I take my pencil and quickly erase the line of crooked-looking cursive I had just made above the text in my Transfiguration Spells for Year 5 book. After wiping away the eraser shavings, I glanced up at the redhead next to me, who was supposed to be getting the introduction for our transfigurations essay ready, and I am forced to do a double take.
Fred Weasley was looking at me with his eyes wide open, a slight hint of awe inside of them. I must say, I’ve never seen a Weasley twin look so attentive before.
“Did I make a mistake? I’m sorry, I’ve been awake for too long and only just realized that I was writing complete nonsense in the book. I must look ridiculous to you right now.”
I gave him a sheepish smile, thinking I’m about to become the new butt of a Weasley joke for a week. ‘I can already hear it now. My roommates will never let me live this down.’
“How’d you do that?” He said, interrupting my inner Peter-Parker-like monologue.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
‘Did I hear him right?’ I stared at him, a look of surprise on my face, my eyes open wide and my brain trying to register what was going on.
“What spell did you use to clear the ink?” He says pointing to the text. “I didn’t hear you say a spell. Hell, you don’t even have a wand in your hand. Do you know wandless magic?”
He said all of this while slightly leaning forward at the end of every sentence. I blinked twice. I was slowly figuring out what the pureblooded wizard was asking me. It took everything in me not to laugh at the realization that this was simply a misunderstanding over a pencil.
I saw that he was looking at my messy grey handwriting on the textbook. “That’s not ink, it’s lead.” I said, getting ready to explain the concept of a pencil to someone who had used medieval scrolls and quills their entire life.
“Lead?” He tilts his head slightly to the right, trying out the word on his tongue as if he’d never heard it before.
“Yeah. Lead. You know, Ld on the periodic table of elements.” I started, unsure if wizards even knew of the concept of a periodic table of elements considering there’s no General Science course at Hogwarts. “Although it’s mixed with other stuff to make it stable. I’m sorry do wizard kids not learn chemistry?”
He looked at me with a face of confusion the entire time I was explaining. ‘Maybe wizarding education was much more behind muggle education than I thought.’
“I know what chemistry is. It’s like the muggle version of potions. They use it to make those badderiez. Dad says so all the time.” Fred had a smug look on his face as he said that. It almost made me feel bad for correcting him.
“Do you mean batteries? And potions is more of a rudimentary wizard version of chemistry really. Chemistry seems to be much more sophisticated since it kinda mixes in arithmancy and is much more specific with its combinations.” I had to stop myself from going too far as I looked at him. He now looked much more confused than before.
“Whatever, just tell me how you did that with the weird-looking quill.” He said, looking at my pencil like it was an odd-sized quaffle.
“Umm” I began, trying to think of the simple way to explain this without further confusing the poor bloke.
“Well the sharp end has lead mixed with graphite, I guess…” As I said, this I pointed to the dull point of my pencil. “That’s the end I write with. Then the other end has a rubber eraser. When I make a mistake, I use this end to, y’know, erase it.” I made a small scribble onto the textbook and then quickly erased it to show him how it works.
“Benzil…” He said, his brows pulled forward as he tried the word out for the first time. He was staring at the spot where I had just erased, I could practically see the gears turning in his head.
“Yeah… more or less.” I was beginning to feel awkward just sitting here, watching as the information dump slowly sank into the mind of Fred Weasley.
“Did you make it?” He turns to me, curious.
“Umm, no. I jinxed it so that it would return to me in case I left it somewhere but besides that–” He cuts me off before I further can tell him about my genius idea against pencil stealers.
“Do you have more?” He was now intently staring at me, seeming extremely excited about the idea of me being in possession of more ‘benzils’.
‘Just wait until you learn about a pen, Weasley.’