The morning sun rose, the birds around Hogwarts sang, the hungry creatures in the forbidden forest roared, and the merefolk hunted for food in the great lake.
Septimus was woken up by his owl Merlin's screeches. It was as if it were telling him to wake up as the first class of school was beginning.
Not wanting to be late, Septimus put on his clothes and said goodbye to Merlin, whom he probably wouldn't see for the whole day. Excited, he left his room and headed towards the Slytherin common room.
It was quite early, and nobody was in the common room. The fireplace was burning calmly, like always. I wondered if it was enchanted by some kind of magic.
After looking at it for a few minutes, I made a mental note to myself to find out later on when my magic knowledge had increased.
It was surprising that the common room was clean and flashing but than I remembered that his was not the old bats house but this was Hogwarts. In Hogwarts there were house elves in who cooked food and kept the castle clean and shining in its old age.
Yesterday, there had been a huge party. Surprisingly, the older slytherins had hosted a huge party to welcome the new generation of slytherins.
I guess even they had to have some fun sometimes. They were all kids, after all.
...
I left the empty common room and headed towards the Great Hall to get something to eat.
Going down the Hogwarts moving stairs was very confusing, even for me, but after some time I got the hang of it and made it to the right floor.
There weren't many people in the great hall, unsurprisingly since it was so early. Only a few were sitting by themselves and eating.
They probably liked the quiet and didn't want to eat in the great hall later, when everybody was here.
I decided to eat a few eggs and some sausages with bacon. It was quite delicious.
After eating, I didn't have much time to catch up and started walking towards my uncle Severus' class.
My first class was about potions, which would probably be very boring for me because I already know so much about the subject.
The old bat will probably give me some senior-year textbooks and let me read them and research the trickier potions.
...
This time going through the moving stairs, I already spent half the time I had spent before.
The lesson was supposed to be with the Hufflepuffs, but no one was there yet except for a few Slytherins. It seems like the sorting hat doesn't make mistakes often.
I sat next to a Slytherin my age and waited for class to start. In the meantime, I was talking to the boy I was sitting next to.
His name was Larry. He had black hair and large, dark patches under his eyes. He was completely obsessed with quidditch and wanted to make it to the national team.
He was actually quite friendly, but he wasn't exactly the sharpest pencil. During the lesson, I had to explain to him several times what to do because he was visibly struggling. The art of potion-making wasn't definitely his area of expertise.
Uncle Severus started the lesson with his classical monologue:You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making.
As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper in death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.
At the beginning of the lesson, Uncle Severus didn't give me the book of the senior classes, but he gave me a strange newspaper for some reason.
It was called "Potion News." It had all kinds of new potions and discoveries. Only someone interested in potions, like Uncle Severus, would read this paper.
Uncle Severus explained to me that my task was to have my writing in the newspaper at least three times each year. At his request, we had to send whatever I came up with to the editors of the newspaper, and it was up to them to decide whether my writing would go into the weekly newspaper.
According to Uncle Severus, there was no point in me learning potions knowledge from the older classes during class because he had already taught me most of it and I would finish it in maybe a few months, and he wouldn't like me to have such a huge difference of knowledge with my classmates.
Compared to the others, I only needed to memorize the potion recipes because I didn't have a big problem making all kinds of potions according to the recipe with my potion knowledge.
I guess being raised by a potion-making grandmaster had it's good sides.
I only had to come to class if I had a question about potions or if I had completed three projects.
After an hour and a half, the class ended surprisingly without any fighting or mischief. Although there were quite a few instances where almost the whole class was destroyed because of a few Hufflepuffs and Slytherins who had messed up while creating the Boils potion.
After class, I went to eat lunch with Larry and the other slytherins.
...
After an hour, the next lesson started, which was Transfiguration. The teacher of Transfiguration classes is the deputy head, Minerva McGonagall.
The whole lesson was about turning a match into a needle. It was quite a difficult task for those who hadn't done transfiguration before, but unsurprisingly, it was not hard for me.
I even gained 15 points for my house from Mrs. McGonagall.
Later on, Mrs. McGonagall told us to turn a mouse into a snuff box, which was also easily done by me, gaining the slytherin house another 15 points.
I asked McGonagall if I could be excluded from further lessons since I already had the first-year curriculum learned.
Without tarnishing her reputation of being strict while also being fair, she gave me the opportunity to skip classes if I answered a few questions about transfiguration to prove that I knew enough about transfiguration to pass the class.
Of course, if I couldn't answer the questions, I would have to remain quiet and stay in the lessons until I had learned the transfigurations of the first-year curriculum.
"What variables influence the process of transfiguration?"
"The process of transfiguration is influenced by bodyweight, intent, wand power, concentration, and sometimes luck," I answered.
"Very good, Septimus!"
"How many types of transfiguration are there, and what are they?"
"There are in total 5 types of transfiguration, and they are: transformation, untransfiguration, vanishment, and conjuration." I responded after thinking for a while.
"Very good again, mister Septimus."
...
"Alright, I think that you have the first-year curriculum learned, and there is no point in you coming to my lessons," she said with a light smile, seeing that my confidence had the strength to prove it.
"Before I let you go, remember, mister Septimus: transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will ever learn. Use it well and be safe," said Mrs. McGonagall with a serious look.
I thanked her for letting me leave, took my books from my desk, and headed towards the great hall since it was almost the end of the lesson and there would be no point in running around the school while missing dinner.
In the corridors, I could hear the angry yell of Mrs. McGonagall, who was yelling at some of my fellow noble slytherins who had thought they had the knowledge necessary to skip the class like myself but were quickly mistaken as they hadn't been able to answer even a few of Mrs. McGonagall's questions.
...
After finishing dinner, I decided to explore the school since I had around 3 hours until curfew.
While exploring, I found many secret passageways that would help me save time while going to classes.
I also found a few pathways leading out of the school, but in the end, I decided not to see where they led since they were quite long. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them led to Hogsmeade since only third-year students and above could go there on selected weekends.
Hogsmeade is the only town in Britain that was completely occupied by wizards. It was founded around the same time as Hogwarts by a wizard escaping from muggles, since at that time muggles knew about the existence of wizards. To this day, there are legends passed down about wizards and their history.
Hogsmeade has many shops and places to spend the night. It has quite a huge attraction to students since they were forced to learn all kinds of wizard knowledge, and spending free time in the castle would become boring quite fast.
After some time, I decided to head back to the common room and maybe play a few games of wizarding chess.
...
Upon entering the common room, I saw many people chatting and playing games. I noticed a lone girl playing wizard chess by herself in a chair near one of the windows showing the great lake.
She had long white hair, gorgeous purple eyes, and a cold, uncaring face. It seemed like she couldn't be influenced by anything.
I sat beside her and asked her if I could play wizard chess with her. I am Septimus; would you mind if we played a few games of wizard chess?"
She was surprised, but she hurriedly regained her composure. "Sure."
She asked,Do you have your own army, or do you want me to borrow one?"
"No need I have my own; it's created by myself, so it might look a little different." I had been bored at home, so I decided to spend some of my time creating different types of wizard chess armies and boards.
It was just boring to play wizard chess with those black and white pieces. I had made multiple colors myself, my favorite being the dark red and black mixed color one.
"Rook F4"
"Knight B3"
"King E2"
...
In the end, we ended up playing four rounds of wizard chess and decided to end it there since it was getting late and we had already destroyed most of our "armies."
Wizard's Chess was the magical variant of the classic board game Chess, in which the pieces were enchanted to move of their own accord when commanded by the player.
When a piece was taken, it was removed by the attacking piece, often in a barbaric manner where the losing piece was smashed violently by the winning piece.
The games ended in a 2-2 draw, and we decided to play some more wizard games some other day.
Before going up the stairs to sleep, she told me her name with a warm smile on her face: "My name is Aurora Everly."
I smiled a little bit and decided to go to sleep.
...
Aurora, "He is quite interesting."
Septimus, "This year won't be as boring as I thought."