You need to make a conscious effort to keep it closed or you will change for the worse."

This was a very nice way of saying that she believed something was wrong with everyone in our family. I didn't respond. It was one of those situations where I simply didn't know enough to judge if she was right or not. Maybe something was wrong with me as well. I didn't really think so though.

I started to write and Professor McGonagall didn't say anything more. I was quite glad about that. I didn't want her to say something which made me angry enough to respond and get myself into even more trouble.

The Easter holidays passed with plenty of revision for everyone. I kept focusing on Transfiguration but I also had to start revising for the theoretical subjects like History of Magic and Astronomy where plenty of facts needed to be memorised.

After the holidays, I at least managed to get through Transfiguration without causing any unwanted side effects. Everything else continued the usual way.

The Hufflepuffs had their last Quidditch match of the season against Slytherin. I put on the yellow scarf again and this time, I wasn't alone. Many of the other Ravenclaws didn't want Slytherin to win the Cup again either. The Hufflepuffs' ruthlessness matched the Slytherins' rather well to everyone's surprise. Dora obviously had had words with the rest of her team. In the end, Hufflepuff won, narrowly but they won. Dora looked very extremely happy when she got off her broom in the end and three quarters of the watching students applauded loudly. The Slytherins looked very disappointed. They had seen Hufflepuff being beaten by Gryffindor easily after all.

Gryffindor was meeting a streak of bad luck as well though. Harry Potter and his friends somehow managed to lose countless points. No one really understood what had happened but they had been caught by Professor McGonagall in the middle of the night. There were some rumours about a dragon. I would have liked to see it, dragons sounded really fascinating. Almost everyone was angry at Potter and the others because it had looked as if Gryffindor was winning the House Cup and now Slytherin was in the lead again as they had been the years before. I didn't comment on this. To me, it didn't really matter if Gryffindor or Slytherin won the House Cup. I wanted Ravenclaw to win. For some reason, the others seemed to be used to the idea that it would be either Gryffindor or Slytherin. Maybe because they were the most competitive or because they were more interested in Quidditch which brought lots of points.

I had never seen Neville that miserable and that was saying something. For some reason, he had been caught out of bed with the others as well. He was extremely ashamed because Professor McGonagall had been so angry with them. "At least, you don't hold it against me," he said miserably. "Everyone's treating me even worse than usual. As if I had something contagious. It's our fault that Gryffindor doesn't win. I'm only ever messing up and I actually wanted to warn them. I knew Malfoy was going to set them up."

He looked close to tears. I knew that he wouldn't get very far with his potions in this state. "Hey, it's only the House Cup. You have six more years where you can win. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff haven't made it for ages. The others will surely get over it as well." Everything else would be extremely childish.

"Well, let's begin with the potion," Neville said. To my surprise, he did quite well this time and only needed a little bit of help to make an acceptable potion. Maybe trying to focus on something else actually helped in this state.

Back in the common room, Potter's mistake remained the main subject of conversation besides the approaching exams. I was rather annoyed by this, especially because many people started to talk badly about Neville as well. I didn't say anything about it because I wanted to do as Snape had told me but it made me feel like a coward.

Therefore I spent most of my free time alone or with Mandy and the other first-year girls who didn't care about this that much either. Well, with the exception of Padma whose sister was really upset by the great loss of house points for Gryffindor.

The upcoming exams made me more and more nervous myself. The time seemed to pass really quickly and the heap of things to revise didn't seem to get much smaller. The arrangements for the long summer holidays took my mind off this. Mandy had decided to return to the orphanage and visit us towards the end of the holidays. Aunt Andromeda and Uncle Ted would have let her stay but she didn't want to overuse their friendliness. She also wanted to see Aurora and Andy again. I wasn't really sure about this myself. I wanted to see them again as well but I didn't know what to say to them if I did. I couldn't share any of the things I had seen and learned with them. They would tell us about their year and Andy about his new school while I had to keep everything secret. I hated lying to someone I considered a friend and they'd probably notice it as well.

This was why I rather wanted to accept my aunt and uncle's invitation and stay with them for the entire summer. There were many things I wanted to discuss with my aunt and I still had so much to learn. If I stayed completely cut-off from the wizarding world during the summer, I wouldn't really have a chance to get any of this done.

No, my life in the Muggle world was over. By returning to Hogwarts, I had decided this. My family lived in the magical world and I wanted to stay close to them now that I had found them.