I Swear That's Never Happened To Me Before

Oleandra left the Charms classroom with the onset of a headache. She was having trouble making her brain cells spark together due to general feeling of fuzziness pervading her consciousness, since she had slept even less than she had the previous night due to the homework load.

And there was also the fact that despite constantly reaffirming to herself that other students' opinions of her did not matter, the incessant whispering and the fingers pointed at her behind her back were beginning to get to Oleandra.

"Are you feeling quite all right?" said Tracey in concern, as they took their seats in the Transfiguration classroom. "You look like death warmed over."

"I'm fine," Oleandra responded tiredly. "I just need to close my eyes a little…"

"Better not risk it," said Tracey, nudging her gently in her side with her elbow. "Teacher's here."

It was best not to antagonize Professor McGonagall more than she already had, as the old crone already had it in for her. Oleandra had provoked her ire countless times in the past years, and the last thing she needed was another detention.

Nevertheless, Oleandra could have done without the O.W.L. talk; just like Professor Flitwick before her, Professor McGonagall insisted at length upon the importance of these examinations. She droned on and on, and Oleandra felt her eyelids fluttering despite her best efforts.

"Miss Greengrass!" Professor McGonagall thundered, causing Oleandra to snap to attention. "Am I boring you? Or do you think yourself above such petty concerns such as the O.W.L.s?"

Oleandra mumbled some excuse that she had been listening, but Professor McGonagall wanted to hear nothing of it.

"Perhaps you'd like to demonstrate a Vanishing Spell for us?" Professor McGonagall said witheringly. "Since you apparently know so much about it?"

Oh, is that what we were doing?

Her mind being trapped in a mental haze, Oleandra had been wondering why there had been a snail desperately inching away from her on her desk. Vanishing? That was too easy; Ginny had already taught her about those spells, so she could only hope that her wand wouldn't malfunction again.

Oleandra opened her Mystic Eyes; the principal difficulty with Vanishing Spells was understanding the target, but a mere mollusc held no secrets before her eyes.

"Evanesco," Oleandra clearly said, tapping her wand on the snail's shell.

The snail popped out of existence, shell and all. Oleandra looked expectantly at Professor McGonagall, who was now wearing a thin-lipped grimace on her wrinkled face.

Take that, you old crone!

The excitement of success gave Oleandra's mind a burst of clarity, but her efforts would all be for naught. Instead of giving her House points, Professor McGonagall transformed her feat into a learning experience.

"As you can see," she said drily. "Vanishing Spells aren't very complicated when compared to Conjuring spells, which you will see in my N.E.W.T. level class, but they will still count among the most difficult spells you will be tested on in your O.W.L.s."

So far, every Transfiguration spell that Professor McGonagall had taught them had been about modifying existing objects; whether it had been changing their shape or colour, transforming them into facsimiles of living beings or even changing their space-time coordinates. (Human Transfiguration was the only thing they hadn't done yet in this respect, as the danger involved made it a N.E.W.T. level subject.)

However! Vanishing and Conjuration involved the conceptual magic of non-being: Vanishing deleted a target from existence, while Conjuration brought out objects from nothingness. It was a whole different level of difficulty, so it was no wonder that most students were now failing to make their snail disappear.

"Evanesco!" Daphne said, repeating Oleandra's movements precisely.

Behind them, Mafalda had already succeeded on her second attempt, and further to the front of the class, Hermione had succeeded on her third, so Daphne was beginning to feel the pressure mounting. Her reputation as a genius was on the line, and if Oleandra could do it, there was no reason why she couldn't!

"Ingwaz, Kenaz," she muttered, signing the two runes before touching her forehead for an extra boost. "Grant me the wisdom of the gods, guide me towards the light of knowledge."

"Evanesco!" Daphne repeated, and the snail disappeared before her wand, much to her satisfaction.

Perhaps due to the fact that she had not given any points to Slytherin for Oleandra's first-try success at Vanishing, Professor McGonagall abstained from granting any points to any of the high achievers for the rest of the lesson.

Meanwhile, Oleandra, who now had too much adrenaline flooding through her system due to beating Professor McGonagall at her own game, decided to try her hand at Conjuration spells. And she knew just the one she wanted to attempt first: the Water-Making Spell.

"Aguamenti," she whispered.

Oleandra's wand trembled, and a stream of water with power comparable to the pressurized water of a fire hydrant shot out of it, catching poor Longbottom in the back and sending him flying into a wall. For a moment, Oleandra could have sworn that her wand had just experienced profound joy and nostalgia; as if it had got to play with a long-lost toy.

"Neville!" Oleandra gasped. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it!"

She had once again accidentally overcharged her wand with magic; she was too used to forcing magic through imperfect media such as her own fingers and limbs, or her old wand. And now that she thought about it, her wand's core wasn't just any Greater Fairy's wings; those wings had once belonged on the back of the Lady of the Lake's original body; its compatibility with water-based spells was immeasurable.

For a few seconds, Professor McGonagall was shocked into speechlessness at the scene she had just witnessed.

"Never in my life!" Professor McGonagall cried. "Never in my long career at Hogwarts have I ever thought I'd see one of my own students attacking one of their fellows before my very eyes!"

"It was an accident!" Oleandra said in a panic. "I didn't think—"

"You didn't think is exactly the problem!" Professor McGonagall screeched. "Miss Greengrass, would you kindly remind us of the very first words I told this class in your first year?"

"Er…"

"Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back," said Professor McGonagall flatly. "You can't say you haven't been warned. Now, please go stand outside, but don't go anywhere. I want a word with you after class."

Oh. This was very bad, wasn't it?