Year 3 (pt. 1)
Following the fight that happened during his second year at Hogwarts, it was thought by Dumbledor that Michael wouldn’t be fit to come back to school for his third year. Michael spent most of the summer at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries because his injuries were so bad. But when the school year rolled around he was allowed to go back home. This is where he found a present from Hermione waiting on his bed. There was a note on top of the box and it said: I want to thank you for being a good friend to me. I hope this arm will show my gratitude towards you. Hope to see you soon. ~Hermione
Michael lifted the top of the box to see a giant steel arm, he had to squint at how shiny it was. In the box next to the arm was another note. This one read: Near the bicep of the arm you will find a little slot. Knowing that you broke your wand and will have to get a new one, I thought why put the old one to waste? You can put the old wand in the slot and it will make the arm lighter. It works similarly to how your sword did. Hope you like the arm.
After a little bit of work, Michael managed to put his old want into the arm and put it on. He looked in the mirror in his bedroom and admired the arm thinking it wasn’t uncomfortable and it was quite easy to move. The only thing he didn’t like all that much was the color. After some debating, he went to the garage and found some old black spray paint his dad kept around for projects. He then spray-painted the arm and when it dried he put it back on. He went back to the mirror and thought that it matched his personality and probably most of his clothing/armor better.
The next thing he wanted to do was get used to this new arm and get stronger. So he went to his dad, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world to start training. After months of training and gaining back all this strength plus more his mom took him to Diagon Alley to get a new wand.
While Michael still had his old one, it wouldn’t do proper spells. And while he wasn’t one to do spells all that often, Hogwarts did require students to have a wand that worked properly if they wanted to go to school. When Michael walked into Ollivanders, Garrick Ollivander immediately sensed that something had happened to one of his old wands.
“Michael Butcher, supple mahogany, nearly 12 inches, dragon heartstring. What happened to it?”, Ollivander said.
“I broke it while fighting a dragon," Michael responded. Ollivander was shocked by this. Usually, if someone broke their wand it was because they were being careless and someone stepped on it. Michael then said, “I still have my old one, but it doesn’t work the way normal wands do and Hogwarts requires a proper wand.”
With this, Ollivander nodded and disappeared into the back of the store. After a while, he came out with a wand quite similar to his old one. Ollivander went on to explain, “This wand isn’t a twin to your old one. However, the dragon that your last wand was made of had a twin and this core is from that dragon.” Ollivander handed the wand to Michael, and when he did something just felt different about the room. Wind whirled around causing some papers to turn up and a few boxes fell from the counter.
“Seems like the dragon's twin picked you as well.”
After Michael and his mom left Ollivander’s they went to The Leaky Cauldron where they had food. As they were eating Michael heard some people talking at the bar about the new defense against the dark arts teacher. They mentioned that it was some man named Remus Lupin and while he was in school, it was rumored that he was a werewolf. While Michael didn’t care much about it he did think that it was a pretty interesting thing because he imagined it would be hard to teach if you were gone for days at a time every month because of the full moon.
~
Christmas came and went quickly in the Butcher household. During this time Michael made a new sword, this time made of a stronger metal. It had a spot for his wand and he made sure that the spot where you place it was extra protective because he wasn’t interested in breaking another wand. After the holiday break, he went back to Hogwarts. This surprised a lot of people who assumed he had died or were told ridiculous rumors of why he had been absent. When he got on the Hogwarts Express and settled into a car by himself he was very aware of the people slowly walking by his car to peer into the window to confirm that it was true that Michael Butcher was going back to Hogwarts.
When Michael entered the great hall he was greeted with stares but after looking out over the people he could see Hermione quickly making her way over to him. She had a huge smile plastered to her face
“I am so glad you came back! However, I thought you weren’t going to come at all this year.”, she said with a fast delight. Michael was calmed by this familiarity that he didn’t realize he missed.
“I was feeling a lot better, thanks to this arm, and I decided I should come back instead of wasting away at home.”, Michael responded.
Dumbledore cleared his throat indicating that everyone should find their spots and quiet down. Hermione had to go back to her table while Michael found a spot at the Hufflepuff table. Everything else started to fade into nothing as Dumbledore did a speech about how everyones back and should start preparing for the next half of the school year. After dinner, Michael went straight to his dorm and fell asleep.
~
The next day, his first class would be potions. At first he wasn’t looking forward to it until he looked closer to this schedule and noticed it was with Gryfindor and Slytherin. This meant two things: Hermione would be there, and so would Draco. As he walked to the dungeons he reminisced on the time he saved Hermione from a troll down there. After a while he started thinking of how he could get into Draco's head during this class, too many possibilities went through his mind to keep track of them all.
As he enters the potions room, he looks for Hermione right away. He sees her sitting at a table alone with a cauldron in front of her while she intently stares at the textbook that's on her lap.
“Can I sit with you?” Michael asked her.
“OH, you scared me a second there. Of course you can. I asked Snape if you could be my partner for the rest of the year instead of Ron. He isn’t very good at potions and I believe you have some catching up to do.”, Michael smiled at this. As she said this Michael noticed Draco sit down next to Crabbe and Goyle.
“Thank you for the arm, I know I already said it but it means a lot to me.”
“It was nothing. That is what friends do for eachother, we help each other out in hard times.”, Hermione sighed. “I wanted to visit you while you were at St Mungo's Hospital but my parents were nervous to go because it's for wizards. They still feel a bit skeptical about all of this kind of stuff.”
“It’s fine, the place wasn’t that bad and my parents were there to keep me company most of the time.”, Michael said.
“The arm works alright? I noticed you painted it black. I figured you wouldn’t like the shiny metal color but I figured I’d let you decide what color it should be.”
Michael thought for a second, watching himself flex his metal hand, “It feels just like my old arm, the wand slot works too. My broken wand makes it feel lighter and I can do a few smaller spells with my arm because of my wand too. Nothing too fancy but it's pretty cool. I got a new wand at Ollivanders right before the holidays and have been practicing a lot of spells.”
Hermione looked happy with this, “Oh! We should go to the library soon and practice spells then. I can help get you back in the routine of things and then we can go through the new spell book I got for Christmas from Ginny.”
With that, Snape began the lesson for the day. Michael could hear Harry and Ron arguing about which way they had to stir the potion and if they waited long enough before adding the right ingredient. He heard Draco snicker when Neville’s potion exploded and left him covered in green goo. With this something boiled up in Michael and made him angry. He looked over at Draco wondering what he could do to his potion that would make it also explode.
“Hermione, what do you think Neville did that made his potion explode like that?” Michael asked. She looked over towards Neville and back towards the textbook. “I’d imagine he had his burner on too low. There is a strict 237- 256 degrees celsius for this potion. Anything too low might risk explosion while anything too high can risk the potion taking the opposite effect than intended.”
With this information, Michael decided he was going to turn down Draco’s burner. He walked up to Draco’s table and that was the first time Draco got to see how big Michael had gotten while he was gone. Michael loomed over the table at 6’10”. He looked down at them and asked if they had any beetle eyes he could borrow.
“What do you need beetle eyes for? Doesn’t that mudblood have everything she needs?”, Draco said with disgust.
As he was saying this Michael turned down the burner and Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were laughing about what Draco said, none of them noticing what he had done.
Playing dumb, Michael looked back at his and Hermione’s table and said,”I guess she does have the beetle eyes. I suppose I talked to a bunch of lowlifes for no reason then.” and he walked back to his table.
After a couple minutes, a loud noise came from across the room. Everyone turned to see Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle covered in a bright green, slick goo. Everyone was laughing at them. You could see the anger on Draco’s face as he said,”MICHAEL MUST HAVE DONE THIS! HE WAS AT OUR TABLE A WHILE AGO AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!”
Snape gilded quickly over to Draco’s table and said while glaring at him, “20 points from Slytherin, there is no blaming others for when your potions go wrong. Clean up this mess and reread the textbook. You will be redoing this again next week.”
After Snape said this Goyle tried to chime in with,”I know it was Michael. He had to have done something.” but Snape quickly snapped at him, “Another, 20 points from Slytherin.”
Everyone went back to their potions and Hermione looked over at Michael who quickly gave her a look confirming that he was the one who messed up Draco’s potion. “Of course you did,” she said while rolling her eyes with a grin on her face.