Isabella, Zala, Angelica, Mariano, Khalid, Kurt, and Deitmar stayed up that night in the large Main Hall. There were many cushy armchairs and mahogany coffee tables so Isabella was sure the place would be a good study area. It also appeared to serve as a sort of common room for the entire school.
The Academia was smaller and younger than Hogwarts. Everything was laid out neatly and close together with no rambling staircases or vanishing doors. There were also very few pictures. Instead, there were wide windows overlooking the Enchanted Wood or the valley with the Muggle village far below. Isabella, who had grown accustomed to the constantly moving, talking, and smiling portraits at Hogwarts was beginning to miss the castle a little.
But of course it isn't the same, she told herself darkly. Now that Snape was headmaster, Isabella was very sure that Hogwarts was not at all how it used to be. He probably kept all the windows shut and the rooms dark so you couldn't even see the walls anymore so that it didn't matter whether there were any pictures.
There were also no ghosts at the Academia. Isabella spent a good few minutes wondering this was an improvement. Thinking of Peeves, she decided it was.
It transpired that the library filled the top floor, which was technically the attic. Isabella hoped to go up and have a look the next day.
She was only taking Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, and Arithmancy. Those were the ones she had managed to scrape O's in, but she had passed all of her other subjects.
It turned out that this left huge amounts of time open in her schedule, but she was still taking more classes than most people. The classes were ridiculously easy to find, all being located on the first floor, with the exception of Astronomy (which had squeezed itself into a potion of the library) and Herbology (whose greenhouses were accessible by tunnels in the winter).
Professor Hecuba was the Charms teacher. She had a warm smile and spoke in a lilted, accented voice that indicated Middle-Eastern origin. The lesson was all about Memory Charms and their proper application. They were assigned an essay on how Memory Charms were used in conjuncture with the International Statute of Secrecy.
Professor Francis, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, spent the day lecturing on the dangers of Acromantulas, but assuring the class that, as the giant spiders lived in South America, they were in absolutely no danger. Isabella, who had heard of the tarantula-like beasts living in the Forbidden Forest, wasn't so sure.
Her Uncle Valentino taught her Arithmancy the next day. It felt very odd to call him Professor Petrroci, so she usually resorted to calling him "Sir". Over the summer the two of them had been discussing her plans for counteracting Fiendfyre. At the end of class, Valentino finished by saying, "Good work today. Remember to finish the problems at the back of the chapter for next class. Miss Petrroci, would you mind staying after a few moments?"
Isabella hung back. Valentino waited until all the other students were gone before striding over to her desk and giving her a hug.
"Everything okay?" he asked. "I saw you with Mariano Vinci, are you friends?" The way he said "friends" made Isabella positive her meant "an item". He seemed unnaturally concerned about this.
"Yes, I'm fine. A little homesick for Hogwarts, but okay."
"Good. I just wanted to tell you that I sent in our finished calculations to the Ministry last night. Signor de Piero tells me that he's planning on putting the same protection on several of the major wizarding and Muggle sites."
"That's cool," Isabella smiled.
"Anyway, you'd best get to your next class," Valentino said, giving her another hug and handing her her textbook. "Have a good day!"
The teacher for Potions was a thin, wispy-looking woman. She had a distinct greenish tone to her hair and skin. Her eyes were large bright green.
"She's half-dryad," Angelica whispered to Isabella. "So she's knows everything about plants and ingredients for Potions."
"Why isn't she the Herbology teacher?" Isabella asked.
"I don't know. She just got here three years ago," Angelica shrugged. "And Professor Hyacinth has been the Herbology teacher for ages."
The half-dryad was named Signora Clymene. She was very soft spoken - a sharp contrast to both Professors Snape and Slughorn - with gentle hands that were constantly in motion. She set them all working on a Beautifying Potion, which was supposed to make the drinker more lovely in appearance.
"No, dear, you have to pour the bubotuber pus very slowly," Signora Clymene told Isabella, holding her hand steady. "Can you tell me why we add bubotuber pus?"
"Um, it cures pimples, right?" Isabella asked, watching the foul smelling, thick liquid pour into her potion.
"Very good," the teacher said. "Yes, now stir it counter-clockwise... Wonderful."
Isabella left that Potions class feeling as though she had never brewed a better potion. Signora Clymene had a soft way of advising and helping students that gently nudged their potions the right way.
The next day the seventh years had Defense Against the Dark Arts, taught by a tall, grey-haired man named Professor Hadrian. He earned Isabella's immediate respect by talking about what he called "The England Situation" and warning the class how it could affect them.
"In case The England Situation gets out of hand and we are endangered, I'd like to focus this year on discussing various Dark Magics used by You-Know-Who and how to combat them. Have any of you heard of Inferi?" A few students raised their hands, including Isabella.
"Ah, you there," Professor Hadrian nodded to her. "Name, please?"
"Isabella Petrroci," she said.
"All right Miss Petrroci, what is an inferi?"
"It's a corpse animated by Dark Wizards to do their bidding," Isabella answered. She had learned about them last year when the English Ministry of Magic had sent her father pamphlets warning about various attacks and how to protect your family from them.
"Correct," Professor Hadrian said gravely. "They are different from ghosts in that a ghost is the disembodied spirit of a witch or wizard but an Inferi had no thought or purpose of its own other than to serve its maker. As You-Know-Who used these in The First England Situation, it is possible he will use them again."
The next class was Transfiguration. Isabella wasn't sure if she was excited or nervous about that class. It was possible that it would be boring, as Isabella had covered a large area of advanced Transfiguration last year in Professor McGonagall's private tutoring sessions. It was also possible that the teacher would be unhappy that Isabella knew so much.
The Transfiguration classroom, like all the others, had a splendid view of the mountains on the far side of the valley. It turned out that Senior Mosca, whom Isabella had assumed only taught flying lessons like Madam Hooch, also taught Transfiguration. Unlike Professor McGonagall's room, there were no cages with animals to be used for practice. Isabella thought this immensely strange as transfiguration of animals began in second year at Hogwarts.
"Is he a very good teacher?" Isabella asked Zala.
"Oh, he's amazing!" her roommate assured her.
"Settle down, everyone!" Senior Mosca said in heavily accented Italian. "Quiet! Order please, order!"
When everyone was silent and in their seats, Senior Mosca smiled down on all of them. "Well, I must offer my congratulations to you all for passing another year of transfiguration. I can only assume my superior teaching skills are responsible." All of the students laughed and Senior Mosca smiled.
"Now who wants to here about my trip to India?" Senior Mosca asked. Every hand in the room except Isabella's shot into the air. "Right. At the beginning of the summer I took my Nimbus 2000 broomstick and flew to India. Well, of course I had to make several stops on the way there and one of those stops was in Cyprus, lovely country."
Isabella began to notice that the students, who had at first seemed so eager to hear the story, were no longer paying attention. In fact, most of them were writing notes to each other, reading magazines under the desk, or (in the case of a few of the more diligent students) pulling out homework to work on.
"Anyway, the local villagers on the island were being plagued by a Griffin which was said to be guarding the treasure of Herpo the Foul. Naturally, I volunteered my service," Senior Mosca continued, utterly unperturbed that no one was listening to him. He suddenly reminded Isabella very strongly of her first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher: Gilderoy Lockart.
He kept going on and on so that after fifteen minutes, he still hadn't gotten past Cyprus. Isabella finally raised her hand.
"Yes? Do you have a question about my story?" Senior Mosca asked. Everyone stopped whatever it was they were doing and turned to stare at Isabella.
"No, sir. I was just wondering when we were going to begin the lesson," she said pointedly. Kurt looked at her like she had two heads.
"I'm telling a story," Senior Mosca said, mirroring Kurt's incredulous look. "Now where was I? Oh yes. So after I had subdued the Kappa... What is it now?" He asked Isabella, looking supremely annoyed. Her classmates were also throwing her dirty looks.
"Are you not going to teach us at all?" Isabella demanded.
"If you would just listen to the story you will learn how I drove the Griffin from his lair by riding on the Kappa's back," Senior Mosca said haughtily, turning firmly away from her.
"Does he always do this?" Isabella asked in a not-very-quiet whisper.
"Well, yes..." Mariano shrugged.
"You said he was brilliant!" she rounded on Zala.
"He's a great Quidditch player!" her roommate said defensively.
"Ah yes, Quidditch," Senior Mosca said fondly, evidently just catching the last comment of their conversation. "Did I ever tell you about the time I caught the Snitch with two seconds to spare in the match the Madrid Mantacores played against the Quiberon Quafflepunchers?"
Giving up all hope, Isabella spent the next hour and a half transforming her quill pen into a porcupine quill and back.
Later, Isabella stormed around Valentino's office. "He doesn't teach! He just sits there and tells ridiculous, made-up life stories!"
"How do you know they're made-up?" Valentino asked, shuffling papers on his desk.
"Kappa's are Japanese Water demons but he says he found one in Cyprus," Isabella explained. "Plus there's no way a grown wizard could ride on one's back."
"No one else has complained about him in the two years he's been here," he sighed, dropping papers on the floor and having to stoop down and pick them up.
"Of course not! They get away without doing any work," Isabella said, throwing her hands up in the air.
"I think you are overreacting," Valentino said, replacing the papers on the stack and tapping them with his wand. The stack of papers levitated and silently floated to a cabinet, which opened so that the paper could sail onto the topmost shelf.
"I am not! I just want a decent Transfiguration teacher-"
"No, you want Minerva McGongall," Valentino said, standing and looking at her much too understandingly. "You want to go back to Hogwarts. Well, you can't. Because Leonardo told you you couldn't. So I suggest you settle in and sit through whatever ridiculous, long, made-up stories Mosca tells you."
Isabella stared at her Uncle for a moment. Then she turned on her heel and strode away.