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Chapter Three: Wolfie
I awoke to the sound of high pitched giggling and was extremely disorientated by the sound, the only gigglers in the flock were Nudge and Angel and it didn't sound like them. I stretched and opened my eyes, the sunlight streaming into the window blinded me. I turned and sat up and saw the owners of the giggling. Two girls, one I knew was called Lavender due to the fact she asked if I had died or not when I had crash landed. I turned to my right and saw that Cassidy, the girl whom I had woken up last night, didn't look too amused to be woken up either.
"What in Merlin's name are you two doing?" Cassidy asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I personally rolled my eyes and snuggled under the covers again.
"Oh, lighten up," Lavender said, "Parvati and I are just having a laugh," Lavender added and the other girl next to her, whom I assumed was Parvati nodded. Cassidy made a distained noise and sat up, I watched the interaction between the girls and it was clear that they didn't get along. I watched as Cassidy grabbed a brush and a towel and walked into a separate room, which I assumed was the bathroom. "She can be such an old fart," Lavender muttered and turned back to Parvati.
"Don't mind them," a girl with bushy brown hair said, she was now standing in front of me. "I mean, they are snappy with each other but they aren't enemies by any means." She added and cast a friendly smile in my direction, "I'm Hermione Granger," She said in greeting.
"I'm Wolfie," I had got the jist of the 'introducing yourself' thing.
"I'm sorry, did you say your name was Wolfie?" Lavender asked and snorted, giving a great impression of a pig.
"Yeah," I shrugged, I got that the flock had weird names. I saw Hermione give Lavender a look and Lavender didn't make any further comments.
"Well, it's great to meet you," Hermione added and with that the girls in the room all started to get changed for the day. I looked around and spotted a uniform sitting on my bed. Last night Dumbledore had told us he'd have fresh uniforms brought to our room and it looked like he had stuck to his word.
After we'd all dressed, Cassidy emerged from the bathroom. Her long, golden blonde hair was tied back, she was neatly dressed, her tie comfortably place and her robes clean and pristine. Her sapphire blue eyes looked over at those of us in the room. I looked down at my own thrown on uniform, Cass clearly liked having everything just right and in place, I on the other hand couldn't care less. I was used to Nudge dressing us, seeing as whatever Nudge was wearing that day, I would just wear the same thing. "Well...?" Cass said, "Are you all just going to stand gawking at me or are we going down to breakfast?" That caused a movement among the girls. I followed behind the group outside, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My dark wavy hair sat just below my shoulders, and I had a few cuts and scrapes on my face. Madam Pomfrey had healed most of my injuries in the Hospital Wing so I was just left with a few war wounds. I followed the girls down the stairs and into the cozy Gryffindor common room.
"Wolfie!" I turned and saw that Max and Iggy were both waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. "We tried to go up and get you," Max explained, "But there was some weird enchantment on the staircase that wouldn't let Iggy go up." She didn't sound all too happy about it either. Max was still apprehensive about this whole thing; it had taken her being out-voted for us to be able to stay. I stood next to Iggy and tapped the back of his hand twice to let him know I was there.
"Took you long enough, Little Wolf," Iggy cast a smile in my direction.
"I didn't know that the pair of you would be waiting on me, I thought you'd have just gone down to breakfast." I rolled my eyes.
"Max wanted to make sure that you were safe, she doesn't trust anyone here," Iggy said with a shrug.
"That doesn't exactly surprise me," I said, looking between Max and Iggy. Max just shook her head and started to walk ahead, I gave Iggy my arm to help lead him down to the great hall. It was hard for a blind kid to navigate Hogwarts, especially since the staircases moved and that was disorientating enough for those of us who could see. I had found it odd when Iggy had asked me to help him navigate last night, I was so used to him just knowing what to do I had forgotten how scary this must be for him. I didn't mention this though; it had embarrassed him enough last night asking for help.
"Hey guys!" Nudge called, running toward us. She was wearing the same thing I was, only her robes had a different crest (Hers had a Badger, mine had a lion) and her tie was yellow and black, unlike mine which was red and gold. "Look, these uniforms are cool. Apart from the colour scheme on mine, I mean yellow and black come on, how gross is that? Why would anyone want to wear that! Your colours are nice, red and gold go and—"
"Nudge!" Iggy said, slapping his hand over her mouth.
"Sorry," came her muffled reply. It made me laugh a little bit. Nudge came to my side, looping my arms with hers and started talking animatedly to me. I had been close to Nudge for a long time so I had learnt the art of looking like I was listening but instead I was thinking about breakfast. But, when Max opened the door, Nudge went silent, her mouth gawking open and I probably looked the exact same.
The great hall was huge and as I looked up, the ceiling looked like the sky outside. I looked around and saw Fang sitting at a table with a lot a green. He waved at us and continued to eat his breakfast, listening to a boy next to him. It was odd, we were missing some of our flock and Fang hadn't even come up to meet us. I knew I didn't like this house thing from the get go, and I hated it even more when Nudge removed herself from my side.
"We need to sit at different tables, I'm a Hufflepuff," Nudge said seeing my face, "I know its odd Wolfie, we are always together, but we need to follow the rules."
"Don't worry about me, Nudge," I said forcing a smile on my face so she wouldn't feel guilty. "Go sit with your house." Nudge let out a delighted squeal, hugged me and ran off. I felt Iggy tug my arm and I turned to look at him.
"Let's go eat, Little Wolf," Iggy smiled, I just nodded and followed Max and sat at the table that's colour seemed to be red. I sat in-between Iggy and Max and frowned, I had expected Angel and Gazzy to be down here as well.
"Where are Angel and Gazzy?" I asked, that caused Max to frown.
"They eat in the kitchen; Dumbledore didn't want to cause too much disruption." She didn't sound pleased at all by this and I didn't blame her. When we were told we could attend the school, I had been super excited, up until I learnt that Angel and Gazzy were too young to attend. The solution to this situation hadn't been found yet, Angel and Gazzy were currently living in a room in the teacher's quarters as Dumbledore needed to find permanent living arrangements for them, which he said may take a while. Max had also only agreed to it as long as she got to approve where they were placed. To be honest, I had been surprised she'd even agreed to that. I started to eat my breakfast, it was all so odd. I didn't think we'd be here that long anyway, Erasers always found a way to ruin things like this.
"Come on, apparently we've got shopping to do," Max grumbled.
-oOo-
I came to one conclusion that day: I hate shopping, no matter what we are shopping for. When you have Nudge for a sister, you don't just go into a shop for a few minutes, you go into a shop for hours. Hagrid escorted us, showing us all around Diagon Alley. Apparently, Hogsmeade didn't have all the shops we needed, so we used this weird substance called Floo Powder and travelled Santa style. Travelling Santa style however made the flock violently ill, and the trip back wasn't much better. Anyway, after searching and searching for all the stuff we need, we finally got to return to Hogwarts. My favourite item that we got was my wand. It was pine, 9 2/3 inches and had a phoenix feather core. Mr Olivander said it was quite old, and was very supple. It was died black, and curved at the bottom like a claw. My favourite part of it however was the engraved wolf, which was howling at a silver moon. It was certainly a nice inside joke. Once we returned, we were to go to classes. We had yet to pick our classes, due to the fact we were to see what it was like first. We also had to do extra lessons in order to catch up on what we missed. In my opinion, Nudge had it the easiest as she only needed to catch up on a single missed year.
So I found myself in potions, with the bat like Professor who was named Severus Snape. I didn't particularly like the man, and the man didn't seem to particularly like anyone else. Well…except maybe his Slytherins. I was Cass' partner, and she didn't seem to be overly thrilled with it. The girl was kind of a mystery to me. She had the instructions out and looked at me, somewhat harshly. Her cold blue eyes made me want to take a step away from her, or run screaming to Hermione, whom I seemed to get along with quite well.
"I am not failing this class; do you understand?" Cass snapped.
"Ugh…ma'am, yes ma'am," I replied, my humour did not go down well at all.
"Just follow the instructions," Cass added, her glare reinforcing her dislike for the situation. I looked over the directions, I mean how hard could potions be? It would just be like cooking. So, I began to add the ingredients to the pot. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly: Snape for the most part left Cass and I alone, he seemed much more occupied with Harry. And, the potion seemed to be cooking relatively well. That was until I looked inside the pot. According to the directions, the potion should have been a smooth consistency and a blackish colour. Our potion, our potion was a bubbling green pot of goo. I turned to Cass,
"I think something has gone wrong," I announced. She frowned and walked over, her face went from shocked to angry.
"What did you do!" She called, utterly distained.
"I just followed the directions!" I snapped.
"Really?"
"Yes!"
"Okay! Did you add wormswood, finely chopped?"
"Yep."
"The pigs feet?"
"Of course!"
"Did you stir it clockwise and then add salt?"
"I uh... no, no I did not." I muttered, at this point in time Snape had come over to our table to investigate.
"You idiot!" Cass called, the potion started to make a strange gargling noise.
"What is-" Snape didn't get to finish his question. Someone in the back of the class had screamed and then,
"IT'S GOING TO BLOW!" Called a Gryffindor kid. The whole class got under their tables, the whole class accept Snape, Cass and I. It was like a never ending shower of green goo raining down on us. For a minute or two, all I could see was green. By the time I had cleared the goo away from my eyes, all I saw was Snape, covered from head to two, glaring down at Cass and I. Cass was making a noise that didn't sound human and as I looked around, the whole room was covered in it. From the walls, to the ceiling, to the desks. The class, who had dived under the tables looked unscaved however. I turned back to look at Snape and smiled sheepishly at him.
"Detention," He growled and looked between Cass and I, "The pair of you, you shall stay behind after class and scrub this room clean, without magic!" He swept away, walking down between the tables, "Class dismissed, get out the rest of you!" The rest of the class didn't need to be told twice, they all fled from the room. Leaving Cass and I alone.
"I can't believe it! I have never had detention! I have never failed a potion. This is the end, this is when my bad reputation starts!" I went to butt into her ramblings, but the girl was on a par with Nudge. "I'll get detention all the time, I'll start to fail classes. Do you know what that means? I'll never get a job, I'll never succeed in anything, I'll be homeless, I'll be a failure!" I was in shock, I never knew one little detention could unravel a person quite so much.
"Cassidy, it's going to be fine. It's just one detention," I tried to calm her down, but it didn't seem to be helping. In fact, it angered her more.
"One! One! One is how it starts, how your life is flushed down the drain!" She wailed. I took a step back from the crazy goo covered girl.
"Look, just breathe." She paused and sat down, she seemed to be trying to comprehend what had just happened. "Look, Snape left us a bucket and a brush, I'll start cleaning. You just…just take some deep calming breaths." In Cass' defence, she listened to me. I began to clean, scrubbing as fast as I could. After I was halfway done, Cass started on the other half of the room. We didn't talk much, but cleaning a whole dungeon together, you create a bond with that person.
Snape let us leave once he had inspected our work. We both went to our dorm, having missed dinner. We showered, changed and crawled into bed, utterly exhausted. After a moment of silence, I had to break it.
"I'm sorry I caused the potion to explode," I said, turning to look at Cass.
"It's okay. I may have over reacted…just a smidge," Cass said, "But only a smidge."
"Of course, just a little," I even managed to keep a straight face while saying it.
"Although, seeing Snape covered in goo, that was priceless," She smirked.
"Yeah, I mean did you see his face?" I made a horrendous impersonation of Snape. Cass and I erupted into giggles of laughter.
"Do you two mind!" Lavender snapped, "Some of us are trying to sleep!"
"Oh lighten up! Cass and I are just having a laugh," I said, echoing her words from this morning. "I mean you can be such an old fart, Lavender." This caused Cass and I to have another round of laughter. Lavender scowled and closed her curtains, outraged.