Chapter 8
Flying and Pranks
15 September 1991, Hogwarts, Scotland
If Alexandra had thought she had known to how further the Slytherin-Gryffindor mutual loathing could go at Hogwarts, her second week at the magical school made clear she hadn't known anything at all. As Professor Flitwick had predicted with the wisdom of a former Ravenclaw student, everyone from the headmaster to the caretaker's cat knew what had happened on Friday evening between Longbottom and Malfoy's groups by the next day at breakfast. Okay, maybe not the caretaker's cat. Though this pitiful and angry animal, called Mrs Norris by his dirty and gloomy owner, looked extremely well-informed on everything which happened in the rooms of the castle. As teachers were on their guard Saturday and Sunday to avoid further incidents, the week-end was relatively devoid of any magical incident. The issue was that all the Gryffindors and the Slytherins had known this, and had passed these two days planning and stockpiling for the coming week.
When Alexandra entered the Great Hall for breakfast on Monday morning, the Slytherin table was full of people wearing red robes and having gold hair, while the Gryffindors sprouted green beards and song salacious hymns. Far from stopping the pranks, this event just unleashed a circle of pranks and magical ambushes between the Lions and the Snakes, with the Ravens and the Badgers in the crossfire. Alexandra followed the advice of her Head of House: as soon as there was a prank or a fight, she ran away from it the most discreetly possible. She was already a paria in Ravenclaw House and detested among the rest of the student population; she didn't need to encourage the older teenagers to see her as Enemy Public Number One. The issue was that the chaos was spreading into the school, and it became increasingly difficult thorough the week to avoid all the disturbances.
The teachers assigned detentions by the dozens, the House points for the two belligerent Houses dropped in the negative numbers but it didn't change anything: by Thursday, Hogwarts was a "prank zone": going to the classes exposed every student to funny and humiliating traps, spells, jokes, which saw a boy or a girl present himself to the professor with a far different look than the one he had left the common room. A normal conversation between two students was now consisting of:
"Rictusempra!"
"Tarentellagra!"
"Furnunculus!"
"Everte Statum!'
In a non-magical school, reflected Alexandra on Friday, half of the students guilty of these "pranks" would have been expelled instantly for what they'd done. Their venerable Headmaster, the Gandalf-like Albus Dumbledore, thought it was all in good fun. But the old wizard had thought the same thing when Alexandra was almost murdered, so she supposed the man was simply senile. Maybe his notion of fun was way off the radar? Anyway the Headmaster himself had not been seen since dinner on last Friday.
On the scholarly side, the only novelty in the first-year classes of the second week at Hogwarts was the Flying lesson, which for the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff revealed themselves singularly boring. At two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, Alexandra and the other Ravenclaws, followed by the herd of Hufflepuffs, hurried down the front steps into the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, sunny day and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns towards a smooth lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the Forbidden Forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.
Professor Hooch, teaching the Flying courses, was already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Alexandra had heard a prefect saying they had replaced the old-models of brooms at Hogwarts two years ago after one broke in half with a student on it, but the students addicted to flying had emitted deep reserves with the replacements, telling everyone these were training brooms for five years old. Their teacher for this class, Professor Hooch, had short, grey hair and yellow eyes, features which made her comparison with a hawk appropriate. Unfortunately, the witch had also the temper associated with this bird of prey.
"Well, what are you all waiting for?" the woman barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."
Alexandra glanced down at her broom. She knew appearances could be deceptive, but this broom did not seem to be saturated with magic. The wood was ugly and dark, and the best one could say about it was that its conceiver had passed a little varnish over the broom to make it more presentable. Not the idea she had of a competition broomstick.
"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say, "Up!"'
"UP!" everyone shouted.
Alexandra's broom rose slowly into the hair to reach her hand in a slow motion. She looked around, and she realised only about half of the brooms had answered to the command. The vast majority of the rest were rolling over on the ground, unaware of the frustration they posed to the students. One or two, like Zacharias Smith's own broom, didn't move at all. The strangest answer without contest came from Megan Jones broom, the object giving her a playful spanking on her behind when she told "UP!"
After ten minutes of "UP!","UP!", each student had managed to call its own broom at least once, and Professor Hooch proceeded to show them how to mount this flying means of locomotion correctly. According to her instructions, you had to not slide off the end and you had to have the correct grip on the handle of the broom. Some Ravenclaw and Hufflepuffs were told they had been using wrong positions for years. Zacharias Smith, again, didn't take this judgement with courtesy and humility.
"But the manager my father invited told me that's the perfect position!" Wailed the haughty Hufflepuff.
"When you will be an expert player, Smith! And you are far from this level!" Barked Professor Hooch, who didn't appreciate her authority being challenged.
"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said the Flying teacher, more irritated in her tone and manners. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet and then come straight back down by leaning forwards slightly. On my whistle – three – two –one-GO!"
Alexandra kicked the ground hard, but as the broom she was sitting on was only for training the beginners, her rise towards the sky was slow and unimpressive. Near to her, the group of her year mates also soared progressively in the air.
Air billowing her robes beyond her, Alexandra found flying extremely pleasant. Now, if only the broom had been able to speed even a little, it would have been wonderful. The manoeuvres Professor Hooch taught them during the rest of the class were not completely useless, but when your broom went at a snail's pace, it was boring nonetheless. The only exciting moment was when Zacharias Smith almost crashed in Susan Bones, making the former the target of several black eyes from his fellow Hufflepuffs and the anger of the redoubtable Professor Hooch.
"Smith! Do you want to kill someone? Five points from Hufflepuff! Now descend from your broom the lesson is over for you!"
The rest of the lessons ended without any other notable incidents.
Coming back to the castle, Alexandra decided to buy a broom for next year. Not an expensive and cutting-edge broomstick, she couldn't afford spending hundreds of Galleons with the majority of her family's fortune inaccessible to her, but there had to be a market for second-hand brooms. Alexandra would never be selected on the Quidditch team due to her extreme unpopularity, but she could fly one hour or two by herself around the castle without breaking any rules. The school brooms were too slow anyway, the older students had been right on that point, and she wanted to experience a bit of speed on a magical means of transportation. If not, where was the fun? Even Dudley had wanted a racing bike to go faster last year, proof everyone wanted to experience the sheer joy of extreme speed. Although what her cousin did with the racing bike after he got it was a subject not best thinking about. There were performances unavailable to you when you had the constitution of a very large pig.
The noise and the odour of a dungbomb exploding in the nearby corridor forced her to stop these thoughts and run to avoid a new wave of pranks. This time it was not a student, but Peeves, the poltergeist of Hogwarts. Unlike the ghosts, this spirit was a massive threat to peace, serenity and tranquillity.
"HA, HA, HA! FLEE BEFORE PEEVES POTTSY!" Shouted the poltergeist, who enjoyed abandoning himself to the delights of dungbomb-throwing and anything which might annoy the residents of Hogwarts.
As she heard from Hogwarts legendary rumour mill the next day, the Flying lesson between the Gryffindors and the Slytherins on Thursday afternoon had been far more explosive. Alexandra wondered who had had the brilliant idea to pair for a class in a relative dangerous environment two Houses who were doing their best to tear each other apart. Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs by comparison, had a set of challenges between the Houses, each trying to beat the other students academically and in long-term competitions the Hogwarts Cup. But this was, to emphasize it again, a friendly competition, with the Ravens and the Badgers never going further than throwing ironic remarks and a few jokes about the "permanents residents of the library" or "bookworms" and the "badgers" or "duffers". Ravenclaws were far nastier to everyone of their own House who didn't meet their expectations, as Alexandra had learnt rapidly to her disadvantage. She had no idea how Hufflepuff as a whole was doing with the problematic students.
Coming back to said Flying lesson, all began according to Lavender Brown when Nigel Wolpert, the first-year Lion who was always at the infirmary, found a way to rise fifteen feet with a training broom in less than five seconds, before falling and breaking his arm. While Professor Hooch escorted him to the infirmary, the situation on the lawn degenerated in the absence of the teacher. The source of the conflict was none other than Draco Malfoy, who had seized a necklace belonging to Nigel. The object which had been thrown away on the grass with the fall of the Gryffindor boy, and Draco Malfoy had seized the opportunity to tease the first-years Lions.
Too predictably, it didn't stop there. Wands were drawn, spells were exchanged with the Gryffindors gaining the ascendant from the beginning, until Draco used one of the school brooms to evade one of Leo Black spells, letting his followers on the ground eating the dust when they faced the charge of the enthusiastic Gryffindors.
The rest of the story was less reliable, as Lavender Brown had been busy singing the exploits of the Boy-Who-Lived, who heroically and with great risk to himself had managed to recuperate Nigel's necklace in a furious aerial battle. The Slytherin version was much different. Pansy Parkinson was telling everyone Neville, Leo and Ron had cornered Draco in the air three-on one, and the air battle had never existed in their version. In the Gryffindor report, Neville had managed to catch the necklace after three loops and a dive of fifty feet.
According to all witnesses, it was just after Neville grabbed the necklace Professor McGonagall had made an apparition, and taken Neville Longbottom and Leo Black away. Finnigan, Crabbe and Goyle had been sent to the infirmary, the three of them having been caught in a magical explosion made by Finnigan himself. The Great Hall was full of rumours by dinner that Neville Longbottom was going either to be awarded a medal or expulsed, when the news came in from Longbottom himself: he had been recruited to play in the Gryffindor Quidditch team as Seeker. Alexandra had no idea what a Seeker was, in fact she didn't know a lot about Quidditch, only having deduced it was played on flying brooms and that it was a very violent sport. Apparently, being Seeker was great news in the Wizarding World, because a good half of the school had stood up to acclaim him. It was like a famous professional football player had entered her former primary school by mistake.
What Alexandra knew was the strict minimum: an absolute rule of the younger students not being authorised to play this brutal sport during their first-year, as well as being forbidden to own their own broom. That this rule did not seem to apply to the Boy-Who-Lived proved once more to Alexandra that Hogwarts was decidedly a very weird institution. As she finished to eat and prepared to leave her table, she heard Ronald Weasley shouting Neville was the youngest player in a century to play Quidditch with his mouth full of food. Watching the Slytherin table, she saw a wave of green and silver boys flaunting their displeasure. She really hoped for Neville Longbottom he was as good as the rumours said on his broom. He was going to need this skill.
Finally, the end of the week brought Friday and her evening duelling lesson, with her lasting three rounds against Professor Flitwick before being too tired to continue. She had learnt two more offensive spells in the interval, which she unleashed against her Charms Professor. The first, named Flipendo, created a minor blast of blue wind, with more powerful versions allowing the caster to materialise and control a small tornado. Vermillious was a minor hex sending a mix of red light and red sparks to the target, creating mild discomfort. These new addition to her growing arsenal of spells did not had any effect on her grinning professor, who smiled with delight when Alexandra bombarded him with sixteen incantations, trying her best to survive a few seconds against him. The longest time she managed was twenty-nine seconds in definitive, and she knew Flitwick had toyed with her every time.
And with this session of duel her second week ended. No one had charged her in the corridors to assassinate her, but that didn't mean it had been an uninteresting week at Hogwarts. Ravenclaw House as a whole had decided that, as they could not expel her without their Head of House's agreement, they could always ignore her and give her an eternal silence, mocking her behind her back and spreading dirty rumours on her in the hope she came back begging at their feet to admit her officially in their ranks.
If only they knew most of her life thanks to the Dursleys had been already like that before, maybe these not-so-clever students could have imagined a cleverer and sounder scheme. Or at least one presenting higher chances of success. Alexandra herself was not going to tell them. Long ago, she had wanted to have friends and persons she could trust, but the terror inspired by Dudley during ten years in Little Whinging had killed these aspirations. People who wanted to be her friend one moment and scorn her the moment after would not have been good partners to trust. If the Ravenclaw boys and girls weren't interested in her, then she was more than happy to reciprocity in the same fashion.
With Ravenclaw in general trying to ignore her presence, Alexandra was free to observe the power struggles among the students and to eavesdrop on the others' conversations. Neville Longbottom, hero of the wizarding world known as the Boy-Who-Lived, was leading the "prank war" on the side of the Gryffindors. By Wednesday, Alexandra had seen students as older as fourth-years go to him before or after the meals to meet him, whether it was to present themselves or to submit pranks against the Slytherins. She had tried to do the same thing, by pure courtesy. Once. The Boy-Who-Lived tirade, how she had a debt towards him, had killed instantly any desire she might have had to become his friend.
It would have been bad enough to see this level of devotion and servility given to one first-year, but the same thing happened with Draco Malfoy in the House of Slytherin. Unlike Neville, Draco's followers seemed to lack conviction, though. Alexandra supposed it was because Draco's father had pressured somehow older students to bow to his son's authority, because the blonde pure-blood had nothing in his charisma inspiring devotion or loyalty. Everything he was close to her, Alexandra was more struck by the odour of his shampoo and other perfumes than his intelligence.
On the other hand, it hardly mattered in the short term. Except Hermione Granger and Nigel Wolpert for Gryffindor, the first-years Lions had univocally chosen their leader. The fact Neville had already received magical education before some of them knew a magical world existed no doubt helped, but there were other reasons: Neville could, when he wanted, be charismatic (until his natural arrogance re-emerged) and designate targets which for one reason or another fail to live up to the standards of stupidity and suicidal courage which was expected of Gryffindor House. Nigel Wolpert, a boy who was clumsy and lacked confidence in himself, was as much an exile in Gryffindor as Alexandra herself was in Ravenclaw, but without the strength of character to defend himself. His only support was Hermione Granger, and the bushy-hair girl was too much in love in books to realise she was in the same situation with her year-mates.
The hierarchy was not definitive, but it was on a good way to be, as Neville revealed himself one of the most skilled Gryffindors in hexes and jinxes. Leo Black, her supposed godfather's son, had taken the post of prankster-in-chief of his year, and Ronald Weasley those of sidekick. The manners and the meals habits of Weasley proved every day more disgusting, and everyone who had a weak heart had stopped at lunch to look at him. To be honest, Weasley was creating himself a reputation of gluttony, tardiness and laziness who made him persona non grata among the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. The youngest of the Weasley family currently at Hogwarts was also ruthless with those he believed were weaker than him. Thankfully, it was not a lot of persons right now with Weasley being a Gryffindor first-year, but it was not encouraging for the future. The senior girl in Gryffindor was Lavender Brown as the gossiper-in-chief, with Parvati Patil, Thelma Holmes and Fay Dunbar as her underlings fashion-victims and intelligence sources. Seamus Finnigan, a boy who managed to explode anything in his vicinity when he drawled his wand and Dean Thomas, a muggleborn fan of football, were considered to be subordinates to Black and Weasley.
In Slytherin, the order was less clear, because Malfoy and his new followers rarely spoke in the library and the corridors in loud, thrashing voices. When a student of another House came close to them, they closed the ranks and presented a united front, making any information difficult to find. The members of the House of Slytherin were also not adverse to sabotage their competitors' efforts. According to the rumour, Tracey Davis had been guilty of exploding Flora Carrow cauldron in Potions Class, but had avoided punishment affirming it had been Leo Black's fault, and Professor Snape had taken this affirmation at face value, taking twenty points from Gryffindor. Clearly, Draco Malfoy was in charge of the first-years for the moment, with Crabbe and Goyle as bodyguards, thugs, executants, but his power base was considerably less powerful than Longbottom. Pansy Parkinson led the hierarchy of the Slytherin House girls, and Theodore Nott led the rest of the boys.
Unlike the Gryffindors, watching the Slytherins try to do any magic was a spectacle that oscillated between the pathetic and the horrible. If the two massive boys answering to the names of Crabbe and Goyle had brains, they hid it well. Neither she nor the rest of the Ravenclaws had heard these gorillas utter a full sentence since the beginning of the school term. They only communicated in grunts and groans. She had heard some third-years Ravenclaws betting one galleon if "the two trolls following Malfoy knew how to write?"
The rest of their first-years Snakes were no better for a battle of wits. Pansy Parkinson and Tracey Davis were Malfoy's fan girls, following him like servants or damsels-in-distress depending the occasion. Millicent Bulstrode and Byron Vaisey tended more towards the Crabble and Goyle model in body, though thankfully a bit more intelligent in brains. They knew how to read and speak. Only Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini appeared to have any skill to practise magic, but their cold and distant character put them into the "outcast" position of Slytherin House. Not that they seemed to care. Blaise was as distant as the day she had met him on the train, while Greengrass continued to show a frosty face of a pureblood princess no one was able to crack. Theodore Nott and the Carrow twins Hestia and Flora were sadist and cruel to anyone who was not a Slytherin and a pureblood. It explained the struggle between the Carrow Twins and Davis, as Davis was a half-blood. It also explained why three-quarters of the schools never presented their backs to them. All in all, her impression of Slytherin House was not pretty, most of her year-mates were pureblood supremacist with ideals going from sadism to genocide. Charming.
Gryffindor and Slytherins had their hierarchies and their struggles for power, Alexandra had remarked. Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had theirs too, but it was less precise and less structured. So far, she had not seen a true leader emerging in these two Houses. The Ravenclaws spent all their time in their books and doing group studies, not even bothering to explore the castle a bit. Terry Boot and Stephen Cornfoot went together. Kevin Entwhistle and Antony Goldstein were friends, but it seemed to have begun a long time before Hogwarts. Su Li and Padma Patil formed a Ravenclaw foreign group, and the last three girls, Lisa Turpin, Morag MacDougal and Mandy Brocklehurst studied together.
There was no post of leadership in the last House. The Hufflepuffs had taken the maxim of "All for one, one for all!" to a new degree and were travelling in a herd, all equal under the banner of the badger. It was a bit surprising, as Bones, Jones, Abbot, Macmillan, Moon were influential names in the Wizengamot and the rest of Magical Britain. But Hufflepuffs qualities on unity and equality weren't just for show and the celebrations.
It was on Saturday afternoon that the Slytherin-Gryffindor war ended in a cascade of explosions. Alexandra was walking on a corridor on the second floor, with several Hufflepuffs near her, when they heard a series of shouts, yells and a loud grumbling like someone had collapsed a major part of the castle.
All the persons present including Alexandra ran in the direction of the stairs and stopped immediately. Neville Longbottom was there, as were Leo Black and Ronald Weasley, all three unconscious. A third-year Gryffindor was lying along to them, tied in ropes. The part of the corridor where they were lying was in ruins, as someone had annihilated it in an explosion. A pool of blood was growing on the floor, making gasp those who were discovering the scene. On the wall near the three vanquished first-years and the tied third-year, large words painted in green were written: "NOT INVINCIBLE". The message couldn't have been clearer.
"Call the professors and Madam Pomfrey! Now!" Shouted a Hufflepuff prefect who had just ran into here.
"Alert the professors! The ghosts! The portraits!" The older student was in full panic mode, hyperventilating, his visage a red tomato colour and his legs and arms shaking significantly. A glance showed similar symptoms among the other Hufflepuffs. Not Duellists in that group, this much was evident.
Some Hufflepuffs went away alerting the teachers, while older students cut the ropes and try to reanimate the Gryffindors. Fortunately, while all of them remained unconscious, none were in danger of dying. Their wounds were qualified as "superficial" by the Hufflepuffs having magical healing knowledge, and Alexandra took their word for it. The arrival of Professor McGonagall and Snape on the scene forced the crowd of students to disperse, the attack being now the subject of every conversation on all lips.
The repercussions of the new aggression once it was known were astonishingly quick, given how the professors and the rest of the adults had handled the pranks and the attacks until then. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore himself had returned to the castle at once, summoned all the students to the Great Hall before dinner, and expressed himself "disappointed" in the students.
"This aggression on Mr Longbottom and his friends is intolerable!" Affirmed with a certain dose of hypocrisy the Headmaster, as there had been a similar attack perpetrated on two Slytherins less than twenty-four hours ago. "I can assure you the culprits once they are found will be severely punished!"
At this moment, Alexandra had to acknowledge Dumbledore was a very dangerous man. For an instant, the old senile man with a grandfather persona ceased to exist, replaced by a tyrant with a flow of magic expulsed by his body like a miniature storm. A sort of power aura was surrounding him, his fingers were almost expulsing miniature sparks and he silenced the crowd of students with a piercing stare.
One moment it was there, and the moment after the flow of magic was gone, the grandfather character making his return. The rest of the speech was fairly uninteresting: the pranks had to stop now, should the culprits denounce themselves their admission would be recognised when assigned detentions, those who had thrown "exotic" spells had to present themselves to the infirmary to give the counter-curses to Madam Pomfrey, and so on.
Watching all the students in the Great Hall, Alexandra doubted the speech of the Headmaster would incite many to reveal their culpability. Some who had done one pranks spells or two, perhaps, but not the masterminds of the prank war. There had been incidents that had broken all the rules this week at Hogwarts. A good example was the act that had flooded the toilets in the dungeons. Anyone who did that prank would be the recipient of Professor Snape's hate, a fate a student generally didn't want to be on the receiving end of. There had been cursed mail, spiked drinks and food in the Great Hall. Trapped Toilets, trapped bathrooms. Spells making your clothes invisible, thankfully Alexandra hadn't been caught by that one. Fireworks, destruction of homework, charming the ink to make it another colour or destructive to parchment. Hundreds of dung bombs had been launched in the unlikeliest places. Truly, the quantity of prank items and potions used in a week had been beyond imagination. The Slytherins and the Gryffindors were already whispering between themselves, and the words "slimy snakes" and "imbecilic lions" were loud enough to be heard. No student looked particularly repentant for any malicious prank they had made nor looked ready to be voluntary for hours and hours of cleaning in detention.
Several teachers, especially Professor Snape and Sinistra, former members of Slytherin, looked disgusted by the principle of Dumbledore intervening only when the Snakes began to strike back against the Lions and Neville Longbottom. The prank war would cease; it was less likely any member of the House would be on friendly term for this year of school. As this speech had gone on, the Boy-Who Lived, Black and Weasley were at the heart of the Gryffindor formation, the entire House ready to defend them should any party try an attack. All the Lions were smirking or showing arrogance on their face, and why shouldn't they? Alexandra had recognised Dumbledore's actions as a measure to protect the hero of the wizarding world and his supporters from heavy retaliation; older and more influential children had understood it too. It was a blatant show of favouritism to shield the Lions from their own actions. It also left the Slytherins unpunished. A subtle and perfect way to ensure the Gryffindor-Slytherin tensions would persist for the rest of the year, if not longer.
Sunday was a very calm day after this series of incidents, as the cessation of pranks and other facetious enchantments stopped the ambiance of chaos reigning from the start of the week. Alexandra profited from the sunny day to go running outside the castle. The surrounding of the Black Lake provided an excellent course, the grass was green and no student came bothering her. Maybe they were all allergic to physical effort? As she did her jogging taking great care to maintain a safe distance between her and the Forbidden Forest, her eyes lied on the Quidditch Pitch, unoccupied for the moment. The tryouts for each team had been delayed to the next week, given the chaos reigning in the school. Well, that and the fact no one with a neuron in his skull was tempted to fly when at every moment a member of another house could "prank" you when you were unarmed and at an height of at least forty feet in the sky. Perhaps it was her nature to be naturally suspicious but Quidditch looked like the perfect way to divide even further the four Houses of Hogwarts.
"Not like it is my problem." Said Alexandra Potter out loud, contemplating the sun illuminate the thousand-year old fortress in this beautiful September morning. "Surviving the madness of the students and the teachers is more than enough for me. Let the teachers deal with the school problems, it's what they're paid for."
In the years to come, Alexandra would remember this moment, when no darkness or cloud was visible in the horizon. And wonder how naive she had been.