chapter four
The rest of the day passed in quiet study, Harry being buried deep in the books of the great library. Specifically, the Transfiguration books. He read and trained to use the most basic transfigurations, like needles to matchsticks, matchsticks to needles, beetles to buttons, a pence into a gem. By the end of the day, he could manage the first two transfigurations, whilst his buttons still had legs and the pence was unchanged. With his day done, Harry made his way back up to the Ravenclaw common room, easily solving the way too easy riddle. Up in his room, he greeted Hedwig with a happy, “Hello girl”
His snowy white owl sat on the stand, happily hooting back at him and presenting the bones of a mouse she’d caught to her owner.
“Wow, successful hunt I see”, Harry smiled, “my day was great too, Potions is fun and Herbology wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I even learned a few new things in the library. It has to be the biggest assortment of books in so many miles, it’s crazy… anyways, good night hedwig”
Hedwig hooted back a response as Harry fell into his bed.
The Week progressed swiftly, with classes during the early hours of the day and study sessions in the library after that. Transfiguration was fine, not his favourite but not bad either. He’d already mastered the matchstick to needle transfiguration, so that earned him a good few points and a rare smile from McGonagall. Charms too was rather dull, the pacing was clearly made for a normal 11 year old child, not someone like Harry who had the experiences, and attention span of an adult man at his disposal. Harry immediately got the charm they were taught right, a simple thing to shoot out red, green or blue sparks and he spent the rest of the lesson practising other charms. He hadn’t had an opportunity to test it yet but he was fairly certain that he had the Tickling charm Ricktusempra down, added to the small list of charms he could already perform.
History of magic was just as painfully boring as described in the books, making it hard to pay attention. He was pretty sure that most of the other students were sleeping. Harry had the resolve to stay awake though and took notes diligently.
Astronomy too was very, very boring, just memorising stars and planets, moons and constellations. They hadn’t done all too much yet but he was pretty sure that that was all there was to the subject, a dull and slow affair.
Defence against the dark arts under professor Quirrel wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it to be. They learnt interesting things, if you managed to see past the painfully fake stuttering of their Professor. It was rather entertaining, watching the man forget to stutter for minutes straight only for him to realise it and stutter way too much. It was so bad that it was good again, like one of those hilariously bad movies from the eighties.
Flying was… horrible.
As someone who had a very pronounced fear of heights, Harry was frozen in terror just by flying up a few feet. He did NOT look forward to doing this every week. At the very least it was only a subject for the first years, so he wouldn’t have to torture himself anymore after he got through the first year. Still it was a rather lacklustre thing to look forward to.
Saturday, whilst eating breakfast, a letter from Hagrid arrived at the Ravenclaw table.
Opening and reading it, he found that Hagrid invited him to his hut for some tea.
Looking up at the teachers table, Harry gave Hagrid a thumbs up. The friendly giant smiled at him and continued to eat his scrambled eggs.
Later that day, Harry made his way to the hut, wand in his pockets and a book in hand, his potions book. He was currently reading ahead on the next potion they would brew, so that he would be ready when they had their next lesson that following monday. As he got closer and closer to the hut, he found that fewer and fewer students were around. Whereas the castle was rather overcrowded, the region around Hagrid's hut was pleasantly deserted. Harry could even smell the tea which Hagrid was cooking inside his wooden home.
Rapping on the door, a loud bark came from inside.
“Calm down, Fang”, Hagrid’s voice echoed from inside, “it’s just Harry”
The door was opened and Harry was face to stomach with the half-giant groundskeeper, who ushered him in, past the big Fang and into one of the large, leather seats. Tea and rock cakes were already laid out on a table in front of the chairs. Hagrid fell down into a seat opposite to Harry and, with a big huff, asked him how school had been.
“It’s nice, it’s nice”, Harry told him whilst scratching behind Fang’s ears, “Classes have been easy and I’ve been doing good so far. Not the biggest fan of Herbology and Snape- I mean Professor Snape has it out for me, he isn’t very nice”
“That's just how Severus is”, Hagrid laughed, “don’t let it go to your head, he is just still salty he didn’t get the job as the defence against the dark arts professor. He has been applying every other year for nine years now. I heard you are a real prodigy in charms and transfiguration?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a prodigy, I just like to study”, he took a sip from his tea before continuing, “everyone can be as good as me, if they just study every day”
“Not something most kids want to do though, study every day after classes”, Hagrid chuckled whilst nursing his teacup, “any friends you got?”
“No, not really. I’m not used to socialising. Dudley used to ensure that I didn’t have any friends and that just carried over, I reckon. It’s not too bad though, it just gives me more time to study”, what he didn’t say was that talking with hyperactive children every day would give him a headache, so he avoided them as much as possible. He had no friends in his past life and he was more than happy to continue as is, at least until the others were a bit more mature, less chaotic if you will.
“On an unrelated note”, Harry continued after a quick second of silence, “I wanted to ask you about something relating to magical beasts. I read somewhere that all magical beasts can be used to craft a wand, yet, ollivander only uses dragon heartstring, unicorn hair and phoenix feathers, any idea why that is? I mean, why not Thunderbird feathers or maybe dragon scales, if you have to stick with those beasts”
“Well, I’m no wandmaker but I reckon it has to do with two things, first of all, rarity. Thunderbirds are much rarer compared to phoenixes for example and the other thing is that some tissue just has more magical conductivity than others. Dragon scales, for example repel magic, so I reckon they wouldn’t do too good as a wand core”
“Hmm, that could be it”, Harry hummed in a low tone, still scratching behind Fang’s ears, “thank you for the explanation, none of the books seemed to talk about it anymore than ‘these are the best cores found by the ollivanders’”
Wandmaking was fascinating, because making a wand, in theory, wasn’t all too hard, hollow out a twig of a wandwood tree, put a core inside and seal the wand up. Yet, despite its simplicity, becoming a wandmaker took many years of study and perfecting the craft.
There was a huge difference in the quality of a beginners wand and a master wandmaker's wand. Yet none of the books explained the difference between the two. There was no step to step guide for making a wand or improving one.
“Anyways, how was your week so far, Hagrid?”
“It’s been good, it’s been good, got a few bothersome snails that keep eating away my cabbages, might need to get some flesh eating snail repellant if they keep going at my vegetables like that. There’s also been some weird sightings in the forbidden forest, something that doesn’t belong in there has come and is harassing the unicorns”
Harry, of course, immediately knew what that was. It was Quirrelmort hunting for unicorn blood, though he didn’t think he would start so soon. They were barely a week into the school year and already, the possessed Professor was looking for a way to extend his body beyond what it naturally allowed.