Untitled Ravenclaw Story

(c)2005 by Josh Cohen. May not be reprinted except for personal use. JK Rowling owns the Potterverse; I\'m just playing around in it.

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YEAR TWO, CONCLUDED

I’d like to say that something interesting happened over Christmas Break, but I would be lying. Aunt Natalie couldn’t make it this year, but she did send me a teal American football jersey with the number 13 on it; evidently it belongs to a player named Dan Marino. One of Ron Weasley’s older brothers, Charlie, evidently follows American football as well as Quidditch. But really, I think my parents are getting to the point where they’d rather give me a few Galleons and tell me to go buy what I want. Easier on them. Especially since I can never figure out what it is that I do want.

I couldn’t even correspond with Padma; she was in India this Break, visiting family. But when we got back, the first thing I did when I found my way to the alcove was to pull her into a hug.

She hugged me back, chuckling. “Well, it’s certainly good to see you too, David, but have you ever been this excited about anything?”

“Hardly.” I tried to maneuver into a position in which I could kiss her, but she turned her head. I let her go. “Did I do something wrong?”

She shook her head. “No, David, you didn’t. You did absolutely nothing wrong.”

“Then…”

Padma took a deep breath. “I like you, David. A lot. But I don’t know that I’m ready for a relationship that has kissing in it.”

“Oh.” I sat down on my corner of the couch.

She reached over and took my hand. “David, please understand, there may come a day, but not just yet. I just want us to be friends, okay?”

I nodded. “I suppose that’ll be okay. Especially since you really are one of my best friends.”

Padma grinned. “You’d best remember that.”

I suppose I was too young to grasp the implications of what Padma was saying. In retrospect, she was actually very adult about the not-breakup. But we remained close friends, despite the occasional dark nights where I remembered her lips against mine. We continued going to classes, working together on papers and projects – along with Terry and Lisa – and generally getting up to what normal twelve- and thirteen-year-old witches and wizards get up to.

This continued through most of the rest of term, until April, when we had to pick two subjects in which we wanted to specialize. It was actually Hermione Granger who suggested I take Muggle Studies – I think she just wanted someone like herself in the class, someone smart, who she could relate to, and who, most importantly, had grown up around muggles. Padma and Terry also chose Muggle Studies.

I had actually mulled over taking Care of Magical Creatures until Padma warned me that Lavender and Parvati were both in that class. While I didn’t dislike the two of them, I certainly wasn’t a fan of the sparrows – the nickname had caught on with some of the other second-years as well, including with Seamus Finnegan in Gryffindor – and didn’t want to spend two years or more in a class with them.

So I ended up picking Arithmancy. It seemed challenging, and it involved statistics, which I had always been good at in primary school.

I was actually planning to tell Hermione this – she’d mentioned she’d be taking Arithmancy as well – but I never quite got the chance. I was in the library looking up something for one of Professor Snape’s essays when she came rushing in. Madam Pince gave her a dirty look and Hermione completely ignored it, which was strange, because she treated Madam Pince – and her books – with the utmost respect the rest of the time.

I set down my quill and followed Hermione to the section where books on beasts were kept. “Is everything all right, Hermione?” Over the past few weeks, she and I had actually become, if not friends, than at least friendly acquaintances.

“I don’t think so, David. Excuse me.” She reached past me to pull down a thick tome – something about reptiles – and began paging through it.

“Can I help you look for something? You look a bit rushed.”

“Maybe.” She snapped the book shut and reshelved it. I wordlessly passed her another reptile book, this one a bit thinner. “How much do you know about magical reptiles?”

“Just a bit. A friend in primary school had a komodo dragon, but the magic’s been bred out of those.”

She put that one back on the shelf. I handed her a third; this one had a lot of dust on it. “What did they do?”

“Not much, really.” I pulled down Virulent Vipers And Other Poisonous Reptiles and started paging through it. “They used to have pretty strong poison in their fangs, and they could cast stunning spells on anything about the size of a terrier or smaller. Kind of like a smallish basilisk.”

“What?” Hermione looked directly at me. Her eyes were an unprepossessing shade of brown. “Say that again.”

“Like a smallish basilisk. A small version of this.” I turned the book around and showed her the picture. She grabbed it out of my hands and I could see her eyes darting down the page. “Do you need a bit of parchment?” She nodded, eyes still on the book, and I gently took the edge of her robe and led her back to where my things were. Wordlessly, I slid a blank piece and my quill over to her, and she began scribbling furiously.

I just watched.

It only took a couple of minutes, though; Hermione gave me a grateful look and tore off the part of the parchment she’d used. “Thanks so much, David. I needed that.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, but it was to her back; she was halfway across the library, moving at a run.

At a more leisurely pace, I paged through the section on basilisks. My heart started pounding as I connected what I knew – the Petrifications, the strange behavior of spiders that I’d noticed a couple of times this term, usually near the Herbology greenhouses – and combined that with Hermione’s behavior when I’d mentioned the basilisk.

Hermione, like myself, was not a pure-blood. And if what Professor Binns had told us in History of Magic, back in November – we had that class with the Gryffindors – was true, it would continue to spare pure-bloods.

Oh, no.

I was too late. By the time I figured out where Hermione had gone, she had already been Petrified.

Over the next few weeks, I was furious. Hermione had figured it out. I had figured it out. But no one was listening. Professor Flitwick seemed too willing to ignore what I was saying – “There can’t possibly be a basilisk in Hogwarts, David! We would have seen it!” – and Lockhart was only too happy to say how he was looking into the problem. I wasn’t going to Professor Dumbledore – not like I could get an appointment to see him, not with the way he and Professor McGonagall were being deluged with owls and Floo messages from worried parents. Only Professor Snape seemed to take me seriously – but even he, as Head of House for Slytherin, still had much to deal with, including preparing his OWL and NEWT classes. He did say he’d try to find time to address the situation, but I had the distinct feeling that I was being politely brushed off.

The Friday before exams, I had had about enough. Terry, Padma, and I were in my alcove at the top of Ravenclaw’s common room. “Look, mate, you can’t go confront a professor! It isn’t done!”

“The hell I can’t, Terry! The man’s a fraud! What have we learned from his class?”

“Nothing.” Padma had made it clear that she wouldn’t take on a professor, but she agreed with me that Lockhart was worthless. “Unless you count Reenactment 101.”

“David,” Terry tried to caution me, “he may simply be hiding his power. He may very well be more powerful than anyone thinks.”

“You’re grasping at straws.” I was surprised that this came from Padma; I had been about to say something in kind. “David’s right. Lockhart should’ve figured this out, and he should’ve stopped it after that Gryffindor first-year was Petrified. None of the others should have had to face this.”

“I’m going, Terry. I’m going to make him do something, or I’m going to make him leave.”

I stood up, and I felt them both watch me go.

Padma’s “be careful”, as my head dropped below the level of the floor, was the last thing I heard from them.

We had Defense Against The Dark Arts last period on Fridays; Madam Pomfrey had led us to Lockhart’s classroom from the Great Hall after lunch. I strode to his desk and said, softly, “Professor Lockhart, may I have a private word with you before class starts?”

I could tell he was going to brush me off again, but when he saw my eyes, shaded to the pale amber I know they are when I’m angry, he nodded. “All of you, please wait a moment. I will be along to review for your exams after I speak privately with Mr. Goldman.”

I followed Lockhart into his office and shut the door behind me.

“All right, David,” he said, not quite angry but definitely not happy, “I’ll tell you once more: I haven’t been able to discover anything that proves out your theory about a basilisk in the walls. It must be something else.”

“No, it’s not. You’re just incompetent.”

It took a moment for this to register with him. His mouth dropped open, and he pulled out his wand. “How… dare… you!”

“Simple.” I pulled out my own wand – the way Lockhart was holding his, I had a real fear he might fire a spell at me that would, completely by accident, actually do some damage. “I have learned nothing in Defense Against the Dark Arts this year except how to recreate your little victories. I have seen you do no spells that actually had their intended effect. And I have sat by and watched as students here at Hogwarts were Petrified.” My voice had been getting louder; I was really hoping someone had put a Silencing Charm on the door before Lockhart had gotten here. “I have watched, and you have done nothing!” I stepped toward him, and he gave ground. “Look at you! You’re more concerned with fan mail than with doing the right thing! You’re afraid! Even of me, a mere second-year wizard student!”

“Look, David, you’re being completely irrational.”

I stepped into him again, and he stepped back, but now there was nowhere to go. His back was against the wall, and all the photographs and press clippings were watching me warily. “I’m going to give you two options.” I brought up my wand. “Either you will find out what is going on and stop it from happening, or you will resign. Right now.”

“But… but…”

I cut him off. “Make. Your. Choice.”

The tip of my wand started to glow a sharp blue color – it looked an awful lot like I was about to cast some sort of curse, although it was really a simple spell used in the creation of certain types of art. I’d simply pre-cast it on my wand and keyed it to go off when I said the word “choice”. If I touched Lockhart with it, I might stain his robes.

But he didn’t know that.

We stared at each other for a long, long moment. But it was Lockhart who broke first. “Fine. You win.”

I backed up and whispered “choice” again; my wand stopped glowing. “So what’s it going to be?”

“I told you, you win. I’m resigning. So long as you promise never to repeat any of what’s happened here, I will never darken your doorstep again.”

“All right.” I didn’t put my wand away, I simply turned to open the door. “I’m sorry I had to do that.”

“And I’m sorry I have to do this,” he shot back, raising his wand. “Obliviate!”

“Protego!”

I was only a second-year wizard student. I had only just recently read about Shield Charms. I wasn’t even sure if I’d done it right.

But I must have done it right enough. Lockhart’s spell hit the shield and both evaporated.

“Do it again, Lockhart, and next time, it won’t simply be a shield.”

He slumped to the floor. I left the office and returned to my seat next to Padma.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

“Oh, just fine.”

About a minute later, one of the portraits behind Lockhart’s desk said, “class is cancelled today. I have asked Madam Pince to return you to your common rooms.”

“But what about the review?” protested Wayne Hopkins, one of the Hufflepuffs.

The picture looked flustered, but then recovered. “Bring your notes to the exam.”

A small cheer erupted, and I smiled at Padma. “Bet there won’t even be one,” I said.

“I never bet when I’m going to lose.”

I like to think that I had something to do with how it all shook out. I like to think that if I hadn’t convinced Lockhart to leave, he wouldn’t have been packing when Potter and Ron found him, and they wouldn’t have been able to make him come along with them to the Chamber of Secrets. And I like to think that I had a bit part in the cancelling of end-of-year exams.

Of course, in the end, Potter and Ron and even Hermione got all the glory. I’m not a glory-hound. I never was. But I truly wish Ron had been the one to face down the ghost of Tom Riddle. I like Ginny, and I’m glad Potter was able to save her, but I… oh, hell. I don’t know.

On the train back to London, I ran into Potter while on the way back from the loo – I’m guessing he was on his way there. “David,” he said in greeting.

“Harry.”

We were a few steps apart when I turned around and called after him.

“What is it?” He truly looked tired. Triumphant, but tired.

I held out my hand. “Good work. Thank you for saving Ginny. I’ve known her most of my life, and it would’ve been horrid if she’d died down there.”

Harry held out his own hand, and we shook on it. I met his emerald eyes with my amber ones as I felt the power flush within him.

It had changed. There was something more there. Something like… confidence?

I still didn’t like him all that much – especially given how much attention he gets, and how much he gets away with. But as a human being, he really wasn’t so bad. I think I may have actually started to respect him.

We separated and went our separate ways. I returned to the cabin I was sharing with Padma, Lisa, and Terry; Terry passed me the latest issue of Sandman without a word.

A satisfying end to another year at Hogwarts.

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Don\'t worry... It\'s not over. Year Three is coming, just as soon as I write it.

I realize that this chapter was shortish, but really, not a whole lot happened in Second Year that didn\'t directly involve the Golden Trio. I think it might have been a little too forced if I\'d tried to shoehorn my own story in there too much. That, and the previous chapter was probably the longest I\'ve written (15 D/S pages in Word). So it all evens out in the end.

You can see that the main characters -- David, Terry, and Padma -- are starting to become more adult. Next year, there\'ll be a little experimentation, I think.

Also, you\'ll probably note that I\'m a Miami Dolphins fan, and that I like humorous t-shirts.

Reviews are always welcome. Until next time...