The Child of Dark and Light
Chapter 6
School Days
After a week of classes, I have everything down. At least, I have my classes down, I still haven't made any friends. I've meet all the people in my year in Gryffindor, even the oh so famous Harry Potter, but none will even talk to me because as one of the guys said, I'm only haly a Gryffindor. Harry was the only one who even took a little pitty on me, then he said somthing about how he had to make a similer choice, but when I asked him to explain he just walked off.
Well, I guess I can't say I haven't made one friend. There is this poltergeist named Peeves, he likes to play pranks on people, which is cool because so do I. I meet him trying to throw a paper basket over another first year, I told him that if he put a shrink spell on the basket after it landed on their heads, it would be harder for the students to get the baskets off. For the past week we have been getting together after hours to plot, for one of the least liked poeple in the school, he's pretty cool.
So, other than my lack of social skills, school is going well. Every Wednesday night, we go to the North Tower to study stars in Astronomy. According to the professor, we will be learing the names of the important stars and the movements of the planets. I've been told that if you read them right, the stars can tell you about the past and furture. Certain things like comets, astroids, and solar flares are supposed to be omens of different things, depending on the stars around them.
Professor Sprout teaches Herbology, three times a week, in the green houses outside the school. We will be learing all about the different plants and their uses in the magic realm. She also mentioned something about us planting various magical plants for spells and potions later on in the year, I hope we aren't graded on how well they turn out, I have a black thumb and can't make anything grow.
It was in the first class of herbology that I found out about all the houses and what they ment. Hufflepuff, the house we have Herbology with, are for the nice people, or wusses as some say. Ravenclaw is the house were those who are smart, but lack everything else, are put. These two houses don't have any sort of rivalery between them. My two houses on the other hand, are complete opposites, a yin and yang, so to speak. Gryffindor is the house for the good and noble, while Slytherin, is the house for the evil, who want to join the dark side of the force. I guess I'm the whole yin and yang completely in sync with both halves of myself.
My least favorite class, and I think in this everyone else agrees with me, is History of Magic. I looked at the class schedual, and found that I've already learned everything that we will be going over this year. It also doesn't help, when the most boring class is taught by the deadest professor in the school, literally. Professor Binns is a ghost, I asked Peeves what happened, he gave me some outragious story about Professor Binns playing with his wand one day and blowing himself up. According to some of the older students though, he just fell asleep in a chair by the fire, and never got up, his body anyways. That stroy seems a bit more realistic than Peeves'.
Charms on the other hand seems like it is going to be a fun class. Professor Flitwick teaches it, some of the things he said we are going to learn are going to be a blast, though I already know some of them. The poor man had an incident when he was calloing out roll, he fell off a pile of books when he got to Harry's name. I guess somehow getting rid of Voldemort when he was a baby made him real famous here in England, in America we know about him, but I guess because Voldemort wasn't to big there, Harry isn't that big for defeating him.
I believe that showiung off only draws unwanted attention to yourself, and pushes away others, that's why for the most part, I keep my accomplishments to myself. In Transfiguration, with the Head of my house, Professor McGonagall, told us how to turn a match into needle. I completed transfiguring mine after the second time, looking around the class towards the end of the period, I noticed that only Hermione had even made a real difference to hers, it was silver and pointy. I quickly changed mine back into a slightly pointy match before the professor saw mine, like I said, drawing attention to oneself is a bad idea for the most part.
The strangest class I had though was Defense Against the Dark Arts, with Professor Quirrell. Everyone in class was dissappointed with the class because Quirrell was a wuss. His class room smelled of garlic, and when asked to tell the story of how he got his turban from a prince in Africa, he couldn't go into details about how he defeated the so called zombie. But, the smell of garlic and his turban weren't the strangest part, after class the first day, he asked me to stay behind. When the other students left, he asked, in a slightly better, stuttering voice, about my parents and why I came to America. It was a bit wierd, I hope he didn't start asking because my eyes changed in class today. They turn a woody brown when I get bored, they are normally a bright green, maybe I should start wearing contacts, it would get me into less trouble.
Today is Friday and the last day before the weekend. I'm so glad it's almost the weekend, I have thirty minuets to eat my scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, before I go to doube potions with the Slytherins, this should be very interesting. Shoving the last of the eggs in my mouth, I grabbed my bag, and ran to the dungeons.
"meep...merow..." those noises should not becomming from my bag.
I opened my bag and, "Shadow!! What are you doing in my bag? I can't take you up to the dorms because I'm running late to potions, don't make a noise, ok?"
"Meow!" Taking that as agreement, I shut the flap of my messenger bag, and continued on to the classroom.
"Miss Zeak, you are late, please take your seat."
"Yes Professor Snape." I took the only available seat in the back, then grabbed my notebook and quill from the bag. While I was setting up, Professor Snape was asking Harry some really easy questions, it seemed that the public know it all, Hermione, thought the questions were easy too. Harry mentioned that Hermione might want to answer, which really upset Professor Snape, but the rest of the class giggled and laughed.
We took notes the rest of the first half of class, after the Professor got the class under control. For the second half of class we made a simple potion to cure boils. Neville, one of the shyer Griffindor boys, made his potion wrong, I wasn't paying attention, but he spilt the potion on himself, and Professor Snape took it out on Harry and Griffindor lost some more points.
I can't wait till we get to start making complicated potions, it was my favorite subject at home. There is something about mixing all the ingrrediants together, in the right way, or inventing new ways to do the potion that makes this subject the best. Though charms and transfiguration are a close second, making up spells and changing things is great too.
If it wouldn't take too long, would the readers of my story review and tell me what you think of my writting? Constructive criticism would be nice. I will be posting my story every other day, when my iffy internet works.