An American at Hogwarts

First Lessons

I woke up very early the next morning. It almsot felt like Christmas morning to me, with how excited I was. Only this time I didn't have to wait for my parents to get up too. Ron, Harry, and Seamus were all still sound asleep, and the sun was just barely starting to rise. I glanced at my clock. 5 AM. I sighed. I knew I wouldn't be able to head back to sleep now, so I grabbed a couple books and headed down to the common room. I spent the next hour or so practicing flipendo. I had read that it was generally considered easier than depulso, at least easier to cast at a useful level, so I decided to focus on it for the time being, as I hadn't been making much progress with depulso. It took a bit of practice, but I was eventually able to pull it off consistently. I was just starting to practice it on on of the chairs when I heard the door at the top of the girls dorm stairs creak open. I glanced behind me and saw a rather tired looking Hermione. Her eyes shot open when she saw what I was doing though.

"So that's what all the racket was. I can hear you from my room, you know?"

I blushed. "I really hope I didn't wake anyone else up. Didn't realize I was being quite that loud."

Hermione laughed lightly. "I'm just a soft sleeper and was already half awake anyways. I think you're fine! You seem to have a fairly good handle on the spell, at least. Rather impressive for your first day!"

I blushed again, a bit deeper this time. "Like I said on the train, I've been working on depulso. Last night I read this was sort of like an easier version of it, so I thought I'd give it a go."

"Can you try to teach me? I don't really know any defensive spells yet!"

I smiled. "I can try! Vermillious may be an easier thing to start with, but it's not quite as useful since all it really does is shoot sparks."

Hermione smiled. "Let's start with that then!"

The next hour or so I spent trying to teach Hermione vermillious. It went ok, I suppose. She struggled a bit with the reach of it, but she assured me that I was explaining what to do rather well, something I wasn't quite sure I agreed with her on. Shortly before we finished up, Marie had joined us, and I was trying to teach both of them. Marie had actually tried the spell before, but was having some trouble with it, which I was able to give her some good pointers on, which raised my confidence in my teaching abilities a bit. After we finished, we noticed that we had left a somewhat noticeable mark on the wall we were casting against, which I hoped wasn't too much of a problem, since I didn't quite know how to get rid of it. My mother had some sort of cleaning spell that she would have used, but I hadn't learned that one yet, so we just pushed a chair up against the mark and hoped nobody bothered to check, at least for a good while. Shortly after, more people began to trickle into the common room. We sat around for a good while before heading down to eat breakfast. Ron and Harry hadn't joined us yet, but I wasn't too concerned. They surely wouldn't be late for their first class, after all! After we ate (I had a wonderful egg sandwich), we headed to the Transfiguration classroom for our first lesson. Professor McGonagall wasn't in the room yet, but there was a cat sitting over on her desk, so we decided to just take our seats at the front of the room and wait for the others. Soon, everyone but Harry and Ron was sitting in the room, and the cat leapt off the desk, turning into Professor McGonagall midair. The whole class's jaws dropped in awe, a couple of students including myself breaking out into cheers.

"That, students, is what Transfiguration is capable of in it's most complex form. You will not be capable of it anytime soon, however I do hope it provides you a goal to push towards! Now! I see some of us have not yet arrived, so I shall wait for them."

With that said, she transformed herself back into a cat and sat there on the desk as she had before. A minute or two later, Ron and Harry burst in, panting.