Chapter 34: Morning Classes
According to his schedule, the first class of the day would be History of Magic. Which was all well and good, save for the little issue that he had absolutely no clue where to go. The prefect's advice of asking a ghost probably wasn't a great idea, all things considered, and he had somehow managed to find the one hallway in the entire castle that had no portraits hung up; all the paintings here were landscapes and therefore completely unhelpful.
So things were off to a great start.
Closing his eye sockets to focus, Sans stretched his awareness through the castle walls and floors as far as he could manage. There was enough magic in the air that his first mental impression of the surroundings looked more like blurry watercolors than anything specific, but, as he was well used to the highly magically saturated Underground, it only took a moment for things to shift into focus.
It took another moment to make sense of the shifting castle landscape, as staircases and sometimes even full unoccupied rooms moved about all willy-nilly.
Then he spotted just who he was looking for—two floors above and on the opposite side of the castle, a familiar two-toned orange and purple SOUL strolled alongside a trio of… huh.
One had a bright, pure yellow SOUL—rivaling the intensity of the justice-driven human that had fallen into the Underground. Another was a sort of reddish orange color, brave and determined. The last, however, looked… splotchy. It had a strong red base, but it looked somehow muffled or muted. It was hard to say why though; he was too far away to tell.
A little unnerved, Sans decided to set that matter aside for the moment and check it more closely some other time. A quick shortcut had him standing a few feet behind the quartet of three-students-plus-dog.
"—I still don't know about this," Harry was saying, addressing the golden retriever. "Are you sure it's safe for you to just… I don't know. Be here?"
"yeah, sure he's sure."
It was amusing to watch as the three kids competed to see who could spin around the fastest. Sirius, now at least somewhat used to his friend's penchant to pop in unexpectedly, just wagged his tail in greeting and kept walking. He only stopped when he realized his human companions had stumbled to a halt.
Ron had one hand on the wall, having won the fastest-surprised-spin contest but not performed so well on maintaining his balance. "Nearly gave me a bloody heart attack!"
The dog gave an amused snort, which earned him a tepid glare from the redhead. Tail still wagging, Sirius just shrugged; he'd had his fair share of spooks from his skeletal friend, and he had to admit that it was hilarious to watch.
"Do you always feel the need to just pop up out of nowhere like that?" asked Harry, sounding somehow both sarcastic and genuinely curious at the same time.
"you know, a doctor asked me that once too," Sans said with an easygoing grin.
It had always been easy to startle Alphys, mainly due to her nervous disposition and the fact that she had access to an ever-expanding web of cameras that could—theoretically—tell her if anybody was coming to visit long before they would arrive. In fact, Sans kind of wondered how much of her extensive camera network was really set up to monitor for humans, and how much was just part of a futile attempt to keep tabs on him.
The brief swell of melancholy was kept locked behind a relaxed expression and a cheery wink, and Sans joked, "no recorded heart attacks yet, though."
"Yet," stressed Ron. "No heart attacks yet."
"Recorded," Harry added, tone humorous. "Just none recorded."
"what, do you think i'm some sorta cold-blooded killer?" He held his hands out, as if to show his innocence on his palms. "i'll have you know that there's not a drop of cold blood in my body."
He kept his thoughts far away from gold and red and broken promises.
Sirius barked, which naturally got everyone's attention back on track. Even if that track hadn't been specified yet.
"good point, paddy," Sans agreed. "so, i—"
He was cut off by three incredulous stares.
"Do you just—? Did he just—?" Harry stopped, looking over to Hermione with a curious frown. "Are there other animal languages besides Parseltongue?
She looked just as befuddled. "I, well, not that I've ever read about…"
"it's no big deal, just a trick i picked up awhile ago."
The full trio turned on him: "No big deal—?!"
Sensing that things were getting swiftly sidetracked again, Sans cut them off and pressed on. "look, you can dog me for answers later. that's not the paw-int here."
"So," Harry pushed up his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, "you can talk to dogs. Okay." He paused to absorb that information, then he jabbed a warning finger at Sans. "I will be pestering you about that later."
"i said ya could, didn't i?"
The boy looked rightfully skeptical that he'd actually be given a chance to ask questions, but he did let the matter fall for the moment. Under his breath, he grumbled something about appearing and vanishing and dogs and generally dropping surprises left, right, and center.
Looking very much like he shared that sentiment, Ron nevertheless followed his lead and let the subject drop. Instead, he asked, "What did you need, anyway?"
"do you know where history of magic is?"
"Yeah, of course. We're still stuck with that class for this year and the next, after all."
"It's not that bad, Ron," Hermione reprimanded. "Though I do admit, I learn most of the material from the textbook rather than Professor Binns's lectures."
"woah, if even you're saying that… it must be a really boring class."
With a quiet hum of still-reluctant agreement, she waved the group forward and turned to lead the way down the hall. "Anyway, if we want to get breakfast before our own classes, we best get going."
As the trio-plus-dog-plus-disguised-skeleton made their way through the castle, staircase after staircase and sometimes waiting for a staircase to come back, Sans wished he could have just jumped straight to his destination. Especially when he started noticing the transparent stalkers they had picked up.
It seemed that any ghost that caught sight of Sans took note of the supposed glowing, and some of them had clearly already heard about his apparent tangibility. None had tried to swipe at him yet, but at least one looked to be considering it.
At least the trio seemed oblivious to the—Sans took a second to count them up—five ghosts trailing behind them or poking through the walls to stare.
Honestly, getting a description of where to go and trying to teleport there based on that was looking more and more like the better option: he could cut out the walking and stalking in one fell swoop.
"But seriously," Ron asked, as if he had picked up on what Sans was thinking. "How did you just show up? A hidden passage or something?" The castle has plenty of twisty secret corridors hidden behind hallway décor, after all.
"nothing so fancy," Sans replied, shrugging. "just took a shortcut."
Hermione looked suspicious. "A shortcut that wasn't a hidden passage?"
For a moment, Sans considered the phrasing. "i suppose, technically speaking, it could kinda be considered a hidden passage."
Sirius sneezed at that.
Looking between the golden retriever and grinning first year, Hermione crossed her arms. "I do wish you'd stop being so purposefully vague, Sans."
"never."
She just sighed.
Harry stopped, and turned to point down a hallway to their left. "Anyway, here we are. Mostly. Your classroom is down there at the end of the hall, across from a tapestry of a chair."
"just a chair?"
"There apparently used to be somebody sitting in it," Ron answered, "but he left ages ago."
Sans, deciding to treat that oddity as simply matter-of-fact, just nodded and moved on. "gotcha'. do you have any tips for…" A familiar ghostly presence was drifting their way from down the hall, so it might be best if he made himself scarce. "actually, never mind. i'll see ya later. keep 'em outa trouble, paddy."
Sirius stuck his nose in the air and huffed, which Sans knew meant that he would do no such thing. Trouble was, after all, something the prankster truly enjoyed stirring up.
With that quick goodbye, Sans turned and hurried off to his classroom. From behind him, he heard the trio strike up conversation with one 'Nearly Headless Nick'—or, as he had been introduced to him not even an hour prior, Sir Nicholas.
Really, it would probably be for the best if he kept clear of the castle ghosts.
To make sure he wouldn't be spotted, Sans went ahead and took a shortcut to directly inside the classroom down the hall. The room was empty—he wouldn't have taken the jump if it hadn't been—so it would seem that he was the first to arrive: even before the professor. Orderly rows of desks faced toward the front, where there was a blackboard and a bookshelf presumably full of history texts.
Claiming a spot at the back, Sans sat and… promptly realized that he had forgotten his bookbag. In his defense, he rarely needed to carry things around. There was no point, given he could shortcut whatever he wanted directly to his hand from wherever it had been left. So, with another cautious check that he was alone, he did just that.
His textbook dropped onto the desk from thin air, landing with a loud thud. Flipping it open to a random page, he settled in to read and wait. Moments like this, unbothered and peaceful (and ghost-free), were always something Sans could appreciate. Especially given the past half hour.
"Oh, hello."
Sans glanced up from a particularly boring passage about goblins and establishing the wizarding bank system. At the front of the room, a transparent figure had drifted through the blackboard.
"You are… a new first year, yes?" The ghost had a ponderously slow voice, and he floated closer as he spoke.
"yes," Sans said, shooting a glance toward the classroom door. "yeah, that i am, yep."
Maybe he could just duck out of this interaction, and by the time he came back for class the ghost would have glided off to somewhere else.
"Ah, good."
Then the ghost—with one last, long look—turned and took up his place floating at the front of the room, all the while muttering softly under his nonexistent breath about class schedules to remind himself which topics he would be lecturing on first.
So it would seem that Professor Binns was a ghost.
Simply fantastic.
The old ghost paused, partway phased through one of the desks, and looked back at him. "By the way," he said, in that same droning voice, "did you know that you are glowing?"
"so i've been told," he replied shortly.
Luckily, after that first question, more students began to arrive and the ghostly professor was quickly distracted. In fact, he seemed largely uninterested in pursuing the topic of his oddly glowing student, once he settled into the rhythm of his slow lecture.
Still, Sans figured that it couldn't hurt to just never go back to that class. Just in case.
=X=X=X=
His next class was Charms, and—thank goodness—the teacher there wasn't spectral. Though the professor was remarkable in his own way, as he was even shorter than Sans.
Slouching farther down in his chair, Sans listened as Professor Flitwick lectured on the importance of precise wand motion and clear incantations. Color and music theory hadn't even been vaguely mentioned: just words and waving and voila.
And sure, it was just day one and the only other class he had been exposed to was reputably the most boring one on the entire schedule—but that didn't make it any less boring in the moment.
"It's just that easy," Professor Flitwick was saying, swish and flicking his wand to levitate the books on his podium as a simple demonstration. "Now, as this is your first term, we will only cover how to cast a wide variety of different charms. In later years, we go into greater detail on the art of creating new spells."
Sans sighed, wondering if maybe he could find time to sit in on those classes later. It was fascinating how subtle the differences in magic were—how wand motions and incantations served as intermediaries—and learning how to use those differences would be vastly more interesting than just repeating words and waves of a stick.
As the professor directed the books higher into the air, Sans figured he might as well CHECK the spell.
* Wingardium Leviosa — ATK 0
* A charm that can levitate things.
Which was nothing he hadn't expected, really. Though it was interesting to see that it was specifically categorized as a charm; perhaps there was some deeper difference between charms and spells that he just wasn't picking up on.
As the professor lowered the textbooks back to his podium and continued describing the basics behind charms, the disguised skeleton poked thoughtfully at his own book with his bone wand.
This levitation spell—or charm, whatever, he didn't much care what it was called—had, indeed, appeared to be on the blue end of the magical spectrum. However, it lacked the depth of color that would allow for full motion instead of just up and down: closer to the shade of a faded sky than cobalt.
Maybe humans had difficulty handling purer colors of magic, which could explain why most of the spells he had witnessed were pastel to the point of not even being visible to the non-magical eye. Plus, from what he knew of human mages from his own dimension, even they had relied more heavily on tools and incantations than any monster needed.
In contrast to what might be expected when learning about the vast difference in strength between a human SOUL and a monster one, human magic users were, in general, no stronger magically than the average monster. The strength of their SOUL lay in their determination and physicality, not their magic. Even the seven mages who created the barrier were no exception, though they stood on equal footing with the most magically powerful monsters of the time.
Really, the incredible strength of the barrier was only possible because it was secured through their own, much stronger human SOULs. Sans himself could perform the same magic to create a barrier just as technically impassible, but breaking it would be pitifully easy: his SOUL, while crammed full of magic, had always been weak.
But he was getting off track.
"So, in order for a witch or wizard to preform a spell—" Professor Flitwick was saying, before he was interrupted mid-sentence.
Not that Sans had meant to cut him off. In fact, he hadn't even really been trying to cast the spell, it just sort of… happened.
He blamed his glorified stick.
All Sans had done was lazily mimic the flick and swish motion the professor had used, still musing to himself about the colors and saturations he'd need. And that was all it took, apparently: there was the slightest trickle of his energy drawn through the wand, it took purpose from motion and his vague thoughts, and launched the heavy textbook into the air like a rocket.
Sans was probably the most surprised of everybody, honestly.
The book smacked loudly into the wooden ceiling, then dropped back to the desk with a resounding thud, almost hitting Sans on the way down.
Everyone was looking at him, so he just shrugged.
"yaknow," Sans said into the shocked silence, "given the piano, i shoulda seen this coming."
His teacher was staring at him, wide-eyed. Probably because Sans had just inadvertently thrown everything the poor man knew about magic and spell casting into question.
"Forgive me," Professor Flitwick began, glancing between his student, the book, and the ceiling, "but did you just…?"
"my bad, prof. i didn't mean to inter-up ya like that." Sans pointed up when he said the pun, and kept his tone carefully nonchalant
The professor looked toward the ceiling, and Sans—a moment too late—noticed that there was a fairly noticeable dent in the wood where the book had hit. Pointing that out, albeit accidentally, probably hadn't been the best choice.
After a long moment, Flitwick stepped off the stack of books he used to be able to see over his podium and walked over. Sans swiftly tucked his so-called wand up his sleeve; he didn't want to risk teleporting it away, not with an experienced wizard standing right there, but allowing a chance for closer inspection would not serve him well.
"what's up?" Sans asked. Much more quietly, he finished, "well, not the book anymore."
The professor caught the joke, and he grinned—just a little bit. Then, after another glance toward the ceiling dent, he directly asked, "Did you mean to do that?"
With a wink, Sans replied, "well, it's not so much that i didn't mean to not do that, and more that what i did wasn't completely what i didn't mean to not do."
Which was a sentence that immediately made every other Ravenclaw in the room want to pull out their quills and try to follow its string of multi-negatives.
Professor Flitwick, however, just frowned ever so slightly at the perfectly innocent look his student was giving him. He'd seen a lot of 'perfectly innocent looks' in his tenure teaching—he'd been exposed to the Weasley twins, after all—but even so, he found the guiltless smile hard to verify.
Before he could come to any decision on the legitimacy of Sans's lackadaisical grin, the loud chime of the school bells signaled the end of class.
"Alright then," he addressed all of his students, "when we come back together on Tuesday, we'll get started on actually casting some simple charms." He gave Sans a rather significant look when he said that. "Until then, I hope you all have a splendid first weekend here at Hogwarts!"
As the other students began to noisily gather up their quills and parchments, Professor Flitwick turned his attention back to Sans. He had just one more thing to say: "Do be more careful in the future, Mr. Skelton."
"yeah, sure thing."
Author's Note:
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Undertale.
Quick real talk here to spread awareness, but Article 13—which you've probably seen memes of by now—could cause a lot of issues in the global internet community of content creators: not just those in the EU. Film Theory has a pretty good video on it, I'd say give it a watch if you're curious.
Also, December 10th is a deadline for a last push to restore Net Neutrality. Not sure what we can really do to help, but it bears mentioning.
Sorry for getting a bit political, but thought you ought to know.
Anyway, Hogwarts!
Classes have begun, and already Sans has tripped over himself a bit. It would seem that his fake wand is not only bone-afide (still a very nice pun, Neutral Zone) but a bit super charged. But then, that's what happens when you work with a 100% magic wand, I suppose. So begins the first half of his first day.
And in other news, this story has somehow gotten more fanart! I'll put the link (as best as this site lets me) on my profile page, so that it's easier to copy-paste into the url bar.
Thank you so much, Agent 3 Novi. It looks awesome!
Note that the previous chapter was a bonus, so you should check it out if you missed that update.
Updates are on the first of the month.
Thanks for all of the reviews, favorites, and follows! I hope that you all continue to enjoy this story as it goes on.
TwilightGlow3: Don't doubt a good pun, they're never boo-ring. Sometimes coming up with so many puns feels like it might be the death of me, but it's always worth it in the end!
Finished Deltarune! It's amazing, you should definitely go play it if you haven't already.
See ya on the flipside, everyone!