The Slightly Stalking Photographer

⚡️2⚡️- For whom the duck quacks

The next day, Esmeralda met Benjamin by the marble statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, ready to eat breakfast. "Good morning!" cheered Benjamin as he ran down the stairs.

"Good morning to you too ..." Esmeralda yawned as they proceeded out of the Ravenclaw common.

"Not really, I think I might die of tiredness," Esmeralda said as they walked down the halls leading to the Grand Stairs.

"That's probably an exaggeration. Nevertheless, I see your point; most people are not very fond of mornings, well except for me. I think I might be the only person I know who likes the feeling of waking up at six o'clock and jog several times around Hogwarts to transfer some of my energy onto something." said Benjamin cheerfully.

"Tell me your secret," Esmeralda demanded, her eyes widening, somehow making her look far more like a zombie than she already did.

"I cannot tell, I can only show. Tomorrow I will wake you up at six o'clock and you will join me jogging around Hogwarts several times, we'll probably only use two hours. Are you up for it?" Benjamin did not wait for an answer. "Super, then it's settled, I'll wake you up at the crack of dawn and exhaust you out so you look more like a zombie than you already do."

Benjamin grinned from ear to ear.

"I hate you, you know that?" Esmeralda said.

"Nope. I have no idea of what you're talking about, the only thing I heard escaping your lips were you declaring your unrequited love towards the one and only super awesome Benjamin Deely."

Esmeralda fished out her wand from her robe pockets and pointed it at him.

"What are you going to do to me? Are you going to shoot Lumos at me? Or even worse, alohamora?"

"No, I find those spells far too basic for me, what about Ducklifors?" She shot the spell at him and he immediately transfigured into a duck. She picked up Benjamin or better known as a duck at that precise moment and said,"That ought to shut you up. Who am I kidding, I'm talking to a duck ... I will definitely tell him later and perhaps mother, she ought to be proud of me for successfully transfiguring my friend into a duck on my first day at Hogwarts."

She continued walking with Benjamin in a firm grip between her two small pale hands.

When she after a while arrived in the Great Halls after struggling to get to the right staircase for an eternity, she slowly, with the duck still in a firm grip, walked between the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tables. When she had walked to the middle of the two tables she spotted a boy with jet black hair and round glasses,she immediately recognised the boy as Harry Potter. He was the boy who drove a blue flying Ford Anglia to Hogwarts without losing any points for Gryffindor together with his ginger friend. She hoped they would receive a detention.

"Hello, I'm Esmeralda De Casseres and this is my duck," Esmeralda said, shoving the duck dangerously close to the boy who drove a flying Ford Anglia to school the previous evening.

"I thought you weren't allowed to bring ducks as pets to Hogwarts," said a girl sitting opposite to Harry Potter, she had turned her head around to see Esmeralda while talking to her.

"Of course I know that, what do you take me for? A gnome? No, this is my friend Benjamin Deely, he wouldn't shut up about his morning routine and he tried to get me to join him waking up at the crack of dawn to jog around Hogwarts for several hours."

"But you're a first year. How could you possibly be able to transfigure something, let alone a HUMAN? We don't learn that until our sixth year."

"Mother homeschooled me as a preparation for Hogwarts. She wanted me to have more experience than the time she started at Hogwarts, she's a muggle born you see." Esmeralda explained, gripping firmer on the duck as he tried to escape her hold.