The First Classes
The three girls traipsed along the sloping dirt floor until they reached a T-junction. Adhara looked up to where Peeves was somersaulting around singing, “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…”
“Left is the right way to go, absurd Adhara.” She rolled her eyes at his name-calling, and turned left, where the steep slope continued. The Tunnel started to curve right slightly, and they started to hear more noise.
They were approaching another transparent veil and Peeves went in ahead of them, straight through veil, which didn’t even ripple. Adhara went through second, and came out in some sort of broom closet. She could hear a quiet buzz of voices from outside, and she cracked the door open slightly as the others came out behind her.
Elodie suddenly let out a high pitched shriek, “Merde!! Une araignée! Mes cheveux! L’enever!!!” (Fuck! A spider! My hair! Get it off!). Ophelia spun around in alarm, looking bewildered as Elodie shrieked more, and flapped her hands around, panicking.
“Calme-toi, c'est bon, je vais t'aider!” (Calm down, it’s fine, I’ll help you!) Adhara shouted, switching seamlessly to French and grabbing the spindly-legged spider out of Elodie’s hair. “Est-ce que tu l'as?” (Have you got it?) Elodie asked. “Oui, c'est ici.”
“Merci. Tu parles français?” (Thanks. You speak French?)
“Oui, ma mère me l'a fait apprendre à moi et à mon frère quand nous étions tout petits. Je parle couramment.” (Yes, my mother had me and my brother learn it from when we were little. I’m fluent.)
“Ophelia a l'air confuse.” (Ophelia looks confused)
Adhara laughed. “Oui, mais, pour être honnête, je serais confus si vous commenciez à parler une langue que je ne comprends pas.” (Yeah, but to be fair, I would be confused if you both started speaking some language I didn’t understand.)
Elodie giggled, “I suppose we should probably speak English.”
“Uh, yes please? Was that French??” Ophelia asked incredulously.
Adhara laughed again, and put the spider on one of the shelves next to her. “Yeah, now come on, otherwise we will be late.” She said and pushed the door open to where Peeves was causing chaos among the students lining up in the corridor. Ink was splattered on the walls, and quills were being thrown around whilst he floated through the air cackling manically.
Adhara rolled her eyes and leant against the wall, dropping her bag to the floor. Ophelia was busy interrogating Elodie about their conversation when the door to the classroom burst open. Adhara couldn’t see a teacher there though, which was strange. However, she heard a shouting voice, and Peeves zoomed off down the corridor.
“Come in, come in.” She heard, and the stream of Hufflepuff and Slytherin students dawdled into the classroom. When she got to the door, she looked down at the teacher, who stood at least two feet smaller than her. “Well, come on in then, we don’t have all day.” He said waving his hand to hurry her up.
She sat down on the highest bench at the back, with Elodie and Ophelia on one side, and a short Hufflepuff girl on her other side. The girl had pretty yellow clips in her hair, two on each side, and she looked up slightly at Adhara.
“Hi! My name’s Mio!” She said grinning at Adhara. She had very straight, white teeth with sharp canines, “What’s your name?” The girl’s excitement was infectious, and Adhara couldn’t help but smile back and say, “Adhara Black.”
The pair carried on a conversation until the Professor started to speak. He was balanced on a small stack of books so he could see over the desk. “Hello, first years. I am Professor Flitwick, your new charms teacher. This is my first year teaching here, so I hope you will all be nice and well-behaved. Charms is an intricate and rewarding subject, which I’m sure you will all accomplish lots in. Today we will be attempting to learn and perform the levitation charm; Wingardium leviosa.”
The small professor flicked his wand, and a book on the desk in front of him floated steadily upwards, wobbling slightly as it rose. “Now, if you could all please open your textbooks to page 4, and read through the theory behind this charm, and then we can commence the practical side of the lesson.”
Adhara reached for the textbook in front of her at the same time Mio did, and their hands brushed. Adhara noticed when Mio’s hand abruptly pulled back, but she ignored it and opened the textbook to the right page, and started to scan through the information.
Once the class had finished reading through the writing and studying the diagrams, he started to speak again. “Right, now watch my hand and wrist movement closely, and then try to replicate it silently.” They all followed his instructions, and practiced it a few times, before he started to speak about the pronunciation of the incantation.
“Remember, it’s wingardium leviosA, not wingardium leviOsa. Okay, now repeat after me.” Eventually, they finished practicing pronunciation and actions, and started to try to apply the spell to the feathers the professor had handed out.
Mio got the hang of it almost instantly, and Adhara was close after her. Ophelia couldn’t quite get the right emphasis on the words, and Elodie’s wand movement was too loose, and Professor Flitwick came over to help them both, congratulating Mio and Adhara on his way. “Welldone girls! Very good indeed!”
Mio blushed again and Adhara replied, “Thank you, sir.” The small man beamed at the both and turned to Elodie and Ophelia. Ophelia was closer now, and the feather shifted around the desk, but didn’t lift. Elodie was getting frustrated, and Adhara could see tears welling up in her shining blue eyes.
Professor Flitwick showed Elodie the wand movement again, closer this time, and she managed to copy it exactly, and she said the incantation perfectly, and the feather ascended unsteadily. Once he saw her smile, he turned to Ophelia, and wrote down where the emphasis in the words should be, and she so she got her feather in the air too.
They both smiled brightly at each other, and Adhara turned her focus back to Mio, who was trying to land her feather on the head of a boy in front of them. Adhara giggled when it touched he head and he span around glaring at Mio playfully.
“I can’t do it yet, not fairrrr.” He whined while Mio laughed. She turned to Adhara gesturing at the boy, “This is Theo, a boy I know from home.” She turned back to Theo, who was focussing his stare intensely at his feather, as if that might make it float, and said, “Oi Theo! This is Adhara.”
“Oh! Are you the one who sprayed water at that boy yesterday?”
Adhara nervously laughed. Apparently everyone knew about that now. “Yeah, that was my brother, Sirius. In my defence, he was being an idiot, sooo...”
Theo snorted, “In your defence, you have none, you mean?”
“Um, yeah, I suppose.” Adhara briefly thought it was a strange thing to say, but she pushed it down. Mio was laughing next to her, which only confused her further, until she got distracted by something moving her hair slightly.
She twisted around to see Elodie and Ophelia laughing at her, pointing their wands above her head. She looked up, where a couple of feathers were brushing the very top of her head. She laughed along with the pair and started to direct her feather towards them.
“Ahh no, don’t mess up my hair!” They screeched, and Ophelia leaned back away from Adhara, into Elodie’s chest. They were all still laughing as Ophelia slumped into Elodie, who barely seemed to notice as she began twisting Ophelia ringlets around her index finger.
Most of the class had got the hang of the charm now, and Professor Flitwick was wandering around the classroom helping anyone struggled. Adhara thought he was a very good teacher, but then again, she had only had boring tutors that were much too strict in the past.
The class was drawing to an end, and Professor Flitwick stood at his desk again. “Right then everyone, you have all done brilliantly this lesson. Keep practicing the charm on light objects, and next lesson we will be moving on to slightly heavier things. Thank you, and off you go.”
The whole class filed out into the busy corridor, which was filled with chatter and noise. The hour had seemed like four, they had had that much fun, and as they split off from Mio and Theo, Elodie checked her timetable. “Herbology now, down at the greenhouses with the Ravenclaws.”
“Any idea where the greenhouses are?” Ophelia asked, looking between the other two.
“Nope, no clue. Let’s go find them!” Adhara said laughing and marching off dramatically. Elodie and Ophelia followed behind, also laughing.
They made it to the greenhouse a little bit late, but that was excused by the bubbly woman who was teaching them. “Come on then, let’s get going. Now, there are four greenhouses, each with progressively more dangerous and difficult to work plants in. As you lot are only first year, we will be in greenhouse number one today. Follow me and we will get started.”
The group of children followed her into the glass building, which was filled to the brim with plants and dirt. Adhara wrinkled up her nose, and tried not to touch anything, and Ophelia looked to be doing the same, whereas Elodie was gazing around in awe, reaching out to touch the leaves of the plants near her.
They stopped near the middle of the greenhouses, and the professor started to speak. “Now, I am Professor Sprout, your Herbology teacher. Today we will be germinating some fluxweed seeds. Does anybody know what fluxweed can be used for?”
Before anyone else could react, Elodie’s hand shot in the air, so fast that Adhara jumped. “Yes miss…?”
“Elodie Laurent, and it is used in the Polyjuice potion, to alter a person’s appearance.”
“Welldone Miss Laurent. 3 points to Slytherin. So, here’s what you will need to do. Watch what I do closely, so you all know what to do when you start in a mintue.”
She began to gently place and wrap the seeds on some fabric that she had dampened, and cast a spell on the parcel. “Crescunt magnas fortes. Now, this charm is extremely useful for germinating seeds, as it increases and encourages growth. This is especially important for magical plants, as they do not usually grow as easily as most muggle ones.”
After the class had finished listening to Professor Sprout, they began on their own seeds, working in pairs, or groups of three. Adhara had grouped with Elodie and Ophelia, but it may as well have been just Elodie on her own, as she was doing all the work. She was enjoying it though, so it was ok.
Only a few minutes into the work, Alecto and Amycus Carrow had started dumping dirt on student’s heads. When they got to a particularly short, blond Ravenclaw boy and did it, his friend pivoted around quickly, his eyes blazing. “What are you doing?!” He shouted, raising his wand at the twins.
They snickered, and one of them said, “What does it look like, idiot?” The Ravenclaw boy aimed his wand straight at the face of the wand who spoke. His small friend covered in dirt tugged on his arm and whispered something to him, and he said menacingly, “Well you better stop it, or else.”
He turned back around, his back facing the pair, who laughing mockingly, “Aw, how sweet, he stopped you! Adorable!” In a flash, his wand was pointed back at them. “Shut up. Now.”
Amycus sneered. “What is he, your boyfriend or something?”
“Ferio!” The boy shouted, and Amycus grabbed his reddening cheek, growling and raising his wand too. Professor Sprout had looked up from where she was helping some students, and began to push through the students.
“Vulnus!” Alecto retorted, stepping in front of her brother. The whole class was watching now, and everyone gasped as a deep gash appeared down the side of the boy’s face. Professor Sprout had reached them, and she said, “Protego paries.”
A glowing blue wall appeared between them, but it didn’t stop their glares passing through. She started to shout. “What in Merlin’s name do you think you are doing!!! Fighting! In a classroom! I will be going straight to your heads of house, and all three of you will have detention for at least a month! More if your house head deems it appropriate! Now come with me! The rest of you stay here, and you better behave, or so help me Hecate!”
She was quite formidable, and the Ravenclaw boy had gone pale with worry. However the Carrow twins still had the audacity to laugh under their breath, sniggering at the professor shouting at them. She stormed out of the greenhouse, and the three of them trailed behind her, the Ravenclaw in silence, and the twins whispering to each other.