Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Rooms and Stews

I stood in front of a bland and undecorated wall that is now slowly changing into a medium-sized wooden door. Honestly, the sight of the transformation is still quite strange to me, I can't believe that magic is real now…

As the door fully appeared right in front of me, I first looked around, checking if there were any passerbys walking through the seventh floor corridors. There’s no one, so I quickly walked towards the door and entered the room of requirement.

As I entered the legendary room, I could instantly smell the scent of old books and dusty carpets. I looked around, and noticed that the temperature has changed drastically. It’s much warmer here, I could see a chimney at the edge of the room with smoldering fire crackling inside of it.

There were some couches and small tables near the entrance, at the left of it, there’s a spacious empty spot for training I guess, and the rest of the room is filled with rows of shelves, filled with old and new books alike.

This is what I need right now…

A quiet place to learn and relearn, with no disturbance at all.

I silently let out a sigh of relief. At least, with this, I could quickly study so as not to be noticed by the other professors… Imagine if I entered a classroom without knowledge that I haven’t practiced at all… while Whitlock is a genius and had many opportunities to study and practice, I am in my day one, I need to relearn what Whitlock had learned to the point that it becomes natural for me, to what once was.

I took out my wand, made with Acacia wood, Phoenix Feather as its core, 12 and a half inches long and is rather springy… I searched the memory of when Whitlock came towards the wandmaker, he said that it was probably one of the rarest combination, Ollivander said that Acacia will only give its full potential to the most gifted wizards and witches and would generally refuse to produce magic for anyone other than their owners, a loyal wood, while Phoenix Feather is a picky core, with only a handful of wizards ever having one.

One of the most stubborn and picky combinations, Ollivander said to me.

Well, the wandlore said that me and Whitlock are gifted wizards, let’s test that theory, shall we?

—

I was now standing at the spacious spot from before with a book called The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection in my right hand. I skimmed through most parts, to see the movements, the pronunciation, what it takes for it to use it nonverbally, and all that stuff.

To be honest… this feels… disappointing… I felt relieved too, but still…

This isn’t like math or god forbid physics, this is like those fake healthy yoga tutorials! I just need to remember the words, the movements, practice it a couple of times, and be done with it! Sure, I need to practice it later for muscle memory, but I could do most of the spells in this book in one sitting!

As I got rid of my frown in my face I quickly waved my wand in front of my face and spoke the incantation.

“Lumos.”

Suddenly, at the top of my wand, a dim light started to appear. Fuck, first try, is this really magic? Surely this is just because it’s first year material… or maybe because Whitlock had done it many times and the muscle memory is there… or both…

It was dim at first, but when I started to think to make it brighter, the light turned brighter and brighter, to the point it was almost blinding for me.

“Nox!” I screamed, so I won’t be blind because I just did my first magic trick, and the light quickly disappeared in front of me.

“Well….” I spoke to myself. “This is…”

I decided to just skip the first year altogether and just wanted to check if it’s really like this all year or just the first year. I took a fifth year book about Defense against the Dark Arts and skimmed through the Reductor curse. I quickly looked at the movement, it is not really that complicated too! You just have to draw a bloody greater-than sign using your wand and speak the incantation while imagining it. I quickly slammed the book to the table, and walked back towards the empty space, where there is suddenly a target practice there waiting for me… it’s creepy but it’s the wizarding world…

I quickly waved my wand, pointing at the target and spoke the incantation.

“Reducto.”

Blinding blue lights suddenly launched from the tip of my wand and it hit the target, shattering it to pieces. The force was so strong that the shockwave messed with my hair a little, and bits and pieces of the target hit my body.

Turns out… It’s the same for all years… for spells at least, I don’t know about the other subjects.

I tried to search on what Whitlock took as electives… oh shit, it’s Arithmancy and Runes…

I quickly walked towards the mini library in this godsent room and found a book of Arithmancy, I opened it, all numbers… I took a book about Runes, I opened it, all drawings… Well, I take back what I just said… only DADA seemed to be the easy one… the rest? Not so much…

—

When I saw the Arithmancy books and Runes, I decided to just skip it altogether for now, and focused on practicing defensive spells, so for hours I just cast a bunch of spells, I memorized the common ones, even the uncommon ones that I never heard before from the movies. I got pretty good memorizing skills, I don’t have Eidetic memory or anything, but it’s enough.

After that, I’ve a few more hours to spare, so I tried to learn Arithmancy, it’s just math with extra steps, it’s like having to decode words from a limit function… that sounds dumb, but it is what it is. I skimmed through it, got the general idea what it was about and closed it to do it for another time, took the Runes book, turns out it’s just using ancient language to enchant stuff, it’ll probably help to learn runic languages, Ancient German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Hieroglyphs, all that kind of stuff, I’ll do it at a later date…

Potions… okay, from the looks of it it’s just recipes, like cooking but with magic I guess… damn, this has a lot of practical stuff… I mean, it’s not that bad, I hate theoretical stuff, so I guess I can move through it. I moved to Herbology, basically Biology with extra branches, Astronomy… Similar to what I learned in the past so it shouldn’t be bad. History of Magic… I wish I had a podcast for this, this looks like it would be a boring read… and finally, Transfiguration… I don’t know about this one… seems like I have to have a broad imagination for this class, a tremendous amount of focus, and a strong will… but other than that, seems fairly moderate.

I was too deep in my readings about the lessons of Hogwarts when suddenly a clock bell that I didn't even know was there started ringing. I flinched at the sound to turn to it, only to see that the clock was showing that it was already in the evening, and the Halloween Feast is about to start. I quickly tidied my clothing because it had become messy and also tidied my hair. It’s quite a productive start I might say… I might even kill Voldemort myself, wait, don’t say that, please don’t jinx it… I beg you whatever shitty god that put me in this situation…

Well… overall, I’m happy.

—

The sound that is coming out of the Great hall is really loud. Rightfully I guess, a bunch of kids and teenagers packed into a single big hall will make quite a noise… not to mention the extra baggage we have this year.

I opened the big door in front of me and entered the hall, only to see that it was packed. I could see that the Slytherin’s table was cramped because the Durmstrang boys were there, as well as the Ravenclaw’s…

Speaking of Ravenclaws, I walked towards it, and I saw no space at all… well, there’s one, but I don’t really want to sit with her right now… it’ll be awkward… But there’s literally no space anymore, damn magic and its preciseness…

So, I did what I had to do, I walked towards that single empty spot, and asked the one beside it, it was Fleur.

“Can I sit here?” I asked politely, trying not to sound awkward.

Fleur turned to me and I could see that she was surprised a bit. She didn’t say anything, but nodded.

I quickly sat on that single empty spot and just waited for the Headmaster to start the feast… Fuck, it’s already awkward…

“So…” I broke the ice with her. “When will your father come?”

“Tomorrow morning.” she said calmly with her thick french accent. “I will come find you when he has arrived, do not worry about it.”

“Alright…” I murmured, god she just made it more awkward… “Did you put your name in the Goblet?”

The young woman turned to me, finally… “That is why I am here, why would you think that I didn’t put it in?” she said rather defensively.

Okay that’s rather a strong answer… “Right… sorry…”

To my happiness, Dumbledore then quickly told us to eat, the food appeared in front of me and I took some small amount of food to my plate. I ate rather slowly as it was uncomfortable as hell, seeing a lot of teenage boys looking at me with envy and jealousy. I turned to my side, to Fleur, she looked a bit put off by the food, so I asked her a question.

“Are you alright?” I questioned her.

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She turned to me and just sighed. “British food is a bit… greasy…” she murmured.

“Oh. Well, do you want something else?” I asked. “A french dish maybe? I could probably look for it on the other tables.”

She looks a bit hesitant at my offer, but ultimately relented. “Then could you please find me a Bouillabaisse?”

The hell is that? “What’s that?”

“It is a shellfish stew.” she explained. “The stew is quite red I think… I didn't have a chance to have it yesterday because of… well…”

“Oh… sorry…” I murmured. “Sorry about yesterday... I’ll get your stew…”

She just smiled at me. “Thank you.”

“No worries, I need to get away from all the stink eyes anyway…” I sighed quietly as I stood up from my bench and quickly walked across the great hall, carefully scanning the tables for some sort of stew, and I found it on the Gryffindor table, in front of someone I know.

I walked towards it and greeted the girl that was having some of it. “Evening Granger, you still want the Bouillabaisse?”

Granger looked at me. “Whitlock… No, you can take it if you want.”

“You like this?” a certain Redhead suddenly commented.

“I don’t know yet.” I shrugged as I grabbed the bowl with two hands.

“Then why’d you take it?” He questioned me again.

“Fleur wants it. Apparently British cuisine isn’t up to her ‘exquisite’ tongue.” I said casually.

“Looks like you’ve been charmed by the Veela.” Granger suddenly commented without facing me.

I just chuckled at her words. “It’s called being nice Granger, you should try that sometimes.”

I turned around and heard Granger huffs at my words, before walking back to my table, putting the Bouillabaisse in front of Fleur.

“Here.” I said, plopping back to my seat.

She grabbed the bowl and put it on her plate. She smiled at me once again. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” I smiled back, before turning to my plate. I slowly ate my food, but quickly felt full. I sighed, I looked around again, the occasional envious stares still there, I looked at Luna, eating pudding rather happily in the corner ignoring her entire surroundings.

I just sighed, and waited for the others to finish their meals and finally end this damn evening.

“Monsieur Wh—... Archie?” Fleur suddenly commented from beside me, finished with her meal.

“Yeah?” I answered.

“This is my sister, Gabrielle.” she suddenly said, leaning back so that I could see her sister, a nine-year old girl looking shyly at me. “She came with me to see Hogwarts.”

“Oh.” I just smiled at the little girl. “Hello Gabrielle. Does she speak English?”

“Non.” Fleur answered weakly, not bothering using English as it was similar. “Only I can speak English, albeit a bit bad…”

I shrugged at her words. “Good enough in my opinion.”

Fleur just smiled weakly at me. “Archie, tomorrow, whatever happens, please make the right choice…”

I raised my brow. “Choice? What choice?”

She ignored my words and continued to speak. “I understand that British Pureblood tends to ignore age, but I beg of you, choose the right one. She’s not ready yet.”

“I don’t understand Fleur? What are you talking about?” I am still confused as hell.

She looked hesitant, she was about to say something, but then Dumbledore stood up, speaking loudly towards the students inside the hall.

“Well, the goblet is almost ready to make its decision,” said Dumbledore. “I estimate that it requires one more minute. Now, when the champions’ names are called, I would ask them to please come up to the top of the Hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber, where they will be receiving their first instructions.”

Well, this is it I guess, the Champions… right…

I saw that Dumbledore pulled out his elder wand and dampened the fire around the halls, making the atmosphere quite tense. The fire of the goblet is now shining more brightly as the time has almost come, and Dumbledore is preparing to catch the first paper.

The flames inside the goblet turned suddenly red. Sparks began to fly from it. Next moment, a tongue of flame shot into the air, a charred piece of parchment fluttered out of it. The students were anticipating what’s inside of it. The old headmaster caught the piece of parchment and held it near the fire, so that he could read it by the light of the flames, which had turned back to blueish white.

“The champion for Durmstrang,” he announced, his voice loud and clear, “will be Viktor Krum.”

The room gave Krum, who was now standing to walk to Dumbledore, a round of loud applause, his headmaster himself congratulating him, praising him as always. The boy walked past me and he had this wide smile on his face, proud of himself.

The claps and cheers quickly died down as the fire turned red again and Krum disappeared into the next chamber. Another parchment fluttered out of the goblet once again, it was an elegant paper, probably from the Beauxbatons.

“The champion for Beauxbatons,” said Dumbledore, “Is Fleur Delacour!”

I could then see that the Beauxbatons students started to clap, but it was not as loud and cheery as Viktor’s. They were actually disappointed in themselves, I saw one even starting to cry. Meanwhile Fleur was smiling and she kissed her sister’s forehead, she looked at me and threw me a gentle smile.

“Congratulations.” I simply said. She just nodded at my words and she walked towards Dumbledore, shaking his hand and entered the next chamber.

After that, it was Cedric Diggory as the Hogwarts Champion, and he got the loudest of applause. Dumbledore then was about to send us to bed, but Potter’s name came out of the goblet, and it was dead silent.

After people processed what was happening, they started to yell at the boy as he walked to Dumbledore. I didn't really listen to it, I already knew what would happen, and I was just waiting for Dumbledore to send us to bed.

Dumbledore just walked out of the great hall, leaving the students alone.

I just sighed at the condition. People kept bickering and protesting with the professors. I didn’t want to hear it all, so instead, I stood up and exited the great hall, going to the Ravenclaw common room to end the day, ignoring the words of the professors that tried to stop me.

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