Hera

{Chapter Seventeen}

With a heavy thoughts flooding her mind, Hera entered Professor McGonnagal's transfiguration chambers. The green wool scarf followed her as she took each step towards Elena, who was looking at her best friend curiously. She had not remembered Hera wearing a scarf earlier that morning before she had left her in the Great Hall, and she wouldn't have had time to retrieve her own all the way from the dungeons. 

"Lovely scarf you got there, Hera." Elena hummed as the said girl took her seat. 

It was as if Hera wasn't paying attention, as she looked at the Asian girl with slightly raised eyebrows. Elena tsked and gestured to the woolen accessory wrapped around her neck. With wide eyes, Hera's hand suddenly went up to touch the scarf before playing it off with a soft chuckle. "Yes, Draco lent me his scarf out in the courtyard. Quite silly of me to forget."

Skeptical, Elena watched her friend for a little while longer, not remembering whether or not she had seen Draco wearing his scarf at all earlier in the day. Suddenly, all thoughts were pushed to the back of her mind as Professor McGonagall had entered the chambers with her robes sweeping the floor. 

"Good day class." Her stern voice resonated against the walls, as she was greeted by a chorus of greetings from both the Slytherin and Hufflepuff third years. With a flick of her hand, the chalkboard had flipped sides.

Animagi.

"If you all turn to page 283 in your textbooks, we will come to learn a certain process of transfiguration. Before we begin, can anyone tell me what an animagus is?"

Elena immediately put her hand up, excitedly waving it in the air. Plenty other hands went up in the air, but Hera kept hers down. McGonagall's eyes scanned the chambers, and the number of hands in the air, eventually landing on a Hufflepuff boy named Fredwick Catsnitch. "Mr Catsnitch, do tell."

"An animagus is a person with the ability to transfigure themselves into an animal."

McGonagall hummed, "Yes, quite right, thank you Mr Catsnitch. Ten points to Hufflepuff." Fredwick sat back down, earning a few congratulatory nudges from his classmates.

"Being an animagus is not something that happens out of the blue, or is genetically inherited. It is not to be confused with a maledictus." Hera's mind wandered, to deepest depths of her brain, thinking about the contents of the letter that she received earlier. A meeting with her uncle Lucius at the first Hogsmeade trip...what could he possibly want?

"Miss Lestrange." McGonagall's stern voice snapped her out of her thoughts. The young girl's cheeks tinged a pale pink in embarrassment as she turned to look at the professor. "I'm quite glad you're back from wherever you came from." A couple of giggles passed around the room. "Would you be so kind to tell us as to why an animagus should not be confused with a maledictus?"

Thanking Merlin, that Elena had talked to her about it the night before, Hera cleared her throat to speak. "An individual undergoes a lengthy process into becoming an animagus, whilst a maledictus inherits the ability to turn into an animal due to a blood curse that can occur from their forefathers."

With a nod, Professor McGonagall nodded in her direction, and continued on with her lesson. Hera inwardly sighed in relief, but her attention was captured by Elena, who was nudging her side. She pointed to Draco who sat at the other end of the chambers with Crabbe and Goyle on either side, a green and silver scarf wrapped around his neck.

"I didn't know Draco had two scarves." The girl whispered.

♧

"I'm starving." Elena exclaimed as soon as they had entered the Great Hall for dinner. They had come in quite late, thankfully avoiding the evening rush into the hall. The two girls sat at the end of the Slytherin table next to a trio of first year Slytherins, who was paying way too much attention to the plates in front of them.