Clubs

Having a great sleep after a week of insomnia, Luca had to be violently shaken awake by Winnetou, his forehead patted by Ringo felt more like a massage than a wake-up call.

"Are you alive here, shik'is?" Winnetou asked, looking at Luca sleeping in his robes as the breakfast jingle finished playing, he and the other boys were ready to go with their one-strap school satchels slung over their shoulders.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Wait a second." Luca decided to stand up and go like this, it didn't matter either way. He put Ringo on his collar, the kitten seemed to like being around his head, then took the empty bag put aside, and packed the books according to the schedule he learned talking yesterday.

"First Offense Against Incoming Hazards, then Charms. After lunch Crafting and No-maj Research..." Luca picked the four needed books and turned to go, his roommates looking at him differently, Tolkien and Nathaniel with interest, Junfeng and Bennet with a tinge of fear.

"Mornin', what's up with you touchin' deadmen?" Tolkien asked with a slight accent what everybody wanted to know.

"No idea, I come from a no-maj family, shouldn't you have more of a clue? Voodoo, ancestral spirits, yin-yang stuff, anything?" Luca looked at the more 'magical' of his roommates in vain, they only stared back at him in incomprehension.

"I know those words, it's some no-maj gobbledygook explanation for wizarding world exposure." Bennet said in a barely audible voice as they went out led by embarrassed Luca.

"Ancestral spirits kind of exist, but not in a way you imagine. In the tribes, we have animal totems that host the knowledge and experience of our forefathers' transformation, you would call it Animagus. There is a ritual for dying shamans to fuel their power." Winnetou explained something similar.

"Voodoo is just forbidden blood magic, ain't it?" shrugged his shoulders Tolkien.

"I'm born in Iverstead." Junfeng put an end to racial profiling as they went down the stairs.

"He's here, Master of Death is coming!" a blonde young man stood up from the sofa nearest to the staircase, a large team of people assembled on his shout, their uniform characteristic a badge of black cat head in an open-visor helmet holding a sword and shield, and burly silhouettes, especially visible in the coming to the front two-meter giant, that smiled and went to shake hands with Luca.

"Hi, I'm the president of Knight's of the Round Wampus club, and two times voted as house's prefect Daniel Slate." he introduced himself.

"Luca Granger. Listen, I don't know why those things happened yesterday…" Luca automatically thought him waiting here to investigate.

"No, I don't care, and nobody here does. We just want you to know that Wampus house has your back, don't worry about some idiots." he patted Luca on the shoulder, to show his support.

"Yeah, beat up anyone who insults our brothers and sisters!" the blonde man multiplied into three identical ones, Luca thought for a second there to have hallucinations.

"Didn't you call him Master of Death a minute ago?" the one standing in the middle said.

"How is that an insult, peabrain?" left one replied, looking at his triplet brother as Luca realized their identity.

"My brain is the same as yours, genius." the middle one scoffed with a sense of superiority.

"I want to make a demonstration on how we will beat up people, now you volunteered. Don't resist!" left one punched his brother in the face in slow motion, the one attacked made a funny face upon contact and jumped back into the arms of the crowd of club members, pretending to pass out with a hanging tongue.

"Haha, we're the Makris brothers. I'm Themistocles, he's Leonidas and Alexander, deputy leaders of the club." right one also shook Luca's hand, pointing with the other to his brothers.

"Hello, hello…" at a bit of a loss, Luca nodded to the crowd watching him, this noticed by the leader.

"Okay, now everyone knows our rising star, go eat." Daniel waved his hand to disperse the crowd, clearly he had a lot of authority. Luca's roommates went along with them, leaving him, the triplets, and Daniel to talk near the middle of the room.

"Sit down and listen, we want you to become a member." Themistocles nudged a fat orange cat sprawling on the sofa to make way and made an inviting gesture.

"Is that kind of dry solicitation appropriate for Ruler of Afterlife? Try again." his brother, Luca was 33% certain named Alexander, sat down where his brother indicated.

"Don't grab my only job, I'm the one recruiting newbies. As having 'Knight's' in the title indicates, we are mostly a fighting club, with an emphasis on physique. Playing with swords, battle quidditch, weekend morning group runs around the castle, you know. You have to practice how to dodge and aim spells for them to be effective, idea of healthy body agile like a cat's..." Daniel had a tendency to drone on, interrupted by Miranda that went down with her girlfriends and overheard part of his speech.

"I'm in, don't try to leave me out!" she clamored to join,

"You can't get in by shouting, we recruit only elites. Other houses also have clubs like ours, we must be stronger, smarter, better at magic, and most importantly more handsome than them." Leonidas who all this time lay motionless on the carpet swarmed by cats sniffing him, said with pride without opening his eyes.

"What a coincidence, I seem to be a perfect match." Miranda went and kicked him lightly in the shin, this finally made him stand up and look at her closely.

"Brat, you are also a first-year if my memory serves right, can you even cast a spell? Granger is an exception, you look ordinary as my socks." he put his pants up to reveal black cotton socks without a pattern. Miranda snorted and yanked out her wand aiming it at Leonidas.

"Rictusempra!" Leonidas watched her with a smirk, as the spell failed embarrassingly. Miranda didn't want to give up just yet, shouting the same word repeatedly, poking the wand forward, and waving it here and there.

"Okay, you are in! Nice spirit!" Daniel handed her the Knight's badge from the side. "So how is it Luca, the club exists to help potential wizards develop themselves and gather the more hardworking and committed ones." Luca looked at the furious Miranda that threw her wand on the ground and took the badge with her backhand despite the laughter of everyone watching.

"Fine!" he decided to be bold once and grasp the opportunity to receive some extracurricular guidance, at least not to be embarrassed like her in the future.

"Marvelous! Hurry up for breakfast now, Knight's can't joust on an empty stomach." Daniel clapped his hands in joy and threw him a badge, then went forward in big strides, his stomach rumbling loudly, heard despite the commotion and cat's constant meows or purrs - a permanent symphony of Wampus common room.

"Brother, your future is bright with us!" Themistocles and Alexander hugged Luca's shoulders from both sides and went after him. On the way, a couple of ghosts patrolled, they stared at Luca as he passed. Triplets explained that it's the ghost's job to keep order in the castle interior, outside Pukwudgies patrolling under the leadership of William, whether the original one surviving for more than four hundred years or his descendant of the same name hotly debated.

At the dining hall shrouded in green hue, eagles flew above wizard's heads delivering packages or newspapers to eager recipients. Macris triplets went to the fifth-grade table, Luca sat down with Bryce again, his uniform also adorned with a badge, two pairs of horns pointing upwards, the middle pair longer.

"Good morning, you joined a club too?" he said to an absorbed in reading 'Daily Seer' Bryce.

"Too? Oh, obviously…" Bryce was ready to show off but then recalled Luca's performance. "They took me in because I got chosen by two houses, not as impressive as you. Honestly, might be that someone saw us together and figured out to spy on you." he got doubtful now, similar to Luca, his housemates ambushed him after going out of the dormitory, he didn't think it unusual at that time.

"Don't worry about it, what's the name of serpent's club?" Luca took a jug of strawberry-flavoured milk from the table and a bowl of cornflakes. Ringo jumped headfirst from his shoulders and started slurping, Luca hesitant for a moment to bring himself another plate or ignore it. He eventually decided to bring himself a second plate and leave Ringo to eat in peace.

"Order of the Slick Horns. So lame. Our first lesson name is also lousy, Offense Against Incoming Hazards? Who came up with it?" Bryce complained, as peeved Miranda sat down in a huff at the same place, on Luca's left.

"Incurable dimwit, I would wager." she started by stabbing waffles with a wooden fork, perhaps a relic of times long past personally carved by the hand of the first headmaster.

"People seem to calm down from yesterday's excitement, at most some look at me sneakily." Luca commented as he observed the hall from over the soup, curious or hostile gazes cast at him sporadically. At the teachers' table, only Juno remained from people Luca knew, reading one newspaper after another from a small pile accumulated beside her plate. Luca wondered what was she reading, and where the rest of the staff are.

"They better or I will shove an eleven-inch splinter up their noses." Miranda brooded over her inability to use the wand.

"I had no time to ask, we should both be in class C, right?" Luca asked Bryce after he finished eating and started playing with Ringo's little tail.

"Mhm." confirmed Bryce, as the dining hall was becoming emptier, wizards heading to their first classroom of the new year. Seeing Winnetou passing by, Luca put Ringo back on his collar and got up to join and introduce them.

The group traversed a corridor separating the dining hall and the main staircase, a giant set of sandstone spiral stairs climbing up to the exit on a rooftop, ghost on duty overlooking the busiest place in the castle. This time, they needed to go down to the basement level, lit up by simple white everlasting candles every five steps. Students along the way lined up the walls or were already inside their classrooms, Luca thought it to be no different than a normal school.

Eventually reaching their target with some time left until the beginning, the boys looked around the space. A row of sixty wooden dummies stood under the stone wall on the right, sixty empty frames hung on the left, and sixty fairly small desk chairs stood in the middle. At the end of the classroom sat two adult wizards leisurely chatting with each other. Most of the chairs were occupied so the boys sat down at the back. A couple of stragglers came after them and filled the classroom to the brim, the empty frames welcomed a team of five old-fashioned visitors rapidly jumping from picture to picture until they reached the teacher's desk.