Author: Lady Laughing Owl
Category: General, Drama
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. Characters and situations are used without permission, no infringement is intended.
Summary: Ravenclaw Julie Fawcett reminisces on her last year at Hogwarts. As she works through the rigors of 7th year, she also struggles to integrate two very different worlds.
* * *
Professor Flitwick, now over a foot shorter than many of his students, still somehow managed to command the attention of the classroom. It helped, of course, that there were less students than usual, and that the dozen or so of them remaining were all serious students. The criteria for going on past OWL-level Charms was less than it was for some other classes, but that didn't mean it wasn't just as hard as, say, Transfiguration. At least two students had dropped the class last year.
Charms was one of Julie's favorite subjects - well, it was about tied with Astronomy and Ancient Runes. The first few years had been incredibly boring while they learned basic spells that were pretty much a combination of pointing a wand and saying words. Things had starting to look up in her fourth year, though, when they got into theory. Today, Professor Flitwick had announced (after, of course, the requisite NEWT speech), that they would be working on adapting basic spells so that they could be spoken with accents without a change in effect.
"An Alohomora spell in English," he said, squeaky voice rising in earnestness, "has the same effect as one cast in, say, Spanish. But let's say this Spanish speaker leaves his native country and tries to cast a spell using English. But his inflections are different! He'll say 'Ah-lo-OH-moh-rah'" - there were a few laughs at the exaggerated pronunciation, "and end up gaining five pounds!" More laughs. "You don't want to end up in St. Mungo's, now do you?" he asked, smiling himself. Flitwick was one of the rare easygoing teachers at Hogwarts, with a healthy sense of humor. That didn't mean, of course, that he wasn't dedicated to his subject. "This, however, can be compensated by wand movement..."
* * *
The Ravenclaws made their way back up to their Common Room for a half hour break. The late morning sun was streaming through the windows, bathing the room in bright light. Those who had gotten back from class first sat by habit in the plush blue armchairs next to the fireplace, though it wasn't lit. The Charms classroom, though not too far away, wasn't as close as some of the others, so Julie, Cho, Thalia, and Autumn (Marietta had Muggle Studies that period) were resigned to seats a bit farther back.
"I never should have skipped a year," Cho groaned, already opening her books and setting paper on the coffee table in front of her. "Charms was alright, but I could barely make out what McGonagall was saying..."
"No one could - not much of it, anyhow," Julie told her consolingly, taking Cho's quill and correcting a section. "There you are - you got the rest right."
"You have homework on the first day?" Mandy asked suddenly from behind them. Her tanned face was red and sweating, loose tendrils of brown hair hanging in limp disarray over her eyes - the fifth years had just come back from Herbology. "Teachers never assign homework on the first day! It's like a travesty of nature or something!"
"You're one to talk, Autumn." Thalia looked pointedly at the book she was holding. "What are you reading?"
Autumn colored slightly. "Just some fiction book..." she replied, hastily covering the title with her hand.
Mandy pried her fingers away. "'Merlin's Magical Mission'? Don't worry, it could be worse. Guess what I saw in Padma's trunk? Celestina Warbeck's autobiography!" The girls snorted with laughter.
"What's so funny?" Anthony asked, leaning against the arm of Julie's chair. He wasn't in much of a better state than Mandy; his appearance was totally disheveled, and his robes caked in thick dirt.
"Nothing..." Autumn said quickly, and they all disintegrated into laughter again, leaving Anthony staring bemused at them.
"Well, I was just going to ask if we're going to start up the -"
"Later," Julie interrupted. "Katie's going to come up after dinner, we can talk then. It's time to go back to class, anyhow."
* * *
Marietta and Julie were the only two Ravenclaws in third period Arithmancy - consequently, even though the two weren't especially close, they took seats together near the front of the classroom. Marietta took out last year's notes for review, and set down to studying. Julie, whose temperament was not quite as inclined to organization, and who honestly had no idea where her old schoolwork was, watched Professor Vector as she scribbled equations onto the magical blackboard with her quill.
"Is this seat taken?" Annie Yu asked her cheerfully, already swinging down her bags.
"No." Julie answered without looking up - when she did, her face became much more enthusiastic. "Oh... hi, Annie!" Annie, who was in Julie's year, was in Slytherin House - but despite that, also one of the sweetest girls that Julie knew. The only reason she'd been put in that House, in fact, was because she had determination and was almost as much of a perfectionist about her work as Cho. "Hey... can you come over to the Annex after dinner? I need to talk to you."
"Sure." Annie squinted nearsightedly at the board. "Remind me why all these equations have to use Greek letters?"
"No clue." Julie followed her gaze. "They look interesting?"
"Shh!" Marietta said fiercely, whipping around. "I can't concentrate with you two whispering..."
"Marietta, the lesson hasn't started," Julie told her good-naturedly. "I'll be quiet when it does."
She made good on her promise, and fell silent then, as Professor Vector turned to face them. She was a rather frumpy witch with thick-lensed glasses and unkempt brown hair - general opinion had it that she was a walking vision of what Hermione Granger would look like in thirty years. "Welcome to class, everyone," she told them gruffly.
"Good morning, Professor Vector," her students recited in rote unison. When you have the same teachers for seven years, you start to get a good sense of their personalities and quirks as people as well as teachers - the rules of a classroom become so permanently burned into your mind that you behave that way without even thinking of it. Professor Vector and her mannerisms were two things Julie could have done without, but by now they were comforting, and she felt vaguely sad at the fact that she wouldn't be seeing them next year. At any rate, she liked Arithmancy.
"The first lesson here is review," Vector continued, stabbing at the blackboard with her wand for emphasis. The wood connected with the surface, giving a screech to rival an owl's, and Marietta winced slightly. "Open your books to page fourteen please, read it, and do all the odd problems in the section. If you have any questions, let me know. Due tomorrow." With this speech, one longer than she was accustomed to making, she sat back at her desk, and turned her attention to grading the first papers of the term.
The classroom was nearly silent for a few minutes as the class read; then the soft sound of breathing was joined by the incessant scratching of Erasable Quills as the seventh years mapped out their Fibonacci Tables (the Fibonnaci Sequence, as discovered by wizards in 1974, actually did have relevance to certain types of Transfigurations). And then, inevitably, someone whispered something to someone else, which reminded their seatmate of something they had to say, until the classroom was abuzz with quiet conversation.
"What problem are you on?" Julie stabbed a hole into her graph paper with the bottom of her quill.
"Number thirty-three, I think." Annie looked down at her tidy paper for confirmation. "Yeah. You?"
"Twenty-four," Julie told her with something less than enthusiasm. "Ugh... I hate making tables."
"It's not that bad." Annie squinted at Julie's paper, which was something less than perfectly neat. "Well, maybe it is for you. Couldn't you make a Table-Making Charm or something?"
"I guess...but when I am going to have the time?" Julie quilled in an answer. "Maybe I could get Flitwick to help and ask him for extra credit?"
"Will you two be quiet?" The entire class looked up, and Professor Vector's oblivious head swiveled upwards. Marietta was practically screaming, her face flushed with anger. "I can't concentrate!"
"Is everything alright?" the professor asked, looking slightly shaken by the commotion.
"Yes, of course, Professor Vector," Julie said quickly, making use of the tone that Autumn affectionately referred to as 'the suck-up voice'.
"Try to keep the noise down then." Professor Vector turned back to her work.
* * *
The other students wouldn't forget about the incident as easily.
"What's with Mari?" Thalia whispered as they all took seats around the Ravenclaw table for lunch. "Annie told me she had a bit of an... episode, you know, in Arithmancy."
"Well, not really...It's just that I was sitting near her, you know, and so I asked Annie about the problem..." Julie scooted her chair away from the table and recounted the class as briefly and quietly as she could. "I hope she doesn't keep this up. I mean, I try to be easygoing, but I don't want to be rooming with someone who's in a state of permanent PMS for the next year..."
Apparently she wasn't being quite as secretive as she thought. Cho leaned over to take a breadstick from the basket, and added, "I don't know, but I don't think her summer went all that well. Last I heard from her, she told me she couldn't talk to me over break because her parents had taken away her owl."
Thalia's attention span wasn't of the greatest length. "Oh, well," she said, biting into a roll and moving back to the table. "Do you know when Quidditch tryouts are, Cho?"
"They're next Tuesday," Roger answered for her - his attention had been grabbed by the mere mention of the 'Q-Word'. "I posted all the info on the bulletin board at break."
"I didn't have time to read it," Thalia said cheerily. "But I've been practicing all summer - wouldn't it be great if Ravenclaw won this year?"
Julie mentally began setting the spell structure for a Table Making Charm. The Ravenclaws - like every other house, she supposed, had been talking about their chances of winning the Cup non-stop since they'd arrived. If she had to hear about it one more time...
* * *
Professor Glyph, a former Ravenclaw, had started teaching Ancient Runes at Hogwarts the same year that Julie had started going there. Supposedly, he'd been awfully inept as a teacher for his first term, but by the time Julie had gotten to his class in her third year, he seemed to have everything under control. Ancient Runes was a particularly difficult subject, which made it all the better to have a teacher of it who never assigned too much homework.
Autumn and Julie, the only two seventh-year girls from their House, were working on the papers they'd been passed out. "Just as a review," Professor Glyph had told them cheerfully. "See if you remember anything - just match the rune with the corresponding letter of the alphabet, and translate the sentences I've given you, please."
Languages came naturally to Autumn - she had come to Hogwarts trilingual, and picked up, out of all things, Mermish, during her time there. She finished her paper a good ten minutes before Julie, and turned it over, staring bemusedly out into empty space.
Julie still finished her work before many of the class - she wasn't as gifted at the subject, but she was still a quick study. Adding her name to the top, with an extra flourish on the "Seventh Year", she surveyed it one last time.
Autumn nudged her in the shoulder and pointed to her own paper - "It's 'defeated the monster', not 'tickled the monster' was scrawled at the top. Julie nodded gratefully and rewrote the offending segment, while Autumn crossed out the words.
"It's the school motto," Julie wrote on a piece of scratch paper, "you know, 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon'... always gets me confused." Autumn stifled a laugh.
"Are you done, girls?" Professor Glyph came by to collect the papers. "Good."
* * *
"Thank you, our teachers, for granting us your generosity and bounteousness in assigning our homework tonight. Amen," Anthony said with good-natured sarcasm as most of the Ravenclaws finished their dinners, and headed back to start their work.
"You think you're so terribly clever, don't you, Anthony?" Julie was fairly tall, but she still had to stand on tiptoe to give him the hair ruffle required by that statement.
"Well, yes, actually," he replied with mock seriousness, hopping deftly over the trick step in the staircase they were climbing.
"Whatever." She was feeling too pleasantly full to make any sort of witty argument. "Will you be in the common room around eight o'clock?"
"Where else would I be?"
"Boy's dorms, library, Quidditch fields -" they both wrinkled their noses at that one, "...Prefect's bathrooms, Gobstone's Club, I don't know... Well, be there, okay?"
She took his silence as a 'yes'.
* * *
Whoever was pounding on the statue leading to the Ravenclaw Common Room was definitely doing it quite vigorously - making far more noise, indeed, than the figure herself, who was giving a very half-hearted cry of "Intruder! Intruder!"
"Who is it?" Anthony tucked his laptop behind his back as a safety precaution, and motioned for the others there to do the same.
"Who the hell do you think it is, Anthony? It's me!" Katie peered through the peephole in the statue's eye.
"And me," a quieter voice added.
"Yeah. And Annie." Katie delivered another series of staccato raps. "Julie, are there? I want my spatula back!"
There was a sound of very blank silence. "I was making pancakes, alright?" Julie looked for the unfortunate person who happened to be closest to the door. "Orla, will you let her in? Please?"
The curly-haired second-year shot her a rather snooty look, and condescended to leave her gaggle of friends long enough to open the door for the two girls before making her way back to her own seat.
"Thank you!" Katie threw herself onto an overstuffed armchair, half-pulling Annie along with her. "It's about time..."
She was interrupted when the bulging sack thrown at her hit her in the stomach, nearly knocking the wind out of her. "Here's your stuff, Katie," Julie said nonchalantly, grinning rather impishly at her. "And your spatula."
There was a burst of laughter. "Let's get down to business, shall we?" Anthony said, perching himself on the back of a chair. "I'll pass around the sign-up sheet..."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, we already know who's here." Mandy surveyed the small cluster of people around her. "Julie, Cho, Autumn, Thalia, Padma, Katie, Annie...Where's Marietta?" She thought for a moment. "Nevermind. Shauna's graduated... Anthony, Terry, Michael, Roger...Anyone else?"
Cho gulped. "None I can think of," Annie said quickly. "So we're doing the paper again?"
The Night Phoenix was the official underground newsletter, meaning that while it supposedly didn't exist, by the time the first term was ever, every first year knew about it - for the most part, teachers turned a blind eye. The staff was largely Ravenclaw-dominated, with Katie and Annie representing their Houses, and a good deal of other students submitting contributions. There had been a Hufflepuff liaison too...but that was Cedric Diggory, and no one really wanted to think about that.
"Okay - suggestions for articles?" Autumn, along with Julie, had assumed the position of editor-in-chief.
"How about what people are wearing? You know, like a back-to-school fashion issue?"
"Padma," Roger said with a note of exasperation, "we all wear uniforms."
"But there are tons of variations," Padma said unfazed. "And we can talk about how to spruce up our wardrobes a bit... I'll ask Parvati and Lavender to help."
"Okay, fashion tips..." Autumn jotted it down in her notebook. "Anyone else?"
* * *
The meeting, which had continued in an orderly fashion for almost two hours, broke up around ten o'clock. By eleven forty-five, most everyone else had gone off to sleep, and the remaining inhabitants of the room were sprawled across various of pieces of furniture, in stages of wakefulness ranging from giddy to half-asleep.
"I swear, someday Hagrid is going to either make an ingenious breeding discovery that will revolutionize Muggle medical science... or he's going to kill us all." Mandy ducked, narrowly missing the empty Butterbeer bottle that Katie had thrown at her.
"I swear, you're starting to sound like Loony Lovegood." Julie, twirling around in her socks, did a perfect spin and ended up facing the clock. "Oh. Shoot. We have have astronomy in thirteen minutes."
"Have fun," Cho said complacently from the couch - it was one of the few subjects she'd dropped.
"Have fun yourself," Julie retorted, running out with Thalia, Autumn, Katie, and Annie, the rest of the seventh years taking the class. "I like astronomy!"
Luckily Ravenclaw Annex was fairly high up, but even so, Julie and the others just barely made it to the Astronomy Tower in time. Professor Sinistra beckoned them into their seats in the indoors part of the tower with an eyebrow arched and a rather knowing smile. Julie suspected that the Professor knew exactly what was going on in this instance - as well as in quite a few other past escapades, but none of them had ever gotten in trouble for it. In class, Professor Sinistra treated her Ravenclaws equally to all the other houses, but outside of it, they'd gotten away with so much that it amounted to either complete stupidity or blatant favoritism on her part - most probably the latter.
"Good evening, everyone," Sinistra said, moving to the front of the classroom, "or good morning if you prefer - it is after midnight, after all, and I'm sure you're all just as happy to be up and working as I am. Today you are all going to show me just how much you have retained over the summer by filling out a basic constellation chart." A flick of a wand, and the said papers appeared on everyone's desks. "I hope you all brought cloaks... follow me outside, please."
Julie wrapped her cloak more securely around her shoulders and took her place at her telescope. She hadn't studied much... or at all, actually, but the constellations came back to her easily. She liked stars - on a thoughtful level they were beautiful, distant, and promising - and on a factual level they were interesting to study. Carefully, she drew out the Big Dipper and labeled it.
"Hello, Julie. Had a nice summer?" Professor Sinistra, who had been making her way down the rows of students, leaned against the wall next to her, her dark hair rippling fiercely in the breeze that had come up. She was wearing a coat that Julie suspected was either Knarl fur, or a very good imitation of it.
"Very relaxing - I think I'm a Muggle at heart. It's nice having technology." Julie wiped the lens of the telescope off with the sleeve of her robe and started looking for the Dog Star. "You?"
"I'm quite as partial to Muggle England as you. And the beginning of term's been surprisingly peaceful too - I've only caught three couples sneaking up to the tower so far." Professor Sinistra gave her a rather sardonic smile before she moved on, but one with a genuine hint of friendliness to it. She was still no more than ten years older than her oldest students and rather sociable with many of the upper-classmen Ravenclaws.
Julie finished up her chart, and headed back to her dorm, completely exhausted. As she, Autumn, and Thalia crawled into their beds, trying not to wake a peacefully sleeping Marietta and Cho, her last thought was that someone should really write an expose about the sedative powers of butterbeer.