Chapter 44: Get a Grip!

He had somehow made it through one and a half weeks of classes, was now halfway through his second Wednesday, and Sans decided that it had been going simultaneously better than he had feared and worse than he had wanted. After the series of unfortunate mishaps that had been his first day, Sans had done his absolute best to remain unobtrusive, unremarkable, and generally as perfectly average as possible.

A plan that he was only able to somewhat deliver on, unfortunately.

He would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling professors: all trying to do their jobs and such, not letting him peacefully snooze through troublesome practical bits. Barely a class went by without any kind of wand waving, and since his wand skills remained only marginally ahead of his knitting talents—that is to say, near zero—this meant that first book incident in Charms was not the last.

Though at least some of the rest were a bit less… inexplicable. Sure, he had damn near blinded the entire class the first time he twitched his wand toward casting 'Lumos', but at least it had happened after the class had technically been taught the spell, not before.

He didn't end up doing anything outrageous in Transfiguration, which was largely because the rest of the class was still working on the matchstick thing. Professor McGonagall instead lent him an introductory book on magical theory, which he found undeniably useful if vaguely embarrassing.

Sans was a a fully grown monster, after all—and one that had devoted a good portion of his life to researching the SOUL, magic, and all of their fascinating technicalities. Having to read an intro book felt just a tad demeaning.

But it was a good book and he did have fun reading it… so whatever.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was an odd one, for a variety of reasons. First of all, Sirius—as a dog—didn't bother to hide his dislike of the imposter teacher, which made for some toothy interactions. Secondly, during class Moody always seemed to have his magical eye trained on Sans.

Not exactly ideal, but at least the fake wasn't doing anything other than watching.

Ignoring those non-school-related tensions, the class was interesting; its flavor of hocus-pocus was different compared to transfigurations or charms. In fact, these spells felt like they were shaded a bit closer to the magic Sans was familiar with, though a little sideways and watered down: affecting the SOUL through the body, rather than the other way around.

Last class, they had been going over some kind of 'Riddikulus' spell—despite complaints from one of the snootier Ravenclaws, claiming they shouldn't get to that spell until third year. Sans didn't know why, it was a simple enough concept; basically, it just made whoever was hit burst out laughing. Easy.

Well, easy without his wand. With it, he had accidentally set the whole class hooting and hollering. The look on Fake-Eye's face while even he tried not to giggle had been hilarious.

Anyway, things went a fair bit better in the non-wand-heavy classes. Kind of. Herbology was a delight, even though he couldn't claim much interest in it subject-wise, and History of Magic remained as boring as he had expected. Potions, however, was something of a mixed bag.

On the one hand, no wands: right now, that's a major plus. But on the other hand, he was still working through the kinks of how much magic should be added to the slurry of ingredients. The long brewing lessons were useful for that, at least, as it was a chance for him to futz around with the potion and his imaginary measuring cup of magic.

When he had tried adding in quite a bit—about as much as Napstablook would use to make a ghost sandwich—the result bubbled and seethed and very much looked like it was going to explode: clearly the 'heat' had been turned up too high. But if he kept entirely out of it, as he had done that first day, then no mixing happened at all.

It was an interesting bit of magical chemistry, and thankfully a problem he could easily work on without, say, wrecking all the furniture in a classroom while practicing.

All that aside, there was also a metaphorical third (and most worrisome) hand: Professor Nose—that is, Snape—was still keeping a watchful eye on him during class. Sans could handle a little scrutiny, of course, but it meant he had to be that much more cautious.

Oh well.

Overall though, he'd thought that things were going well. Until, that is, he learned that the school had a full hour block set aside for flying lessons. On broomsticks.

Clinging to a stick a few meters off the ground, Sans decided that perhaps reality just had some kind of grudge against him; he would much rather deal with nosey professors and setting off semi-accidental light shows any day of the week.

Skeletons were so not designed for gripping things, least of all branches, and especially not ones that could fly. The entire experience has been a lot of scrabbling for purchase on smooth wood, plus trying not to accidentally fry the darn thing with anxiety-driven blue magic.

Stars, man, at least Buckbeak had feathers to hold onto.

On the ground beneath them, Madam Hooch—the instructor—called for the class to fly up a few more meters, then back down to their previous height. Given his boney grip, Sans was quite (un)happy with the height he'd already reached, thanks, and was not keen on adding to it.

Still, the instructor was sure to call him out on it if he just did nothing. Which meant that, reluctantly, he shifted to angle the broom slightly upward.

Laura, who seemed to be annoyingly competent at flying, drifted over to him as he slowly started to float up higher. She had already been back in classes after that first weekend, hair restored, but she had taken to wearing her new beanie anyway.

"I think you need to relax, Sans," she said, eyes worried.

"oh yeah, easier said than done," he grumbled, clutching his broomstick with all the strength his muscleless hand could bring to bear.

The grip he had with his legs and feet was better, given the additional friction from his clothes and shoes, but he was still left feeling far from secure. If anything, it made him feel like he was about to flip right around until he was left dangling upside down by his crossed ankles.

"Trust the broom a little bit more, it's not going to fall." Laura was trying to reassure him, but it wasn't really helping that much. "It's magic, after all."

"i trust the magic just fine, thanks," he replied, feeling a bit snippy.

And he did; he absolutely trusted that the broomstick had enough enchantments on it to lift itself plus the weight of whatever person might be riding. What he wasn't so sure of was his own pitifully weak, slippery grip.

For the record, he wasn't actually bothered overly much by the height—he'd freely jumped from the tallest tower of the castle, after all, not to mention having lived around the sheer cliffs of Snowdin for non-literal years. This few-meters-high hover really wasn't too bad by comparison. However, he was finding that he wasn't keen on flight via secondary sources, like broomsticks (or hippogriffs even, for that matter).

Plus, he usually had an easy out if he found himself plummeting to the unforgiving ground: shortcuts, gravity magic, suspended bones or even blasters—he had options.

The problem was, of course, that not many of those could be used here without a lot of questions heading his way. He might—might—be able to play blue magic off as accidental, but he'd really rather not risk it. There was a limit to how much attention he could garner safely, after all, and he had a feeling that he was getting close to it.

Laura gave him a few more pointers as they practiced together—pretty helpful ones, even, but he didn't exactly have enough control to put them into effect. They both floated up to the bare minimum height the instructor had asked for, hovered there for a moment, then began to lower back down. Descending involved leaning forward quite a bit, so Sans took things even slower than before.

From the castle, the bell signaling the end of the class period rang.

"thank the stars," he grumbled, hands aching.

Madam Hooch paced the field as the class began their descent, double checking that everyone was landing safely. A young Hufflepuff boy yelped as his broom suddenly jerked, dropping the last few feet too quickly, and she held out a hand to keep him steady.

Sans wasn't doing much better, bone tired from having to maintain his death grip on the broomstick. He just didn't have the energy for it any more.

"oh, that's not good—"

"Sans?"

Feeling himself begin to slip—and still too high up to stick the landing without any magical assist—Sans scrambled to find purchase on the wood again. As one might expect, it didn't quite work out; he ended up overbalancing, sliding even farther forward on the broom, then teetering suddenly sideways.

Or he would have, if Laura hadn't snagged his shoulder and pushed him back upright. She drew her broom closer, trying to further stabilize the wobbling, but they still ended up in a comedically slow tumble the rest of the way to the ground.

"Oof," she grunted, pushing herself upright and shooting a worried Madam Hooch a thumbs up.

The instructor was too caught up to come over and help them—the Hufflepuff boy was clinging to her, the jerky drop apparently having spooked him quite a bit—and, seeing that the two of them were okay, she simply nodded back.

"thanks for the assist." Sans kicked the broomstick away from his legs. "and, uh, sorry for dragging you down with me."

After picking up her hat from where it had fallen and dusting off a few bits of grass, Laura smiled back. "It's no problem, landings can be tricky."

"any crash you can walk away from is a success," he mused, half to himself.

Sirius had been watching the entire show from the side, tail wagging in amusement through most of it, though he had been a tad worried there at the end. He barked, head cocked to the side in question.

"i'm working on it," Sans said, standing up and taking a few testing steps. "there, see? success."

Laura was still sitting on the grass, but now her smile faded away into a rather concerned look.

"…what is it?"

"Are you eating enough?"

Sans blinked at the non sequitur. "what?"

She glanced to her hand, then back up at him. "You're really thin, Sans." Her voice was quiet, worried. "Like you're just skin and bones under all those layers."

Sirius snorted.

Sans had to set aside his own amusement at the unintentional joke, rubbing the shoulder she'd grabbed to try and steady him when he'd nearly tipped over. "yeah, that's fair." He shrugged. "but i've just always been that way. it's no big deal."

She let the topic lie for the moment, but even after they both finished putting away the broomsticks and gathered up their things, Laura still looked fairly unconvinced.

Following that, lunch turned out to be rather more interesting than usual. When they walked into the Great Hall, Laura sent half a glance to her fellow Hufflepuffs, half a glance at the rest of the school, then took a deep breath. Stride more confident than she probably felt, she walked with Sans all the way to his table and took a seat beside him.

Nearby students paused, chatter dying away as they all gave curious looks to the odd spot of yellow mixed in with their blues. Laura held firm, though now she was blushing a bit in embarrassment.

Luna, who was seated across from them, gave her a serene smile. "You seem very bright today."

"Huh?" Still a little nervous, Laura twitched when a new plate appeared on the table before her. "Er, I mean, hello. I'm Laura Madley."

"Luna Lovegood."

"It's nice to meet you," Laura replied, settling as the conversations around them restarted. "Are you Sans's friend, too?"

Sans didn't so much as twitch at the statement, but he feels something in him twist a little; warm and guilty at the same time. It was an unfortunately familiar sensation, given how much he had kept from his own brother over the years and non-years of his life.

Luna nodded.

"Oh good." Taking some bread and meat to make herself a sandwich, Laura glanced pointedly to Sans and his plate. He had seen fit to grab a handful of chips, but not much else. "Is he eating okay?"

"geeze," he sighed, tone a shade too nonchalant. "who do ya think you are, my brother?"

"Well, I don't imagine Sans eats much," Luna replied, tilting her head as if considering the idea. "That he can at all is already pretty interesting."

Laura plainly didn't know how to react to that, and turned a questioning look on Sans.

He just shrugged. "i think luna sees the world a few step to the left of the rest of us."

"Okay…?"

Luna took a spoonful of cubed cheeses from a dish on her side of the table, reached across, and plopped them onto Sans's mostly-empty plate. "Dairy is good for bones, isn't it?"

Sans rolled his eyes, but gamely stabbed one of the tidbits with his fork.

By the end of lunch, the combined efforts of Luna and Laura (and the occasional nudge from Sirius, even) had gotten Sans to eat what amounted to perhaps half a sandwich, plus some chips. It had been entertaining, if occasionally just mildly annoying, and Sans was certain he wouldn't be able to eat anything come dinnertime.

He was a skeleton, after all. Even if he did have any appetite, he wouldn't ever need to eat a lot. Certainly not as much as a typical growing eleven-year-old boy would need.

Which could become something of an issue, if too many people got nosey.

For now, though, he was pretty sure he could handle it.

Laura dusted the bread crumbs off her hands and onto her plate, took one last gulp of pumpkin juice—a drink Sans thoroughly disliked—and stood up. First year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws share a lot of classes on Wednesdays, so the two of them were headed the same way.

"I overheard some Gryffindors saying that Professor Moody has something special planned for today," Laura said, looking a little apprehensive as they got closer and closer to his classroom. Defense was certainly not her favorite subject.

"special?"

"You don't think it's, like, fighting a troll or something, do you?" she asked. Just the thought made her grip on the strap of her bookbag tighten. "I heard that happened a few years ago."

Sirius gave a small bark, and Sans resisted the urge to roll his eyes—of course Harry would somehow end up fighting a troll mere months after learning that magic even exists.

"don't be riddikulus, laura," Sans replied, the joke earning him a small grin. "it'll probably be nothing."

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Undertale.

Spooky scary skeletons… can't hold stuff easily.

I hope you all have had a happy Halloween, and welcome to November! Are any of you guys planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year? I am. It's probably gonna involve a lot of seat-of-my-pants flying when it comes to the story I've got planned (and it already has been), so we'll see how that goes.

This story has gotten more fanart, too! I forgot to mention last chapter, it skipped my mind since I was unexpectedly running late.
Super thanks to WelpHi1212 and RTNightmare, for your amazing works! I have the links for you to go check 'em out up on my profile (can't copy-paste from a chapter), so go take a look!

Updates are on the first of the month.
Thanks for all the support—for every follow, favorite, and especially every review! It's been over three years now, and I'm happy so many have stuck around to see where the story's going.

Still looking into Discord stuff. Like, uh, figuring out what I'd call my server.
Talk about getting stuck at the gate, amiright?

See ya on the flipside, everyone!