Hogwarts Legacy; the Story

Chapter 2 (Defence Against the Dark Arts class)

I don't like Professor Weasley. I find that she is always cramming my schedule with more and more pointless activity. She's given me a very heavy Field-guide I need to lug around everywhere I go. She also made a comment about how it'll help me 'keep track' of everything, with a wink, what ever that means. She spoke regarding recent events, "My suspicion is that there's more to the story than a search for belongings and an extended trip up to the castle" she said, adjusting her thin spectacles.

"I'm afraid there isn't" I said,

"Hmm. Almost precisely what Professor Fig said"

I stood up straighter. Professor Fig helped me greatly, and I don't know if I would have made it out of Gringotts without him, provided I may have never been there in the first place if it weren't for him either. But I trust him, and wont betray his confidence. Professor Weasley seemed to sense this as she lets the matter slide.

I caught up with Fig as well, who commended my clandestineness, and said I would need to go to Hogsmeade soon for supplies, once he unearths more information on the Goblin Ranrok that attacked us, as well as his loyalists.

Now maybe I'm just stalling so I don't have to talk about what happened earlier today, during my first class. Defence Against the Dark Arts began with a very long staircase which lead to an enormous arched Wenge wood door, bordered with rough misshaped stone, wide and gaping, like it could swallow you up if  you stumbled too close to it. The classroom itself was a long bowel-like thing, suspended above it in the middle was the skeleton of a long-dead beast, and at the end a white-stone stairwell that lead to a landing which lead to a closed door. I itched to get behind it, just for the reason that it was closed, while the rest of the room was open, not just to me, but a whole range of students. I scanned the crowd for Ominis couldn't see him. The students either stood along the narrow work stables lining both sides of the room like corridors, but most gathered around the middle, where, two students duelled. I couldn't make out who they were from this far back in the crowd, but the heat of their magic flared, warming my face, and silhouetting the crowd. Sparks of red, flashes of blue, warred against each other, and spells muttered too quickly and too heavily accented for me to catch what they were. Then an errant spark of blue hit the skeleton above us, my breath hitched, the loud clatter of its sway sent the students diving and skidding to the parameter of the room, and I must have estimated I was a fair enough distance away as I didn't move a muscle (though in hindsight that may not have been wise of me)  not that it mattered in the end. Before the beasts decapitated head could crash to the ground, crushing a student or two, it stopped mid-fall, held like a suspended magnet just above the ground, and a wizened woman appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Professor Hecat" someone to the right of me muttered.
He-cat. What an odd name. It reminded me of a street-feline, hunting for sport and swinging birds in her jaw till their entrails were strewn out. Oddly, (and not at all in a diminishing way, quite the contrary) with her wispy silver hair, and the sharp look in her eye, it suited her.

"Perhaps you'd be good enough to blast each other to pieces in your own time, I get new students every year, but I only have one Hebridean black skull" she spoke matter-of-factly, which made me smile. A faint purple glow, snaked like a trail from the wand in her hand to the dragon head. "It was a token from the great poacher raid from 1878, no doubt you've heard of it. Now you may wonder how an old woman like me, single-handedly took out the largest poacher ring in Eastern Wales and lived to boast about it? Knowledge."

The Ravenclaws in the room traded glances. Knowledge. If there was one area I was woefully inept in, it was that. At least as far as magic was concerned. I could name every wizard that has ever won the order of Merlin since the fifteenth century, and go on a tirade of information on my most distinguished class-mates, but I didn't recognise the spell Professor Hecat had used to suspend the dragon skull. She used the same magic to fix it back in place then came down the stairs. "To the wise age matters very little. Today we will review a spell that has saved me from death at the hands of dark wizards more times than I care to remember"