MJs Hogwarts Journal Chapter 5

Wednesday 4^th September

First lesson this morning was Potions. Part of my wished that being as Professor Snape’s classroom was right next to the Slytherin Common Room that we could have a lie-in and just get up in time to make it to his class, but I realised that would mean having to skip breakfast, because we would have to go to the Great Hall first. I decided to get up early enough to join the others for breakfast. What was the point of starving myself when there were plates and plates of lovely tasting food in the Great Hall? My head did start throbbing from lack of sleep – I can never get to sleep on the nights because I’m too excited, but then I’m exhausted in the morning, because I haven’t slept well. Typical me, I guess.

Potions wasn’t too bad today. I think I’m getting a little more used to Professor Snape, having seen him around school more and in the Common Room. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I like him just yet, but he is growing on me. In his lesson today we started to look into what is known as Wiggenweld Potion. We won’t actually be making it for a few more classes yet, but the reading on it has been interesting. The potion is supposed to be able to wake you from a magically-induced sleep, which reminds me of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. I managed to copy out the ingredients list onto one of the Hogwarts napkins that I’ve kept (I knew that they would come in handy and that I shouldn’t have considered skipping breakfast this morning).

The ingredients kind of creep me out a little bit: salamander blood, lionfish spines and flobberworn mucus. I’m not quite sure that I understand the first step either: Add salamander blood until potion turns red? Add salamander blood to what? If you just poor it into a pot on its own, it isn’t going to change itself, is it? Maybe this is one of those trick recipe-type things that Professor Snape was talking about in his first lesson on Monday. I hope that I’m right. I might have to see if I can find him later and ask him.

*

Our second lesson was Herbology, with Ravenclaw. I’d been looking forward to his all morning, one) because we’re with Josie and two) because this class actually seems the easiest. It doesn’t involve any actual magic, which although it is annoying to a certain degree, it is also what makes it easier. Professor Sprout is lovely too, which helps. She spent the lesson going through, with us, the correct way to re-pot magical plants. We even got to try it ourselves. It was just like gardening. It was kind of fun – not that I’m a big fan of gardening, but knowing that I was planting a type of magical herb just made the whole experience seem more exciting.

Professor Sprout even lets us talk while we work, so I got to ask Josie all about her Flying and Astronomy classes. “The Flying lesson was pretty tough,” Josie admitted. “Not because it was hard to do. Most of us didn’t even get the chance to mount broomsticks. We shared our class with Hufflepuff though, so it wasn’t too bad.”

“Lucky you,” muttered Jed. “We’re stuck with Gryffindor.”

“Yeah, but being with Hufflepuff meant that if you mounted your broom after any of them, they thought that they were smarter than you,” she retorted. “It may not sound bad, but it’s not nice when people from your house walk past and laugh.”

“No!” I gasped. “Who’d do something like that?” Josie broke eye contact with me and stared at the plant pot in her hands.

“I don’t know who they are,” she mumbled with a shrug. “Some of them might have been Second-Years,” she said with a sniff. “It doesn’t matter who they were; it wasn’t very nice.” I watched Josie’s eyes shimmer as tears built up in the corner of her eyes. She took her glasses off and rubber her right eye.

“You weren’t last, were you?” asked Jed. I threw him an evil glare. How dare he ask that sort of thing when Josie was so upset. Lifting her eye level up to see Jed she shook her head. Sniffing she rubbed a hand across her face before pushing her glasses back up her nose.

“It still doesn’t make it right,” she murmured. I had to agree. That was awful. Whoever upset her is going to pay. Once I learn a spell… any spell, I will threaten whoever it is with it.

To try and take her mind of her Flying ordeal, I decided to ask her what Astronomy class was like. Upon changing the subject Josie’s smile returned. “I really like it,” she told me. “I’ve always been interested in the stars. I’ve always wanted a telescope too, but-” She ended her sentence sharply, before looking over at Jed. “Could you pass me some more soil please?” she asked. As he handed the sack of soil over to her, she immersed herself in her work.

“My parents would never let me have a telescope,” I told her. “Not that I ever really asked for one, but I know that if I had, they would have said no,” I said with a laugh. Josie forced a smile in my direction, but that was as much as we were able to get out of her all lesson.

*

We asked Josie if she wanted to sit with us at lunch again – well I asked her, but like the last time, she refused. I let her know that the offer was always there for her to join us, but it didn’t change her mind. During lunch I asked Jed what he thought about Josie’s behaviour and whether he thought we should be worried, but he just shrugged.

“She’s probably just worried about us being in Slytherin,” he told me. “Most houses don’t mix with others too often, especially Slytherin.”

“But why?” I asked him. Again, he shrugged.

“It’s just the way it’s always been, I guess.”

“Well things are about to change at Hogwarts,” I told him. “I’ll make it so.”

*

After lunch we had double Transfiguration. It kind of dragged on a bit, especially when for the last hour Professor McGonagall got us to try and turn the matchstick into a needle again. Knowing a little bit more about magic now, I was disappointed that I didn’t manage to make a difference to my matchstick. It wasn’t overly disappointing though, because no one else managed to succeed fully either. I heard that a few people around the room had managed to make a difference though. Pansy had changed the colour of her matchstick to grey and Trevor had made a hole/needle-eye in the splint part of his. While I gazed over at Pansy and Scarlett, Jed nudged me. “Don’t worry about them,” he told me. I rolled my eyes at him and gave a sigh.

“I can’t help it,” I confessed. “What if I’m never going to be good at this?”

“Nonsense,” he said with a smile. “You’ve already made it pointy.” A frown formed on my forehead as I glared from Jed to my matchstick. I’m sure that he was just saying that to try and boost my confidence, because the matchstick still looked the same to me. “It is,” he exclaimed. “You’ve just got to look harder.” I must say, I give him points for trying.

To make me feel even worse, at the end of the lesson Professor McGonagall gave us our first lot of homework… and it was a lot. She told us to read the first four chapters of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration’, the third and fifth chapters of ‘Magical Theory’ and the first sixteen pages of ‘The Standard Book of Spells (Grade One)’. Then on top of that, we have to write a three-parchment long essay about what we found out. And that’s due in this time next week. How on Earth are we supposed to be able to read all of that and write parchments on it? I’m not quite sure what the difference is yet between parchments and pages, but it sounds longer – much longer.

*

On our way to our first Flying lesson I turned to Jed, asking him something that had been on my mind for a while, “Jed… have you ever ridden a broomstick before?”

“Once or twice?” he mumbled, kicking at a stone on the path.

“So which is it?” I asked him with wide eyes.

“Which is what?” he asked with a shrug, his hands in his pockets.

“How many times have you ridden a broomstick before?” I projected, hoping that he would answer me this time. “Once or twice?”

“I dunno… maybe five or six times,” said Jed as he squinted, looking as though he was trying to search for the memory to pounce out at him. “No more than ten.”

“Ten!” I exclaimed, louder than I would have liked. My pulse thudded around my body. I quickly looked from my left to my right. There wasn’t anyone in sight. Hopefully no one had heard me. I ran a hand through my hair and took in a deep breath. “Great,” I muttered to myself as I stared up at the sky. “That’s all I need.”

Everyone from Slytherin was already stood waiting, well gossiping, while the members of Gryffindor filed in. As I saw that Potter boy and his red-headed friend approach the group, a blur of colour shot towards us. It stopped on the ground inches before our feet. Now that the blur was stationary, I could make out what it was. A short lady, with spikey, greying hair, dressed in a black t-shirt and trousers, stood before us with a broomstick in her hand. “My name is Madam Hooch,” she told us. “I will be your Flying instructor.” Her eyes burned into us as she barked, “Well, what are you waiting for? Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up.” She clapped her hands at us to try and make us hurry. It worked.

There were two lines with nearly twenty brooms in each. The two lines were facing one another. This was rather embarrassing; it meant that we would each have to face another member of the opposite house, whilst trying to learn to fly a broomstick. I hurried to the line, although I wasn’t eager to fly, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t stand opposite anyone who looked too threatening. At first I stood myself opposite the girl who introduced herself to us on the train, Hermione Granger, but then I remembered from Potions class that she is a bit of a know-it-all, so I guessed that she probably already knew how to ride a broomstick. After ducking and dodging my way through the fight of people trying to line up beside a broomstick, I opted to stand opposite the short, round boy who lost his toad on our first day. He didn’t seem like too much of a challenge – not that this was a competition… I just didn’t want to be last at grasping anything and I hoped that me and, I think his name was Neville, would at least tie for last place, so I wouldn’t be on my own.

The broomsticks were no more than a collection of twigs tied together on a thicker branch by a bundle of string. ‘It doesn’t look very safe,’ I thought to myself. But then again, neither is flying a broomstick in the first place. “Stick your right arm over your broom,” ordered Madam Hooch, “and say, ‘Up’.” We all held our hands out over the broomsticks and did as she instructed. Nothing happened, at least not to me anyway. Both Blondie and the Potter kid’s brooms zoomed up and into their hands. Nobody else’s broom did. I think I noticed Hermione’s twitch a little, but it didn’t move from off the ground. “Again!” commanded Madam Hooch. Again, we held our hands over our broomsticks and shouted, “Up!” It didn’t seem like much of a spell to me, but more and more peoples broomsticks flew into their hands. Jed (on my left) was holding his, this time, too.

“Come on MJ,” Jed cheered. “You can do it.” I pinched my eyes tight and took in a slow, deep breath.

Holding my right hand out at my side, I spread out my fingers and shouted, “Up!” Something thudded into my palm. My heart flipped inside my chest. I flung my eyes open. Looking down in my hand I gasped. “I did it,” I cried. “Jed, I did it.” I had managed to get the broomstick to fly into my hand and I wasn’t the last one either. Hermione, Neville and Priscilla’s broomsticks still lay on the ground.

Once all of us had out broomsticks in our hands, Madam Hooch showed us the correct way to mount it, which I guess is a little bit like riding a horse. Then, whilst we all sat upon our brooms, she made her way down the line and corrected out posture and our grip, so that we were less likely to slip or fall.

“Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard,” she told us. “Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet and then come straight back down by leaning forwards slightly.” My heart hammered in my chest. I held my breath, feeling the pulse pounding in my ears. My stomach twisted around inside of me. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that extra sandwich for lunch. I could feel it churning its way back up to the surface. I snapped my eyes shut and breathed deeply. Even with my eyes closed I could feel my head spinning.

As Madam Hooch counted down from five to one, Neville jumped, kicking his feet off the ground too soon. Like a rocket, he shot off into the air. Madam Hooch shouted for him to come back down, but poor Neville obviously didn’t know how to control his broomstick and just kept flying higher and higher. He rose like a helium balloon – he was rounded like one too. As Neville flew up even higher, he began to wobble. All of his weight swayed to the one side. He took one hand off his broom. Lowing my head, I balled my hands into fists and pinched my eyes shut just in time to see Neville’s broomstick zoom out from under him and off towards the Forbidden Forest.

THUD! Squinting open one eye, I noticed a heap on the floor. Everyone began to crowd around. “Oh dear,” muttered Madam Hooch. “A broken wrist.” She helped Neville to his feet. I have no idea how that boy managed to survive such a fall with nothing more than a broken wrist. Madam Hooch left to escort Neville to the Hospital Wing and warned us not to move an inch until she got back, otherwise she would make sure that we got expelled. I forced myself to swallow. This woman meant business.

As soon as Madam Hooch and Neville were out of sight, Blondie and his gruesome twosome burst into laughter. “Did you see his face?” Malfoy sneered. “The great lump.” Some of the others started joining in; I just hid my mouth behind my hand. Spotting the sun reflect off a round spherical object on the ground, Blondie started laughing once more. “Look,” he said as he picked the ball up. “It’s the lumps Remembrall from the post this morning!” I had no idea what they were going on about. Apparently, Neville had received a small, round, crystal-like ball in the owl post that morning – I didn’t know, I was still half asleep this morning. Jed told me that a Remembrall is something that is supposed to help a person remember something that they have forgotten, and that Neville’s grandmother had sent it to him.

Potter pushed his way forwards and held a hand out to Malfoy. “Hand it over,” he demanded. Blondie seemed to think that Potter’s words were a little too harsh, for he laughed in the boy’s face.

“I think I’ll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to collect,” Blondie sneered, squaring up to the dark-haired boy. “How’s about… up a tree?”

“Give it here!” Potter yelled. This only encouraged Malfoy more. In a flash, Malfoy had already mounted his broomstick and was in the air.

“If you want it… come and get it,” Malfoy jeered, as he swept in and out of a couple of nearby trees. As Malfoy had done, Potter threw himself over his broomstick and sped off after him. The two darted in and out of the trees, getting higher and higher.

“Give it here, Malfoy, or I’ll knock you off your broom!” threatened the Gryffindor.

“Oh yeah?” Malfoy sneered, as shot upwards. “Catch!” he said with a smug grin as he threw the glass ball up in the air and darted back down towards us. That was a rather stupid thing to do, but pretty good flying on Blondie’s half. As for Potter, he sped off, crashing through the branches of trees, leaves lodged in his hair, as he sped off after the Remembrall.

Landing with a thud on the ground with the ball in his hand, Potter clambered to his feet just in time to hear Professor McGonagall scream his name. She must have seen him from a classroom window. “Never in all my time at Hogwarts,” she roared and marched off with Potter in tow. Needless to say, our Flying lesson was cancelled. I guess Malfoy is good for something – getting us out of Flying. I don’t think I’ll be able to get him to pull another stunt like that again though – I’ll have to wait and see.

- Josie -