𝗽𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄, james potter

03. TRANSFIGURATION

CHAPTER THREE
✧
-: seventh year :-

─ IN WHICH JAMES PUSHES ON

. . .

MUST TO THE CHAGRIN of all seventh year Transfiguration students, they were destined for the lowest depths of boredom and the highest reaches of final-year panic. Swearing into oblivion and cursing the living hells through their unlucky ancestors, each would find themselves thrown into the abyss of disappointment to find themselves reading their timetables, and each would leave breakfast, trudging through the crowds of students into the courtyard, to slip through the doors of Classroom 1B, finding adequate seating, and await the moment when their Professor, for many, their Head of House, to join them.

Matilda Moody was one of them. She had Defence Against the Dark Arts next, and again after lunch, with Potions after that. She would study Charms, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as well - those logical subjects, where one needed to actually think and work hard, none of those woolly subjects her father deemed somewhat useless in comparison.

Only five were needed to become an Auror, because somewhere in all his paranoia, all his vigilance, Alastor Moody had inspired his only child to follow in his footsteps, but Matilda wanted to specialise. With the war picking up even more danger, casting an even darker lull over the wizarding world, dark magic could never be blatantly there. It would be hidden behind ancient languages, patterns, things that couldn't easily be figured out. She wanted that challenge.

And thus, Transfiguration, much like all other choices, was a necessity. She ate her breakfast - something filling, porridge with honey and banana, because she couldn't be distracted by her hunger, certainly not - and made her way to the classroom after making promises to meet Lily Evans and Mary MacDonald to review their Potions coursework in the library at lunch trailing behind her.

She chose a seat in the middle, far enough away from James and Sirius's constant mutterings about whatever prank they were planning or whatever it was that kept them constantly wittering all lesson long - she had made that mistake last year - but not close enough to the front that made her appear all too eager, and prepared for lesson.

The door swung open and shut beside her as other students joined, taking various seats along the way. She carefully pulled the cork from her ink bottle - a deep bluish-green, close to black - that had been her designated colour for the subject ever since her father told her about the new colour-centric system used to organise some of the files at his job, and placed it in the well. A peacock feather quill rested beside it, her textbook at the top of the desk, a piece of parchment placed neatly in front of her.

All ready.

The door swung open again, incessant chattering following and she rolled her eyes. She knew that sound, she recognised it from years of hearing it in every classroom she sat in. The mess of James Potter and his band of hooligans - okay, perhaps that was her father talking; it was only Sirius who was as bad, Remus was really nice, truly, and she hardly knew enough about Peter to make a judgement, the only time she remembered a significant conversation with him being half out of her mind at a party two years before, and she swore it was about cigarettes.

Well, she knew he didn't like smoking, and that was probably enough to reason he was a pretty stand up guy. Or, at the very least, he didn't fall into every category of the typical dick.

The stream of constant wittering slowed. A sound of indignation; perhaps a complaint, and there was suddenly someone sitting down at the desk beside her, dumping a pile of books at the top of the desk and rifling through pockets to dig out a wand, ink and quill.