Chapter Text
“Alright, students! Now that you have your ear muffs, after I finish directions, you will put your muffs over your ears. Does anyone know why we need these still?” David held up his pair of mint green, puffy ear muffs as three hands shot in the air. “Hmmm… Neil!” The Professor pointed at one of the hands.
“A mature Mandragora’s wail is extraordinarily lethal to naked ears… they can cry us to death.” Neil dumbed down his answer when both the students and teacher looked at him dumbstruck. He faintly heard a scoff coming from one of the other students that raised their hands.
“Great job, Neil! 10 points to Ravenclaw! Thank you for trying Mr. Philips and Ms. Moonhart! Now then, since they are adults, the Mandrakes are deadly so I advise you make sure your earmuffs are put on securly. Once that’s done you will carefully remove them…”
“By-”
“By pulling on their ‘hair’, or their stems, with both hands and carefully transferring them into the larger pot next to your desk, sir!” A hufflepuff cut off Neil, who he recognized as Harrison.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Philips! 10 points to Hufflepuff! Next time, please don’t cry out, ok?”
“Yeah Harrison.” A girl Neil knew as Nerris whispered to Harrison.
“Oh please, you’re just jealous that I know more about magic then you.”
“Oh sure you are, muggleborn.”
“I… don’t know what that means.”
“You suck, Harrison.” Neil began to become annoyed with their bickering and tried to ignore them. After class, Neil saw Harrison continue to argue with Nerris ahead of him.
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a magical Zoologist, I bet you don’t even know what that is!”
“Doesn’t matter, when I’m done, I’m going to be the most famous magician of all time!”
“Really? A magician? You’ll just be risking the exploitation of our kind.” Neil said to himself, maybe a bit too loudly. Nerris and Harrison both turned to face him, Harrison looking a bit smug.
“Oh really?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. Simple ‘magic’ tricks can easily be explained, real magic can’t. It’ll only make no-majes or muggles suspicious of you.”
“He does have a point, Harrison-”
“Shut up, Nerris.” Harrison put his hand in front of Nerris’ face. “It won’t matter since muggles don’t believe in magic.” he wiggled his fingers. “You’re probably just jealous that I took your points during Herbology.”
“Oh please, Herbology is only a fraction of all the magic you can learn. You probably can’t even cast any magic aside from that.”
“So you wanna see magic, Neil?” Harrison came close, his angry face only a few inches away from his. “Fine, I’ll show you some magic.” Harrison reached into his cloak, pulling out his wand. “How about a duel?” Neil had never been asked to duel before, yet he was very interested in having one.
“Fine.” Neil pulled his out. Almost immediately, the boys were casting charms and hexes at each other. Neil had been able to parry all of Harrison’s, acting immediately after Harrison spoke his enchantments. QM passed by, mumbling something about jews under his breath and continued to do nothing about the boys fighting.
“Stupify!”
“Immobulus!” After several charms, Neil’s wand flew out of his hand, Harrison catching it with ease.
“I win.” He said with a smirk. Neil looked down at his wand hand, as though he expected it to still be there.
“H-how did you-” Harrison chuckled as he handed Neil his wand back.
“I told you silly, magic! Boop!” Harrison booped Neils nose and sauntered away.
“...fuck you Harrison…”
It was short but I wanted to get something out this month and the next chapter was getting too long, sorry.