Previously...

Forgetting about Hermione entirely, he walked off with Dorian and Jaime, talking about the possibility of a day that lasted a whole year.

Harry was exhausted by the time Charms came around. History had been rather dull, and involved very little history. Miss. Vance had spent most of the lesson handing out notebooks and outlining the year ahead. They'd be spending all of the first term on the Roman occupation of Britain. After that they would learn about the rise of Merlin and then, after the spring holiday, about the emergence of immortality. Everyone was eager to learn about Merlin's Conquest, but Harry was not alone in dreading "The Economic Impacts of the First Population Explosion". After lunch, Latin hadn't been much better: they had spent the entire lesson learning the difference between nominative and accusative cases.

All things considered, Harry was looking forward to his first lesson involving practical magic. After his summer of successful spell casting, he felt more than ready for wandwork. As far as Harry knew, he was the only Ravenclaw in his Charms class, so he made his way there on his own, agreeing to meet up with the others for dinner.

When he arrived, however, he realised that he wasn't completely alone. Unfortunately, he was to share Charms with the Malfoy boy, who was surrounded by a gang of Slytherins. Harry hung back from them, not wanting a confrontation on his first day of school. It wasn't long before Professor Flitwick turned up. He was a very short man – he probably wasn't fully human, Harry thought – and had a squeaky voice. He ushered them into the classroom and immediately decided to re-arrange them.

"No, this won't do, not at all," he said. "Everyone stand up and sit girl-boy alternating."

The class grumbled, but did as he said. It was a tactic Harry was familiar with from primary school, so he quickly grabbed a desk in the middle of the room between two blonde girls – a Slytherin and a Hufflepuff. Meanwhile, Malfoy and his gang were squabbling over who would have to sit at the front.

Soon enough the class was settled, Malfoy sitting smugly at the rear of the class, and Flitwick began to teach. Despite his small stature, he had no trouble gaining the attention of the class: he simply raised his wand and they hushed. It was, Harry supposed, an advantage of teaching at Hogwarts - all the children had been trained to obey. Fear of the silencing charm didn't hurt either. Having got their attention, Flitwick pointed his wand at his feet, and clearly announced:

"Volonte!"

At first, the spell had no visible effect, but then Flitwick floated upwards so that his eyes would have been level with a normal man's. The class grinned, and so did Flitwick. Harry noticed that his teeth were quite pointy.

"For every ten spells cast by the average adult wizard, nine are Charms," he said decisively. In a surreal parody of Miss. Vance, he began to pace in mid-air, as if his feet were upon solid ground. "They are the most useful, most flexible, and - if I do say so myself - most fun magic you'll learn here at Hogwarts. Now, for 5 points, who can tell me the difference between a Charm and a Transfiguration?"

Harry was pretty sure he knew that one, but - unlike Hermione - he didn't have an answer ready at a moment's notice. As he was thinking about the best way to word it, the Slytherin girl to his left raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss. London?"

"Transfiguration changes things physically, Charms change things magically." There was no hesitation to her voice.

"5 points for Slytherin! Yes, that's more or less it... though you do have to be careful! After all, something like the Unbreakable Charm changes a thing's physical properties - that is, the way it interacts with other physical things. But you're essentially right. Though an Unbreakable Charm changes a physical property, it doesn't change physical constitution - how the thing is physically made up. Rather, it overlays a magical effect, underneath which the object remains the same. A demonstration will help you appreciate the difference, I think."

He jabbed his wand, and said "Aguamenti!". A jet of water burst from his wand and hit the blackboard, drenching it and anything nearby. A few girls in the front row shrieked in surprise, which caused Flitwick to grin his toothy grin once more.

"That," he said, with some satisfaction, "is the water conjuring Charm. A Charm, mind you. How do you imagine this water differs from natural water?"

There was silence as the class thought about it. If a charm wasn't physical, Harry thought, did that mean the water wasn't physical?

"No one?" Flitwick said, "I'll tell you then. The water I just conjured isn't real water at all - it's a magical construct. Certainly it has physical effects - it will feel wet, it may even quench your thirst if the charm is cast well enough, but there's nothing real there. Just properties without substance. The exact "how" of that is advanced Physicks, so you'll have to take my word for it! Now, another demonstration."

He have his wand a sharp flick. "Conjuris Aquis!" he said, the tone of his voice resonating with command. Harry felt a kind of vibration echo out from Flitwick, though it wasn't like the vibration of loud music, or a hockey stick after you hit the ball hard. It was something almost imagined, a prickling behind the ears, but Harry knew it was real, even if his classmates showed no sign of feeling it. The spell created a large globe of water hanging in the air. Flitwick kept it there, hovering and undulating, so that they could get a good look at it. Then, with a cackle, he released it, and the water fell to the floor with an almighty splash. Even in the middle of the room Harry felt a few drops of water hit him. The girls at the front shrieked again.

"That, on the other hand, was a true conjuration, which belongs to the branch of Transfiguration. No points for it, but who can tell me how this water is different from natural water?"

Harry raised his hand.

"Mr. Potter!" Flitwick cried, as if he had just noticed him. Harry took it as permission to speak.

"It's the same," he said, fairly sure of himself.

"Correct!" Flitwick cried, and he flicked his wand again. The room instantly dried out. "The water from a true Transfiguration is indistinguishable from natural water. You could drink it for all your life and never want for a drink. You could leave it in a glass for a thousand years and it would never disappear - except through evaporation, of course."

Flitwick stepped out of the air onto the chair behind his desk, which had much longer legs than a normal chair, so that he came up to normal height.

"So, we have established that Transfiguration is not completely useless. Good. But we are here for Charms, which are much better, I think you will agree! So let's see if we can do some magic!"

"Doing some magic" apparently meant getting out their books and taking notes from the board. They learnt about the three key elements of Charms: the incantation, the wand, and the motion. The incantation was the most important, Professor Flitwick said: every Charm had an incantation, but some could be performed without a wand, and for many the motion could be dispensed with once a person was familiar enough with the spell. After that, they were ready to start casting spells.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Harry said, swishing his wand awkwardly, just as Professor Flitwick had showed them. He was unsurprised when the spell failed to do so much as make the feather in front of him twitch. The spell just felt wrong. It was like trying to walk in a shoe that didn't fit properly. The words sounded silly and the wand movement was extravagant. He felt like someone pretending to be a wizard. The spell would be so much better if it used an upwards flick, Harry thought...

"Stop!" Flitwick cried, shocking Harry into freezing mid-incantation. He rushed over to Harry and forced Harry's wand down, then waved his own wand in a complex motion. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

"I will say this only once," Flitwick said, addressing the class as a whole. "Never - never - deliberately change a spell. Believe me, more than one student has died trying it. Bad things happen to wizards who stumble into spell creation without proper preparation. You have been warned. Should I catch any of you attempting it, you shall be suspended for a year. Is that understood?"

The class nodded, but Flitwick had eyes for Harry alone. He gave Harry a piercing look, before nodding and walking away. "Now, remember, it's WinGARdium LeviOsa..."

Harry looked back at his feather, properly chastised. He had no idea that fiddling with magic was so dangerous. His mind went back to Thomas' warning at the beginning of the summer, and to all the magic he had played around with. How close had he come to death, without even realising it? And that spell he used against the werewolf - that was surely fiddling at its most extreme. Harry had been planning on asking a teacher about it, but he was suddenly wary. He didn't want to be suspended for a year, after all. What would Thomas and Marissa say?

Harry was subdued for the rest of the lesson. He answered no questions, and stuck rigidly to the correct form, bad shoes or no. His feather would not move.

Harry's bad mood persisted all the way through dinner. He ate methodically, offering only a few words to the Ravenclaws' conversation. His mood did not go unnoticed. Dorian tried to cheer him up by snorting a line of pepper. Harry laughed when Dorian almost screamed from his stinging nose, but was otherwise unmoved. Selwynn told Harry in a faux-mystical voice that he foresaw Harry being cheerful once dessert came, but Harry wasn't hungry. Alexandra looked at him thoughtfully, but didn't snort pepper or make jokes. She waited until dinner was over and they were walking to the Study Halls before pulling him aside.

"You're acting like a little girl, you know," she said quietly as they walked through a rose garden. Though it was approaching 20:00, it was nowhere near dark.

"What?" he replied, surprised. Of all the things Harry thought she might say, that was not one of them.

"You're being all sulky," she said as casually as if she was discussing the weather. Harry didn't know what to say. Dorian and Selwynn playing around were easy enough to ignore, but someone straight-out accusing you of sulking was hard to avoid. Especially as avoiding it would just make you look more childish.

"Of course, we all like to have a sulk now and then," she continued, "I just can't figure out what's got you so upset."

"I, er..."Harry looked away. He suddenly felt rather foolish. "I couldn't get my feather to move in Charms."

Alexandra laughed.

"Oh, Harry, is that it? Mine barely moved either, you know, and Stephanie's actually caught fire! Don't worry about it - it's our first day! You're still the only one who can light a candle by blowing on it."

That was true enough, Harry thought. And magic was meant to be hard. If it was easy, they wouldn't have to go to school for it. Maybe the spell felt awkward for everyone. Harry felt his mood lifting. He tried not to think about Hermione, who had cast the levitation charm to get into Hogwarts. Hadn't he learnt a load of Charms over the summer?

He smiled at Alexandra, and she smiled back.

"Thanks," he said.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "My mother gives me that little routine all the time. Now come on, or we're going to be late!"

They made it to the Halls just in time for their supervised homework session. The Halls was a short but large circular building set against the North wall, separated from the main castle by a courtyard, a passageway, a garden and five greenhouses. It was in this building that all supervised homework sessions took place - three hours sitting in a hall with a teacher watching over you to make sure you did work. The building contained three such halls: one for NEWT students, one for OWL students, and one for the junior years. The latter hall was their destination - they were among the last to arrive, and they quickly found a double desk.

While loud talking was not encouraged, students were permitted to interact during these times, and the hall was filled with the buzz of hushed talking as work began. Harry and Alexandra talked about Physicks and how their lessons differed. Alexandra was stuck with a grumpy old man called Professor Seltzer, who displayed none of the passion typical of Mr. Smethwyk. Their homework, however, was the same, and they worked through it together, sharing answers and arguing about them when they differed.

Soon enough they were onto their Latin. Alexandra had left to go to toilet and Harry was stuck on the second problem when someone sat in Alexandra's seat.

"It's ablative - 'taberna', that is. The sailors are in the tavern, you see?"

It was Titus Black.

"But we haven't done anything about ablative yet," said Harry, addressing the problem at hand.

"Hmm. You have Mrs. Perkins, right?"

Harry nodded.

"That's about right then. She loves setting trick questions that you won't get until the next lesson."

"Oh," said Harry, annoyed that he had spent 10 minutes trying to figure out which noun was accusative when there wasn't one. He wrote down "ablative" with some satisfaction. Perhaps he would get extra marks for it.

"So what brings you over here?" Harry asked, not impolitely.

"Oh, you know, a bit of this, a bit of that," Titus replied with a smirk, "but really, I just saw you from across the hall and thought I'd check up on you. Blacks and Potters have got to stick together, right?"

Harry suddenly recalled the conversation he had overheard. Thomas had said something about keeping him away from Sirius Black - Titus' father. And now that he thought about it, Cedric had been surprised when he incorrectly assumed that the Potters had introduced him to Titus. And yet now Titus was acting as if their families were old friends.

"I'm not sure if Thomas and Marissa would agree with that," he replied carefully. He didn't want Titus to think he was snubbing him. Harry was pretty sure that snubbing a Black on your first day at Hogwarts was social suicide. Or perhaps regular suicide.

To his surprise, Titus laughed - and was promptly shushed by a dozen students.

"I dare say they don't," he said, back to a whisper. "For generations the Potters and Blacks have been enemies. But our fathers, they ended that. As close as brothers, they were - ask anyone. But the Potters, they didn't like that, did they? Potters and Blacks were meant to be enemies. But James was the rebellious sort, as I'm sure you know. Didn't listen to his parents, nor his grandparents. And then - you probably haven't been told this - my father introduced your father to your mother. When they got married, the Potters were furious. Threatened to disown him. And James may have been rebellious, but he wasn't that rebellious. Family is family, after all. After the wedding, your father and mine never saw each other again."

Harry was speechless. At first, he couldn't believe that Thomas and Marissa had threatened to disown his father over his mother. And yet he could believe it of the overly-stern Thomas, and even of Marissa, who clearly still disapproved of his mother. And now, clearly, they were trying to make sure he didn't walk in his father's footsteps.

Harry would never be ashamed to follow after his father.

"I don't know about you," Harry said, "but I'm feeling a bit rebellious."

He held out his wand, just as Alexandra returned. Titus looked at him searchingly, then nodded, and tapped Harry's wand with his own - in front of every first, second, and third year.

"Well, Harry, I suppose I should let you get back to your Latin. As you Potters say, In Fide Venaratio!"

He nodded to Alexandra and left. Half the hall seemed to watch him go. Mrs. McGonagall even seemed to be watching.

Alexandra took back her seat and stared at him.

"What just happened?