Taylor peeked around the common room, feeling a bit out of place. From what she could see, no one was saddled with homework. Even her dorm-mates were working mostly on transfiguration practice, instead of the History Essay due tomorrow morning. She wanted to ask how they managed to finish it that fast, but also didn’t want to. It was a massive assignment and Taylor’s hands were cramping from all the writing.
It was a shame she couldn’t use proper paper and pen. It would have made this so much more easier.
With a final hand swish for the cramps, a yawn big enough that she could fit her own hand in her mouth, she focused on the last part of the damn essay.
On a nearby chair, Luna did one of her singy-songy chants and wavy wand-movement — nothing like what the book described or what McGonagall showed — and impossibly, the matchstick thinned and lost the wood texture, becoming silvery and very pointy.
Luna smiled blindly. Taylor wanted to shade her eyes to avoid losing her vision.
“History, huh?” Harriet asked, slumping onto a nearby chair.
A disgruntled grunt was Taylor’s only response.
It took five more minutes until Taylor finished. She stretched, feeling her spine popping pleasantly. She’d need to do a last review, then she’d be ready to return to her transfiguration practice.
“Why not do it on the weekend?” Harriet said once Taylor started her review.
Taylor grunted again. She wanted to roll her eyes, but it was best to answer. “It’s due tomorrow.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Taylor stopped, and slowly, with narrowed eyes, glared at Harriet. “We have History of Magic tomorrow, and Professor Binns said it was due next class.”
But Harriet was already shaking her head. “No we don’t. Next History class is on Tuesday.”
Taylor glared some more.
Harriet turned around and ruffled through a book. It didn’t look like any of the class course books.
“Here,” she said, handing over a table color coded with the weekly schedule.
Taylor read the thing, looked at Harriet who had an eyebrow raised, and looked at the huge essay that was supposed to be a weekend’s worth of homework. Abruptly, she got up, which earned her a startle hoot from Nap and a snicker from Harriet. She grabbed her stuff, then marched toward her room.
It was a better place to hide so no one would see her burning face.
For the rest of the night, Taylor spent her time reading books in the charms classroom with the pixies while practicing the transfiguration spell hidden from the others. She still didn’t remember where the idea that they had history on Fridays came from. It was also mostly her fault, because she hadn’t checked the class schedule after receiving it from Flitwick.
Once she managed to put that blunder out of her mind, transfiguration practice was easy. It was like from one day to the other, things just clicked. She could visualise perfectly the matchstick changing into a needle, and even knew how to push that image into the spell.
She managed a perfect needle on the second try!
Practice after that turned into experimentation. Could she change the needle colour? Make it longer or shorter or transform into something else? The answer was yes, but also no. Trying to change the colour messed with the spell, but it might have been because she had trouble imagining coloured metals. In her mind, when trying to imagine a red needle, it was always a painted red metal and that didn’t help with the transformation. Making it longer or shorter was easier, and she got the gist of it after a few tries. She tried out adding decoration to the needle, thinking about enchanted runes from those stories. It didn’t work that well, it looked more like the needle had been half forged or something.
After being satisfied she wouldn’t mess up the spell the next day, Taylor made sure there wasn’t anyone in the room and grabbed her mum’s letter.
It was another short one. Mum agreed with her decision to complain to the head of house, she even wanted to send a complaint herself if things didn’t get better. Mum’s reaction to her afternoon adventure was to take care not to hurt the cat, not a single word of condemnation. Taylor managed to go through the letter shedding just a few tears.
Taylor sat down on her desk and wrote another letter in response. She wrote about trying coffee in the morning and hating it, the new classes, the rumors, the gossip, the dung throwing. Taylor also whined about another useless professor with Lockhart, but she wasn’t sure if she should also complain about him: She didn’t want another Snape incident.
The full letter was only three pages long, which she considered an improvement. She sealed the envelope, handed it over to Nap along with a few treats. Once the bird had flown away, Taylor brushed her teeth, got into her pink pajamas, and crawled into bed. She still needed to think of a way to encourage the other students to, if not be friendly, at least ignore her instead of picking on her and Luna.
She hadn’t finished planning how to address the situation when sleep claimed her.
Taylor dreamed about the other Taylor again. She was dressed in normal baggy clothes in muted colours. This dream, unlike the others, was of a normal day in school. By the looks of it, an American school. The class subject was with a professor that somehow made Taylor think of Lockhart. He was trying too hard to look good and smiled too much.
What she didn’t miss was the rumors, or the pushing and shoving and elbow to the ribs when class ended.
She could feel the other Taylor in the dream holding back the insects from swarming the bullies and putting an end to it.
She woke up gasping, bugs and pixies and all manner of crawlies buzzing at the edges of her mind. It was almost like they wanted to swarm the school and do terrible, terrible things.
Was that some sort of prophetic dream? Right now, the talk about interpreting dreams in Divination class didn’t seem that silly anymore. Was she supposed to endure the bullying and do nothing?
Taylor turned and realised she wasn’t alone in bed. Luna had got in at some point. She was still asleep, but Taylor didn’t miss Luna’s pained expression and the tears in her eyes.
It dawned on her that she’d been a terrible friend. Too preoccupied with her own loneliness that she failed to notice Luna was also having her own problems. She hugged her friend close, feeling glad when, instead of pushing away, Luna nestled closer, her face losing the pained frown.
When morning arrived, Taylor gave a surprised Luna a big good morning hug, then scampered off to get ready for the day. Before leaving the dormitories, Taylor made sure to confirm the class schedule.
Flying lessons with Slytherin first thing in the morning, followed by Transfiguration with Gryffindor. After lunch, double potions with Hufflepuff.
The flying sounded amazing, the Slytherin presence not so much.
She ate a light meal (no coffee this time), then marched toward the flying lessons. She wasn’t afraid of getting lost this time, because she’d seen the class the previous day while spying on the students.
Taylor learned that she and the broom were not friends. Much to her embarrassment and to Slytherins’ delight, she was the last one to command her broom up. It was worse because dear, lovely Luna kept encouraging her and the broom to be friends. Taylor couldn’t decide if she wanted to hug or clasp her hands over Luna’s mouth.
If being the last wasn’t bad enough, the broom didn’t want to listen to her at all. Taylor had trouble getting off the ground, had trouble turning around, and had trouble returning to the ground. It was a mess, not helped by the constant booing and jeering from the audience in green.
The whole thing left Taylor confused, because she had dreams about flying a giant beetle sometimes. It was nothing like the dreams. In her dream, she could feel and control every minute gesture of the giant beetle, and things just didn’t translate to broom flying.
The only good part of flying lessons was seeing the mouthy Slytherins having to fly with their mouths shut because they kept swallowing flies for some reason.
Some reason.
Things got better in transfiguration. The first thing McGonagall asked them was to demonstrate the spell. Taylor aced that one, along with most of the class. Feeling confident, Taylor displayed to the professor her extra training, changing the shape and size of the needle.
“Marvelous work, Miss Hebert,” the strict professor said with a hint of a smile. “Five points to Ravenclaw.”
She didn’t miss the intense stare Nneka sent her way and the furious wand waving and whispered chanting. Taylor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the girl. Ginny on the other hand seemed distracted, not unlike Taylor had been in the morning of the previous day. Was she having trouble sleeping too?
McGonagall finished the class by assigning another mountain of homework. They were to study the theory behind the magic, write an essay, practice their transfiguration and prepare for the reverse spell: Transforming a needle into a matchstick.
Having learned her lesson the previous day, Taylor unbugged the older students once class was over, stashing the bugs inside the classroom and leaving teenagers to do whatever teenagers did unobserved. She wanted no part in any of that.
Her morning spying also had good results. By watching second and third year charms class, Taylor learned about two spells she decided were a must have as soon as possible. Second years, after reviewing the Levitation charm, were learning a disarming charm. The wand movement and chant didn’t seem that complicated.
The class after that, the third year, was reviewing a cleaning charm. Taylor really wanted that one, and realised that bug vision wasn’t going to help much. She decided to hide a few pixies in Charms and Transfiguration classroom at all times. They had better eyes and ears than bugs. She’d learn the spells better that way.
Not to waste time, Taylor gobbled her food, fled to her quarters and spent the rest of lunch waving her wand (a smooth, sinuous motion, like a letter S, the professor had said) and whispering the words.
Scourgify.
It took most of her free time until she saw some magic sparks. Taylor performed a victory dance, then grabbed her potions homework and supplies, made sure Nap was comfortable on her perch with enough food to last the day.
Nap didn’t seem happy that Taylor was leaving her behind. She hooted in what Taylor imagined was a angry hoot.
“I know,” Taylor said pretending she knew what the hoot meant. “But but I don’t trust Professor Snape. He might do something dramatic, then I might need to do something dramatic.”
Nap hooted. Taylor imagined it was menacingly. She offered another treat to her pet, then marched toward a class she had an inkling that wouldn’t be pleasant.
And it was anything but pleasant.
Professor Snape looked even more dour than the first class. At first, he didn’t say anything toward her and Taylor hoped she was wrong. It wasn’t until the man decided he had to review her homework in front of the whole class, and deducted five points for “shoddy penmanship” and ten points for “attempt to sabotage others by intentionally using the wrong word” that she knew she was in for a really bad time.
By the end of the day, everyone knew Snape was out to get Taylor. She’d lost more points to her house than it seemed possible. Slytherins congratulated her when she passed by, thanking her for her ‘hard work’, while Ravenclaws glared at her back when they thought she wasn’t looking.