The First Morning
The morning dawned early, soft pink and orange that gradually faded to the periwinkle of early day. Birds woke and sang their songs high and clear to show the rest of the world their voices. A soft wind drifted through the trees of the crowded, sleepy forest, and if one were to stand at the peak of the highest tower of Hogwarts, even then they wouldn't see a cloud in the sky.
Nico woke up to the soft, warm feeling of sunlight falling onto his chest. Sitting up sleepily, he rubbed at his eyes and stretched, letting out a soft groan. Reaching down to push off his covers, his hands brushed nothing but the crumpled black robes he'd worn at the Sorting Ceremony the previous night. He was still lying atop the covers (soft and fluffy though they undoubtedly were), clothed in his robes and shoes from last night. Despite this, he felt incredibly well-rested, and briefly considered laying there all morning. He sighed, gazing up at the midnight blue top to his four poster bed. He quite liked the idea of having curtains that he could pull around his bed whenever he wanted. It was like having a room within a room. Or like living in a bathtub. He rolled to the side, ready to catch a glimpse of his new roommates tiredly getting ready for breakfast- and instead shot out of bed.
They weren’t there.
Panic rising up in his throat, he tore through his trunk, searching desperately for the alarm clock he had packed. Stark black numbers that cut against a soft muted gray green read clearly: 8:00 AM.
He was supposed to be down in the common room at 7:30 to be led to breakfast. Had they left already? Was he going to be late? Why hadn’t his roommates woken him up?
Nico ran his hands through his hair, closing his eyes to take a deep breath, to calm himself. It’d be fine. Maybe they hadn't left yet! He looked back at the other tousled and obviously slept in beds in the room, and bit back the resurgence of the panic. They'd definitely already left. No, he decided. He’d just get dressed and make his way back down to the Great Hall for breakfast himself, and find the right prefect to give him his schedule. He was capable enough, smart enough. That was what being a Ravenclaw was all about, right? It shouldn’t have been that hard.
He tore through his trunk, throwing on cleanly pressed robes haphazardly and tying his new (blue) tie into a knot, frustrated. God, he was so angry at himself. This was something he'd been looking forward to for a really, really long time, and because of a lapse in judgement caused by too much food and sleepily undermined decisions, he might have messed it up. He closed his eyes, forcing himself once again to calm down. They couldn't kick him out for being late, could they? If anything, people might giggle or something, he might get a stern look from a teacher. Nevertheless, he had already smeared his chance for a perfect first day, and all that was left to do was a make sure the rest of the day went better. The first way to do this was to make sure he got down to the Great Hall quickly and efficiently. That would be easy, right?
Wrong. Nico got lost before he’d even started. When Nico frantically hurried downstairs, he couldn’t remember which of the doors he’d taken to get into the common room- there was one made of marble, one made of wood, and one made of steel. Merlin, why did everything have to be so complex? Who needed three doors to choose from?
He vaguely remembered the door he'd entered being wooden the night before, so he chose that one. Instead of going out of the common room portal, like he’d thought he’d been doing, he found himself at the top of a staircase. The common room door led onto a staircase, yes, but that staircase case was a spiral one. Nico distinctly remembered the dizzy, sick feeling he had gotten when they reached the top. Instead these steep steps extended further than he could see, lit by glowing yellow torches on either side. When Nico turned around to try a different door, he found nothing but a blank wall.
‘Well,’ he gulped, ‘Guess I’ve only got one option then.’
And he started down.
The more steps he took, the more nervous he became. There had been enough for at least five or six floors by now, but the staircase hadn’t strayed or curved at all-it seemed to Nico as if it simply stretched into the core of the Earth. The air was musty and thick, and full of dust, as if Nico was the first person to tread these steps in years. The staircase grew steadily warmer as he descended, both by what seemed to be natural heat, and by the physical exertion Nico himself felt as he hurried down the stairs in thick, starched, robes. Nico loosened his ill tied tie, and eventually let it hung around his neck like a scarf out of frustration. Whatever. It's not like his tardiness would be mendable with an impeccable uniform. Man, if he had regretted not setting his alarm clock before, then he really regretted it now. He wiped his damp forehead, grimacing at the offensive glistening sweat.
Finally, the walls started to seem brighter, covered in fresh natural light. Heart pounding, Nico hurried down the last steps, hoping to all the gods he’d ever heard of that he would end up near the Great Hall. He turned out into the corridor and- yeah. He still had no idea where he was.
It seemed like another regular old stone hallway, maybe not as grand as some of the ones on the first floor, but still relatively large- or so it seemed to Nico. The light seemed warmer down here, somehow. Like the sun that was shining in from the windows that were set oddly high in the walls was being transformed from just photons to the feeling you get when someone hugs you really tightly. Nico liked it immediately. What he didn’t like was the fact that it didn’t seem to connect to the Great Hall in any way.
There was a door at the end of the long room. Nico decided that was probably his best bet. He was planning on swiftly and efficiently moving on through till he found any recognizable landmarks, but he got distracted.
The next hallway was decidedly… busier. Not from people, but from items, from decorations. And from smells too. For some reason, it smelled really, really good over here. Both Nico’s stomach and Nico’s head agreed that this was the right path to take. But that wasn’t what distracted him. It wasn’t the smell (though it was wonderful), and it wasn’t the giant fruit painting (though it was atrocious), and it wasn’t the sound of distant footsteps (though it was encouraging). Nico walked past a seemingly inconspicuous stack of barrels. Then walked back. And stared at them.
There was a door here.
He wasn’t sure why he knew, or how he knew. But there was a door here.
It was almost like there was a draft coming out of it, just a slightly chilly bit of air coming out to drag at his robes, but he knew there was no actual draft, no actual air. Something was just… off about this wall. It was as if someone had built an entire room, full of wonderful and fantastic things, and forgotten to make a door. So they just sit outside the wall, knowing something fantastic was just out of sight. Behind a plain stone wall, and a couple of dirty old barrels.
Nico examined one more closely. It appeared to be a very old barrel of some sort of ale, dating back to medieval times. Nico didn’t even want to know what it looked like inside the barrel. Nico was almost afraid to touch it- he was afraid it would dissolve at his fingertips. Still, curiosity is a powerful thing, so he couldn’t help but reach out one hand, just to touch it once….
“WAIT, DON’T TOUCH THAT!”
A sudden shout startled Nico, and in his haste to whip around at the voice yelling at him, the boy running at him, he tripped over the edge of his cloak, and fell firmly backwards against the barrel.
The good news was that it didn’t disintegrate at his touch.
The bad news was that it exploded.
Nico found himself thrown into the middle of the hallway as the barrel erupted with some white liquid. In trying to right himself under the tumult of ever flowing frothy liquid, he only succeeded in slipping a little more thoroughly, landing firmly on his arm. Nico panted heavily, cradling the abused appendage, trying to breathe deeply through his nose, but had to stop because dear God it smelled awful. It was an acrid, pungent smell, full of sharpness and the promise of rot. Nico stuck his tongue to his wrist begrudgingly, just to make sure, and winced in disgust.
“Vinegar? Really?”
Nico heard a little chuckle above him and looked up.
It was that boy again. The one he saw in Flourish and Blotts. His hair was still as curly and light as it had been the first time Nico had seen it, except now it was plastered to one side of his head, sticking oddly up on end on the other side, like he'd slept on it funny and gone out without consulting a mirror. His eyes were twinkling.
"Why was I just doused in vinegar?" Nico asked, still dripping.
“I thought it was a little bit overkill too, but I also thought no one would be stupid enough to cause it to happen. For once I'm glad to be wrong.” He laughed again.
Nico looked at him in bewilderment, feeling a little bit of anger flush into his ears, but that only made the taller boy laugh harder.
“Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean. But jeez man, you look like a kitten that just fell into a sink. Why were you trying to get into the Hufflepuff common room in the first place?”
Nico started to defend himself, then paused. “That’s the Hufflepuff common room entrance?”
“Well yeah,” the boy said, “What did you think it was?”
“I don’t know. I felt like there was a door there and decided to investigate like any rational human, and your common room decided to drown me in salad dressing.”
The other boy snorted again, muttering “Salad dressing!” under his breath in amusement.
Nico shifted, trying to stand up out of his puddle, and hissed in pain when he put pressure down on his wrist. The boy’s laughter stopped for the first time, and he looked curiously at him, before crouching down next to Nico.
"Hey, are you hurt?" He sounded legitimately concerned.
Nico looked at the boy, then at his wrist, and then back at the boy, suspiciously. He nodded, unsure if he should accept help from someone who'd been laughing at him only seconds previously.
The boy took his wrist gingerly, lightly enough to not cause any further damage, and examined it.
"Yeah, I think it's broken, or at least splintered. I should probably take you to the nurse, but..." He trailed off, gazing down the hallway towards the staircase. Nico followed his eyes, which seemed emptier all of a sudden. There was nothing at the end of the hallway. He looked back at the blond boy, who was back to scrutinizing Nico with those squinted pale blue eyes. He seemed to have decided something.
"Alright," he said, "I'm going to fix your wrist. Brace yourself." He smirked. “Literally.” And before Nico could say anything, like no please do not do that or even yell, the boy had pulled out his wand, tapped it to Nico's wrist, and said in a clear voice, "Ferula."
Bandages sprung from the boy’s wand and wrapped themselves snugly around Nico's wrist, securing the bones in place. Nico, entranced by the magically produced healing, flexed his fingers lightly to make sure he could still move them. The boy had apparently been talking, and Nico hastened to listen.
"...don't know how to stop the pain but that should at least splint the bone, you could go to the nurse to see if she can do anything but-"
"How'd you do that?" Nico cut him off, wondrously.
The boy stopped, dumbstruck. "What?"
"I mean, how did you..." He waved his bandaged arm around insistently. "You're a first year, right?" The boy nodded. Nico felt like he was sinking. "Oh... I don't know any magic...."
"Oh!" The boy said. "Don't worry about it. I only know magic because my dad-" He stopped like he was a wet towel thrown into a freezer. His back went lightning rod straight, and he didn't speak for several seconds. When he did, it was just to quietly whisper, "Never mind."
Nico considered waving his bandaged hand in front of Golden Boy's eyes to shake him out of whatever funk he'd just fallen into. He wanted to bring back the lighthearted tone to the conversation. He felt like he was sitting on icicles. Looking at the vacant hollowness in eyes that had previously been filled with stars, he realized that the blonde boy wasn't just gazing off into the distance this time, he was looking at something.
“Nico! There you are!”
Nico warily took his eyes off of the blank boy in front of him and glanced back. Luke, the tall Gryffindor prefect was hurrying toward him, his face set in a smile so wide it looked painful.
“Bianca was worried when you didn’t show up with the other first years. She asked me to help look for you. I thought you might have followed your nose to the wrong place! Guess I was right.” He stopped, taking Nico’s drenched appearance, and apparent smell in for seemingly the first time. He scrunched up his nose. “Why were you trying to break into the Hufflepuff common room?”
“I wasn’t trying to break into anything! I was startled, and I fell against the barrel!”
“Startled? By what?”
“By him!” Nico turned around, gesturing.
But the golden boy was gone.
Nico felt Luke clap a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “C’mon Nico. Let’s get you some breakfast and a schedule. If we hurry, you’ll get to class without being late.”
He was five minutes late to Transfiguration.
- - -
Nico was a bright kid. In school, no matter what the subject, he picked up the material like it was no problem. It wasn't that he was naturally smarter than everyone- no, that wasn't the case. The reason he was so adept at absorbing information was mainly attributed to his fierce desire to learn. He wanted to know the answer- so he did. Hogwarts turned out to be no different.
The classes themselves were weird and new enough to be enticing. And after years of watching and waiting, he was just so eager to begin that despite his rough start to the morning, he simply apologized sheepishly to his new teacher, and hurried to ready his quill and book on his desk.
His seat-mate, a boy with wild, curly black hair, wrinkled his nose. He leaned over and whispered, “Bro, why do you smell like vinegar?”
Nico grimaced and whispered back. “Long story. Is it really that bad?” One look and a raised eyebrow confirmed it. Nico groaned softly and hid his face. Luke had been kind enough to cast some kind of warming spell, so that he at least wouldn’t be dripping wet, but it seemed nothing could dampen his permeating stench.
The boy poked him in the arm insistently. His brown eyes were alight with some dawning idea.
“Hey aren’t you one of my roommates? You’re Nico right?”
Nico nodded. “Yeah. What’s your name?” he whispered back.
“I’m Leo Valdez. Muggleborn. Libra. Hopeless romantic.”
Nico smiled awkwardly. “That’s… nice.”
Suddenly there was a loud ringing noise from the very front of the classroom, and their conversation was cut short. When Nico looked for the source, he was surprised to find the teacher, who he hadn’t gotten the chance to observe very closely, sitting cross-legged atop of his desk.
He seemed like a fairly young teacher, especially by Hogwarts standards. If Nico had to wager a guess, he would think that it had only been 5-10 years since this man had attended Hogwarts himself. He had short cropped dark hair, and even though his nose was straight and severe, his eyes twinkled with kindness, and his face was molded into a patient smile. He wore the same style of robes that the other teachers wore, but his had an array of colorful adornments, and with the way he was sitting, all the students could see his brightly colored, mismatched socks.
“So! Welcome to Transfiguration class. You’ve all passed the first test, which is getting here, even if some of you got here a little later than expected,” here he gave a sly smile to Nico, who fought the urge to hiccup nervously. “I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you throughout this year! My name is Professor McGonagall.” Curious titters and whispered, “McGonagall?”’s broke out across the room, but the Professor simply chuckled a bit.
“As you probably realize, I have the same last name as our Headmistress- and the reason for this is because I’m actually her nephew. She taught me everything I needed to know, and everything I wanted to know, and managed to make me want to learn more, which is why I’m your professor now, hoping to do the same to you.
“But,” he continued lightly, “For the sake of making things less confusing, I like to ask my students just to refer to me as Professor Michael. That alright with you all?” A sea of nodding heads followed.
He grinned. “Great!” he said. “Let’s get started then.”
The idea of Transfiguration fascinated Nico. Turning one thing into something else was really the most magical thing he could think of. It was like alchemy, and science, and otherworldly powers all in one motion- the rearrangement of atoms into a different form, with a different look, to serve a different purpose. The idea of Transfiguration was great. The execution, however, was less than great.
“Are you having any luck turning your match into a needle?” Nico asked Leo after about ten minutes of frustrating attempts.
“No,” Leo grumbled. “Mine keep catching fire. It’s funny, that. Pretty much all magic I do sets stuff on fire. Handy for making tea, but not so much so for making needles.” He poked his wand at his match again, prodding it insistently. It sprang up into a roaring flame almost immediately. Leo sighed, sounding almost bored, and poured some of his water bottle onto it. He swept the soggy, charred stick into a pile with all the others, and in one glance, Nico counted about twenty. He made a mental note to himself to never ever ask Leo to make his tea, even if he said it was fine.
The motion for the spell was simple. All you had to do was wave your wand and literally say “Match to needle.” But, as Michael explained to them, it was still a difficult concept to grasp. It is the process of literally changing something into something else. He told them to be patient, and gave them the advice of reading the textbook summary of the process because, he said, “It’s always easier to do something when you know why it works.”
The class ended abruptly, without any of them expecting it. The little tea timer that Professor Michael had used to get their attention at the beginning of the class started screaming, signally the class was over. Oh, and it wasn’t screaming as in a little tinny sound ring, like the one used earlier- this was actually, literally screaming. The timer sprouted little legs and hopped from desk to desk to get to the Professor, all the while scrambling to shout, “IT’S OVER! IT’S OVER! THE CLASS! IT’S OVER!”
When it landed on his shoulder, Professor Michael patted it absentmindedly until it settled down, while he finished talking to Lou Ellen about her brand new, shiny needle. Afterward, he called everyone to order.
“Alright everybody! I’m very proud of your progress already. In just one class alone, one single class of thirty, three of you have already managed to master transfiguration of the match to the needle! That’s 10%! Wonderful! Those three students are Lou Ellen Sinclair, Malcolm Pace, and William Solace! Let’s give them all a quick round of applause before we go.”
Lou Ellen, in all her pink-haired glory, stood up and gave a mighty bow to the mild applause. Malcolm, who Nico recognized as one of the boys in his dorm, gave a slightly disinterested nod, and a half smile. And Nico looked around to see who the third boy, William Solace was, and was shocked to finally learn the blond boy’s name. He was already standing, holding his books as if ready to bolt out the door as soon as possible, but he looked like he’d frozen in place because of all the eyes on him, his own pale blue eyes wide in discomfort. His face was growing steadily redder.
And as soon as Professor Michael said, “Alright! Please head on to your next class. I look forward to seeing you soon!”, he was out the door, pushing through the crowded hallway until he was out of sight.