An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Nineteen

It had been a few weeks since Oliver's rousing speech, and I was starting to drag a little bit. Exhaustive physical and mental activity most days was starting to take its toll on me, although I still appreciated that Quidditch practice wasn't every night like most muggle sports.

About two weeks in, I was starting to feel truly exhausted. I sank down into my seat at breakfast on Monday and drank my black tea in silence. It still wasn't as good as coffee, but it got the job done.

I dragged through the day, until finally—finally—the last class was over.

"Ugh, this has been the longest day of my life," I groaned. "I almost fell asleep as soon as I sat down in that last class."

"You could've, you know," said Fred.

"Binns wouldn't even have noticed," agreed George.

"That's true, but I had to get some math done. I'm not gonna have any time to do it later."

"You could always ditch the muggle school," Alicia suggested.

"Oh whatever." I rolled my eyes as the rest of my friends laughed. They all knew I wasn't going to do that, but they regularly teased me about it.

"Just think, you'd have so much more free time," Fred added.

"Oh yeah, because that's the biggest drain on my free time," I said sarcastically. "Not anything else, like, oh, I don't know, Quid—"

"Shut up, you little mudblood!"

My sarcastic comment was cut short by a yell coming from a little further down the corridor. I looked up to see that Blondie and his cronies had somebody cornered and were yelling at them. I looked a little closer to see that someone was Cassidy.

"Hey!" I yelled, storming towards Blondie and suddenly wide awake. "Back off!"

All three of them turned to look at me, and as soon as they saw me storming over they squared up and pointed their wands at me.

Nice to know they considered me a threat.

"You may be a fifth year, but you can't take all of us. You have no idea what you're doing with magic," Blondie sneered.

How cute. They thought I relied on magic.

I didn't miss a step as I kept storming towards all three Slytherin boys. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Cassidy run off crying once Malfoy and his crew were distracted. I saw red.

Malfoy started to say a spell, but I ripped the wand out of his hand before he could and jacked him right in the nose. Crabbe took a swing at me, which I ducked. I jabbed him in the stomach and when he doubled over I kneed him in the face. I side-stepped Goyle's attempt at a punch, and used his momentum to send him flying into a wall. It was over in seconds, and I'd never even touched my wand.

Wizards were overly dependent on magic.

I glanced over my shoulder at my friends, who were standing exactly where I'd left them, staring at me in shock.

"You guys good?" I called back. Slowly, they all nodded their heads, mouths still hanging open. "Okay, good. I'm gonna go check on Cassidy."

Without another word, I turned and sprinted off towards Ravenclaw tower, still fuming. Nobody hurt my friends and got away with it. Nobody. And Cassidy was one of the sweetest, most non-confrontational people I'd ever met. She didn't deserve to deal with this shit at age eleven.

With the map clear in my memory, I made record time to the other tower. I wasn't sure yet how I was actually going to get into their Common Room, but I figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.