HPSU Chapter 06 (Patreon)

Harry Potter’s Point of View

With the three of us skipping out on the classes we could pick, we already did charms and transfiguration. They did away with the history of magic and it became a few new classes a few years back. That meant the next class was the defense against the dark arts. Everyone disliked Professor Quirrell and I knew we wouldn’t get much use out of the class but I sort of felt bad for the man. He was terrified of everything to the point he stunk like garlic to ward off vampires.

His stuttering meant that very little was spoken and the few spells he tried to teach either misfired or fizzled out doing nothing. Thankfully there were enough books here to learn a large chunk of actual magic. I knew Dumbledore hid the really powerful books somewhere outside of Hogwarts but I was still only a first year. There was plenty for me to read and learn from before I got into the more dangerous books.

Flight classes posed the same problem of having to learn the very basics with brooms so old some were barely functional. It led me to believe that Dumbledore was not only bad at scheming but management as well. All it would take is a student to die to a broom for him to be removed as headmaster. The school was subsidized by the ministry but it seems more like a lack of asking for funding for new brooms than anything.

It made the no-brooms for first years even more silly. I sent a letter to my uncle to see if he could solve the problem and the next day, all brooms were replaced with the cheapest clean sweep mass-produced ones. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot but the brooms we were using were also the cheapest but also anywhere from ten to thirty years old.

It just flabbergasted me that I could have been using the same broom my mother or father used to learn how to fly on. Besides those classes, we were also skipping Snape and Professor Sprout’s classes because I refused to play his silly game. Oh, we’re not supposed to go to this certain wing or we might die, yea you won’t catch me there even with the staircases trying to force me into the area over and over again.

Sure is weird how the book on Nicholas Flammel and the Philosopher’s Stone keeps ending up in my line of sight when I’m reading as if someone is trying to get me to read it. The new classes they added were different for each year and we had a Brief History of Magic, Muggle Studies, and Magical Items knowledge and usage. A Brief History of Magic spoke of Merlin’s interaction with the muggle King Arthur and how he affected his reign.

It was really interesting to see how even a single wizard changed the course of a king’s lifetime. Merlin was so intertwined with Arthur that his rule was chalked up to fantasy rather than reality to muggles. Muggle studies were information I mostly knew and could opt out of with my muggle upbringing. It made me notice that a huge portion of students didn’t know anything about muggles at all. I couldn’t imagine not watching TV or using cars to get from one place nearby to another.

Magical Items knowledge and usage was probably the most fun class with us learning how many magical items were created and what they were used for. We were shown floo powder and explained how it worked as well as how the floo network was set up. It made me decide to take magical item creation as my elective when Dumbledore finally gave up and allowed us to choose other classes.   

It wasn’t until the third day of skipping Snape and Professor Sprout’s classes that I was finally given the chance to swap classes. It took convincing to keep Hermione from folding and going back to Snape’s class but our hard work paid off as we got to choose. We all ended up picking magic item creation but none of us picked the same secondary class.

Magic item creation was far more boring than I thought it would be with us learning the fundamentals and even more history on how many magical items were created. We learned that unless we took ancient runes in later years we’d only be able to make the most basic magic items possible. The kinds that required expensive magical materials to make and making new magical items this way was an extremely time and cost-intensive process only the most wealthy families could do.

The construction of a new rune system was underway but that was a graduate program run by the ministry. It would take getting an O on your owls for you to even think about joining which meant it was a very, very small field to join. It took me almost the entire class that realize that our teacher wasn’t fully human. Raphael Dugard was in fact a small portion of something else.

I asked after class to one of the students that was there from the beginning and Dugard mentioned he was a quarter elf. My childish brain not registering what that really meant at the time. I just thought it was cool and he had proved to be one of the stronger wizard teachers in the school with his wandless casting. I would have to ask him to teach me if that’s possible. I could do a few wandless spells but the more I could accomplish the better.

It made me realize how unfortunate the fresh family students would be without magical knowledge for getting stronger they’d end up learning absolutely nothing from Professor Querrell. I would have to look at starting a club, was that a thing here in Hogwarts? It turned out there was and the Dragon Club was exactly what I was looking for… Except it was for students who were already gifted at fighting and flying.

I had to talk with the leadership and even get Draco to agree to help me train up the new members where they’d be judged at the end of the year to see if they still belonged. Malfoy was a genius though and although I wanted to teach for free, he managed to get them to also sign up for the new soccer league we were starting.

Watching a duel between two fourth-year students… Was insanely disappointing. They were using the basic of basic spells and didn’t do anything wandless or silent casting at all. Me and Malfoy went up next and I smirked as I asked him. “Do we go all out?” He only chuckled as he spoke. “No, we wouldn’t want to scare off the higher-ups by proving ourselves above them from the start. Let’s just go with one wand for now.”

We took our places as we saluted and began. “Protego! Accio shield.” Draco began with the basic protego spell, I should say basic as most third years didn’t even know it. I pulled the shield from a nearby knight statue causing it to collapse to the ground as we prepared for the next spells. “Silencio! Fumos.” Draco fired off a silencing spell while I created a cloud to reduce visibility before smacking the spell away with the shield.

“Lumos! Nox.” Again he made a lumos spell to try and reveal more of me but I countered his spell with my own. “Ventus! Perfringo!” I wasn’t completely familiar with the shield-breaking charm so had to verbally yell the spell to focus on the effect. He clears the smoke as his shield is struck. At first it appears to not have done anything before his shield shatters like glass. He stares daggers at me because that is a spell he didn’t know I could use.

“Bombarda! Engorgio.” He aims at my feet attempting to remove my footing to make it easier to attack me and perhaps even win the duel but my spell expands the shield big enough to cover my entire body as I dig it into the ground to block the blast. For a few seconds, Draco just looked at me wondering if his spell worked before a tiny portion of my face peaked out and I cast the first spell without a counter. “Expelliarmus!”

Wham! His wand went flying out of his hand. That would be the end of most duels but Draco was as skilled as me so I knew better. “Accio! Petrificus.” He wandlessly pulled his wand back to his hand as he’s hit with the petrificus totalus spell I had worked on to be able to use without the totalus part of the spell. He freezes and falls backward as the completely silent crowd begins to cheer at our duel.