CHAPTER 12: THE EMPTY CLASSROOM

"I'll always remember that empty classroom, the room where the three of us met and our place to study, practice, and chat, and later the three turns to four, but that's another story."

-Richard Neil

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It was now the middle of February, classes had been restarted, and the atmosphere was back to normal. Ed and Richard were walking down the corridors, they were talking about classes and homework, in their hands are papers filled with scribbling. A few moments later, they arrived in front of an unused classroom that they have always used, they opened the door, but suddenly they heard a hasty and hurried noise, and what they saw inside the room was two seniors, a boy, and a girl, naked, lying on the ground, and looked flushed, they looked like they hurriedly covered themselves.

"Um… sorry, I thought this room was empty." Said Ed awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.

All of them went silent for a minute, but the boy senior shouted,

"Get out!"

The senior then used his wand, the wooden wand, to push the two first years out of the room and slammed the door. Ed, who stumbled after being pushed by magic stood up and helped Richard to stand up as well.

"Well, our study room is occupied right now." Said Ed while chuckling.

Richard just laughed, and asked, "So what do we do now? Search for another one?"

"Sure, let's go to your practice place, I remember you said that you practiced in an empty classroom with a senior girl named Cho Chang right? Where is it?"

"Well, it's this one." Richard pointed the occupied classroom.

"Oh, okay, then let's search for another one." Ed said while walking to search another empty and unused classroom.

They walked through the corridors for a couple of minutes searching for it, but it's either full of stuff, or used by another, they searched again until they found one on the edge of the corridor, they opened the door and the room looked empty, only a couple of desks and chairs, but it can be used to write and sit. But when Ed got closer to the desk, behind it he saw a girl, with blonde hair and wearing a Slytherin badge, the one he met when he was coming back from Dumbledore's office.

Ed then looked at Richard and said, "Should we wake her up?"

Richard just shrugged, "I dunno, it's on you."

Ed looked at the girl for a few seconds, then just shrugged and said,

"Meh, just let her sleep, she looks tired."

"Already falling for the girl Aldrich?" Richard teased Ed with a smirk on his face.

Ed ignored the teasing, he put the books in his hands on one of the desk, and start to rummage it, looking for something. After a couple of seconds, he picked up book he wanted and throw it to Richard.

"Here, read it, we're experimenting today." Said Ed while grinning evilly.

Hearing this, Richard's face fell, "What do you mean experimenting? I'm not the test subject am I?"

"Not really, just read the book, it's quite an interesting topic."

Richard nodded, he then opened the book and started to read the first page, he noticed something and exclaimed,

"Cursed ice?"

Ed nodded while grinning. "What do you think?" he said.

"You want to implement it to your ice magic?"

"Yes, it's quite handy for capturing people don't you think?"

"Forget about capturing, if you want to kill people through suffocating, this is the right thing to learn." Richard said sarcastically.

"Well, I'll learn to control it then."

"It's basically the same thing as fiendfyre! It's a living ice Ed, and you're what, eleven years old, how do you control a living magic. In case you didn't know, cursed ice used to froze Hogwarts between the year 1984 and 1896, and I mean look at the description! 'Prolonged exposure could affect the mind of those who falls afoul of it and render their memories "erratic" and place them in some sort of delirium', if this is not dark magic, it should be."

"W-Well, I thought about it too, but I asked some people, and the cursed ice is easy to control if you're the one that cast the curse, and as you may know, I am a bit talented in ice magic, so maybe It'll work out, no, I know it'll work out."

Richard eyed Ed suspiciously and asked, "Who did you ask? A dark wizard or some shady people?"

"No, I guess he's some sort of my great uncle I guess, I don't really know but he's connected to the family." Ed answered, he thought about Gilligan's relationship to the family and ultimately decided to call him his 'great uncle'.

Richard is still eyeing Ed suspiciously and asks, "Are you 100% sure this will work?"

"W-Well not I wouldn't say 100% but-"

"Ed, this is serious, if you can't control it, the school will probably freeze again."

"If it's cancelling the spell then I'm 100% sure I can but controlling where it spreads and how fast it is, it's a different matter." Ed defended.

Richard sighed, and just said, "Okay, at least we can cancel the spell, so at least it won't spread."

"Great! Okay, let's use the desk as a trial first." Ed enthusiastically moved one of the desks to another corner of the room. Richard, who was seeing this, just sighed, "This is going to be a disaster."

"Oh, come one, I thought you trusted me." Ed said, acting hurt.

"I don't, especially this one." Richard answered flatly.

Ed just chuckled at the response, he then turned to the desk, he aimed his wand at the desk, took a deep breath, and casted the spell.

An ice shard spawned beside Ed, he then cursed the ice and shot it to the desk.

"Okay, here we go." Ed whispered, looking nervous.

The ice was spreading slowly to the desk, a couple of seconds later, the ice covered half of the desk, Ed then tried to control the ice's spread direction, to outside the desk, it worked, the ice didn't spread to the rest of the desk anymore, then he tried to control the speed of the spreading, and it spread fast, in a matter of seconds the ice almost touched Ed that was the nearest, and Ed tried to stop the spreading, but it didn't work, he instantly panicked.

"Shit! It won't stop!" Ed screamed.

"Then cancel it!" Richard shouted, also panicking.

The ice was spreading quickly, it already covered almost half of the room, then Ed cancelled it with a specific counter curse, the spreading then slowed down and eventually stopped. The room was piercing cold, a bunch of ice crystals can be seen on one half of the room, Ed's feet are covered with ice, while the ice was really close to Richard.

"W-Well, that went better than I expected."

"BETTER?! YOU ALMOST FROZE US TO DEATH YOU MANIAC!" Richard shrieked.

But before Ed could refuse, another shout was heard behind the desks in the corner of the room.

"What's going on here! Why is it so cold!" a girly voice shouted.

The two boys then looked at the source of the voice, it was the blonde girl.

"Oh, you're finally awake." Said Richard in a deep voice, as if impersonating someone.

"W-Well y-yeah, w-why is it s-so c-cold h-he— w-what! w-why is t-there a b-bunch of i-ice c-crystals h-here!" She said while standing up, shivering from the cold and she looked at the half of the room.

"Sorry to wake you up, it's my fault, we wanted to wake you up but you looked tired, so we let you sleep here while we did a bit of experimenting." Ed said while walking to the girl, he gave his robe to her for extra warmth and conjured a white flame that heats its surroundings.

The girl took the robe and instantly wore it, he looked at the condition of the room and asked, "This is your doing?"

"W-Well, technically it's an accident, so I didn't purposely do it, I just want to freeze the desk over there." He explained while pointing at the now frozen desk.

"Less chatting please, we need to remove the ice, Ed, you know how to get rid of this mess?" Richard said with an annoyed face.

"I mean, we could just melt it." Ed said casually while walking towards Richard.

"And flood the entire corridor? Yeah, no." Richard quickly denied the proposition.

"Then what do you propose, except for melting it, I've got no idea."

"How about we open the window, then throw the ice crystal out of it, the ice on the floor we can melt, so the water won't go out of the classroom." Richard suggested.

"Okay then, let's start working." Ed said, he walked to the ice crystals, cutting it off from the floor using a severing charm, picked it up, and threw it out of the window, Richard did the same but much slower. Ed looked at the girl who was sitting on the chair beside the white flame and asked her.

"Can you help us?"

The girl looked at Ed for a second and answered flatly,

"No way, it's your mess to fix."

Ed just sighed and continued to work. After about half an hour, all the ice crystals are gone, leaving the ice chunk on the floor.

"So now what?" Ed asked.

"Can you draw the water out of the window too?"

"I dunno, probably? I mean, it'll be exhausting as hell, but let's try it." Ed nodded, while he and Richard casted heat and flame spells to melt the ice, after another half an hour, the ice completely melted, leaving a puddle of water on the floor.

"Okay Ed, do you thing." Richard said while walking to the corner of the room.

"This is going to be torture…" Ed sighed. He then raised his wand and pointed at the water; the tip of his wand suddenly lights up with an icy blue colour. Then a small amount of water moved to the direction of where his wand was pointing, Ed then pointed the wand at the window, the water followed and exited the window.

"Okay, there are many more to go." Ed said, he's already sweating because of all the magic he's done.

About twenty minutes later, all the water had been removed, and Ed, although still conscious, practically collapsed from exhaustion.

"That was probably the most tiring thing I've ever done." Ed wheezed; he's practically bathing in his own sweat.

"Well, it's your fault, you did this." Said Richard accusingly.

"Yeah-yeah I know. Thank Merlin we've got no class today, otherwise, we'll be late for class right about now."

Ed then went silent for a minute, resting his body, 'I need to go to Madam Pomfrey after this.' He thought. Then he looked at the girl who was still sitting looking at them.

"So, are you just going to sit there and do nothing?" Ed asked.

The girl looked at Ed for a few seconds and said,

"This is originally my place to study, so yes, I will sit here until you two leave."

"What if we don't want to leave?"

"Then I will report what you did in this class to the professors."

Ed just chuckled and said, "Like they would believe you."

"I hear Professor Snape is a master Legillimens, maybe he can read my mind and find out about what I saw here." She said flatly, with a bit of a threatening tone in it.

Hearing this Ed just sighed, and asked, "What's your name anyway? last time I saw you, you were sneaking off to the dungeon because you fell asleep and from what I assumed, you fell asleep in this classroom, just like today."

The girl looked away from Ed, and blushed a bit, ashamed from what he told her.

"I was tired that day okay, and my name is Daphne, Daphne Greengrass."

'Daphne Greengrass? Did I see her name in the books? I know the name Greengrass though from the information book.' Ed thought.

"Greengrass? From the sacred 28?" Ed asked.

"Yes, I'm the heiress of the family." She said, a bit of pride can be seen on her face.

Ed didn't care if she's an heiress or not, he's more curious why she was sleeping here.

"So, why are you sleeping in an empty classroom? You could've slept in your dorm room."

Daphne just sighed, but then she put on a cold face, "I was studying theories and practising it, then I was tired and started to rest, I closed my eyes a little bit, the next thing I knew the room was dark and it was night-time."

"How about now? I didn't see any books or papers around you when we came in."

Daphne answered, still has her poker and cold face,

"I was studying late last night, so I didn't get enough sleep, and I came here to get some sleep, I didn't want my roommates to see me sleeping in the middle of the day, it would damage my family reputation, 'The Heiress of the Greengrass family is laying around all day.', my family will scold me for that."

Richard looked at Daphne weirdly and asked, "Then why did you study all night? I know we got quite a lot of homework, but it doesn't require you to be that diligent."

Daphne just went silent for a minute, not answering the question, then Ed spoke,

"I get it." He said softly.

"Get what?" Richard asked Ed.

"Family Pressure right?" Ed asked Daphne, "As the Heiress, you have to be at least somewhat the top of the class, especially now with Hermione and Richard, muggle-borns are now the top of the class, so the pureblood family feels insulted by that."

Daphne just nodded weakly, then Ed continued,

"But why? I noticed Draco didn't really care, some of the other family did too."

"I'm different, my mother expects me to excel at magic, she used to be a duelling champion, The Malfoys were rich, while my family is considered to be top duellists and even has our own family magic. She was mad when she heard someone else was chosen to be a Hogwarts representative at the under seventeen tournament instead of me." She said, with an angry tone at the end of the sentence.

"Oh, sorry, that was me." Ed apologised weakly.

"It was you?" Daphne finally broke her poker face and looked surprised.

"Yes, Professor Flitwick asked me, so I accept."

"A muggle-born like you? Chosen?" she chuckled desperately.

"Muggle-born?" Ed laughed, "Careful what you said Greengrass."

"You are a muggle-born are you not?" she asked, confused.

"No, I'm pure blood, now I don't know where my father and mother came from, but I kept my last name since I was young, so you could ask your family about my family." He said the half-truth.

She just nodded suspiciously and went silent.

"So, what do you want? Me stepping off of the tournament?" Ed asked.

"No, that's insulting." She scoffed.

"Then want to duel me? If you win I'll step down."

"Absolutely not, after that ice, you would accidentally freeze me to death." She said, mocking him from his lack of control of his ice magic.

Ed's eyebrow just twitched, while Richard chuckled.

"Okay, what do you want then?" he asked annoyedly.

"Nothing." She said flatly.

"Then why'd you try to insult me by mentioning my ancestry?"

"I didn't insult you." She said, looking angry because of the accusation.

"Really? You said the word 'muggle-born' like it's beneath you." He said, disgusted with her behaviour.

"I- sorry, I didn't mean it." She said guiltily, breaking her cold façade.

Ed looked surprised at the sudden attitude change, 'interesting…' he thought.

"It's fine, you're quite an interesting person, a girl born in a family that drilled the concept of pure-blood supremacy to their members, but you, you apologised to me, why is that?"

"I-I just didn't like all of that, but as you said, it has been drilled into me, so sometimes I still act like those who actually believe that sort of thing."

"So, you don't support pureblood supremacy?" Richard suddenly asked, interested in joining the conversation now instead of just listening to it.

"No, not really." She said weakly.

The room went silent for a minute, only the sound of the howling wind outside can be heard because of the opened window. Richard looked at Ed signalling him about something, she looked at the girl, her cold façade was long gone, just a tired face.

"Family pressure huh…" he whispered.

Ed looked at Richard and nodded, then the Ravenclaw boy spoke,

"Then, do you want us to help? With your studies I mean." Richard asked softly, "We're quite smart you know, I'm quite good with theories and history, while Ed over here is quite good with everything that has physical practical application in it."

Daphne looked at the two, and said with a bit of mocking tone,

"Who said I need your help? I'm doing fine by myself."

Ed just chuckled and said, "Yes, falling asleep in an abandoned class until curfew because of studying is doing fine."

She blushed, embarrassed by the flaw of her words, then asked suspiciously.

"Why do you want to help?"

Richard just said vaguely, "Let's just say we've got something in common."

"And what is that, may I ask?" she asked.

"A lot to be honest, lust for knowledge most of all, although you're forced to have that." Ed said.

"And besides, you look like you need a friend." Richard continued. "And it would be cool, you know, they'll call us the Weird Trio, a combination of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. I mean Gryffindor and Slytherin hated each other, while Ravenclaw just wanted nothing to do with other people around them, we will be a unique combination." He said, while making rainbows with his hands.

All of the just chuckled, but Daphne's face fell,

"But I can't be seen with the two of you, especially you, um.. What's your name?" she said while pointing at Richard.

"Oh right, Richard Neil, nice to meet you."

"Right, especially you Richard, you know, you're a muggle-born, if someone sees me studying with you and reports it to my parents…" she shivered.

"It's all right, we can study and chat here, outside this place, we don't know each other." Richard said.

Daphne just nodded, and said, "Okay then, I'll bless you with my presence here."

The other two boys just rolled their eyes after that comment. Then in the next hour they chatted, mostly just Richard and Daphne talking with Ed listening and joined in here and there. She mentioned she had a sister, and she will enter Hogwarts next year, the three also planned the lessons they will study over the next months or so, Ed will still experimenting with his cursed ice, Richard will study more advanced spells, while Daphne will be taught from the start much to her protest.

After about an hour, they went their separate ways, it's already quite dark outside, and Ed walked to the Great Hall to have some dinner. In the Great Hall, he saw Hermione chatting with Harry and Ron, and Ed walked to them. Hermione noticed Ed's presence, and spoke,

"Where've you been?" she asked, looking annoyed.

"Practising with Richard and another student, why?" Ed answered casually while sitting beside her.

"Where? I came to your usual spot, but it's empty, and the room smells weird."

"Oh." Ed chuckled remembering the scene. "We did come to that room, but we caught a couple of seniors were doing… sexual activities." As soon as Ed said that Hermione just blushed, and the others piqued Ed with interest. "That's probably why the room smells weird. And we'll probably move our spot to the end of the corridor next time, it's tainted there."

"Yeah? Who is it?" said one of the twins while both grinned.

"Is it from Gryffindor?" said the other twin.

"I don't know to be honest, the senior pushed me and Richard out of the room and slammed the door in front of us." Ed just shrugged.

"What do you think George? Should we go investigate this?"

"Absolutely Fred, we could have a field day with this."

While the twins just grinning madly and planned for some mischief, Ed turned to Hermione again.

"Why are you looking for me? Something on your mind?" While side-eying both Harry and Ron.

"Nothing." She shook her head, "I just want to finish my homework with you."

Ed just hummed, but suddenly Hermione sniffed, "You smell really bad, what did you do with Richard?" She said and looked at Ed suspiciously, "And who's that other student you talked about?"

"Oh, I may have an accident during an experiment, so I had to clean it up, and it's quite exhausting." Ed answered, avoiding mentioning Daphne's name.

"Accident?" she asked worriedly, "What accident?"

"I- it's not important." Ed wanted to tell her, but a cursed ice incident happened in 1986, so if some seniors heard the conversation, he'll be scrutinised by them. Ed picked up some food and started to eat it.

"Really?" Hermione frowned, "So, who is this 'other student'? I noticed you avoided the question."

Ed choked at the question, 'she's really persistent.' he thought. Ed just smiled at her and answered,

"It's no one really, you'll meet her soon enough."

"Her?" Hermione looked at Ed with a scrutinising gaze, accusing him of the worst of crime.

"Like I said, it's no one really." Ed said casually, but he was sweating bullets because of the way Hermione looked at him. She and Ed have been quite close since the Troll incident, although she didn't spend time with Ed like when it was the first week, she still finds the time to do homework with Ed.

Hermione still looked at Ed suspiciously, and Ed quickens the pace of his eating and finishes his Dinner. He then stood up, and said to the other three, "I'm going back to the common room, I need a shower, coming?"

The three of them just nodded, and exited the corridor, on the way, Harry talked about how Snape's refereeing in the next match, hearing this, Ron and Hermione advised Harry to not participate in the Quidditch match, but Ed just listened to it silently, not saying anything.

In front of the Fat Lady portrait, the four of them met Neville, who seemed to get a Leg-Locker curse, seeing this, Ed instantly casted the counter curse.

"You okay Neville?" asked Ed.

Neville just nodded, but Hermione also asked worriedly,

"Who did this?"

"It's Malfoy." Neville answered weakly.

Ed just sighed and shook his head, "You've got to stand up for yourself Neville, we won't always be there for you."

"I'll pass, it's too much trouble."

"Then report it to Professor McGonagall, that won't be too much trouble." Hermione said to Neville.

Neville just shook his head weakly, "He'll target me even more if I report it."

"Come on Neville." Said Ron, "That's not a reason to let him bully you like this, you need to at least fight it."

"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor Ron, I know it myself."

Ed just sighed, but Harry stepped in, "You're worth twelve of Malfoy Neville.", he patted Neville's back and gave him a chocolate frog, "The sorting hat chooses you to be in Gryffindor isn't it? And where is Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin."

"Hey." Interrupted Ed, "Not to say Malfoy is not a bad guy, but Slytherin's not that bad. A friend of mine is from there."

"Is it that girl?" Hermione asked suddenly, a frown can be seen on her face.

Ed just shut up at the question, silent covered the front of the hall for a moment, before Neville broke it,

"Thanks everyone, I think I'm going to bed now." Said Neville while entering the common room.

After that everyone split up, Hermione went to her dorm, Ron and Harry played Wizards chess in the common room, while Ed took a shower.

'What a tiring day.' Ed thought while sighing in the shower.