Chapter Three:

Walking into the Great Hall caused Olivia to pause for a moment. It had been decorated in the most beautiful fashion. Incredibly tall trees lined the room, hiding away the four house tables that had been pushed against the walls, as there was no need for them. The trees themselves looked to be the regular fir tree that she would find at home, yet several times taller. Olivia smiled as she imagined trying to fit a tree that big into her living room.

All of the trees twinkled with little faerie lights that grew brighter when you stared at them, which she did, causing the twinkles to reflect in her eyes. Some of the trees were dusted lightly with fresh snow, and the faerie lights in those trees seemed to shiver with cold.

Four of the trees had been decorated with the house colors, and Olivia couldn't help but think that the Gryffindor house really did get the best set of colors. Red and gold were her favorite for decorating the Christmas tree at home. As for her own house tree, it was beautiful, but not her favorite. Maybe she had been placed in the wrong house? Olivia shook her head slightly. No, she was much too clever to be in any other house but Ravenclaw.

Thinking about all these trees brought her thoughts to her mother, and she wondered if her mother had gotten a tree for Christmas. Had she decorated it with red and gold like the Gryffindor tree? Had she strung up pretty gold lights that shone from within the branches? Had she missed her daughter while she put on all the decorations, leaving the topper for the last? Had she cried when she put on that topper, remembering how years before she had lifted her baby girl up to do it, and then later, held her steady while she stood on the ladder to do so?

Or was she spending it alone and sad, sitting by an unlit fire, holding a cold mug of tea, shivering under a threadbare blanket? Was she staring off into the distance wishing she could have her only daughter by her side?

Tearing herself from those thoughts, Olivia glanced quickly up at the enchanted ceiling. The sight of the beautiful sky above never failed to lift her mood, not since that first time she had looked up and realized the potential for greatness she had walked into. The same was true for tonight. With a smile she gazed up at the sky. The sun was shining out from behind snow clouds, great big gray clouds that fluffed across the ceiling. She could almost feel the wind across her skin as the clouds moved with the gentle current.

"Excuse me, Miss? But would you care to take a seat?" A voice called, breaking into Olivia's observation of the passing clouds. With a start, Olivia snapped her head back down straight and looked towards the source of the voice. It was coming from the one table that had been set in the middle of the room. From the looks of it, it was filled with teachers.

Olivia nodded shyly before walking over to the table and taking the first empty spot she came to, which happened to be in the middle of the table as it faced her length wise. Quickly she pulled out the chair, sat, and scooted herself back in before looking down the length of the table to see whom else was there.

So far, it was just the teachers who had elected to stay behind for the holidays, chatting quietly to one another. Olivia recognized some of them, though not many. She may have had classes with the majority left behind, but her focus was more often then not on her notes. It was a rare thing if she paid attention to more than just the words that were coming out of their mouths.

However, she did recognize her head of house, Professor Flitwick, as well as the Headmaster, Professor McGonagall. She smiled vaguely at them before turning her eyes back up to the ceiling, wondering when the other students would arrive. Unless… Unless Tully had been mistaken and she really was the only student who had to stay here over Christmas break and it was going to be terribly boring and she really should have brought her book with her—

"May I sit here?" a voice asked politely as a hand touched briefly and gently against her shoulder. Olivia whipped her head around and up to look at the person who had spoken to her, her eyes wide with slight shock. No one spoke to her, really, no one except…

"Teddy Lupin?" She asked in a breathy voice. What was he doing here? He hardly seemed like the type who came from a troubled home. He was nice, kind, seemed intelligent enough from the two times that she had actually spoken to him. So why wasn't he at home sitting at an over-crowded table surrounded by a loving family?

"Olivia Ballentine?" He asked back with a smile. Olivia glanced past his shoulder to see his friend Dylan with him, but no Roger. Good, she didn't much care for Roger. Perhaps that was why Teddy had stayed over for the holidays, too keep Dylan company.

"Well?" He asked a little quieter, his smile faltering just the slightest.

"Oh!" Olivia gasped remembering his first question. "Yes of course, sit!" she patted the seat beside her quickly then blushed red in the face at her action. Really, there was no need to act like a mother hen. He obviously knew what she meant without the patting motion because he sat down, didn't he?

Absorbed in her sudden embarrassment, Olivia clasped her hands tightly on the table and stared down at them, pretending she found her fingers to be the most interesting thing in the world. She concentrated on the lines around her knuckles until she felt her face cool down enough that they were almost normal once more.

"That's a pretty bracelet," Teddy said as he scooted his chair into the table. Olivia glanced up and saw Dylan take the seat next to him. A girl who looked a little older then herself and sporting more Gryffindor colors sat beside Dylan and three older boys as well as an older girl wearing Slytherin colors sat across from them, looking too important to join in conversation with any other then themselves.

"Yes it is," Olivia agreed quietly as she jingled it along her wrist. "It has the most beautiful cursive letters for charms. See?"

With a smile she lifted up the bracelet for Teddy to look at. She glanced at his face and saw him staring intently at her own, almost as if waiting for their eyes to meet. She saw his bright smile out of the corner of her eyes as she watched his crinkle up with a mix of mirth and happiness. Then he was reaching for her wrist and pulling it so he could hold it so the light twinkled on the silver chain.

"Ah… yes, they are quite fancy. Simple, yet elegant," He peered a little closer before setting her hand back down on the table. "It suits you. Who was it from?"

"I don't know," Olivia murmured, looking down at the bracelet. A logical explanation for who had sent her the bracelet had yet to come to her. But thinking about it after hearing Teddy's words, it did suit her. It was something that she would pick out for herself. So the person who had bought it for her, must have been someone who knew her well.

There was only one person who fit that bill: her mother. But she had already been ruled out, hadn't she? Best to know for sure, as she was currently the only logical explanation. She would send an owl to her mother tomorrow asking her about the bracelet.

"You don't know who gave it to you? Does that mean you have a secret admirer?" Teddy asked with a huge smile and a playful nudge to her elbow, which caused her to blush again. The thought of a secret admirer was infinitely embarrassing, but luckily Professor McGonagall standing to give a quick speech saved her from having to answer that question.

Then the plates were filling with the most delicious food overwhelming the senses. The smell of mashed potatoes wove its way into her nose and she closed her eyes as she inhaled the scent. She loved mashed potatoes. With a wide smile she filled her plate with that and nothing else.

"Like those, do you?" Teddy asked as he grabbed some turkey as well as a small portion of mashed potatoes. He had a biscuit and also some sort of potpie. Olivia couldn't quite tell what it was.

Unwillingly, words were spilling out of her mouth. "My mother makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. On the one Christmas where my stepfather was out to sea and we could really celebrate, my mother made a huge batch of mashed potatoes, so many we thought we would never be able to eat it all. We sat in the living room, before the fire, something we're never allowed to do. Just me and her. She read me a story about a happy family and I could swear it was almost real. It's the happiest I've ever been."

She glanced quickly up at Teddy to see his reaction, but he just continued to quietly eat his food, as if what she said about "happy families" and her stepfather was perfectly natural. She wasn't fooled however; she knew that her family was not the typical one. Perhaps, he didn't come from a happy family also. Perhaps what she went through was similar to his own situation. Perhaps he understood.

"My cousin Victoire loves mashed potatoes too. Every Christmas, she always eats them all before I get some. Sneaky brat," but he said it with a smile on his face. No, he didn't come from the same place she did. He was one of the lucky ones.

"Tell me about your family," Olivia said, surprising herself again. She normally didn't want to have her unhappy situation thrown at her. But today was a different day, she could feel it. Today, she wanted to know what it was like to be loved by more then just one woman who lived the majority of her life in fear.

She listened avidly as Teddy told her of all his cousins, of his uncles and aunts who spoiled him rotten, of his godfather Harry Potter, who Olivia recognized immediately from books she had read. She was impressed by this, but didn't mention anything. Teddy talked of his grandmother with such love that Olivia wondered if she was his primary family member. Maybe he was a little like her, maybe he didn't have a mother and father and so knew some of what it was like.

He spoke most of his young cousin Victoire. She was two years his senior and quite a handful, as far as she could tell. From what Olivia had been told, the girl sounded a bit like a brat, and very selfish, but Teddy seemed to favor her. Olivia called him on that.

"Victoire is your favorite, is she not?" She asked as she pushed away her empty plate. Teddy was still digging into his, on his third serving of ham (after his one serving of turkey), eating steadily between words. This however, seemed to give him pause.

"What?" he seemed slightly taken aback. "No, I don't have a favorite. I love them all equally. Why do you ask?"

"Just the way you speak of her. You mention her more then the others. And the way you mention her. It is with a certain fondness that you do not present with others. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it sounds to me as if you like her more then the others. Perhaps because you have more in common?"

Teddy was frowning and shaking his head, but Olivia was soon distracted as the food disappeared from the table before her and was replaced by desert. Sitting in a dish before her was a gigantic platter of cheesecake.

"My favorite!" Olivia squealed as she grabbed the pie slice and put the biggest one she could find onto her plate. She hadn't had cheesecake in forever. Cheesecake was a delicacy at her house, too expensive to buy just any old time. Her stepfather knew that Olivia liked it, so he therefore refused to have it in the house. But that was one story she would not be sharing with Teddy.

"Excuse me, dear, but would you mind passing me a slice of that cheesecake?" Olivia looked at the voice. It was Professor Flitwick. He was smiling at her from across the table and two seats to the left from her. His plate was being held out towards her. Standing she reached and slide a slice onto his plate then smiled at him.

Suddenly she was reminded of her earlier thoughts. About the hover charm. She frowned in puzzlement, wondering if she should ask him. It wasn't an appropriate place really, not with all these other students surrounding her. What if he didn't appreciate being called out in front of his fellow teachers?

But then again, she had been living the past three months in a fog, almost a complete daze when it concerned the world outside her studies. What if she fell back into that fog after tonight? What if she never had the chance to ask him again?

"Professor Flitwick? Would it be all right if I asked you a question. Concerning our coursework," the words were tumbling out of her mouth almost before she had decided that she was indeed going to ask, despite the people who were sitting around her, likely staring at her.

"Ah, a very persistent student. Remind you of someone, Minerva?" Flitwick called with a quick glance towards the headmaster. Olivia feared for almost a moment that she had made a grave mistake and that he was angry with her for interrupting his holiday with pesky questions. After all, he was on vacation as much as the rest of them.

However, he turned back to her with a patient smile. "Are you having trouble learning something? Because I am certain if you are, I can set up a time and a tutor for you."

Olivia sighed with relief before quickly glancing at Teddy to see if he as paying attention, praying he wasn't. However, he was watching her just as avidly as ever. That made it hard for her to continue, as she found his eyes on her most unnerving, but it would be even harder to retreat now.

"No, Professor, it's not that. I was wondering about a modification to the levitating charm we had learned. I was wondering why you didn't mention it in class," Olivia tried to make sure her voice was loud enough for Flitwick to hear, and not too fast, as she was feeling nervous now and knew she had a habit of speaking too quickly.

She became even more nervous when Professor Flitwick frowned at her. "What modification is that, dear?"

"The…" she had to swallow the sudden lump in her throat. She could feel her face blushing yet again with embarrassment. Now she had gained the attention of almost everyone within the immediate seats of her. Even some of the other professors were watching her. "The modification in Wingardium Leviosa."

He looked even more confused now. She wouldn't be surprised if he started to scratch his head. Olivia was deeply regretting asking about this. Obviously she should have had this conversation in private since Professor Flitwick was either very slow, or really didn't know about it. Either of these two would end in his shame at being uneducated. She really should have done this in private.

"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to clarify. I'm still not sure what you are talking about," he said with an apologetic smile that didn't quite mask his confusion and slight irritation.

"The modification that causes the item to hang in the air without actually using the hover charm. It allows you to lift as well as hover the object but with just the one levitation charm," she explained, clasping her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking. She could see the confusion clearing from his eyes but it was being replaced by pity. Something was going wrong.

"Oh, yes, I understand now. Dear, which one of the seventh years told you of this modification?" He said with a small laugh, looking towards one of his fellow teachers. The potions master. "Professor Windell, your Slytherin's are telling more and more outrageous lies as the years pass."

Now it was Olivia's turn to be confused. What was he talking about? Her lips puckered just the slightest at her confusion as Flitwick turned back to her with that pitying smile still stuck to his face.

"My dear, I don't know who told you about this so called modification, but it doesn't exist. No spell has a modification. There are varying intensities of the spell, which causes it to be more or less powerful, depending on what is needed. But there are no modifications to speak of."

"But I—" she began but was cut off. Flitwick, it seemed wanted to redeem himself for his earlier confusion by fully explaining the truth to her. Or the truth as he believed it to be.

"There is the possibility of making the object levitate at such an incredibly slow rate that it appears to not be moving at all. But as soon as you take your focus off of it, the object will come down, just as if you made it levitate at a normal pace. There is no way to make it hover without adding in the separate spell."

"But there is! You can make the object hover as well as take your focus away from the object. Even cast different spells while the object is in the air. Then, when you are ready for the object to come back down, you simply pick up the thread of magic once more with your magic and take it back down with a reverse wand motion. It's all in the pronunciation as well as a final jabbing motion."

Even as she was speaking, Professor Flitwick was shaking his head in denial. He refused to even listen to her explanation, which caused anger to replace her sudden embarrassment. How could he not eve hear her out? Was he so sure of his own intelligence that he couldn't even consider for a second that he wasn't right?

"Whoever told you this must have been very convincing," he said as Olivia was trying to decide which object she would use to prove to him that the modification was possible. She had done it.

However, at that very moment, he did the one thing that sent her over the edge. He laughed and then turned away from her, dismissing her as if she was beneath his notice. The people who had been listening to the exchange laughed as well and she felt them dismissing her in their mind also. No one dismissed her, not when she knew that she was right. Knew it to her very depths.

Pulling her wand from her pocket, Olivia rose calming to her feet, pointed her wand and declared quite proudly, "Wingardium Leviosa!"

With the proper pronunciation, the added emphasis on the S, and the slight jab of her wand, Professor Flitwick rose neatly from his chair until he rested several feet above his seat. And then he hovered as Olivia sat back down in her seat, picked up her fork and took a healthy bite of cheesecake.

"This cake is excellent Teddy," Olivia said as she set down both her fork and her wand, turning to Teddy with a smile, dismissing Flitwick. A smug smile was on her face as she looked up at Teddy, expecting praise for her actions. He however, was staring in horror at the head of the table that was now behind her.

"Set him back down!" A voice said quite loudly, sending her nerves afire. It filled the sudden silence that surrounded her. No one dared move let alone breath as the professor hovered harmlessly in the air. Olivia reasoned to herself that she had simply been proving a point, educating really. There was no reason for her to get in trouble, no not at all. There was no reason to be afraid. She was simply doing what she had felt was needed. Logically, she had done nothing wrong.

Olivia, however, refused to let her fear show, something she had become quite good at. With extremely calm movements, she folded her hands in her lap and looked to the head of the table. Headmaster McGonagall had risen to her feet and was giving her the most stern and frightening glare she had, likely, ever received in her life. "Immediately!"

"Of course Headmaster," Olivia said demurely, as she picked up her wand, found the thread of magic that connected to where the professor hovered and took control of it once more with her wand. With as much grace as she had placed the professor in the air, she jabbed lightly at him and reversed the wand movement. Professor Flitwick floated slowly through the air and landed without so much as a bump back in his chair. No one made a sound.

Then Flitwick was laughing and clapping and the students were laughing too. And noise was filling the hall once more as the professor looked at her and smiled such a wide smile. Olivia couldn't logically figure out why he had reacted that way. She may have reasoned herself into believing that she wouldn't be in trouble, but that had been a bluff. Deep down she had expected herself to be in a very big heap of trouble.

"I've never," exclaimed the headmaster from where she stood at the head of the table, "in all my time as a teacher, seen a student have so much gall as to cast a charm intentionally on a teacher. What is your name?"

As the words thundered down the table, Olivia called on her bluff once more. Standing she stood tall and proud, forcing her shoulders back and her chin up. "Olivia Ballentine."

"What house are you in Olivia," Flitwick asked standing up also and coming around to her side of the table, completely ignoring the seething woman that stood just a few seats from him.

"What does it matter—"

"Yours, Professor. A first year," Olivia said, following him with her eyes as he rounded the table and headed right for her.

"Yes, yes I should have known. That was most extraordinary!" He exclaimed as he finally reached her. He grabbed her wand free hand and began to shake it vigorously. "Never in my life have I been so surprised, nor so pleased to have a spell cast upon me."

"Professor, she has still broken an untold amount of rules! She will have to be dis—"

"The spell was cast so gently. Sometimes it can be quite jarring to be lifted into the air that way, or to have a spell placed on you at all. But your spell, why, it was like being lifted up by the wind. And the hover, like sitting on clouds. And then to actually break wand connection!"

He was still holding her hand, but now he was leading her slowly from the hall, talking the entire time, a fire in his eyes. Much the same fire that Olivia felt herself when she was studying. A fire to learn, to understand.

"I literally saw you break wand connection, yet you were able to hold the spell within your mind. I know you think of it as dropping the spell, when you release your wand, but really, the wand is just a tool for what the mind already does. To hold that kind of a spell in your mind, amazing."

"Thank you Professor—"

"But what is truly miraculous, is that you were correct! You did modify the spell. You used the levitation charm, but you were able to make it hover as well. Truly amazing. And a first year at that. You must tell me of how you did it, how you even thought to do it. It was in the pronunciation?"

"Yes, Professor. And in the wand movement," Olivia said as she was brought before a door. She would soon come to find this place one of her favorite rooms within the castle.

Flitwick had brought her to his private office. There was a large oak desk directly across from the door, with a rather comfy armchair off to the side of it, which Flitwick ushered her to. As she sat down he went to light the fire that was behind her desk and Olivia examined the portraits that covered the walls. They were all of famous witches and wizards, some of which Olivia recognized from her studies. All of them famous for their Charm work.

"You must show me, Olivia. I am most interested in knowing," Flitwick said as he sat in the chair behind his desk and looked at her intently, still with that so familiar glint in his eye. "Start with the pronunciation. That's always been where I've struggled the most."

With a small smile, Olivia launched into an explanation of performing the modification, all thoughts of her remaining cheesecake gone.

This truly was a better Christmas then she ever could have hoped for.

A/N Review please! :D