“And after Gnarlok the gnarly took up his axe against the brotherhood of steel...”

 

I don't think there existed words in the english language that described how boring Binns was.

 

I really didn't. It was Halloween for fucks sake, the day where almost everyone in Britain celebrated the defeat of Voldemort. If there was a day for Binns to not drone about boring stuff, it would be this one. But he didn’t, of course.

 

After the most boring class in the world was over, we headed the halloween feast.

 

Aka the troll infestation.

 

Looking at the Ravenclaw table, I saw Hermione and decided that no, there probably wouldn't be any need for heroics this day. Not that there would have been had she not been present. It would have simply led me to telling the teachers about her absence and have them look for her.

 

Letting my gaze sweep over the other tables, I observed the other people I had a mild interest in.

 

Malfoy was just gloating about something. I hadn't really had much interaction with him at all, so I didn’t have a good grasp of his character, although he was still undoubtedly a prat.

 

Potter was looking sad, I had noticed that he hadn't really made many friends in Gryffindor. I had initially thought he would go to Slytherin without the influence of the original Ron, but I was wrong, apparently.

 

Kid probably wanted to have some connection to his parents.

 

I took a look at the staff table, Quirrell naturally wasn't there.

 

Our Defense professor was odd. For one, he didn't stutter, and even weirder was the fact that he was actually able to teach us something.

 

Oh sure he only taught us the knockback jinx flipendo and some standard rules about what to do in certain situations.

 

But still, the man had surprised me.

 

It drove home the fact that these weren’t the characters of a modern fairy tale, they were real people, with personalities and thought processes. This meant that I couldn’t completely trust in canon being reproduced in reality.

 

Speak of the devil and he shall come. Quirrell ran into the hall, his turban flopping madly and after warning us of a troll, promptly fainted in a very anticlimactic way.

 

After we were herded through the halls of Hogwarts towards our homey common room. I noticed how everyone was just kind of sitting there, busy being scared. I pulled out my sketchbook jumped on a table and shouted.

 

“THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE DRAWN BY THE FUTURE GREATEST WIZARD IN THE WORLD SINCE EVER.”

 

Suffice to say, that broke the gloomy atmosphere. Some laughed, some started chatting with their friends and some came to me wanting to get sketches of themselves.

 

After some partying that had broken out for whatever reason, I was finally alone.

 

I had noticed fairly early on, that as my body aged, I required less and less sleep, so I used the time where almost everyone else was resting to practice some harmless magic in the common room.

 

I was just practicing my transfiguration when I heard someone coming downstairs. Sadly leaving the tortoise I had been practicing on looking like it had been crossbred with a rabbit.

 

I turning to Susan. “Couldn't sleep?” I asked, to which she shook her head and sat down on the couch opposite of me.

 

“Nightmares.” Was her answer. Which technically was having trouble sleeping, so I was nonplussed as to why she’d shaken her head.

 

She looked bleary eyed and just generally tired, so I didn't pry as much as I simply encouraged. “I find that it helps if you talk about it.”

 

She looked contemplative. I refused to say anything more and went back to turning the tortoise into a rabbit.

 

“That's pretty advanced transfiguration.” She commented..

 

Third year stuff to be exact, a requirement of becoming an animagus was that you had to be good at animate to animate transfiguration. I simply hummed in agreement.

 

“You know I've actually seen a troll before, they were ugly and aggressive, I don't think I'll ever forget it.” Children, she probably would forget it.

 

“I dreamed about what would have happened if it had found me.” Thankfully I knew the perfect response to that.

 

Giving her a goofy grin I said. “Don't worry I would have been there to protect you.” She giggled at me.

 

I hung around Wayne and Susan quite a lot. More Wayne than Susan, she was after all also friends with Abbott, who for some reason didn't like me, but still that was a lot of my free time.

 

“You act like a politician.” She commented, to which I raised a brow at her.

 

“You make that sound like a negative aspect.”

 

She apparently didn't find my joke funny since she furrowed her brows at me and tried to look intimidating.

 

She looked like a furious chipmunk.

 

“That's what I mean, you don't give out direct answers often, always skirting around things using words that could be interpreted in different ways.” I gave her a grin.

 

“Everything I say is a truth, but how you interpret those truths will determine your understanding of the situation at hand.” I thought that would brighten her mood. It didn't, she just scowled at me and left.

 

I went back to practicing transfiguration. At the rate I was going I would be able to start the process of becoming an animagus in less than a year.

 

Maybe it seemed like I didn't really care about the Susan’s thoughts.

 

That wasn't true, I did. I enjoyed spending time with almost all of my Puffs (when in class, and therefore having no other options). Not only because I enjoyed having minions but simply because they were nice kids.

 

It was just the fact that I knew Susan would forget all about our argument in a few days as long as I didn’t bring it up.

 

I went to bed not wanting to be tired the next day, it would after all be the first time I would ride a broom.