ᴅɪsᴘᴇʟ ᴍʏ ʙᴏʀᴇᴅᴏᴍ | ᴍᴀʀᴀᴅᴇᴜʀs' ᴇʀᴀ

First lesson

McGonagall ceremoniously walked along the corridors of the school that had not yet cooled off from the summer heat. It smelled of clover, apples and milk. Ahead was a new year full of worries, students' pranks, detentions, ups and downs. Minerva was accustomed to the measured pace of Hogwarts life, but every new generation was waiting for new rebels. So this time, the boys who instantly attracted her attention didn't slip out of her mind.

McGonagall pushed the door to her own class, automatically pursed her lips and stepped inside. Her face froze like a mask. The right eye began to twitch, and the folder with the papers in her hands began to tremble.

Undressed to the waist and tied up with someone else's robe with green stripes, James Potter jumped on the teaching desk. The boy spread his arms and shaking his torso like an old flat-chested Gypsy woman, he walked to Narcissa. The poor thing turned red with rage and shame. It was her robe that was loosely hanging around the Potter's hips. Narcissa Black looked up at James, squeezing her small fragile fists and blinking angry tears.

Gryffindors hooted, Sirius Black danced, struggling to move his head left and right, but mostly stepped back and forth, and looked like a shaggy camel with a black mane. His white shirt was half open and mercilessly rolled up to the sleeves.

"Pay for fortune telling, beautiful!" James bent over Narcissa and immediately deftly dodged when a fury named Black spat into Potter's face, but missed.

It only left to wonder where James got all this from. Meanwhile, the Slytherins were huddling around the desks: they liked what was happening, but they couldn't admit it to themselves. Besides, no one liked beautiful and arrogant Narcissa.

"What's going on here?" McGonagall said.

Harsh Scotswoman expected that in the classroom, as always at the sound of her voice, there would be a dead silence. But James Potter has not yet been trained.

Not at all embarrassed, the boy jumped off the desk and went to the professor. Behind him, Black froze uncertainly, assessing the situation. Something in McGonagall's gaze was alarming.

"Professor, do you want me to tell you a fortune?" James smiled widely. "Fifty points to Gryffindor, and I'm ready for anything!"

The students behind Potter were silently horrified.

McGonagall felt like being struck with electricity. She bowed her head and breathed in through her nostrils.

James stepped back.

Minerva took a step forward and smiled.

She almost never smiled, and, as Dumbledore said, the smile of this woman was able to lift to the heavens, and could also send you to hell. Apparently, this time James will have to fall somewhere much lower.

The Slytherins rushed asunder, the Gryffindors ran aside and someone even climbed into the closet. Black dragged his cousin from the battlefield and took a defensive position next to a grey sad boy named Rekus, it seems. Or maybe not.

James smiled much less confidently. "You are smiling? Are you ... having fun?"

"A lot of fun!" McGonagall wanted to say, but instead she only squeezed her dry lips even tighter and jumped forward, turning into a graceful forest cat. A wave of admiringly frightened breaths passed through the class.

Silently landing on the floor for a second, after a second thought, the striped predator leaped into the air again and hit James on the top of his head with its paw. And then again. And again.

James ran around in circles, trying to dodge, but he had no chance against the professor.

You're not allow to hit the children with your hands – this was McGonagall's iron rule.

But you can with paws, right?