Unlikely Beginnings

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Chapter Thirteen

It wasn\'t long before Harry had come downstairs, looking rumpled but ready
to start the day. Ron and Harry gathered their books and Hermione waited for
them at the portrait door. The walk down to the Great Hall was quiet. Ron
and Hermione were on either side of Harry, which he thought was a bit odd.
Actually, he didn\'t feel it was odd, just that today it seemed that way.
Most days, Ron was in the center. They almost seemed to be using Harry as a
buffer zone; Harry shook his head at the thought, thinking it silly.

They entered the hall to see most students there already, and they took
their seats, waiting for any announcements. Dumbledore wasn\'t in his seat
when Harry looked to the staff table across the head of the room. He saw the
headmaster near the end of the long table speaking to Madam Hooch, the
Quidditch coach. Harry didn\'t have a good feeling about that, and when
others saw who the professor was speaking to, they seemed to feel the same
way.

\"Excuse me. Pardon me,\" Dumbledore said as he scooted his way behind the
rest of the teachers to make his way back to his seat. \"Sorry about that,\"
he said to Snape as he walked by the Potions Master. Dumbledore\'s wiry beard
had gotten caught in the back of Snape\'s hair as the old wizard brushed by
him. Snape uttered something quietly to the headmaster and brought a hand up
to hastily smooth the back of his hair down; not that it did much good
anyway, it was still a greasy hunk of hair, either way.

\"May I have your attention,\" Dumbledore said, raising a hand to gather the
students\' attention and quiet their conversations. \"Thank you,\" he smiled,
when he\'d managed to quiet all but a few whispered conversations. \"As you
all know, the first Quidditch match of the season at Hogwarts is scheduled
for this afternoon, subsequently canceling classes.\" There were a few cheers
from the students who were looking forward to an early end to classes before
the days off they had over the weekend.

\"I regret to inform you that the match will be postponed until Saturday.
Enjoy your breakfast, and may you do well in all your studies this day.\"
Dumbledore sat down in his seat and watched happily as food began to appear
on all of the tables in the hall.

A majority of students were almost too upset to eat at the moment, though.
How could they postpone the match? Why did it have to be put off? Those were
a couple of the common questions heard all over the hall as breakfast began.
Needless to say they weren\'t going to get any answers to those questions
from other students. They\'d have to wait until a class began before someone
could ask. The most disappointing thing for the trio of Gryffindors was the
fact that they now had a reinstated Potions class that afternoon.

Ron groaned and put his head in his hands, mumbling curses to himself. He
hadn\'t done his Potions homework, thinking that he\'d have until Monday
before it had to be handed in. They were sure that Snape would expect them
to have it done already. Harry just patted his friend on the back, trying to
cheer him up. Ron just looked at him and Harry shrugged. Yeah, he supposed
there wasn\'t much a person could do to make a good Potions lesson, short of
firing Snape, at least.

When Harry was done piling some eggs and bacon onto his plate, he tried to
look through the heads across the hall to the Slytherin table. He couldn\'t
see Draco. Leaning over to grab a piece of toast from a plate two seats
down, he still couldn\'t see the blond. Harry frowned into his orange juice
as he took a drink. He didn\'t think Draco would be pleased at all at having
the match postponed. Harry knew one good thing about Potions, though; he\'d
get to see Draco, even if he had to put up with Snape.

When they\'d all finished breakfast, Hermione herded them off to
Transfiguration. She wanted to ask Professor McGonagall a question before
class started, and she was in a hurry. Ron and Harry lagged behind a bit as
they strode down the hall behind Hermione, but they finally reached their
classroom.

\"Good morning, Professor McGonagall,\" Harry and Ron chimed in when they
entered the room. Their teacher smiled at them and nodded, turning her
attention back to Hermione, who was standing beside her desk talking
quietly. Ron proceeded to the usual table he and Harry sat at, the second
from the front on the left side. Ron frowned when he set his books in front
of him and couldn\'t see Harry anywhere.

He leaned to the side of his desk, looking down around, and he saw Harry
kneeled down, retying a shoe lace. When Harry stood up, Hermione had started
over to them, and Ron watched as both of his friends sat down at the table
in front of him. His frown deepened, and he felt a pang of jealousy.
Usually, Harry sat with Ron, and one of the girls from their year sat beside
Hermione. He exhaled slowly, calming himself. He knew it was alright. Harry
and Hermione were friends, they could talk and do projects together in class
without him.

Ron did have to note that Harry didn\'t seem to be interested in Hermione in
that kind of way, though. Come to think of it, he thought, he hadn\'t really
seen Harry have that much interest in any girl. After Cho, who Harry\'s
interest in had waned early on, the brunette boy had always shied away from
girls; except Hermione, that is. He\'d always told Ron that he never felt
right hanging out with Cho, or kissing her.

Everyone had filed into the room and were now seated, and it was still a
moment before the bell rang to signal the start of their first class. The
atmosphere in the room was dull and almost glum. It felt like it would be a
long day, and that thought was universal among the students. No one seemed
to be looking forward to this afternoon, except in the respect that it was
closer to the end of the day. The sooner they got it over with, the sooner
they could go to bed and start over tomorrow.

There was an odd number of students in their Transfiguration class. That
meant that one pair would be a trio, and Harry, Hermione and Ron never had
any complaints about being that group. Sometimes they did feel bad about
leaving the third party best friend out of a partnership in class when the
professor choose the groups.

Hermione was glad to see that Harry seemed more cheerful today than he had
in the past week. She smiled across the table at Harry, and often turned
back to do the same to Ron, though she kept averting her eyes quickly when
she did so. McGonagall got up from her desk, and readjusted her glasses on
her nose. \"Today,\" she began, \"we are going to continue our discussions on
Animagi. You\'ve all got your partners from the previous lesson. You may
switch seats to be seated with your partners now.\"

Several chairs were pushed back, and people stood and shuffled around to
find their new seats. Ron picked his up and brought it to Hermione and
Harry\'s table. \"Please write down your more unique theories on the topic of
\'Do we choose the animals inside of us?\' and hand it in to me at the end of
class. You may begin.\"

A buzz of conversation started around the room and McGonagall went back to
her desk and continued working on grading the stack of parchments that was
nearing a foot in height. She looked up and scanned the room occasionally,
but all the students seemed to be behaving well, and she was soon immersed
in her work.

The three Gryffindors had thought of more rare animals, even magical
animals, that a person could transform into. Hermione brought up a unicorn.
If someone was a unicorn Animagus, would they have traces of silver blood in
their human form before they became an Animagus? Or not have silver blood at
all, even when in unicorn form? Would they develop a different type of blood
after they\'ve completed their training to become a unicorn Animagi? Then
came the question of the topic. Could someone choose to become a unicorn,
perhaps for the purpose of immortality that came with the blood of a
traditional unicorn?

Might they feel the threat of being hunted and possibly killed for their
blood? Even if it was a crime punishable by death, there had been many cases
of unicorn slaying, even though it was extremely difficult to catch one of
these creatures. Hermione was proud of what the boys contributed to their
paper, and she wrote it all down neatly, handing the paper over to each of
them in turn to sign their name on it. A few minutes later, McGonagall
collected their papers and picked out several that were more interesting
than the rest.

Hermione preened when theirs was one of the ones selected, and they
continued their discussion with their professor one on one, with the rest of
the class as audience. It turned into a lengthy debate on several points,
and before they knew it, the bell rang to signal the end of that period.
Since they had another Transfiguration class, they were quite content to
keep going on their debate, though stopping for a brief bathroom break.

After double Transfiguration and lunch, the Gryffindors had Charms. It was
an interesting lesson, even if they had only spent most of it reading out of
their texts, but it was an interesting chapter. When they were all finished,
they go try try out some of the charms they\'d read about. After they\'d all
successfully managed their chosen spells, they were rewarded with the rest
of the class to practise previously learned charms. The class went by
quickly, and soon they were heading down the hall towards the stairs.

Most people seemed a bit cheerier now that the day was half over, but some
weren\'t as enthusiastic. There was still the matter of getting through
Potions with Snape, who they\'d heard was equally ticked off about having to
teach a class that afternoon as much as the students were for having to
attend it. Harry could hear Hermione going over the finer points that
McGonagall had described about Animagi with Ron, who hadn\'t seemed to
understand it all this morning. He was a few steps ahead of them down the
stairs, and he waited for them when he came to the first floor of the
castle. \"Thanks,\" Ron said, but he seemed quite distracted at what Hermione
was saying to really talk to Harry. Hermione smiled at him, and they
proceeded down the next flight of stairs that led down to the dungeons.

Harry was glad that Hermione had stopped watching him like a hawk. He could
just tell she wanted to ask him where he went every time he\'d left her
presence, though minus silly things like going to the loo. Her suspicion had
dwindled, but Harry wasn\'t keen to bump it up a notch again. How could he
tell them where he\'d been disappearing to? Honestly, he never thought he\'d
been gone for as long as he had been when he was with Draco, but he supposed
he was.

He wondered what his friends had been doing in that time. Harry wasn\'t proud
of the few times he\'d basically blown off his friends to spend time with
Draco, and he wished he could apologize. Again, he\'d need to tell them where
he\'d been first, since he couldn\'t apologize another time for being in the
kitchens for three quarters of an hour.

He really didn\'t want to hear their predictable speech about the evils of
Malfoys. Even though Draco\'s father could uphold that point, Harry didn\'t
believe it was true for Draco. Of course, he didn\'t really know the boy
well, and all of his previous years in school his relations with the blond
were frankly horrible. Harry sighed to himself as they neared the Potions
lab. Professor Flitwick had let them out early, knowing how long of a trek
it was to get from the fourth floor down to the dungeons.

A lot of students stifled grins at that. For Professor Flitwick\'s size, they
had to sympathize with him. It really was a job to get down all those
stairs, let alone do it in ten minutes in corridors full of students going
every which way. Speaking of Malfoys, there goes one now. Harry watched the
blond head bobbing through the crowded hall in front of the Potions lab.
Draco seemed preoccupied, Harry noted, and he decided just to get into class
and perhaps try to catch the Slytherin\'s eye later on.

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