The Fools Who Dream

Chapter 9

Once they'd all had breakfast, they still had twenty minutes before first lesson, which they figured would be plenty enough time to go get their textbooks for their lessons, and once they had, it only gave them ten minutes to find the Transfiguration classroom. None of them had any idea, until Cynthia spotted Lily, the girl she had met on the train before she went to sleep. Lily waved cheerily at her and walked over.

"How was your first night?" she asked Cynthia.

"Oh – uh – good." said Cynthia awkwardly.

"Lost?"

All five first years nodded in unison.

"We're looking for Transfiguration." said Alice confidently.

"Up the stairs to the fourth floor." said Lily, pointing at the staircase behind her. "Then down the hall and fourth classroom on the left."

"Thanks." said Cynthia gratefully.

Lily nodded and left, and Alice shrugged and led the way up the stairs.

"Who's that?" she asked curiously.

"Lily." said Cynthia, shrugging. "She's in my brother's year. I met her on the train."

"How many flights of stairs have we gone up?"

Eventually, they made it to the Transfiguration classroom, just a minute before the bell went, to find that the Ravenclaws were already there, waiting for them. Cynthia, Alice and Verity slipped into a set of four seats in the middle of the room, and Ceri and Christi went into the row of two next to them. The boys in their house appeared at the ring of the bell and slunk into the seats behind them. Cynthia was the only one who had noticed the cat sitting on the table, and as soon as everyone was sat down, it jumped off the desk and landed as the stern woman they had met the night before, and the woman who wrote stern notes home whenever James got in trouble.

"I'm glad you all found the classroom." she said sharply, bringing silence to the students in the room.

To start off the lesson, she took a register, and paused when she got to Cynthia's name. Just like every other teacher she'd encountered so far – which, to be fair, wasn't many – she glanced at her over her glasses sternly and pinched her lips.

"No, I won't cause as much trouble as my brother." said Cynthia before the older teacher could say anything, sighing heavily and folding her arms across her chest.

"I didn't say anything." said McGonagall coolly.

"I probably got it right though." Cynthia shot back, going very red in her cheeks.

"And you're already proving yourself wrong." said McGonagall dryly.

Once she finished the register, she placed the piece of parchment onto her desk and took out her wand, holding it in front of her and facing them all.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts." she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Then, she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realised they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After making a lot of complicated notes from both a lecture from McGonagall and the heavy textbooks they had brought with them, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By

"Par acus." said Alice, trying to stab her match with her wand.

"You're going to kill someone with that." said Cynthia, rolling her eyes.

"The stupid thing won't change!" Alice whined.

"You said it yourself, transfiguration is hard." Cynthia reminded her.

"Says you." muttered Alice grumpily. "Yours is going silver. Ish."

Cynthia tilted her head to the side and shrugged as she looked at the match on her table.

"It's alright." she said. She was distracted by a sudden snap next to her and saw that Alice had snapped her match in anger, but then went bright red as everyone stared at her.

"Uh, Professor?" she asked, putting her hand sheepishly up into the air. "Can I have a new match please?"

After the exhausting Transfiguration class, in which the only fully changed match belonged to one of the Ravenclaw boys, the two houses of first years were able to leave. They now had a ten minute break, which they all quickly learned was worked into the timetable solely for them to be able to find their next class. Luckily, McGonagall had told them that the charms classroom was on the second floor, but as they discovered, that still left a lot of ground for them to cover. At last, they filed into the large classroom, which had the desks set out around the edges of the room in circles, rather than in rows like in the Transfiguration classroom.

Professor Flitwick, the charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. Just like McGonagall, at the start of the lesson, he took the register, and when he reached Cynthia's name, he gave a small, terrified squeak and toppled out of sight. Cynthia groaned and put her head in her hands on the desk as everyone in the class stared at her. She just wanted to be able to crawl under the desk and hide forever, but sadly, that wasn't an option.

Once Flitwick had regained his composure and Cynthia had answered her name – finally – on the register, he carried on with the list and placed it down on the table.

"I hate my brother so much." muttered Cynthia under her breath to Alice; she still had bright red cheeks that could rival the colour of Lily's hair.

"Maybe you should cause even more trouble than him and make it hell for the children of either yourself or him." said Alice, grinning evilly.

Cynthia glared at her.

"What?" asked Alice innocently. "I mean, you could ruin life here for your little niece or nephew."

"Am I that cruel though?"

"You could be."

A/N

I remembered! Are you proud of me, I actually remembered to publish! 

I am starting to run out of chapters/have writers' block, so please be patient if I don't update for a while.