Chapter 4
The great hall was oddly quiet when Hermione entered it for breakfast. There were still conversations, but they were all subdued, the main portion of everyone’s attention obviously focused on the head table. Sitting in the throne like chair in the middle, in his atrociously bright robes was Dumbledore. Hermione hadn’t ever seen the man attend a breakfast and based on the actions of the rest of the hall it certainly wasn’t a regular occurrence.
Dumbledore drew attention so much that it took her a minute to notice the other new addition at the staff table. A young blonde woman Hermione didn’t know sat near the edge of the long table, eating slowly and talking to Professor Flitwick. Hermione found her seat next to Michael. Normally she was the first one down in the hall and Michael was one of the last in their year, but today she had wanted to do a bit more morning reading and Michael had been up early. She would guess he was likely too excited about their first flying lesson today to sleep in. Judging by Terry’s groggy look and the presence of most of he had probably taken it upon himself to get them all up.
“So Hermione, I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this yet, what quidditch team do you support?” She really didn’t think that was the priority information to figure out right then.
“Are you sure that’s the most relevant question right now?”
“We asked the upper years, no one has any idea what’s going on. You have to answer this is important. Some people have bad opinions.” He shot an exaggerated look at Morag who just shrugged.
“You do remember I’ve never seen quidditch in my life. The only teams I know are the ones I’ve seen in the prophet.” Michael sagged forward. “Oh yeah. Well, you’re from London but the lions haven’t been in the league for the past few years. So you can just be falcons fan with me!”
Immediate cries of protest rose up around the table. It seems like everyone had at least been half listening to the conversation. Every person started throwing out arguments for their respective teams. Their voices falling over each other in a senseless babble of player’s names that Hermione didn’t know. As the only other muggleborn, Hermione looked to Lisa for help just to get a shrug. “I’m from Hollyhead” was apologetically called over the debate. Well, no help there.
“NO, don’t support Kenmare unless you want to get stabbed at a match.”
“Well, if you decide on the Tornadoes, everyone is just going to think you’re doing it because they’re good right now.”
“Yeah, than she should support Wimbourne, you all seem to like the bottom of the table.”
The sound of Dumbledore clearing his throat echoed through the hall. Silencing them in a second. He stared serenely out over them. “Good morning, everyone. I’m sure you are all wondering after my presence this morning. You might remember a few days ago, the prophet ran a story on the Hogwarts history curriculum.”
There was a small ripple of conversation on that before it quickly came back to silence. “Our esteemed board of directors had spent the last week conducting interviews to try to find the perfect candidate to revamp the subject here, deciding on our new teacher, Professor Flaherty.” There was a round of applause around the hall. Noticeably louder from the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, Hermione guessed that the other houses were sad to have lost their nap time block.
“So, for the first time in 213 years, Hogwarts has a new History Professor. Hopefully she will teach for at least that long.” A confused smattering sounded as he sat back down. Hermione quickly glanced at her schedule, unfortunately they wouldn’t get a lesson with her until the next day.
“Hermione, you should really consider the Falcons though. We have some of the best players.” Michael was back on quidditch.
“You’re such a posh fuck.” And the debate was coming back full force.
If there were two things Ravenclaws were best at, Hermione would say it was knowing random things and never admitting their wrong. The quidditch conversation raged through the entire day with people pulling out continually more obscure statistics, becoming so far warped from its original purpose to help her figure out which team to support. She eventually just couldn’t take it anymore and decided to be a magpies fan. They were the closest to Hogwarts, didn’t seem to have any particular haters and most importantly no one in their house supported them so she wasn’t picking anyone. She felt very diplomatic- and she needed everyone to shut up about a sport she barely understood.
The weather for their first flying lesson couldn’t have been more perfect. Cloudless and warm, it was one of those rare perfect highland days where even the wind was behaving tamely. As a pack they walked down towards the open field next to the quidditch pitch where their schedules indicated the lesson was to be held. On the way running into the Hufflepuffs they were to have their lesson with.
They formed a large pack, mingling together for the remainder of the walk. Hermione actually quite liked most of the Hufflepuffs. Obviously, she had met Ernie and Wayne on the train and the Hufflepuff girls were all very nice. Although she hadn’t had much contact at all with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott, they seemed like best friends and didn’t really make much of an attempt to go outside of each other. They were nice though.
The school seemed to be plagued by strong house divisions. The Gryffindors and Slytherins barely talked to each other and for some reason seemed to think they were better than the Hufflepuffs and her fellow ravens, she knew they were technically eagles but she had quickly found out no one said that. By contrast, they seemed to have friendly competition with the Hufflepuffs, they worked hard to beat each other, but they tried their best to not let it go beyond reasonable levels. Really the only issue she had with the Hufflepuffs manifested itself it the skinny brown haired prick that had somehow established himself at the top of the Hufflepuff food chain.
Justin Finch-Fletchley was unfailing in his ability to get on every single one of her nerves. He was every single one of the annoying kids from when she was in grade school. He hadn’t done anything to her, she didn’t think he had done anything bad to anyone, but he was like Malfoy if you took away the maliciousness and turned the bragging to 11. Hermione was by no means poor. Her parents owned their dental practice, she got to take a holiday every year, but if she had to hear about his ski chalet one more time herself control was going to be severely tested.
Their group excitedly flowed onto the short cut pitch of grass that Madam Hooch occupied, forming up into a disorderly line next to the brooms set out on the grass. From what Hermione had gathered, most of the wizarding born students had some form of experience with flying, but other than Michael who had been in a youth quidditch league, nobody had gotten professional lessons before. It was the kind of thing that parents just taught their kids enough to make sure they didn’t get hurt, getting lessons in flying was rare as if they just waited a few years, they would get them at Hogwarts.
Hermione thought that Madam Hooch was surprisingly old for someone who taught sports. Despite her age though, she looked wiry and moved around with the speed of one much younger. “Now, I want all of you to extend your hand above your broom and say ‘UP.’”
Hermione reached over her broom, a decrepit old thing that looked even older than their instructor, a mess of fraying twigs and a cracked handle. Could she really fly on this without dying? “UP.” The broom gave a half-hearted hop, leaving the ground towards her hand before succumbing back to gravity and falling back to earth. Hermione looked around and was relieved to see that many had gotten similar results. Although Michael’s broom was already firmly grasped as were a couple of the Hufflepuffs.
She focused intently on her broom. It would jump. “UP.” The broom satisfyingly slapped into her palm. She looked over at Michael who grinned back at her.
“Come on now first years, the broom won’t come to you if you’re scared of it. It’s like a wand, it can sense what you want, you need to want it.”
A couple tries later, everyone had one of the ancient branches in their hands and the austere woman demonstrated the proper grip, moving around correcting people. Hermione noticed that Michael was using a different grip, but Madam Hooch just looked at it and sized him up before moving on and shifting her hands to a more secure position. Hermione guessed it was probably a more advanced hold.
“Now, on my whistle I want you to all kick off hard, hover for a minute and then lean forward to come back down.”
Hermione pushed down her anxiety about relying on what looked like the most brittle branch she had ever seen to keep her alive in the air and waited for the whistle. The shrill tone echoed over the grounds and Hermione couldn’t help but close her eyes as she jumped off the ground, thinking up, praying to go up and not just crash back down.
She heard people around her laughing and cheering and she slowly cracked her eyes open to see most of year, floating five feet above the ground. She couldn’t help but check for wires or anything that was supporting them, of course finding nothing. She was flying! She had been working to master spells all week, but nothing settled the idea of magic into her more than peacefully floating above the ground, almost no support.
She remembered that the year before at school, one of the introductions they had done for their class was the teacher had asked them to share their name and what superpower they would want. Hermione had obviously said telekinesis, but right now she was actually living some of her old classmates’ dreams. Well, she had almost mastered the levitation charm, so she was well on the way to her own. Was there maybe a way to fly just using one’s wand she wondered? Or maybe not even need a wand for something like levitation? Their first night Dumbledore had dimmed the candles with just his hand.
Hermione leaned forward, her broom slowly -she was pretty sure slow was the only speed it did- descending back to the earth. The lesson progressed quickly after that and by the end of an hour and a half Hermione could slowly fly a lap of the area they were using. She was never going to be good at it, she didn’t care to be good at it, she didn’t like most thrill-seeking things, but she liked flying just because it was flying. It was something that should be impossible and she was breaking that boundary.
After the end of day excitement, Hermione was so ready to just get back to the tower, take a little nap, than do some studying. She was practically on auto pilot, leading the pack of Ravenclaws, the flock, technically a group of ravens was an unkindness, but she didn’t really think that was appropriate.
“Hermione” she stopped and turned around; the rest of her house was standing at the intersection she had just gone through. Morag pointed the other way down the corridor, “We have the study group thing.” Damn.
They hadn’t had any the first week to give them more time to settle in, but starting this week they were having two study. Hermione had actually no idea what she was going to do for this period, she could already do most of the first year spells for charms and although she hadn’t gotten around to the transfiguration ones, she felt like she had a pretty decent grasp on the subject.
There were a lot of rooms in the wing under Ravenclaw tower that had been co-opted by their house. Hermione had heard from an older student that they tried to keep most gatherings outside of the common room so the common room could be just for hanging out and reading or studying.
Their year spilled into the room and seeing the two sixth years already there, the sixth years were always the tutors as they didn’t have to study for OWLs or NEWTs. They filled in the seats of the three small square tables spread throughout the room. The 12 people now there filling the seats perfectly. The older students got them started, telling them just to work on their homework and that they would be available for any questions.
Hermione reached in her bag and pulled out the copy of Standard book of spells: Grade 2 that she had grabbed from the common room. She hadn’t mastered all of the first year spells, but she had managed to perform each of them and they were going to be given time in class to do that.
If she was being honest about what would be most beneficial to her, she should be studying theory, she wasn’t even close to understanding all the theory for their year, but she got the explanations for the individual spells and really doing the practical work was so much more exciting.
She pulled out her wand and opened the book, yeah, the theory and wand movement was much more complicated, but she could still understand what was going on, even if she didn’t understand the rules behind it.
She did what she usually did, separating the wand movement into sections to practice it, beginning to put it together. She felt a tap on her shoulder, the sixth year looking over her shoulder. “Did I recognize the engorging charm?” She nodded. “I’ve managed to do all of the ones in the first year book so I thought I’d work up.”
He nodded, “I was much the same way. When’s your birthday?” That was a bit of a random question. “The 19th, so week after next.” He nodded again, “Then you’ll probably be able to pull it off. Just know if you can’t get the spells to work that there is a reason they are second year spells. There is a basic level of power you have to be able to muster to cast them and often times first years don’t have it. You certainly won’t be able to cast anything from the later years though until you get a bit older.”
She closed her book, disappointment coming over her. She had been planning to try to learn as many spells as she could quickly. “What am I supposed to work on then?”
The boy shrugged, “This is a pretty common problem for Ravenclaws. We all want to move quickly and learn more.” He smiled at her, “House of the curious. The common room is a great resource. If you’re bored, just muck around in the far corners of the monstrosity and I’m sure you’ll find something to interest you.”
That sounded like a good idea to her, she made a mental note to do that when she was next up there. “You should also focus on your theory. You’re going to really need a solid base if you want to do well in later years.” She thought he noticed how she was still a little disappointed from the gate on her advancement. “And it’s not that bad, once you start getting older you can usually stretch up more. In my fourth year I managed to learn a seventh year spell. It just depends on the person.”
He moved off to answer a question from Anthony and Hermione put the book away, taking out her theory books. She would go back and try the spells later. Now that she couldn’t go much further than them it didn’t feel as urgent.
Hermione had to put all of her weight into pushing the bookcase aside. She was making her way through the monstrosity of a book tower that was the Ravenclaw common room and once you got beyond the first couple of levels, a lot of the shelves were on rollers and needed to be moved around to progress through. She was pretty sure there was some weird thing going on with the space inside of the library because there was no way some of the dimensions worked.
The further she moved within the nonsensical structure, the less used it seemed to get. Clearly Ravenclaw’s still went through here, the tracks the bookcases were on still moved well and there wasn’t much dust. But some of the books looked like they hadn’t been removed in years. Old hardcovers and leather spines untouched for a generation of students.
She guessed that she was high enough up that most people just used brooms to fly to this level, leaving the books in the deep interior mostly unused. She squeezed through a narrow gap between two shelves and found herself in a small interior reading room. Yeah, there definitely shouldn’t be enough space for this room to exist here.
A small red book caught her eye on the edge of one of the shelves. The shelf seemed to be a set of schoolbooks from quite a while ago. She pulled out the one that had caught her eye, the title stamped into the leather reading out A Primer on Ritual and other Mystical arts: Grade 1. Well, she had wanted to learn more about the subject. She settled into the dusty chair and pulled apart the covers, the leather creaking. Might as well do some learning.