The rest of the school arrived on Wednesday, and on Thursday morning, all the first years went back to the Assembly Hall and were introduced to the school prefects and the Head Boy and Girl. Among the fifth year prefects was Ron's brother, Percy, and one of the sixth-year prefects was Mikhail's cousin, Sabina Fedorovich. After that, they left so the second years could be introduced to their teachers for the year, and reported to Professor Chavez the foreign language that they wanted to sign up for.
On Monday, September 2nd, school officially started. Schedules were handed out at breakfast and Harry looked over his. He had Charms, History of Magic, and Herbology on Mondays and Wednesdays, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Potions on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Astronomy on Tuesday nights, and World Culture and his selected foreign language, which was French, on Fridays. As he was familiar with both the wizarding and Muggle worlds, he didn't have to take either Muggle or Wizarding Culture, and therefore had that time as a study period.
When he compared schedules with his friends, it became clear that they all had the exact same schedules, other than their selected foreign language and Hermione, Dean, and Anthony having to take Wizarding Culture and Mikhail and Leilani having to take Muggle Culture. "Well, that's convenient," Draco said. "We'll be learning everything at the same time."
At a quarter to nine, the bell rang, reminding students that they had fifteen minutes before the school day started. "We'd better get going," Arista said, taking a quick wipe of her mouth with a napkin and grabbing her school bag. "We don't want to be late for Charms."
The sixteen of them filed out the dining hall and went up to the third floor where the Charms classrooms were. In the Charms corridor, they found the door labeled "Charms, Year One", and entered the room. The rest of their classmates came in as they found seats.
A couple of minutes later, Professor Mills came out of her office, which was next door, and went to the chalkboard, where she proceeded to write her name and the course aims for the year. Once the bell rang, signifying the start of class, she set down the chalk and turned to face the class.
"G'day everyone," she said with a smile, her Australian accent rather noticeable. "As I'm sure you remember, I'm Professor Mills. To start, I'll be taking roll." After attendance had been taken, she went over the course aims, and then said, "Now, before we actually start learning any spells, we are going to be going over the theory a bit. First off, what exactly is a charm, and how would it be different from other types of spells?"
Hermione immediately raised her hand. Professor Mills nodded at her, and she said, "A charm is a spell that adds a certain property to an object or creature. For example, a Color-Changing Charm would change the color of something, and a Levitation Charm would make an object levitate. Charms focus on adding or changing a property, whereas transfiguration focuses on changing the object or creature entirely, and jinxes, hexes, and curses are spells linked to Dark magic and produce negative effects, with curses being the strongest and jinxes being the most minor. There's also counter-spells-"
"Excuse me, Miss Granger," Professor Mills interrupted. "What you've said so far is absolutely correct, but would you mind pausing for a bit so I can put what you said on the board and have everyone copy it down?" Once everyone had taken notes, she continued, "I see that you read through at least the first part of your Charms text and retained the information, Miss Granger. Did you do this with all your textbooks?"
"Yes, I did, Professor Mills," Hermione replied. "I wanted to be well-prepared for class."
"Very good. Now, let's give someone else the chance to answer, all right? Now, Miss Granger was going to briefly go over the remaining two spell types so that we could see how they differ from Charms. Does anyone else know what they are?"
Eileen, Kalea, Draco, and Tewodros Conteh raised their hands. Kalea was called upon, and she said, "Counter-spells are a type of spell that are meant to block, remove, or negate the affects of another spell. Finite Incantem is a general, all-purpose counter-spell that ends the effects of most spells. The last spell type are healing spells, and as their name suggests, they are spells used to heal or fix people or creatures."
"Very good, Miss Allen," said Professor Mills, magically writing what Kalea said on the board. She gave the class a couple of minutes to copy it down, then said, "If you turn to chapter one of A Standard Book of Spells, Grade One, you will find the first charm that we will be learning for the year, which is a simple Color-Changing Charm. The incantation is 'Colovaria'. Please practice saying it a couple of times, without your wands."
The class did so, and then Professor Mills had Draco and Eileen hand out blue ribbons to everyone. "You are going to practice the Color-Changing Charms on these ribbons. If you are successful, the ribbon will change from blue to another color." She demonstrated on a scarf, turning it from red to violet.
Hermione was the first student to successfully master the charm, turning her ribbon to a brilliant scarlet on her fifth try. She then turned it to a deep emerald color, followed by a bright sunny yellow and a pale pink color. "Excellent, Miss Granger," said Professor Mills, smiling. "Both in your spell work and in the grade that you've achieved for today's work. You certainly seem to have some talent for Charms." She went to her desk and picked up a jar of fruit drops resting there. "What flavor of fruit drop would you like? I have strawberry, cherry, lemon, orange, and pear." Hermione chose a strawberry one.
June and Frank were the next students to master the spell, with the former turning her ribbon white and the latter turning his ribbon a dark red. Professor Mills praised their spell-work and gave them a fruit drop each as well. By the time class ended, everyone had managed to make some difference to the color of their ribbons, though in Mikhail's and Ron's case, they had only changed the color to a different shade of blue (from sapphire blue to sky blue), and in Joseph Hinkley's and Leilani's case, only half their ribbons had changed color.
"For homework, read the first chapter in the Charms textbook, and those that didn't fully master the charm, please practice it," said Professor Mills. "Class is dismissed."
Everyone gathered up their things and headed for their next class. Harry's group of friends went down to the second floor where the History of Magic classrooms were. At half past ten, class started, and Professor Park-Davis, a Korean woman of about seventy, greeted the class and took roll call. When she was done, she had them turn to chapter one of A Look at Magical History of Africa. The chapter dealt with ancient Egypt, where the oldest known records of witches and wizards came from. Harry had already learned some things about ancient Egypt back in fifth grade, though that had focused more on their history in general and not magical history, and the class had to read the Muggle book The Egypt Game, which was about a group of kids who had a fascination with ancient Egypt and would role-play living in that era.
"As you can see, many of the priests and priestesses of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, such as Bastet, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, were magical, and so were many of the advisers to the pharaohs. In fact, it's believed that the advisers serving the pharaoh mentioned in the story of Moses that's recorded in the Bible and Torah are actually wizards, using their magic to duplicate the feats that Moses and his brother Aaron did with God's help."
Professor Park-Davis continued going over the chapter, with the class taking notes, and answered any questions the students had. For homework she had the class review their notes and the chapter, saying that she would be asking them a few questions the next class to make sure they had retained the information. With that, at ten minutes to noon, class was dismissed, and everyone gathered their things and went down to lunch.
"We're allowed to eat lunch out in the courtyard, as long as the weather's nice," Eileen said. "Do you guys want to do that?" The others agreed, so they packed up some sandwiches, fruit, cookies, and bottles of juice in a couple of baskets and went out to the courtyard. They settled underneath a large oak tree and began eating, talking about the two classes they had so far.
"Hey, Hermione, since you got the Color-Changing Charm so quickly, do you mind helping me master it when I practice tonight?" Mikhail asked.
"Of course not," answered Hermione with a smile.
"Thanks," said Mikhail, returning the smile. "If you want, I could quiz you on the history chapter in return."
"That'd be wonderful, Mikhail. Weren't the ancient Egyptian wizards fascinating? I never suspected that many of the priests and priestesses were magical."
"My oldest brother, Bill, works in Egypt as a curse-breaker for Gringotts bank," Ron said. "He's written the family about the magical tombs he's worked in, plus the magical parts of other tombs that are hidden from Muggles. My parents are saving money so that we can visit him in Egypt over one of the summer holidays."
"That's cool," said Harry. "I wish I could go to Egypt. Why couldn't any of my parents' friends have been from there? Then I'd have an excuse to visit."
"Hey, look on the bright side, Harry," Eileen said. "We got to visit Saudi Arabia and Japan, at least." For the benefit of the others that hadn't been friends of them before, she added, "Our Aunt Amina is from Saudi Arabia, and our Aunt Yuki has family in Japan."
When the bell rang, warning everyone that there was ten minutes until one o'clock, the start of the next class, the group hastily packed up the remains of their lunch. Ron, Draco, and Arista dropped off the baskets in the dining hall and joined the rest of their Herbology class in Greenhouse One. It was the largest of the five school greenhouses, since it grew the vegetables and cooking herbs and spices used by the school kitchens.
When the bell rang, signifying the start of class, the teacher said, "Good afternoon, class. I am your instructor, Professor Boledenka." He took attendance, then continued, "Since most of you have little to no experience working with plants, other than perhaps helping your parents weed a garden, it is school policy to not have you start on magical plants, a number of which can be dangerous or require delicate handling. Therefore, you will start out with working with the purely mundane plants in here to gain experience. To begin, we will identify the various fruits and vegetables growing here."
Draco raised a hand. "But there are no fruits growing here, Professor Boledenka, other than the tomatoes."
"Botanically, there are certain plants, such as cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, and squash, that are fruits, but are classified as vegetables in culinary use," Professor Boledenka explained. "Their seeds are encased by the flesh of the plant part you eat. Normally we just refer to the sweet-tasting ones as fruit and the savory or less sweet ones as vegetables."
Most of the vegetables were easily identified by the entire class, but a few that were primarily used in Asian cooking were harder to identify. Frank and Eileen were the only ones that could identify them all, as they had eaten those vegetables before. After that, the class did some watering and weeding, and harvested enough vegetables to fill two bushel baskets, which were sent to the kitchens to be used for dinner.
At a quarter past two, class ended, and everyone washed up. Harry's group of friends headed for the library, where Hermione and Anthony immediately rushed over to the bookcases and started browsing. After fifteen minutes of this, Harry interrupted them. "Would you two mind exploring the library later? I wanted to talk over some things with you guys, and get some practice on the Color-Changing Charm."
Hermione and Anthony reluctantly pulled themselves away and the group went upstairs to where the study rooms were. They settled down in one of them, and Arista said, "The sixteen of us are well on our way to becoming a close-knit group of friends. So I thought perhaps we should come up some sort of name to call ourselves, like how my parents and their friends called themselves the Phoenix Club."
"The Phoenix Club?" asked Dean. "That's an interesting choice of name. Why did they pick it?"
Harry shrugged. "That was the only name they all agreed on. Also, most of them aren't really great at coming with group names. Well, Uncle Sirius and my dad did suggest the Marauders, but my mum and Aunt Yuki pointed out that they weren't pirates or raiders. Aunt Katya finally suggested that they name themselves after a magical creature, and said that phoenixes symbolized rebirth, so they went with that."
"We could just call our group the Phoenix Club rather than try to come up with a name," Leilani suggested. "I'm not very good at coming up with club names, and you could say that we're a rebirth of your parents' group, Harry."
"Why can't we just use a different magical creature, like a dragon?" asked Draco. "The Dragon Club sounds nice."
Several of the others laughed. "We're not naming the club after you, Draco," Ron said. "No matter how much we like you."
"I was joking," said Draco with a grin. "I'm not that big-headed or, what's the word, egocentric. The Phoenix Club sounds fine. All for it?"
All sixteen friends agreed, and so Stella took out a piece of parchment. "Which one of us is good at drawing?" she asked.
Dean raised his hand. "I took some art lessons, and the art teacher at my primary school said I was really good at it."
"All right then. Dean, would you please draw a phoenix on top, and write our group name underneath it?" Stella took out her copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and flipped to the section on phoenixes. "Here's a picture so you know what a phoenix looks like."
Dean took out his colored pencils from his school bag and proceeded to draw a phoenix in flight on the top of the parchment. Underneath that he wrote "Phoenix Club" in block letters and then handed the parchment back to Stella, who asked. "Who has the best handwriting?"
After a minute of comparing, it was decided that Veronica had the best handwriting. She was appointed to write down two relatively short paragraphs, which said that the Phoenix Club had decided to form up and would be friends for life, with a summary on how they would behave towards each other.
"Anything else?" Veronica asked. The others shook their heads, so she said, "Then we can all sign this vow of friendship." She signed her name first and then passed the parchment and her pen to Neville.
Once everyone had signed their name, Neville took a good look at the phoenix Dean had drawn. "You're really good at art, Dean. The phoenix looks almost realistic."
"Thanks," said Dean, looking slightly embarrassed by the compliment. "My art teacher said I should attend an art school, but my parents couldn't afford to send me there, only for some lessons, and anyway, the acceptance letter from Nightwind School changed things for me."
"You know, there's an Art Club," Eileen said. "You should join that and exercise your talent. Also, if you do plan on making a career out of it, in sixth and seventh-year you can take a class on wizarding art. Professor Hertz runs both, and Aunt Nicole and Uncle Kurt help out, since art is their hobby."
"Aunt Nicole is good enough at painting that she could have made a career as a wizarding painter instead of becoming a Healer," Arista added. "She painted pictures, many of them of the original Phoenix Club, and gave them to her friends on their birthdays back in her school days. Uncle Kurt is good at sketching and drawing, but as you know, he felt his calling was to be a rabbi rather than an artist."
"What exactly is the difference between Muggle and wizarding art?" Dean asked.
"You know how wizarding photos move, because the film gets developed in a potion that allows that?" Veronica asked. "It's similar with wizarding paintings. There's spells that you can do to make a painting move, and magicked brushes and paints. Also, if you're painting a person, you can, um, imbue it with the person's personality. That allows the painted person to talk and act more-or-less like him or herself when they were alive."
"Also, if a person has more than one portrait, they can travel between the portraits," Leilani added. "They can also travel to other paintings in the same building as them, but they can't go to another building unless they have another portrait there. Headmistress Nakamura's office has portraits of all the previous Heads, and I read that they give her advice and stuff. Once she retires or dies, her portrait will join the rest and do the same with her replacement."
After that, Dean went back to the library to find some books on wizarding art, and Anthony went with him. Joseph tapped on the door. "Hermione, do you mind helping me with the Color-Changing Charm? Tewodros isn't that great at Charms, and our two roommates don't have the class until tomorrow."
"I don't mind," Hermione said. "I told Mikhail, Ron, and Leilani that I'd help them, so you can join us."
"Thanks, Hermione," said Joseph, looking relieved. He set down the green scarf he was holding on the table and took his wand out from his pocket. The three others that hadn't fully mastered the charm took out their wands and a small item they were going to practice on, and under Hermione's watchful eye, practiced the spell.
By dinnertime, Joseph and Leilani could fully change the color of their scarves, instead of only changing it halfway, and Ron and Mikhail could turn the covers of their notebooks to various colors and not just a different shade of the original color. "You're wonderful, Hermione," Joseph said gratefully. "You should sign up as a Charms tutor for the study group that I hear the school has, if that's what you want to do. Do you mind if I come to you if I need help with Charms in the future? I could help you with History of Magic in return. I like history, and I'm good at remembering historical facts and stuff."
"I don't exactly need help in history, but if you want to quiz me on the subject before tests so that I can make sure I know everything, that would be fine." Hermione answered. "And I don't mind tutoring you in Charms, Joseph." After all, she could see that he wasn't simply trying to use her for homework help, unlike her classmates back in primary school, and he had offered to return the favor by helping her in another subject.
The next day, after breakfast, the new Phoenix Club went to Transfiguration, taught by Professor Chavez. After taking roll call, she went over the course aims and the first chapter of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, which explained the subject, with the class taking notes. After that, she had Veronica and another boy named Justin Finch-Fletchley hand out matches to the class. Professor Chavez demonstrated how to turn it into a needle, and had the class attempt to do the same.
Again, Hermione was the first person to actually succeed, with her managing to turn her match silvery on the first try and fully turning it into a needle on her fourth attempt. Professor Chavez, looking pleased, said, "Excellent work, Miss Granger." She showed the class how well Hermione had done, gave her a Chocolate Frog as a reward, and asked her to see if she could turn the needle back into a match.
When class ended, only Kalea, Mikhail, and Justin had managed to turn their matches into needles, and Kalea and Hermione could also turn their needles back into matches. Neville, Harry, and a girl named Gianna de Wit hadn't made any change to their matches at all, while the rest of the class had made some small changes, such as turning theirs silvery or (in June's case) into a wooden needle, which looked like a toothpick with the eye of a needle at one end. For homework, Professor Chavez had the ones that hadn't succeeded to read up on the theory.
After that was Defense Against the Dark Arts, taught by Professor Amper. She greeted the class, took attendance, and went over the course aims. That was followed by having the class turn to chapter one of An Introduction to Magical Self-Defense and going over the differences between jinxes, hexes, and curses. The students took copious notes, and were told to review them and the chapter for homework.
Unfortunately, a light drizzle started at the end of Defense class, so nobody could eat lunch outside. When lunch ended, the Phoenix Club went up to the fifth and top floor, where the Potions classrooms were. Professor van Herten took roll call and then gave the class a strict talking to, warning them about the dangers of potions, and making it clear that he would not tolerate any sort of misbehavior in his class. When he finished with the lecture, he demonstrated how to prepare certain ingredients, showing the difference between dicing, mincing, and chopping. Finally, he wrote the instructions for brewing a simple cure for boils on the chalkboard and had the class pair up and work on the potion.
As the class worked, Professor van Herten walked around and checked everyone's work, praising them if they did something correctly and correcting them if they should make an error. Harry, who had partnered with June, produced a perfect potion. Professor van Herten complimented on their work, and even told Harry, "You seem to have inherited some of your parents' talent with Potions, Mr. Potter. They did well in my class."
However, Neville and Eileen had a mishap with their potion. Apparently Neville hadn't read one of the instructions carefully enough, for Eileen suddenly exclaimed, "Wait! You're supposed to take the cauldron off the fire first!" Unfortunately, she was too late, for just as she finished speaking, there was a minor explosion and Eileen's cauldron collapsed, drenching Neville in the unfinished potion and filling the room with clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing. As the potion seeped across the floor, the rest of the class scrambled to stand on their stools, while poor Neville moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.
"Calm down, class," said Professor van Herten, sweeping over from where he had been inspecting Hermione and Kalea's potion. He vanished the spilled potion away with a wave of his wand, and then grabbed the sample of finished potion he had shown the class from off his desk and had Neville drink it. As the boils faded somewhat, the teacher crossed over to the fireplace and Firecalled Healer Nightwind-Prince, who Flooed over a minute later.
"What happened exactly, Miss Prince?" Professor van Herten asked. "Did Mr. Longbottom accidentally add the porcupine quills too early?"
Eileen nodded. "He was going to add the quills before I took the cauldron off the fire first. I tried to stop him, but he dropped the quills in as I was speaking."
"I thought so." Professor van Herten waited until the Healer finished with the healing, then said, "Mr. Longbottom, in the future, please read the directions more carefully so something like this doesn't happen again, all right? You and Miss Prince can restart the potion, and be more careful this time."
Since Eileen and Neville had to restart the potion, they ended up having to stay an extra half hour in order to finish it. This time, however, there were no other mishaps, and their Cure for Boils Potion turned out perfect.
At nine o'clock that evening was Astronomy, with Professor Larsen. She made the joke that perhaps she was destined to have a career in Astronomy, since her first name, Astrid, meant 'star' in Scandanavia. After that, she had everyone set up their telescopes and pointed out various constellations, with the students noting them down on their star charts.
Author's Note: I am aware that there is more to The Egypt Game besides the whole 'group of kids decide to role-play being in Ancient Egypt'. I had to read the book in elementary school when we were learning about Ancient Egypt. However, there is no need for me to go into the finer details of the book, especially when it's just Harry recalling that he read the book in primary school. Since this is an AU, Neville isn't as abysmal in Potions as he is the books, (especially when he doesn't have strict Potions teachers that scare him) but that doesn't mean he won't make the occasional mistake, such as not reading instructions carefully enough.