Year 3 (pt. 2)
After class, Hermione was catching Michael up with everything happening inside the school this year. “So you're telling me Dementors attacked the train and tried to suck the soul from Harry?” Michael asked. Hermione nodded. “I have been reading up on dementors and I found out about a spell we can learn that can protect us against them. It seems pretty difficult but I am sure we can do it well if we practice enough. It's called the patronus charm and apparently it will produce a silvery-white guardian or protector like thing, which takes the form of an animal or other magical creature that represents who we are.”
Michael thought about it for a second before saying with a grin, “I wonder what our animals will be.” Hermione also smiled, thinking about how she is glad that Michael is back.
~
Within a couple days of being back at Hogwarts, Ginny had already found Michael and told him about the opening spot on the Hufflepuff quidditch team. Apparently there was an accident with one of the beaters and they didn’t want to play on the team anymore. Ever since last year, Ginny and Michael had gotten along very well and would write to each other, usually about the newest match with their favorite quidditch team.
“You NEED to join the team! It’s the beater position and with that arm, you’d absolutely destroy the bludger.” Ginny said, trying to convince Michael to join the team. Ginny was amazing at quidditch but didn’t try out for the team this year and Michael gave her a lot of grief for it.
“Who said I even want to be on a team?” Michael said. Ginny gave him a fed up look. “You mentioned that you might be interested in joining the team last year and in a couple of your letters.” She responded with. Michael could see the corner he had backed himself into.
“Let's say I do join. If it is a match between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, who will you be supporting?” Ginny glared at him. She gave out a long sigh and said, “If it’s a match between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, it looks like I'm going to have to borrow your scarf or something else yellow.”
Michael gave her a smile and nodded. ‘I’ll lend you something. So who is the captain I will have to talk to about joining the team. I'm assuming that after one look at my new arm here, I’m not even going to have to try out for the team.” Ginny told him the Hufflepuff team captain and where he would probably find him. Michael went off to find the captain and just like he guessed, he was immediately chosen to be the new team beater.
There was about 3 weeks before the first game he would be in, and he practiced with the rest of the team quite a bit. However, Ginny was a bit worried he wasn’t quite ready so she would make him practice with her whenever he wasn’t off studying with Hermione trying to catch up on work he missed. They would be out on the quidditch pitch for hours, Ginny flying around the field tossing the quaffle around and having a bludger chase her, while Michael flew around her making sure the bludger wouldn’t hit her.
The day came when the quidditch match would take place. It wasn’t a major match but everyone was still excited about it. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Notorious for being a very civil match but still quite entertaining. As Michael was getting ready, Ginny and Hermione came into the locker room to wish him good luck. He smiled as he saw them both in Hufflepuff scarves and yellow and black face paint.
As he walked out to the middle of the field, he realized how many eyes there would be on him. He was used to staring but he was a little thrown off by the many people watching. They were all looking forward to seeing what the new beater was going to bring to the table.
“Shake hands.” the referee said to the two team captains. Then she blew her whistle. They were off. Michael rose into the sky and kept an eye on his teammates. His main goal was to make sure no bludgers go in their way as they were making points. He continued to hit the bludger time and time again out of its direct path towards players but what he failed to consider in practice is that the beaters on the other team would direct the bludgers at his teammates. While this wasn't extremely inconvenient, Michael found himself not comfortable enough to hit it back towards the other team's players. He could just hear Ginny cursing him about how he needs to do that after the game ends.
After a while, Michael was starting to focus on one particular beater on the other team who seemed to have it out for the center chaser on the Hufflepuff team. The beater would continuously hit the bludger in her direction and Michael would have to hit it away from her. It was starting to piss him off a little bit. After he hit the bludger away from her a few more times he decided he was done with this beater and planned to hit it directly at him next time it got near the chaser.
As the bludger came at Michael and the chaser, Michael wound up his stick, which was held by his metal arm and swung it as hard as he could at the bludger.
The sound it made was so loud everyone in the stands and on the field stopped and covered their ears. A loud ringing was going through Michael’s head, along with everyone else's. As they all looked to see what made that noise, two halves of the solid iron fell from the sky landing right below Michael.
The stands were silent. The referee flew over to the bludger that now laid on the field split in two. She touched it, but quickly moved her hand away. Michael flew down to her and she looked up at him in horror and awe, “It’s hot. I didn’t think it was possible to break one of these. Yet you somehow managed to not only break it, but split it in two.”
When all the people were distracted by this, the captain of the Hufflepuff team flew over to their team seeker and said use this time to find the snitch. The game was still on, and no timeout was called yet nobody was doing anything on the field. So, within a matter of minutes, the Hufflepuff seeker saw the snitch and started chasing after it.
The commentator started narrating what was happening and that's when both teams realized they were still in the middle of a game. Hufflepuff caught the snitch and won the game in the end. But that didn’t stop anyone from thinking about the bludger that Michael completely destroyed.
~
After the game Michael got changed and outside the locker rooms Ginny and Hermione were waiting for him. He noticed Fred and George hanging around behind them.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT! WHEN I SAID YOU'D ABSOLUTELY DESTROY THE BLUDGER I DIDN’T MEAN FOR YOU TO ACTUALLY DO IT!” Ginny yelled. Hermione was also in shock, but didn’t yell when she told him she was proud of him and impressed as hell.
Fred and George approached him, both rambling about how impressive that was and if he knew where they could get a metal arm of their own. They said they would give him a few more tips about how to hit the bludger and Michael said that was much appreciated. They all went to the great hall to eat food and celebrate the win for the Hufflepuff quidditch team.
~
Michael had his first care of magical creatures class and apparently Hagrid was the new teacher. Michael was a bit skeptical about him being a teacher but Hermione said he was doing a pretty decent job so far so Michael ignored his gut.
“Do you know what we will be learning in class today?” Michael asked Hermione who was walking with Harry and Ron. “No, Harry even asked Hagrid and he said it was going to be a surprise.” Hermione responded.
The gut feeling was coming back. As all the students grouped together near the cabin, Hagrid came out from around the corner with a creature large following him. Almost every gasp or looked in awe but Michael and Hermione looked at each other knowing exactly what it was. A hippogriff. While Hagrid was messing with the creature, everyone else was fiddling around with the textbooks they were told to buy for this class.
Monster Book of Monsters was held shut by a leather strap. A couple students tried to open their books only to have them snap at them and chew at their robes. While this was a little funny to Michael, hearing Draco and his friends also laugh at this made it less funny.
“If you think it's so funny why don’t you try opening the book then Draco.” Michael said to him in a cold voice. Draco looked up at him and took that as a challenge. He grabbed this copy of Monster Book of Monsters from Crabbe and undid the strap. The book immediately grabbed onto his tie and started tearing it apart. Michael started hysterically laughing at this and even Hermione started laughing.
“THIS ISN’T FUNNY! GET IT OFF OF ME!” Draco was yelling. Just then Hagrid said, “If you want to tame the books, you need to gently run your finger down their spine.” As Draco did this the book fell to the ground and because of its fall, got agitated and started back attacking anything it saw in sight. Michael kicked the book as hard as he could across the grass and nobody even thought it was a weird thing to do at this point. After going to Hogwarts for three years, they were getting more and more desensitized to weird things that may happen.
“Well, after that, how about we get on with the lesson.” Hagrid said. He told everyone about the hippogriff, Buckbeak, and if anyone would volunteer to meet it up close. Everyone stepped back besides Harry, so Hagrid made Harry go up and bow to the hippogriff and wait until it bows back. Hagrid couldn’t stress enough about the fact that this was a very dangerous creature and if you don’t do the steps properly it would most likely attack. Harry followed Hagrids instructions and the hippogriff seemed very friendly, almost like a pet. Then Hagrid put Harry on its back and it flew off.
“Well that was a load of shit.” Draco said. “It didn’t even look that dangerous. Hagrid probably just said that so Harry would feel better about himself.”
Hermione looked like she was about to say something but Michael stopped her. “Don’t correct him. Let's just see how this plays out.” He said to her, she looked at him with a little frustration but shrugged her shoulders and decided to go along with it.
As a few more minutes went by, Draco continued to say a bunch of stuff about how the hippogriff wasn’t dangerous and that he was going to prove it when Harry gets back. Every word he said, Michael could see Hermione get more anxious as if she wanted to tell him he was wrong. A while later, Harry and Buckbeak land near Hagrid’s cabin. As Hagrid was talking with Harry who was excited about what just happened, Draco started walking towards the hippogriff.
Michael put his arm out in front of Hermione, who was about to try and stop him. “Ugh, it isn’t even that dangerous” Draco said, as he walked up and stood in front of Buckbeak. As he said this, the hippogriff stood up on its hind legs and used its front legs to claw at Draco.
Draco fell to the group with a large gash in his left arm and everyone started screaming. Hagrid distracted Buckbeak and got him back in a cage while Draco rolled on the floor screaming in pain. Hermione looked at Michael with a little anger.
“We could have stopped this from happening. Hagrid might get in trouble for this!”
“I'm sure it will all be fine. Maybe Draco learned not to mess with things he stands no chance against.” Michael said back. After a second, he said, “He probably didn’t but it was worth a try.”
Hagrid picked up Draco who was on the verge of passing out, and brought him back up to the castle and to the hospital wing. For the rest of the day, Michael was pretty amused with himself about what happened. He got to see Draco scream like a little girl and get hurt.
~
It was nearing the end of the year and Michael went up to an astronomy tower to practice some spells. He asked Hermione if she would join him but she was busy with something else that night. While it was a little strange she was busy, he didn’t pay it too much attention until he noticed a couple of people walking across the grass towards the whomping willow tree. The more he stared at the dots, the more he could make out who they were. It had to be Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The jacket one of them was wearing looked a lot like Hermione’s.
As Michael watched them, all of a sudden the tree froze in place and the dots moved towards the base of the tree and disappeared. That tree doesn’t do anything but move and all of a sudden it freezes to let people pass? After a minute or two the tree started moving again.
Michael continued practicing his spells but after a while his curiosity got the better of him. He had to find out who was down by the tree. His first thought was that it was Harry, Ron, and Hermione and it would be easier to just check the Gryffindor common room than go all the way out by the tree so that's what he did.
He walked towards the portrait of the fat lady and all of a sudden Ginny came out of the hole behind the painting.
“Oh, Michael, sorry I didn’t see you there.” She said,
“It’s fine. I was actually going to go and ask if anyone had seen Hermione. I asked her to practice spells with me but she couldn’t make it and I was curious about why.” Michael said back. Ginny looked at him in thought. “I had seen her leave the common room maybe an hour ago? She was with Ron and Harry but they didn’t say where they were going. I'd assume the library, to researching another wild thing.”
Michael nodded but gave a small chuckle to the last part. “I'll look there next. I'm sure they are researching something wild.”
After that encounter, he was sure the people who went to the whomping willow were Harry, Ron, and Hermione. It had to be. But why? And how did they get past the tree? It was able to block freezing spells. So what did they do differently?
As Michael made his way out of the castle and across the grass he was more and more lost in thought. He was so lost in thought that it wasn’t until a loud howl broke through the air that he realized he was at the whomping willow.
Michael looked for what made that sound and made direct eye contact with a horribly humanoid looking wolf. It was pale, had wiry hair all over its body, and walked in a weird hunched way on two legs. Michael was disgusted by the looks of this creature but after a second he connected the dots.
A werewolf. It was a full moon tonight so that's what this has to be. Not only that, Michael gathered that this must be Professor Lupin. Michael slowly looked around realizing that he was alone. Could he fight a werewolf? Michael was a little worried because he didn’t want to get bitten by the werewolf. The werewolf started growling at Michael and slowly inching its way closer to him as he backed away as slowly as he could without startling it.
Within seconds, the werewolf strang up and jumped on top of Michael, knocking him to the ground. Michael grabbed at the werewolf trying to hold it away from him so he wouldn’t get bitten. As Michael was doing this, he realized that he couldn’t just kill this creature. It was his professor, a kind man, who was dedicated to his teachings. Michael wasn’t ready to kill people, nor did he ever want to so he did the only thing he could.
He grabbed the werewolf by the neck and squeezed as hard as he could. The werewolf stopped growling and started whimpering. Michael knew that if he were to loosen his grip the werewolf would use the weakness to attack him again so Michael kept this grip solid until the wolf went limp, falling on top of Michael, who was still below it.
He moved the wolf from on top of him and as he did he saw Harry, Ron, Hermione, and a strange man with long black hair come out from the base of the tree.
“Mike! Are you ok?” Hermione said, running towards Michael. Michael looked at her, there was a small amount of fear in his eyes and only Hermione could see it.
“He isn’t dead. I just made him pass out.” Michael said.
After everything was dealt with, Hermione and Michael were walking back up to the castle together when Michael said, “I was a little scared there for a moment. I thought I was going to die or at least be bitten. I really don’t want to be a werewolf.” Hermione linked her arm in Michael’s and nodded at what he said.
“But you are ok. You are here with me.” She said back. Michael smiled at this.
“I promise to write to you this summer.” Michael said. Hermione smiled and responded, “Of course you will Mike. I always love waiting for your letters. We will have to make plans to meet up again too.”