Chapter 13: Teacher

Possessing a face that was not too beautiful nor hideous, she stood welcomingly amidst the mass of eager-eyed yet sceptical children, a plump woman if there ever was one. Her belly could be seen mildly protruding from her delicate dress, creating a slight tent-like mound in the midst of her stomach. Her loose silk dress fell against the very tips of her ankles, protected by a round high-platform shoe.

Embroidered with a myriad of patterns and symbols, the yellow, almost sun-stained cloth she wore draped over her plump body could be practically likened to a quilt, a family heirloom that told a tale of obedience and dedication. Wrinkles littered her otherwise charming face despite her apparent youth, though not in the form of lines that could only be formed via rage but instead kind crinkles that pulled at her cheeks as if posturing her lips into an ever-wide smile. She sported a head of lengthy chocolate brown hair that fell loosely against her dress's nonexistent collar and blue eyes that appeared to mirror the summer sky that shimmered above. All in all, though, the woman was definitely older than Rowena, who could be determined as a lady in her mid-twenties, though she still possessed enough charm to enrapture the hearts of a common man such as Hengist.

However, before Herne, her appearance held no value, for he did not even spare the plump woman's jolly mask a second glance before his gaze fell upon two distinct items, two pieces of all too familiar apparel. The first was a cloak, a cut of luxurious material that shared the very same hue as the midnight sky. It rested languidly across the woman's left shoulder, akin to a velvety pauldron, with intricate grey stitching and deep pockets that remained ultimately unused.

Different from Herne's drapes was the colouring of the item's interior, for it did not share the same bland grey hue as the boy's but instead was a dazzling, almost blinding shade of yellow. Still, the differences between Herne's garments and the woman's did not stop there, for when his gaze focused upon the other item that pressed tightly against the woman's inflated chest, he could do little more than speculate as to why she possessed a dress so different. Her belt, or rather leather strap that should have remained as plain as day, reflected a different scene upon what should have been the mirror-like silver coating of the buckle, for pressed upon the item's surface appeared one creature as opposed to the four that plagued Herne's.

It was the smallest among the offerings, the most bland in design and colouring, for it possessed no mystical traits nor unique attributes like an eagle's wings or a snake's venom. It was simply a badger, a creature of the night that took comfort in the burrows it called home, streaked with black and white. The creature's monotone colouring both cast back God's holy radiance in the form of cascading beams of pale light and absorbed it. A background of yellow took on the form of a bed for the mammal to rest upon, as its family member appeared pressed upon the cloak's sigil.

All the gathered eyes of those present remained fixed upon the strange woman who wore the same cloth as them though coloured in a different hue with curious fascination, the same type of intrigue they initially possessed towards the child who lingered in the backdrop. Clearly, she was someone new, someone different, someone they couldn't help but admire, whether it be for her strength or aura, this was the human they had been told to meet, the woman with the title of "teacher".

"Is that the last of you?" She spoke, her voice as soft as silk and as warm as a crackling fireplace. She questioned the audience, who returned her query with an atmosphere of bewildered ignorance. Still, though she did not fret over the palpable silence that graced her obscured ears but instead seemed to acknowledge it for what it was, for she did not even need their answer, her question was merely rhetorical a modus operandi to spark a conversation that conclusively failed.

"Well…now that you're all gathered here, let me introduce myself. My name is Helga Hufflepuff, and I'm the teacher that will be escorting you to our wonderful school." The woman named Helga stated with an expansive ear-to-ear smile showcasing all her pearly white teeth. "But before we get going, may I ask you all to form small groups of around two to three people, just so that I can be sure that I won't be leaving any stray straggler behind when we start our trek." She continued much to the anxious bemusement of the gathered children.

It was as though lightning had struck the crowd the way the atmosphere immediately shifted. No longer did silence reign across the land in fear or rather worry of the judgement Helga may throw their way. The mass had forgotten to uphold care for such an inconceivable outcome. All they cared about now was finding a partner. Frantic looks were cast from either end of the small enclosure. Brothers and sisters were torn apart in place of friends and cliques, and within minutes everyone had found someone to stand beside, everyone apart from Herne.

He had tried to make his presence known amongst the gathered crowd to little avail. He had started conversations and introduced himself in a manner he deemed fit with a broad eternal smile. Yet, no matter how much Herne tried, no matter who Herne spoke to, the response he received remained unanimously consistent. Looks of scorn, glances of disappointment and smirks of ridicule, all refusals the boy couldn't consciously understand yet ones his body responded to with an instinctual retreat.

Despite his best efforts, the child remained alone and isolated. No one had even taken the chance to speak to him throughout his little escapade, sparing the outsider not even a token word as simple as "No". Scathing glares of derision latched themselves upon Herne's still brightly smiling form, hushed whispers and soft breaths filled the silence that festered in the air around the boy while prods and pokes were exchanged between partners as they egged one another on to take the opportunity to mock the boy.

And that was when someone began to move. Breaking away from a group of three loomed a figure, lanky in stature, the body of the teenager Herne had once offered an introduction to began to move, his ruthless prideful gaze locked upon the boy's excitable face. He could be described as relatively good-looking, possessing no notably negative traits to speak of when it came to appearance. His hair, a sort of mousey brown in tone, was well-kept and clearly brushed, the polar opposite of Herne's shaggy, unkempt mess, while his face could be denoted as "Handsome" like most wizards. His pair of emerald green eyes seemed to smirk at Heren's expense. They took pride in his climbing anxiety, which proved to only grow with every step he took towards the average child.

His cloak that lay haphazardly strewn across his shoulder fluttered against the fresh dawn air, catching every stray passing gust of wind to an almost dramatic effect. "Do you need a partner?" The boy asked, his tone seemingly caring in nature. However, no one appeared to fall for the false facade he put on spare for the innocent Herne, who took everything at face value, completely ignorant to the restrained laughter that threatened to burst within the teenager's throat.

"Um…Yes!" Herne joyfully exclaimed, having assumed the boy's question to instead be a definite answer. "My name's Herne. What's yours?" Herne continued, much to the teenager's amusement, as a broad lampooning grin stretched across his haughty mug.

"I know your name already, you foo-" The teenager stated, his tone as cold as ice from the distance it had travelled from atop the ivory tower he perched himself on. "Everyone here knows your name. We met just yesterday after all, or have you already forgotten about all of us," The teenager continued, deliberately ignoring the better half of Herne's arbitrary query to instead berate the young boy.

His words rang in Herne's head with all the clarity of a ripple across a pure lake of blue. He was right. Herne had already introduced himself to the children gathered to attend Hogwarts just yesterday and especially to the potential partner who lingered before him. He was being too forward to assuming, too kind. "Ah, I'm sorry, I-I didn't know." Herne bashfully commented, his pale cheeks stained a brilliant, almost crimson shade of red. Still, though, this embarrassment was fleeting in nature, and within seconds the innocent child had returned to his prior self, utterly deaf to the cackles of laughter that seemed to emanate from every gathered wizard's mouth.

"What's your name?" Herne continued, repeating his prior query in a vain, almost hopeless attempt to elicit an answer from the stalwart teenager. However, this time different from before, his query managed to earn a motion from the haughty youth, that being a definite scowl.

"My name? You don't need to know that. After all, a name is something you share with someone befitting your status, and you, well, I think we all know what you are," The teenager replied, much to Herne's utter bewilderment. The child simply couldn't comprehend the condescending nature of the figure who stood before him, for he had yet to experience and be tempered by the true harshness of the world around him, so Herne simply accepted the nameless human as he was, someone he truly would never be able to speak evenly with.

"Oh, ok!" Herne shouted brightly, not caring in the slightest for the teenager's apparent scorn but still gleeful at the possibilities his appearance before him presented. "Are you going to be my partner?" He continued, his jubilant gaze locked with the twin gems that his opposition harboured.

At the child's words, the teenager paused for but a moment, no, even a moment was too long to describe the fraction of time it took the young man to answer Herne's gleeful question; it was more like a fragment of a millisecond, faster than one's heart could beat, and in that period a myriad of emotions crossed the contemptuous adolescent's conceited mind.

For right now, Herne was truly little more than a toy to the budding wizard, an item he could bend and break to his infinite wiles. Herne was naive, an unworldly specimen of human creation that should by no circumstances have managed to live to such a point, and the teenager knew as such. Yet, instead of feeling pity for the hell that awaited the boy, he instead experienced an ecstasy like no other.

Wizards were prideful creatures. They would do whatever it took to uphold their ego, even if that meant destroying the life of another, and Herne provided them with the perfect outlet to vent these insecurities. His power over Herne was nearly infinite. With but a word, he could make him do anything, get down on his knees and beg, pray to him, revere him like a god as the teenager debates his feeble request, he could force the child to perform magic…yes, he could do that, at such an idea a malicious glint passed through the boy's fine gemstone eyes.

"I don't know, you see, I'm already part of a group of three," The teenager monologued as a typhoon of disappointment brushed over the distraught Herne's completely average face. Herne had all but given up on the teenager, on this potential partner. He would just look for someone new, renew his previously failed venture in a futile attempt to convince someone closer to his age to allow him into their group, yet, just as Herne was about to move on, content with his own agreed-upon plan, he would be stopped, by a sentence that could only be likened to the sweet whisper of the devil. "But I suppose I could join you…If you do something for me, that is," The boy continued, forcing back a gaudy giggle that bubbled in the pits of his throat.

"What!? What do you want me to do?" Herne innocently questioned, taken back by the adolescent's sudden proposition.

"Nothing difficult nor too challenging for you. I just want to see you use some magic. Surely you can do that, right?" The teen prodded, a devilish smile strung across the hangings of his otherwise relatively perfect face, for before he could even finish his mutterings, Herne had already brandished his exceptionally banal oak wood wand and had it mid-motion.

The same familiar draining sensation plagued the boy's body, stemming from his heart all the way to his hand. It was as though his blood was running backwards, the way he could feel everything with agonising clarity. His skin felt cold, colder than the frigid air around him, despite being guarded by many layers of heated cloth. Goosebumps dotted every inch of obscured flesh the boy possessed, still that was not all, for not only did the boy's flesh and body undergo such a forced change but so too did his colour, for all life was drained from his pale white skin, turning it an almost sickening shade akin to that of a corpse.

His sense of sight began to waver, with brief interludes of darkness followed by blurred radiance. His head felt light, as though detached from his body and left to hang amidst the clouds, yet despite experiencing the same tortuous sensation as before, nothing excreted from the wand's pointed tip.

'Do I need to try harder?' Herne dazedly commented as a strange gut-wrenching sense of pain befell his chest. It felt like his heart had been stabbed by an incalculable amount of diminutive daggers, though the pain did not linger there for long, and neither did it disappear; no, it spread, like a miasma, a cloud of death, it slowly traversed through every millimetre of the boy's body. His veins felt as though gouged by a branding iron. They burnt, and they scolded the child for his foolishness, and yet Herne did not even release a squeak of defiance, nor did a singular tear scrape his cheek.

He simply dealt with it, forced the pain down in a manner unbefitting someone his age, for it was all in his head. His body wasn't sustaining physical damage aside from the soul-crushing contortion of what would be a mana core. And it was when Herne was in the midst of such a battle that his wand began to flicker. Faint, almost ethereal beads of blue protruded from its tip and hovered delicately in the air. He was using magic, though when his quivering gaze met with the teenagers, he did not see an expression of approval but rather one of self-satisfied superiority plastered upon his haughty mask. "Is that all? Come on, try a little harder, or I'll just have to return to my previous group." The boy laughed, and so too did the rest of the crowd, spare for two people.

Two figures, one who already possessed a connection to the boy in the form of an acquaintance and the other who would go on to teach him the basics of the mystical world he found himself a part of. Hengist and Helga both eyed the child with apparent pity in their hearts. One could do nothing spare for slowly sizzling on the sidelines, brewing in his own festering pot of rage while the other voiced her opinions aloud.

"All right then! Whoever you're standing beside right now will be your partner for the brief trip, whether one likes it or not!" She bellowed, her tone clearly carrying with it an air of judgement, like a god placing their orders upon their devoted worshippers. One could simply not refute her orders, or at least no one tried to, no one spare for the teenager who looked incredulously at the plump woman with bloodshot eyes.

This wasn't what he wanted. He didn't actually wish to stand side to side with this…thing that wore the mask of a wizard, this lesser being. He was merely teasing the boy, mocking him and showcasing to the world just what he was, a failure. His hands reached for his wand. He wouldn't take this-this treachery. He felt betrayed, left to die by someone of his own kind, someone who should have understood his actions, praised them, praised him. Yet the moment his dainty fingers wrapped around the wooden utensil, he would find himself disarmed, his wand hovering gently before him and slowly meandering towards the homely Helga.

"Now then. Let's get going." The woman graciously smiled, sparing the fuming teen no words of explanation.