Harry Potter and the Lost Half-Bloods. *1*

Frank

I ask what I'm worth and my answer is a stick

FRANK: I was beginning to get frustrated. I was stupid to think that somebody could just be born an animagus. The idea was simply ridiculous! Flipping through all of these textbooks was so tiring and useless. Not only did I not find anything, but I had wasted an hour and a half of my time when I could have been doing something more productive like, I don't know, literally anything else?

After I left the library, I found myself not quite knowing where to go. Curfew wasn't for another couple of hours, and I didn't fancy going back to the common room to chat with anyone quite yet. I just wanted some time for myself, some time to think.

I needed to find out how this happened...I've lived my entire life just fine until this year! Everything had been fine until this past summer. Little by little, things just stopped making sense. I'd wake up coughing up feathers, or I'd find myself in the middle of the yard with paw prints surrounding me but no animals to be seen nearby. I had only left home today and my mom and dad felt like a distant memory. I had never been more homesick in my entire life.

I paced the floor of a nearby corridor. I needed to find out how this happened...I needed to find out what I really was! How could everything go so wrong, so fast?

Man, I need to find out a thing that many teens ask themselves at one point or another: what is my life?

Funnily enough, as if the world was playing a practical joke on me, the wall started to rumble. Oh, haha! Very funny, Merlin. Find a kid questioning his sanity? Make the walls shake around him! That will go over just fine.

I discovered in a moment that not only were the walls shaking, but something was appearing. I'd witnessed a lot of odd things during my six years at this school, never has something this peculiar happened.

A door appeared right before me.

"What the--" I cut myself short, making sure nobody was around. This can't have just happened, right?

Calm down, Frank. I guess when a door appears before you there's only one thing to do. Right?

Scream and run away in terror and confusion?

No.

When life presents new doors before you, you open them.

When I'd heard quotes like that before, I'd always thought of them in more of a figurative sense. But I guess the same rule applies with literal form. At least, that what I told myself as I turned the doorknob and opened the mysterious door.

***

This had to be some practical joke. Yep, I was convinced.

"What is my worth?" Asks an innocent teenager.

"Here's a stick on a table," Life replies. "Make of that what you will."

As the door closed behind me, I remembered what this place was. I had heard about it before, my parents had told me all of the rumors and stories about Hogwarts from when they had gone here. I remembered a story about a room that granted you what you needed upon its discovery. Of course, they had said that this was a longstanding myth from years and years ago. All I asked for were some answers about my life, I never asked to find a mysterious room in a magical school.

Hey, I guess you should take what you can get in this life.

Yet, something about it felt familiar. Maybe not familiar, when I hear familiar I think comforting. This object wasn't comforting. This thing was overwhelming; uncomfortable even. I didn't know why, it's a stupid stick for all I know.

However, I couldn't shake the feeling that I couldn't leave it unheeded like this. I had to take it, but what would I do with it? Where would I keep it?

"This is too weird," I thought out loud. "Merlin, God, whoever's or whatever's doing this, I would say thanks but..." I looked down at the stick. I felt uneasy with it being outside of the sack. Oddly enough, I felt exposed. "Uh. Yeah, thanks for the stick." I stuffed the stick in my pocket. Now not only did I have worthless Animagus books to study, now I had a stick.

All I could do now was go to bed and hope for the best. Or at least, go back to my common room for a little while. I still had to thank Will for covering my prefect duties while I went to speak with McGonagall.