74 Preparing for what?

"What was that?", Harry asked, once Iris had come out after him.

"That was the Floo, silly.", Iris looked at Harry as if it was self-explanatory.

"What's the Floo?", Harry asked again, not really any wiser from her answer.

Iris rolled her eyes as if Harry had asked what a door is, then said: "The thing you just came out of. Didn't you listen when I told you it's how we can get to places quickly?"

Harry was feeling safe enough to let curiosity get the best of him, so he continued pestering Iris: "I know that, but how does it work?"

Iris didn't know the specifics either, so she gave the answer her mother had given her. She spread her hands wide while shrugging and said one word: "Magic."

Harry felt like Iris wasn't all that much smarter than him. He could've come up with the same answer.

That was as far as he got, because the next instant, a flock of howling little devils swooped over their heads on broomsticks, so low that one of them got a bit too close to the chimney of the fireplace set up in the middle of the field, lost control of his broomstick and tumbled across the lawn.

Harry rushed to the boy who was groaning on the ground. He asked: "Are you alright?"

The boy replied: "No, I'm not! If the teachers find out, I'll be shoveling hippogriff shit for three days after school!"

Harry stared blankly at the boy for a while, as if he'd been speaking in a foreign language before asking: "You were flying, weren't you?"

The boy replied while wincing and grasping his right forearm with his left hand: "Well, duh. What else would I do with a broomstick? Can you go and swipe something for the pain from Madam Bubbles? I think I broke something!"

However, before Harry could make any promises, he felt his hand being pulled and Iris speaking into his ear in a low tone: "You don't want to be around him. He'll only get you in trouble. You're not supposed to fly outside the flying classes and quidditch practice."

Harry's eyes lit up. Originally, he'd been willing to shovel Hippogriff shit, whatever that was, just to get a chance to fly. Now, he found out that he might not have to, so he quickly asked: "There are flying classes? When are those?"

"There aren't any today, but there is one tomorrow.", Iris mumbled while inspecting a timetable she pulled out from somewhere.

Harry finally had a chance to look around. He could see a big bird flying towards them in the distance. Nearby, there was a building with a clock tower, but instead of the hands, there were a glowing sun and moon on the face of the clock.

The group of flying children from before circled about and took a course on a small building with big words 'Broom Cabinet' on it.

"Come on, let's go!", Iris ushered the Harry who'd been staring at the clock to see if the Sun and Moon there actually moved.

Harry was quickly dragged towards the building's entrance by Iris.

Suddenly, he heard a shout: "Incoming!" from above.

Iris immediately looked up and a moment later, pulled Harry to the side.

"You have to be more careful! The young hippogriffs don't have a good control of their backsides!", she warned.

Harry heard a thud and felt quite thankful towards Iris. A bird pooping on you might ruin your clothes, but if it was something that big? He might get knocked unconscious!

"What was that?", Harry asked.

Iris replied matter-of-factly: "A hippogriff. That's what you'll be cleaning up if you get detention.", she pointed at the massive amount of poop on the ground.

"Eww!", Harry covered his nose with his sleeve.

---

Following Iris' guidance, Harry made it indoors without further accidents.

Iris guided Harry to a classroom. When the door opened, Harry noticed two things: one, there were no chairs or tables. Two, the room was as large as a gymnasium.

The walls were lined with students sitting down and a few more last-minute arrivals trickled in.

Suddenly, Harry could hear an owl's hoot sounding twice and a brunette woman with shoulder-length hair and round cheeks rose from a cross-legged seating position.

She adjusted her clothes – similar to all the students, they were clinging to her body and looked quite stretchy – then announced: "I see that a new student has joined us today. Please, introduce yourself."

Harry suddenly felt everyone's gazes focus on him. It made him feel uncomfortable, as if he'd done something wrong. Iris who was still next to him, whispered: "Come on, it's not that bad."

After a moment more of gathering courage, Harry said: "My name is Harry Potter."

"Oh?" the teacher said, "Don't expect special treatment just because you're somewhat famous. You'll be working just as hard as the rest of the students."

Harry didn't understand what the teacher was talking about. Famous? Him? Whatever for, for living in a cabinet under the stairs until yesterday? What was so special about that?

In the end, Harry said: "I think you have me confused with somebody else. I'm not famous."

"You hear that, kids? The Harry Potter saying he's not famous? Then who can even call themselves famous, except maybe Merlin himself?", the teacher looked at the whispering children with a disbelieving expression. More than half of the children's parents were magical and they had been raised on the story about Harry Potter, the boy who vanquished the dark lord and lived to tell the tale.

Next was the children introducing themselves to Harry. To say they were eager was an understatement, but Harry didn't really manage to remember any names, he was too confused about what he'd heard, and everyone moved in such a flurry. He did remember that a lot of the children had challenged him to a duel ("Dragons, they think you're strong.", Iris had explained), but Harry knew better. The only reason Dudley hadn't broken all his bones until now was because he'd learned to run fast.

Finally, the teacher said: "Ten challenges on your first day! Not bad. Usually, they don't challenge anyone before they've seen them fight. Now, I'll tell you about the rules of a duel. You have up to two weeks to prepare, so I suggest you use the time wisely.

If you ask nicely enough, I'll give you private lessons. I do hope you can win at least some of the fights, otherwise you'll have to start calling yourself Barry Trotter from now on. Can't have you shaming the name of a hero.

I'm Liselle Parkins, by the way, your instructor in magical combat."

Harry was introduced to the dodging dummies – strange mechanisms that shot out white bolts randomly from the many spikes on their bodies. He was also given a short demonstration by the other students.

The students used the third difficulty where bolts were shooting out of three different spikes at once, but Harry was told to start with the lowest setting, to get familiar with it.

When the teacher turned the knob to number one, Harry was staring at the holes at the lower edge where the light had come from in the demonstration and completely missed the bolt coming from the upper part. It hit his left shoulder and he felt a painful sting.

"Oh, come on, it's level one!", Harry heard one of the students shout over his own hiss of pain. Harry became a bit flustered but tried to keep his eyes on all the openings now, scanning the length of the entire thing.

This time, he saw the bolt shoot out and immediately jumped to the side.

"That would've missed you anyway. You got to look at the direction they're pointing when they shoot.", Harry heard another student's voice. Harry decided to just ignore them. He'd do this at his own pace and try not to get hit again, because that hurt almost as bad as a kick from Dudley. Harry just felt lucky that Uncle Vernon never hit him, he'd certainly looked angry enough to do it, but for some reason, always stopped just inches away from him before cursing at the government. Harry had always found it funny, because every so often after reading the newspaper, he'd say how great their government was for making sure little Duddykins was safe from those horrible types.

Harry kept dodging the bolts of light, not getting hit again until he started to get more and more tired, then it happened again.

However, this time, the teacher stopped the device and gave Harry a spoonful of something that tasted a bit like cough syrup, and then something else that tasted like boiled eggs.

"Take a minute to rest and then you can go again.", she said.

Each time Harry got tired, he was given more of the two, and each time that happened, he felt like he did before the lesson started.

As he continued practicing with the machine, Harry saw other students start fighting with each other. To him, it looked like they had a grudge with each other that couldn't be solved without spilling blood. He had never seen two children fight like they were trying to kill each other before!

Harry's worry turned into outright fear for his life. If that's what they meant by a duel, how many of the ten would he even survive? What exactly was this school preparing them for to make the students fight like that?

With three meows of what sounded like a very male tomcat, the lesson came to an end.

Iris seemed to have taken Harry completely under her wing, as she introduced him to a few friends of her properly – they had been in the combat class as well, but Harry had already forgotten their names and was quite embarrassed to have to ask for them again.

Then, the ten-minute break came to an end and the small group moved to the next classroom. This one had the usual seats and desks, but there still was no blackboard. Instead, there was a lot of room in the front.

When the owl hooted, Harry thought that the teacher hadn't arrived yet – he didn't notice anybody in front of the class, but suddenly, he saw movement and he discovered a man had stood up. His shoulders were as wide as a large fridge, his chest as big as a barrel and his eyes cold as ice. Harry realized the man had been sitting behind a desk all the time, but somehow, his eyes had simply ignored him until he moved.

The man spoke with a tone that made Harry feel like he wanted to hide under the table, behind his seat, anywhere really: "Hello, students. You can address me as professor Vywin. I will learn your names if you prove yourselves worth remembering, because I figure before ten years pass, half of you will be dead. That's me being optimistic to a fault. I will teach you how to not become part of the dead half.."

Suddenly, the teacher looked at Harry and he was frozen in place, as if there was a terrifying monster looking at him, already tearing him into pieces with his eyes.

Harry's heart started beating violently. He gulped and clenched his fists. No matter what, he wanted to see more of this magical world he had just discovered, he would not let a teacher stop him.

Harry looked around and he saw that most of the children had gone pale, especially the 'Dragons', as Iris had called them.

Suddenly, the oppressive feeling that had overtaken him disappeared like it was a lie and Harry heard the teacher say: "Hmm. Not a bad seed. What's your name, kid?"

Harry instinctively knew that he was the one who'd been addressed, even if the teacher didn't look at him.

"Harry- Harry Potter, sir.", Harry whispered, his voice not working properly.

With a flick of professor Vywin's wrist, a large transparent cage with a black lion-like creature in it appeared.

He asked: "Can anyone tell me, what are the dangers when you encounter this animal?"

One of the students that hadn't challenged Harry to a duel raised his hand. Mr. Vywin said: "Alright, tell us what you think."

"It has sharp nails, like cats?", the student said.

"That's one of the less important ones. You'll get one point.", the teacher made a note on a piece of paper. Harry wasn't sure what use that was if the teacher didn't know their names.

"It has sharp teeth!", Harry provided, after seeing the creature yawn.

"That is two points, but none of you paid any attention to the organ on its neck.

Because of that, none of you would have survived your first encounter with it.

This creature, it is called Nundu. The organ in its neck is a breeding ground for a magical plague and with one breath, it can kill an entire town. Once you inhale that breath or contract the plague, you have twelve hours to either take the antidote or put your worldly affairs to order, because after that, you'll be too dead to do anything."

There was a scraping of chairs on the floor as the students tried to put some distance between themselves and the creature. For the second time that day, Harry asked himself: 'What kind of school is this? Are they trying to kill all the students?'

Professor Vywin continued the lecture. He said: "Often, but not always, magical creatures with special abilities have unusual structures on their body to facilitate those abilities. This is most often seen in creatures that expel liquids, mists or solid projectiles from their bodies.

The first glance can only tell you so much, how the creature is likely to move and how far it can reach. You should never stop your observation at that, instead you should be prepared for any surprises and keep your guard up even after you have cut off the creature's head, because some of them have one last attack saved up.

Did you all write that down? Because that is the knowledge that will save your life one day."

The students scrambled to pull out notebooks and pens (Harry was given one of each by Iris), then started scribbling down what they could remember. Fortunately, the professor deemed what he'd said important to repeat it one more time.

The lecture lasted for another ten minutes, after which another creature appeared. It looked like monkey with very long white hair on its head, big eyes and eyebrows that reminded Harry an owl.

Mr. Vywin said: "This is a Demiguise. Form teams of five. There is a total of ten of them released in the courtyard. Your task today is to capture them and put them into the red circle assigned to your team. Each Demiguise your team captures are worth a hundred points.

I'd be impressed if you lot managed to catch two out of ten.

As this is your first lesson, I'll give you a tip: when you see their eyes go blue, it's time to distract them.

They're used to seeing people, so they won't react to you adversely before you get too close."

---

Harry, Iris and three of her friends formed a team.

"Professor Vywin was so scary!", Harry whispered, afraid that the man might overhear him. The rest of the team simply nodded.

After gathering themselves for a while, Iris chose to become the team leader.

"Harry, you stay back and block one exit. Melissa, Marge and Carl, you flank from the sides. I'll circle around back and we'll have it in the bag.", Iris whispered.

They did as she instructed them, starting with a wide encirclement on one of the creatures that was picked by Iris.

They inched closer and closer to it, slowly cutting off more and more escape routes. However, when they were twenty feet from the creature, it looked at Carl suspiciously and then – it disappeared.

Immediately, Iris and Marge stood absolutely still and sniffed the air. A moment later, Marge shouted: "Got it! It's at my two, about fifteen feet!"

Harry had no idea what the two was about, but the rest of the children seemed to understand as they all rushed towards the same spot.

"Revelio!", Iris shouted, pointing her hand in front of herself.

The small white furball became visible and everyone scrambled to catch it, but it dodged, dived and jumped, each time avoiding the little hands trying to imprison it. The children quickly became a tangled bundle of arms and legs. Sending one more mocking glance towards them, the furball jumped atop Carl's head and took its leave. It was only then that Harry noticed its eyes that glowed blue.

"That little monkey!", Marge didn't look pleased at all as she was trying to untangle herself. Neither did any of the others, but Harry just felt this was off to a great start. He felt like in the past two days, he'd already had more fun than he did the previous nearly eleven years of his life!

After they'd been all untangled, they went for another target. Then another one. By the time the cat meowed, not a single Demiguise had been caught.

Professor Vywin said: "Honestly, I'm not disappointed, because you caught as many as I expected. Perhaps I'll simply lower the bar the next time."

Suddenly, Harry felt a bit guilty that they hadn't tried harder or come up with a smarter plan.

Next was a lesson on 'proper conduct', the boys were taught by Uncle Carter. Harry didn't know who the girls were taught by, as they had the class separately. It was terribly boring. They were handed a laminated cardboard with lines of text written on them. They were:

Serve the House in valor and good faith (Let's be honest, there isn't a better job than what House Vywin offers you).

Protect the weak and defenseless as long as it does not interfere with your task (public image is important to us, it helps secure contracts).

If you have free money, do donate to those less fortunate (orphanages, homeless shelters), instead of wasting it on something meaningless like luxury items or junk food.

Refrain from wantonly offending people, unless your task specifically requires it.

Live by honor and for glory.

Never accept bribes and gifts, accept only due payment for the commissioned task.

Fighting for the betterment of mankind is a noble goal, as long as it does not interfere with your task.

Groundless disobedience will not be tolerated.

Guard the honor of fellow knights.

Abolish and avoid unfairness, meanness and deceit, unless the completion of your task specifically requires it.

Persevere to the end in any enterprise begun.

Respect the honor of women.

Never refuse a challenge from an equal.

Never turn your back to an enemy.

Harry didn't know what to think about all that. Some of it seemed odd, some of it made sense, some of it he couldn't understand.

Harry's thoughts were cut short by Uncle Carter's voice that said: "Following these simple guidelines will make you into true men and assets for the House. I hope to see you all in Knight training starting from the second year."

Suddenly, the part about fellow knights made more sense to Harry. He'd been wondering about that. Also, Knight training?! Will they get to fight with real swords and armor? Harry wanted that to be their next class! Why did they have to wait for a whole year for it?

They started with the first statement and had to use it as a discussion topic. Harry found out what valor meant and what House Vywin was. It turned out that House Vywin was a noble house that was the employer of the parents of all the students and even the teachers.

The fourth and final class for the day was Basics of Ancient Runes.

If Harry had thought Proper Conduct was boring, he quickly found that compared to this, it was very interesting. The teacher drew a few strange squiggly creatures into their notebooks and they had to copy those as best they could.

From time to time, Harry could hear the teacher speaking while seeing how the students were managing: "No, you're starting from the wrong end" or "you have to do it all with a single uninterrupted line" or "yes, now do the ears, then the back and finish with the tail – perfect!"

There were a lot more comments the teacher spoke, but Harry was too busy trying to draw those strange creatures.

He'd sat in school for an entire day, but he still couldn't grasp just what exactly it was they were teaching. The subjects seemed random and all over the place.