Chapter 3
When considering casting a spell, there are many factors that go into it. Witches and Wizards have spent years debating what contributes to the success of a charm but the primary theory, agreed on by most experts is the Priory theory, proposed in 1674 by Eugene Priory. It states that there are three factors that go into casting: intent, power, and understanding. Intent is based on your personal focus, power is based on your age and some amount of randomness, understanding is what will be addressed in this book. If one does not understand how your magic summons fire how can you expect your magic to.
“Well, you’re up early.” Hermione looked up from her book to see Terry sitting down on the couch across from her. She shrugged, “I slept enough, wanted to get ahead on this.” He glanced at her book, A Complete Guide to Magical Theory: Vol 1. “You do realize you can’t ‘get ahead’ on an optional reading.” His words lost much of their affect as he pulled out his own book, an identical copy to the one in her hands.
Over the next hour, people started to slowly trickle into the common room and then trickle down towards the great hall. Eventually, all the other girls came down and Hermione was hungry enough that with a nod towards Terry, none of the other boys had yet to emerge, she fell in with the group and made their way towards the great hall.
Padma was reading off their schedule. “Today we have Defense, double Transfiguration before lunch, then Charms in the afternoon and then we are free. Oh, and astronomy tonight.”
Hermione had to jump in. “About charms, have you guys started the extra reading? It’s really cool, did you know that there are 18 individual motions for wand movements that each correspond to an arithmancy element. Of course I have no idea what they mean because I haven’t taken arithmancy.” She realized that she had probably overshared, but luckily a group of Ravenclaws were the perfect people to do that with, the only responses being nods and a comment or two of interest.
They grouped up at the end of the table. Padma, her hair slightly messy and looking a bit groggy poured herself a cup of tea. “Why does Astronomy have to be so late. I mean this is the best school in the country, one of the best in the world, you’d think they could do something with magic.”
Lisa dunked a biscuit in her tea, “The real question is why do we even have astronomy, I mean what use is spending five years looking at the stars.”
Sue poked at her eggs, “It’s for potions a little bit but mostly it’s an artifact from when Hogwarts taught rituals.”
Morag and Padma nodded but Lisa looked just as confused as she felt. Sue picked up on it quickly, for someone who didn’t talk much she was very good at social queues. “Rituals are like spells and potions combined but more powerful and volatile. They rely on sacrifice and intense structure and set up. They were slowly banned in the 1800s because they are really dangerous to perform, you do your arithmancy on Jupiter’s position and it could kill you.”
Lisa groaned, “So we have to go to class at midnight for an archaic branch of magic we can’t even perform.”
Hermione nodded that was pretty annoying. She did kind of want to check out rituals though, she didn’t want to perform any, they were illegal for a reason, but what could they do. She had read about spells that could do some of the most wonderful things she had ever heard of. If rituals were more powerful, what was the limit? Her musings were interrupted by the thunder of hundreds of wings.
Owls descended around her to her housemates and Hermione came to the realization that she had completely forgotten to write to her parents. Not even to let them know what house she had been sorted despite the fact that they wouldn’t really understand the importance of it. It just seemed like once you got inside Hogwarts, nothing else mattered; there was always so much action, so many people, so much magic.
Morag spoke up next to her, “Guys, Hogwarts is in the paper.” Hermione leaned over to look at the copy of the Daily Prophet she had open to see the front page.
WARLOCKS FOR EDUCATION RELEASES SHOOL RANKINGS, HOGWARTS TAKES UNPRECEDENTED DIVE.
Well, that couldn’t be any good. Scanning over the first paragraphs, Hermione was relieved to read that the headline was massively blown out of proportion. Thankfully Hogwarts was still ranked as the number one school, she didn’t know what she would have done if it had actually fallen. But apparently under the guidance of a new head, the first time the organization had a head that wasn’t a Hogwarts alum, both potions and history had fallen far below where they were before. Their ranking for potions remained above one of the other academies, but for history they had been ranked in the bottom five schools in the country. The organization sighting abysmal test scores and teaching by Binns which Hermione had to agree was definitely true.
Morag passed on a summary to those further away none of them looking particularly surprised, they had attended those classes, History was completely useless. “Nothing will come of it, Bins has been her for probably a hundred years and Dumbledore will just try to get Snape to do better.” Was Padma’s opinion. Hermione didn’t even know if that would happen, for all the talk about Dumbledore, all she had seen was his opening speech and he just seemed off his rocker. When was the last time he had actually achieved anything?
Defense should have been interesting. It was supposed to be an overview of the dangers they would be studying this year, including things like magical creatures, spells, and environmental magic, the last one Hermione had no idea what it was. The issue was that you could not understand the man. He had one of the worst stutters Hermione had heard making the class give her nothing but a migraine. A migraine that was not at all helped by Finch-Fletchley’s not at all subtle jabs at Professor Quirrell’s speech impediment. Although at her old school they had just called everyone by their first name, she had learned the night before that if you weren’t at least friendly with someone, in the wizarding world they always went by last name. A relic of a more ancient time maybe.
Transfiguration on the other hand was a lot of fun. Anything that allowed them to use their wands was good fun in her book. The only way that transfiguration seemed to differ from charms was that it had much more complicated wand movements and seemed to require more focus. Which made sense to her, instead of just trying to produce light, they were changing one complicated object into another.
Hermione didn’t think it was much harder though. She just broke down the wand movement into individual portions, practiced it in segments then put it all together. By the end of the class she had a semi decent needle although it was still very dull and she hadn’t been able to get the eye to open up. Most of the Ravenclaws had managed something, a few even trying her approach to the wand movement when she explained it. Although Weasley gave her a dirty look from the table next to her as she gave Morag the run down.
In charms they were continuing to work on their lumos but Flitwick had those who had the hang of the charm work on changing the color of the light. It was harder to do than Hermione would have expected, it required additional wand movements and focus to get the tone right.
Soon enough though she managed to make it back to the tower, this time without being dragged into some excursion. She sat down on one of the couches in the common room -she had decided this one was her favorite, lots of light and a good view- and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill. She wasn’t particularly a fan of the writing instrument, her first day of notes were almost completely unreadable by her standards, drops of ink and smudges everywhere. However, Padma had seen them and offered to owl order her a self-inking quill which should help. She hadn’t known owl order was a thing, but it was pretty handy.
She tapped the back of the quill against her hand a couple of times, trying to think of what to say. She wanted to tell them how impossibly amazing everything was. How her house were the best possible people she could have met, how she was making great friends and doing well. But there was only so much she could express or fit on a paper. She would just have to settle for basic details.
“Hermione Granger?” Hermione looked up to see the tall seventh year from the night before, Elliot. “You signed up to try out for debating.” Hermione nodded. He was quick to come to her, but she guessed if he was free there was no point in waiting, the sooner everyone was interviewed, the sooner they could start practicing. “Okay, follow me.”
He turned and started walking off. Hermione looked at her spread-out writing supplies and his retreating form. She ditched her things and quickly caught up. They exited the common room and Hermione had to kind of skip to keep up with his long strides. Maybe he could have slowed down a bit for her. They walked for just a second before they got to a room close to the entrance to the tower.
The room was decently sized, ten chairs ringed a decent sized rectangular table. There was a mostly full bookcase on one wall and a large blackboard on the other. He took a seat and waved for her to sit down across from him. “You probably know already my name is Elliot Avery.” He gestured around the room. “If I pick you, this is where we practice. Do you know anything about the format.”
She shook her head, but she wasn’t sure if he had even paid attention to her response. “Each team has nine people, one from each year and two from first and second. Flitwick wants us to encourage and develop more younger years before you start having electives.” He idly summoned a piece of parchment, quill, and ink from a cabinet on one of the walls. “Once Lawrence-” he noticed her confusion, “Grace Lawrence, the other captain. Once Lawrence and I have interviewed all of the candidates, we will draft our teams and announce it.”
He popped the top off of the ink and dipped his quill in. He peered at her for a second and wrote something down, the scratching of the quill deafening. “So are you ready to begin.” She went to nod and realized that she hadn’t said a word since he had met her. “Yes.” Her voice sounded a bit scratchy to her, she needed to relax.
“Good. Now, Lawrence and I have agreed on a topic so you will need to research broom subsidies and make a write up. Not a positional paper, just research both sides of the issue and write it out. You will have until Saturday to do that. For my personal interview I am only going to ask you one question.”
He studied her and scratched at his chin for a second. “What are the pros and cons of bringing muggleborn into the wizarding world.” Hermione had to fight the desire to get mad. This was clearly a test. Maybe to see if she could think dispassionately about an issue, although she hadn’t really realized it was an issue.
Hermione had heard her dad talking about immigration once and she guessed it was much the same thing. “Well, muggleborn bring in more workers and consumers for economic growth as well as a unique perspective.”
She paused for a second, “And the cons?”
Even if it was just a hypothetical, she felt bad saying it. “They could stress systems such as education or take jobs from others.” He looked over at her and she felt compelled to add more. “Maybe they could possibly lead to loss of national identity.” He wrote a bit more on the parchment.
“But also, bringing muggleborn into the wizarding world would help keep the statute of secrecy as they spend less time in the muggle world.”
He gave a slight nod and then put his quill down. “Well, I think that is everything I needed. Can you find your way back to the tower?” She nodded. “You should give your research to one of us before the end of the weekend.” He picked back up the quill and started writing, a clear dismissal.
Hermione stood up and let herself out. She spent a few moments outside the room collecting herself. She hadn’t expected it to be that stressful or… she wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but she certainly hoped that Grace picked her. She would participate if chosen, but Avery was scary. Maybe he would get better the more she got to know him.
She made her way back to the common room to find her table occupied. The rest of the first years had taken over the circle and were playing some game that she had never seen before. “Hermione, we saw your bag and thought we’d join you.” Well, the letter to her parents could wait another day.
Dear mum and dad,
Sorry I took so long to write you a letter. It’s just been such a crazy first week and I kept getting distracted. Magic is the most amazing thing I’ve learned in my entire life. I’ve been doing a lot of studying outside of class to learn new spells because I want to get ahead and it’s just too cool. Also, I’m one of the top students in our year, definitely in the subjects that use wands, I’m just much more motivated in those. Potions and astronomy are okay, but History and Herbology are both incredibly boring. Also, I’m trying out for the debate team, that’s part of the reason why I’m late to write this. I spent the last few days doing research for the try outs. One of the captains is pretty scary and kind of freaks me out, but the other one is really nice, and I think I made a good impression on her when we did an interview. And I can’t believe I forgot to mention I’m in Ravenclaw, so mum wins. Everyone is really nice within our house, a couple of the Slytherins are annoying but we don’t have to see them that much. We also have a kind of friendly rivalry with the Hufflepuffs, although I wouldn’t mind making it less friendly with Finch-Fletchley, the boy is the most posh, annoying person I’ve ever met. We didn’t have any in the first week but this week we will have flying lessons which I am excited for but also a bit scared of. This is almost getting too long for an owl to carry so this is all for now.
Love you,
Hermione
Hermione folded up the letter and stuck it into one of the thick envelopes they used in the wizarding world. It made sense, you would want a bit more protection when your letter could be carried by a bird through a storm. She and Morag were the only people in the dorm as everyone else had already gone down to the great hall for dinner. Hermione had just realized that she had continually forgot to write her letter and as it was Monday, she had managed to go an entire week with no contact to her parents. Morag had just been nice enough to wait for her.
“Swing by the owlery on our way to the hall?”
Morag swung her legs off her now light green bedspread. After learning the way to alter the color of a Lumos light Flitwick’s homework to them was to practice the color changing charm as the wand movements for the colors were the same. Their dorm had decided to do some decorating although some beds still had some odd colors. “Yeah, that sound good.”
If Hogwarts was a normal castle their route would make no sense. Physically, the owlery was in a shorter tower on completely the other side of the school. They would have to descend all the way down and go past the great hall. In practice geography held little hold over the castle and as the highest dormitory in the school, Ravenclaws had mastered the art of climbing as few staircases as possible.
The shortcut they took was one of the ones the older years had taught them in their first week and in their exploring Hermione, Morag, and the two boys had yet to find a better one. The route involved descending a couple flights to a windowless corridor that looped around the tower and sprinting around it until you came to a door that opened into the owlery tower. It was useful but very annoying (It didn’t work if you walked, they checked).
So that was how Hermione and Morag burst into the owlery, red faces and huffing and puffing only to find it much less empty than they expected during the dinner hour. Parkinson and Bulstrode stode on one side, Parkinson was stroking the feathers of an admittedly very beautiful barn owl.
Hermione calmed down her breathing and made her way over to the school owls. She honestly didn’t understand why no one had invented a magical version of a telephone that was better than the Floo. She found a tawny owl that looked eager to fly and gave it a quick pat, the bird preening into her hand.
“So Granger, your family couldn’t afford to get you an owl?” Pansy’s voice echoed across the windy room.
“Actually Parkinson, my family is perfectly capable of affording an owl, we just didn’t because of our neighbors.” Oh god, that was not better. She needed to think more before she spoke.
She sniffed “Ah, I almost forgot, you’re part of the diversity.” She spun and exited before Hermione could get a word in edgewise. Well that certainly could have gone better. Hermione threw the owl out of the window, something that she was told was completely normal but still felt funny to her and then the two of them started making their way down to the great hall. She really needed to be more regular about her letter writing.
It was much later that they made it back to the tower, having taken a lengthy detour after dinner to do some more exploring. Their just seemed to be infinite nooks and crannies around the ancient castle. They entered the common room to see a good amount of the students crowding around the message board.
They moved with the swell of the crowd until they managed to get to the front of the pack. Posted on the board was a piece of parchment. DEBATE SELECTIONS printed clearly at the top. That had come back much faster than Hermione had expected but she guessed they already knew most of the people. At the top was team blue, Grace’s team. Hermione scanned down it, feeling disappointed when she didn’t see her own name, at least Terry and Sue were picked by her, there was no shame in losing to the two of them. Although she didn’t know what the pick order was like, maybe she had just been picked before them.
She checked team bronze and, printed in bold relief at the bottom, Hermione Granger. Well, this was going to be an interesting year.