I know it's been a long time since the last chapter, but I wasn't lazy in the meantime. I've written some scenes for later chapters and you'll get the first taste of what I'm up to at the end of this chapter.
Enjoy!
The Second Day at Hogwarts
Hermione and Ron's reply arrived at breakfast the next day. Besides the letter there were two non-magical, identical ultrasound pictures in the envelope.
We thought you and Rose would like to see your little brother, Hermione had written.
Sirius ran over to the Gryffindor table, shouting: "We're going to have a brother!"
Rose hugged him and kissed her copy of the ultrasound picture. Lots of other Weasleys from the four tables gathered around them. On the back of Hermione's letter all of them wrote down their best wishes, and Sirius ran back upstairs to his dormitory, hiding Pig under his school robes.
He fed Pig with a piece of cheese and some bread crums from breakfast while he added a few more lines like Have you decided on a name yet? and I'm so exited! and Dad, our first Flying lessons will be in the afternoon!
Sirius sent Pig the Second on his way and then looked at the picture again. He slipped it into a corner of the family portrait on his nightstand before running back to the Great Hall.
The second day of school started with a closer look at the house teacher of Slytherin, Anna O'Hara, during Care of Magical Creatures. She was the youngest member of the staff of Hogwarts School, because she had only been in her third year when Voldemort attacked Hogwarts and had been among the students who were evacuated via the secret passage to the Hog's Head.
She seemed to be a kind person and told the students that they could come to her with any problem they had.
The double lesson had a rather traditional, but unspectacular topic: Flobberworms…
They weren't very exciting to look at, just wiggly, almost see-through, boring worms… The boys and girls had to test which kinds of lettuce the Flobberworms prefered and what kinds of vegetables they didn't eat. But Sirius thought the lesson was okay because he could chat with Vicky and Lucinda and Lex who would be taking care of the same Flobberworms than he for the course of the week.
Their Potions teacher was an ex-Ministry official in his mid-fourties named Felix Fletcher. He used to work in the Office for the Control of Magical Substances before he started to instruct at Hogwarts. There were some funny rumours going around that he had a crush on McGonagall.
Professor Fletcher started his lesson with checking if all the students were present and if they had all their text books and supplies with them.
Then the young Slytherins were allowed to start brewing their first potion: Blue Bubblewater. In other words: A soapy liquid which could be used for creating extra long-lasting blue soap bubbles.
Even the children of non-magical descent were bored soon.
"How old does he think we are?" whispered Baldric. "Five?"
The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was a former Auror, a friendly woman who had been in the Order of the Phoenix, Clarissa Moody.
Sirius had met her once at Uncle Harry's birthday party and so he knew that she was the daughter of the famous Mad-Eye Moody who had died during the war against Voldemort.
The class saw her for a single lesson and after that they had another single lesson of Muggle Studies.
It did not even take five minutes for Sirius to decide that it was even more boring than History of Magic. He took out his copy of Hogwarts – A History and started to read the chapter on Salazar Slytherin. His thoughts drifted off after a passage on Parseltongue. Uncle Harry was a Parselmouth. It was widely believed that one had to inherit the gift of communicating with snakes and reptiles, but Sirius knew that his father had been able to learn some phrases and use them successfully.
The only live snakes Sirius had ever seen had been in a zoo and he didn't reckon he would ever see live ones at any other place. So even if he were able to talk to snakes, the gift would be quite useless.
He continued to read the paragraph about Peeves the Poltergeist, and how Hogwarts castle had become blessed to have him.
The afternoon and the first Flying lesson with Victor Krum were what the Gryffindor and Slytherin first years had been waiting for all day long.
Vicky shouted: "Hi, dad!" when they arrived at the Quidditch stadium after lunch.
Krum tried to keep a straight face: "That's Professor for you, young lady!" With the years he had lived in the UK he had lost his strong Bulgarian accent almost completely.
Vicky snickered.
All of the students were supposed to train with school brooms, so no-one could show off with a fancy broom or injure themselves while flying with a broom they couldn't handle yet.
Krum alotted a broom to each student and told them to get into position in two rows opposite to each other.
The teacher too had a very old broom that looked like it definitely had seen better days.
"Some of you may have some flying experience already because you've had toy brooms or maybe an old broom from one of your parents. Since the Flying lessons are meant to teach you how to fly properly and safely, all of you will have to take part. Those of you who do well will be allowed to take their flying exams early in the week before the Quidditch team try-outs."
At this point of the speech Rose gave her brother thumbs up and grinned. They planned on competing on the Quidditch field the first chance they could get.
Krum continued to explain: "Flying is wandless magic, so you can keep your wands in your pockets. And now let's get some action." Krum placed his broom on the ground next to his feet. "Lay your brooms down gently, don't throw them. With some practice you will be able to simply let go off the handle and your broom will hover in front of you, but it's easier to learn to summon the broom in the beginning.
Those of you who are right-handed, please stand on the left side of your broom and extend your right hand above the handle. Those who are left-handed like me stand on the right side of the broom and extend the left hand."
Krum waited for the children to do so. "Treat your broom with respect and it will follow your commands. Speak polite, but determined." Krum extended his left hand above where the handle of his broom was laying. With a clear voice he commanded: "Up!"
The broom jumped upwards and Krum closed his palm around the handle. Seconds later he ordered the class to begin practicing.
It took some while until all children where able to command their brooms. While some still tried, the others put down their brooms, summoned them, put them down, shouted "Up!" again and so on.
Louise caused some tumult when she accidentally summoned the broom of the girl next to her and her own broom shot away a few metres before landing on the grass.
"Don't worry, Miss Sheffield", Krum reassured her. "Sometimes brooms act up a little when they sense that we are nervous. Happened to me right before my first professional Quidditch match. And it got more lines in the paper than the fact that I did catch the Golden Snitch later…"
For the next exercise the pupils finally got to try flying. Krum demonstrated what they had to do: "Lean back a little and the broom will rise, lean foreward and the broom will lower."
The class spent some minutes hopping around on the Quidditch patch, some more, the others less successful.
Turning left or right worked pretty much the same way: one only had to lean in one direction and the broom would follow. James and Freddie tried to show off and collided, both fell off their broom.
Krum then conjured up an obstacle course that the students had to fly one after the other. There were some pairs of posts through which the had to pass, sometimes there were low blocks above which they have to rise and then behind the blocks slide down again.
Krum said: "There's no need to race through the obstacles and there's no prize for the fastest either. Just fly smoothly and relaxed."
A cushioning charm prevented that anyone could get hurt from an obstacle.
Sirius thought of himself that he did pretty well. As far as he could tell he was the fastest to make it through the obstacle course.
A little later the children who already had flying experience were allowed to fly about three feet off the ground and throw balls to each other.
Sirius complained: "This broom is so lame!" Promplty his broom buckled and he had to grip the handle tightly. "Sorry, nothing personal."
Vicky said: "Dad let my try his Firebolt Series Three once, man, that thing accelerates and leaves your brain behind!"
Rose agreed: "Yeah, Firebolts are the best brooms ever! I wish Mom wasn't so scared of flying and let us have really fast ones!"
"The Nimbus brooms aren't bad either." Lucinda insisted.
Sirius couldn't help being sarcastic: "Let me guess, your Grandpa gave you a Nimbus?"
Lucinda sang "Maybe he did!" and made a looping with her broom.
Krum told her off from the other side of the Quidditch field: "No risky maneuvers, Miss Malfoy!"
At the end of the lesson Krum told the children to dismount and put the school brooms back into their shed behind the Quidditch stadium. Then he led the two classes up the stands and told them to sit down on the benches.
If Sirius had been asked at the beginning of the lesson whether he thought that all of his fellow pupils would be up in the air at the end, he would have said no. But Krum really had managed to teach each and every single one to stay floating in mid-air at least for a few moments.
From the top rows they had an amazing view over the Hogwarts grounds – and even more important – there simply existed no bad seats for the audience. Some of the children from non-wizarding families seemed to be frightened up here, but also some others had slightly pale faces.
"First, let me tell you how proud I am of you, dear class. All of you were brave enough to try flying and all of you made progress." Krum smiled and the boys and girls beamed back at him. "What I want to show you up here is that you don't have to be afraid of falling down during class. We haven't been flying high today, but we will soon."
Grinning Krum held up his right hand and flipped his fingers twice. There were some "Ah"s and "Oh"s when a broom raced towards him, one they hadn't seen before.
Krum mounted and Sirius started to pray that the famous Quidditch player would now show them some of his trademark moves like the Wronski feint – or even some of the risky manoeuvres that had been named after him.
Krum hovered a few feet in front of the class.
"Watch me." was all he said.
Then he fell of the broom.
Most of the pupils screamed, a few ran foreward to the edge of the stands, someone shouted: "Oh my god, we need an ambulance!"
All heads turned when Vicky started to laugh and clapped her hands like she had gone mad.
She had known all along that her father never had been in any danger of hurting himself.
Sirius looked down where Krum's broken body should have been – but where Krum actually was floating about a metre above the ground, swaying slightly as if suspended by an invisible safety net.
What Sirius realised and what Krum explained when he arrived back up in the stands was that the ground had been spelled with a cushioning charm that was used for the junior Quidditch league nowadays, but not for the adult players.
"One last thing, before you leave." Krum smiled again. "Like I said earlier, the first year students are allowed to try out for their House teams when they mastered the flying exams that will be held in about a month. For the rest of you who don't want to take the exam early, there will be another one at the end of the year, so there's no need to worry about it yet." His smile deepened. "But what I actually want to tell you: I'm very happy to announce that the winner of this year's Hogwarts' House Cup will play a friendship game against the winner of the Durmstrang House Cup at the end of the school year."
Interlude
Crushed.
A tiny fragment.
A shadow of what it had been before.
Seven splinters of what used to be one.
It –
He had been ripped apart state was not unknown to him.
It was not even uncomfortable anymore. He had been beyond uncomfortable for a very long time.
Who was he kidding, he had lost all sense of time. Furthermore he no longer had any senses left.
He knew that he still had an aim that was worth bothering to prolong his existence, but that was about it.
All he was still concerned with was the expansion of the tiny fragment that was left over from his former earthly existence.
He was conscious that there were others like him swirling around where he was now, buzzing around him like electrons around an atom.
Like planets around a sun.
Like flies around the devil.
He chuckled, though he had no voice to produce the sound, and no ears to hear the echo of his laughter, thrown back from the walls of his eternal prison.
That there was a prison, some sort of membrane, engulfing him and the others, was something else he knew for a fact. He occasionally drifted against the outer rim of the membrane and bounced away from it again, coming into contact with others that were shattered like him, who had done unspeakable things like him.
Only, to him those things were not unspeakable.
They were great achievements, something to be proud of. No one before him had accomplished what he had succeeded in. No one before him had seen the world as a place to be conquered, to be ruled, to be cleaned of all unworthy creatures.
There is only power and those too weak to seek it.
Those who were meant to crawl in the dust before him, meant to be his servants, bound to do his bidding. And then there were those who had to be wiped off the planet.
The way back to power was hard and stony, but he had made his first step.
He had learned how to repair himself, how to close the wholes in his shell, how to smoothen the sharp edges of the fragment he was damned to be.
He had learned how to absorb others and how to gain mass.
He had learned how to make the others fear him.
It would still take some time until he was ready to leave his prison, but he was sure it would work. He had been forced to hide in the shadows before and like the last time he had plenty of time.
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You all know where the quote is from, of course, but just for the record: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.