Magical Aptitudes

It was February and the grounds were so cold no one liked to be outside, not even Professor Sprout who held classes in the greenhouses. The Gryffindor Common Room was uncommonly full.

And someone – without naming any names, but a male, sixth year prefect with red hair and a fairly nasal voice – had let slip to Hermione about the Third Year Electives. Specifically on how they had to choose only two or three, not all of them.

Hermione was excitable on an average day, but she became impossible once there were even more choices opening up to her. Really impossible. Then when some of those possible choices were foreclosed by an artificial limit of two of three...

She was like magic had transfigured her hair as angry and excited and vengeful as she was. A Gorgon of Learning or something, able to petrify anyone with a glance of wrath.

"She'll calm down," Ron said.

"You think?"

"No. Not for a while. And nothing I say or you say will help."

That much was true. She got these intense bursts of will. She had to do something and couldn't help herself.

Her kind of magic was very different from Ron's. And both of them were different from Harry. He didn't know the right terms to use, but he thought he was right.

Take Ron. Harry fully liked Ron when he was at home on a long-used piece of land surrounded by his family, but at school he could flip and flop between sour and asleep. He had some family here, but it wasn't enough for him. He really did need to be closer to home and family. He just didn't realize it. Hogwarts wasn't doing him many favors.

How to tell someone that? Harry didn't know how to put that supposition into words Ron might hear. Whatever Harry said, Ron would just hear 'you're a failure.' It wasn't true. He just needed to be closer to a particular fragment of land. Or that was Harry's guess as of now.

Hermione was often about order, but there were things that could trump order in her book. Like curiosity and getting to the very bottom of a puzzle. 'Leave no stone unturned' should have been Hermione's motto.

Harry didn't know if his observations had any ties to real things in magic. He thought they must. Some people just had different ways of handling magic. No people he knew in Surrey were quite so templated, so predictable.

Weren't some wands supposedly good for charms or protection spells or transfiguration? Maybe some magic could be like that.

Yes. Ron's magic seemed very tuned to family and defense of his family. The twins' toward wildness or, Harry almost hated the word now, chaos.

Hermione seemed to share what Percy had, for order. If she wasn't on a curiosity kick. Her magic fought her a little, which might explain the hair, being pulled in several directions at once.

Harry wondered if his was tuned for mysteries or adventure. Maybe for family he didn't have. Maybe for helping people. He hoped he could keep himself from the worst forms of trouble, but how could he until he knew what his magic wanted.

Harry noted that Neville was beginning to look unhappy, as he did before every break. It was February, though, and there were months before classes ended. What bothered him so? Not even their hours in the greenhouses were helping now.

Harry was finished with all the Daily Prophets. He'd picked up many things, especially items that never seemed to make it into books, things like traditions. He hoped he could find someone to tutor him on the last of those. It was all so confusing.

Not everything made it into a book. But Harry would never say that in front of Hermione.

The problem that day came as Hermione was finally calming down about the electives. She still had months to consider her three options. (She wouldn't have dreamed of only taking two extra classes, of course.)

Draco Malfoy had to attempt to irritate Harry again in the hallway before Madam Spurl's class.

"I hear she's not staying next year. And I can tell you like her."

"You don't think she was a good teacher?"

"We have better in Slytherin."

"You have private classes?" Hermione demanded.

"Of course we do. Don't you?" Draco asked, knowing the answer.

That started some kind of meltdown. Harry pushed Hermione over to Neville and Parvati to get her somewhere she wouldn't be seen.

Extra classes! Things she couldn't know because of the house she was in! Harry could almost read her mind by looking at her face.

"Your teachers share anything useful, Malfoy? Or is it special lessons on brewing hair tonics?" He asked loudly, trying to calm Hermione.

"Ridiculous. As if a Slytherin would brew his own hair tonics. No. There are private stores for that."

"So what do you learn?" Harry asked.

"Banking. Politics. Dueling. Our dueling master would paste that oversized garden gnome to the wall..."

"So the family room in Slytherin is still being used for extra classes," Madam Spurl said from the open classroom door. Harry hadn't seen it open, or heard it.

Malfoy paled.

So that said a lot about the quality of these other teachers. More Malfoy-bragging. Harry should use that word in conversation.

"Get inside and stop boasting, Mr. Malfoy. As for the rest of you, all the houses used to have interesting optional classes, but certain headmasters allowed them to lapse for whatever reasons. I don't know that the Flamels will have the influence to restart things. They're brilliant, but looked down upon as foreign and French."

That was all she said about that, though she had looked at Malfoy when she said 'foreign and French.' Harry could see that Hermione had taken in every word.

That day, Madam Spurl taught them about curses that could be borne by animals, which she suspected was how a wizard had long ago created lycanthropy, a curse on a guardian wolf that had gone horribly wrong.

These days some estates used cursed birds to act as look-outs. "Though I hear that the Malfoys are no longer able to curse their peacocks. Lost the spell..."

"That's not true," Malfoy said.

"Or are so underpowered they can't cast it."

"That is not true!"

"I see. I was misinformed. Do the Notts still curse their sparrows?"

"Aye, we do," Nott said.

.....

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