Charms was held in a bright, airy classroom on the third floor, with tall windows that looked out over the lake and rows of desks arranged in a wide semicircle around a raised platform at the front.
By the time Felix and the others arrived, most of the seats were already taken, and the noise of thirty-odd first-years talking at once filled the room like water filling a jar.
Fred and George took seats near the back.
Lee Jordan joined them.
Felix sat down beside Jonah, who had gone quiet on the walk up and was now looking around the classroom with the careful, watchful expression of someone who had decided to say nothing until he understood what was happening.
Professor Flitwick was exactly as Felix had expected and nothing like he had expected at the same time.
He was small — small enough that he had to stand on a stack of books to see over his own desk — and cheerful in a way that seemed to take up more space than he did.
He greeted the class with a wide smile and a squeaky voice that carried surprisingly well.
“Welcome, welcome! First years, first day, first Charms lesson. No pressure at all, of course. None whatsoever.”
He said it in a way that made it clear there was, in fact, a certain amount of pressure, and the class laughed.
Felix didn’t.
He was watching Flitwick the way he watched everyone — carefully, filing away the details.
“Now then,” Flitwick said.
“Charms is the art of giving objects and creatures instructions they would not otherwise follow. It is precise, it is elegant, and it is unforgiving of laziness. A charm cast with a sloppy wand movement is not a charm. It is a suggestion. And suggestions are rarely obeyed.”
He flicked his wand at a feather on his desk, and the feather rose into the air and hovered there, turning slowly.
“This is the Levitation Charm. Wingardium Leviosa. The wand movement is a swish and a flick. Put the two together and you can lift almost anything, provided you concentrate. Everyone take a feather.”
The feathers were passed around.
Felix took one from the pile and set it on his desk.
Beside him, Jonah picked one up and held it between two fingers like it might bite him.
“It’s a feather,” Felix said.
“I know it’s a feather.”
“You’re holding it like it’s a snake.”
Jonah glanced at him, then loosened his grip.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither has anyone else.”
“Some people have.”
“Some people have read about it,” Felix said.
“That’s not the same thing.”
Flitwick called for quiet and demonstrated the spell again, and then the class was off.
Felix watched the room for a moment before he tried it himself — the usual first-day chaos, feathers twitching on desks, a few floating briefly before dropping.
Fred and George were, predictably, trying to make their feathers do tricks instead of simply levitating, and Lee Jordan was commentating on their attempts under his breath.
Felix raised his wand, said the words, and made the movement.
The feather rose.
It hovered for a moment, steady and quiet, and then he let it settle back onto the desk.
“Nicely done,” Flitwick said, appearing beside him so suddenly that Jonah jumped.
“Very nicely done indeed, Mr. Falker. You’ve done this before?”
“No,” Felix said.
Flitwick tilted his head.
“Then you have an excellent instinct for wandwork.”
Felix said nothing, and Flitwick moved on to the next desk, and Jonah leaned over.
“Was that your first time?”
“Yes.”
“You did it on the first try.”
“So did she.” Felix nodded toward the girl near the front who had gotten hers airborne.
Jonah looked over, then back at Felix.
“You’re not going to explain, are you?”
“No.”
Jonah sighed and went back to his feather.
The rest of the morning went the way first mornings go.
Charms, then History of Magic with Professor Binns, who was exactly as boring as Felix remembered.
Felix took notes.
Fred and George did not.
Lee Jordan fell asleep with his eyes open.
Jonah spent most of the lesson staring at Binns with an expression of quiet, growing horror.
“Is he a ghost?” Jonah whispered at one point.
“Yes.” This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“And he just… teaches?”
“He’s been teaching for a very long time.”
“How long?”
“Long enough that nobody remembers when he started.”
Jonah looked back at Binns and said nothing else for the rest of the lesson.
Potions was after lunch, and it was held in the dungeons.
Felix had been expecting the dungeons.
He had read about them.
He had pictured them — cold, dark, low-ceilinged, full of jars and ingredients and the faint smell of something old and unpleasant.
The reality was close enough.
Professor Snape was already there when they arrived.
Felix had never seen him before — not in person.
He had seen him a thousand times in the books, had read every description of the man a hundred times over, but none of that had prepared him for the reality of standing in the same room as Severus Snape.
He was taller than Felix had pictured.
Thinner.
His hair hung lank and black around a face that gave away nothing at all, and his eyes moved across the room the way a hawk’s eyes moved across a field.
Felix took a seat near the middle, with Fred on one side and Jonah on the other.
Snape began to speak.
He did not welcome them.
He did not introduce himself.
He talked about the subtle science of potion-making and the art of bottling fame and brewing glory, and he did it in a voice so quiet and so deliberate that every word landed like a stone in still water.
Then he stopped and looked out at the class.
His eyes moved across the room slowly.
They passed over Fred.
They passed over George.
They passed over Lee and Jonah and every other first-year in the room, and then they landed on Felix.
And stopped.
Felix felt it — the way you feel someone watching you from across a crowded room.
Snape did not narrow his eyes.
He did not pause in any obvious way.
He simply looked at Felix for a fraction of a second longer than he had looked at anyone else, and then his gaze moved on.
Felix kept his face still.
“Falker,” Snape said, and the room went quiet.
Felix looked up.
“Sir.”
Snape studied him for a moment.
There was something in the way he was looking at Felix that Felix could not quite name — not hostility, not curiosity, but something closer to recognition.
As though Snape was looking at him and seeing someone else standing behind him.
“Tell me,” Snape said.
“What is the primary ingredient in a Draught of Peace?”
“Moonstone, sir. Powdered. It’s the calming agent. The hellebore syrup regulates it.”
“Correct.” Snape’s expression did not change.
“And what happens if the moonstone is added before the hellebore?”
“The potion turns volatile, sir. It doesn’t calm the drinker — it suppresses them. Too much and they stop breathing.”
Snape was quiet for a moment.
“Correct,” he said again, and there was something in the word that Felix could not quite read.
“It seems you have opened a book.”
He turned away, and the lesson began, and Felix let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
It did not last.
For the next hour, Snape found Felix at every opportunity.
His handwriting was too small.
His cauldron was too close to the fire.
He was stirring too slowly.
He was stirring too fast.
He had added the porcupine quills in the wrong order, which was incorrect, which cost Gryffindor five points.
He had not added the porcupine quills at all, which was also incorrect, and which cost Gryffindor another five points.
By the end of the lesson, Gryffindor was down fifteen points, and Fred and George were watching Felix with a mixture of sympathy and admiration.
“In one lesson. That’s a record.”
“It’s the first week,” George said.
“He’ll have time to beat it.”
Felix did not answer.
He was thinking about the way Snape had looked at him.
The way he had paused before saying correct.
The way he had found reasons to dock points that had nothing to do with the points and everything to do with keeping Felix in his line of sight.
He did not know what to make of it yet.
But he filed it away, the way he filed everything else.
He was still thinking about it when the explosion happened.
It came from the front of the room — a sharp crack of sound, followed by a burst of green light and a spray of hot, hissing liquid that arced outward from the desk of a Slytherin boy who had apparently added something he shouldn’t have.
The potion was still spreading, and the boy was already screaming, and the spray was heading directly toward Felix.
Felix did not think.
His wand was in his hand before he knew he had reached for it.
The words came out of his mouth without passing through his mind.
A single sharp movement, and the spray of scalding liquid twisted in the air and became something else — something harmless, something soft, something that fell onto the desk in a heap of pale green feathers.
The room went silent.
Felix stared at the feathers for a moment, then looked down at his wand, then looked up at Snape.
Snape was looking at him.
The professor had not moved from his position at the front of the room.
He had not raised his wand.
He had not said a word.
He was simply standing there, watching Felix with an expression that had lost all of its flatness and gained something else in its place — something that looked, for just a fraction of a second, almost like surprise.
“Falker,” Snape said slowly.
Felix looked at him.
“Sir.”
“That was transfiguration.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have not had a Transfiguration lesson yet.”
“No, sir.”
Snape was quiet for a long moment.
The rest of the class was staring — Fred and George were staring, Jonah was staring, the Slytherin boy who had caused the explosion was staring, the entire room was staring — and Felix could feel all of it.
Then Snape turned away.
“Five points to Gryffindor,” he said, and the words landed in the silence like a dropped stone.
“For quick thinking.”
He walked toward the front of the room and began dealing with the aftermath of the explosion, and the class slowly came back to life around him, and Fred leaned over toward Felix with his eyes wide.
“Five points,” he said.
“He gave you five points.”
“I noticed.”
“He’s never given anyone five points.”
“I noticed that too.”
George leaned in from behind.
“What was that? That thing you did?”
Felix looked down at the feathers on his desk, then back at his wand.
“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth.
Later that night, Felix was sitting on his bed in the dormitory, turning the morning over in his mind, when an owl tapped at the window.
He got up and let it in.
The owl dropped a small envelope onto his bed and left without waiting for a reply.
The envelope was sealed with plain wax, and inside was a single sheet of parchment with two lines written on it in narrow, slanted handwriting.
Your father and I have known each other for a long time.
That is all you need to know for now.
Do not make me regret the five points.
There was no signature.
Felix read it twice, then folded it carefully and tucked it into the bottom of his trunk, beneath the notebooks.
He did not mention it to Fred, or George, or Jonah, or anyone else.
But he thought about it for a long time before he finally went to sleep.