Daughter of a Malfoy Chapter 7.5

About a week after Winter Break had ended, Professor F kept me and Will after class. “It’ll just be for a few minutes,” he promised. “I just have an offer to convey to you two, from Rose.” It felt odd that he did not call the other teachers ‘Professor’ even in front of students. “Even though neither one of you is in N.E.W.T.-level Charms, she wants to know if you’d like to attend her class for the next few weeks, to learn the Patronus Charm.”

I nodded excitedly and gave my immediate, “Yes!”

“Sure,” Will answered almost as eagerly, “but why?”

That was a very good question: why would Mum offer to teach us advanced Charms magic when neither of us had scored high enough on our Charms O.W.L.s? Actually, I did not know whether Will had gotten the required Exceeds Expectations score. I had just assumed that he would have taken every class he qualified for.

Professor F leaned against his desk. “Rose knows that both of you plan to attend universities in a tropical region in a foreign country, and she’s worried about your safety should either of you come across certain dangerous creatures, like the Lethifold or the Dementor.” He half-rolled his eyes. “I never took Care of Magical Creatures when I was a student here, but I’m pretty sure that Florida, U.S. isn’t tropical enough for Lethifolds to be particularly common. I’m also almost certain that most of the Dementors in America inhabit the northwestern regions, like Oregon, and Washington— not to be confused with the U.S. capital city, Washington D.C.; that’s way on the other side of the country— and British Columbia and the Yukon, in Canada.

“Anyway,” he said, getting back to the subject of Charms lessons, “I didn’t tell Rose any of that stuff because I figured you two might want to take her up on her offer— and, it turns out, I was right. You’re both talented enough as wizards, so I think you can do it. Here.” He handed each of us a beaten up Standard Book of Spells, Grade Seven textbook. “She wants you to read chapter eleven. Rose apologizes that they aren’t in great shape, but they’re spares kept from way back, even before I was a student here.”

Very carefully, I slipped my copy into my bookbag. Indeed, it felt so fragile in my hand that I thought the binding would fall apart if I held it for more than a few seconds.

“Professor,” Will smiled jokingly, “you make it sound like that’s supposed to make these books sound old! Surely you aren’t much older than thirty!”

I giggled into my hands, though I felt a bit guilty about it. But anyone could tell from the thinning crop of dark gray hair on his head and the laugh lines that Professor F was most definitely not thirty years old.

Professor F chuckled and patted Will’s shoulder. “I assure you, Will, I’m old enough to be your grandfather!” He sighed, still smiling. “Well that’s all I had to say, so I dismiss both of you to study, or practice some music, or read for fun, or pelt your friends with flying liverwurst, or whatever.” He waved his hands to shoo us away. “I dismiss you.”


***


Patronus lessons started on the following week. I arrived to class with Will, both of us having just come from Orchestra. If Will was even the tiniest bit anxious about walking into a class that we were not taking, he did not show it. But I definitely did; my face was flushed just from the idea. I wondered what the other students would think when we just walked in and sat down.

But upon walking into the Charms classroom, we discovered that there was nowhere to sit! All of the desks and chairs had been removed! The students who were already there did not seem to think anything of it and were leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor. When Cass arrived— though she really should have been with us, she always took forever trying to cram her books into her cluttered backpack so we left her behind— Will inquired about the lack of furniture.

“It’s always been like this,” Cass replied condescendingly, like we were supposed to know that. “Advanced magic uses the whole body.” She tossed her backpack, and it landed with a heavy thud against the wall. Geez, what kind of stuff does she have in there?

Mum entered the classroom a moment later. She did not mention the two additions to her class, but went right into teaching. “As you should know, today we’re going to start working on the Patronus Charm! I can see on some of your faces how excited you are, so I won’t waste much time explaining what you should have already read in the book. I’m devoting four weeks to practicing this spell in class for a reason: it’s hard. It’s about more than just waving your wand and saying— or thinking— the incantation. You have to dig deep, deep into your memory and find the moment when you felt the happiest, and then focus on how you felt. Relive the memory and let the feeling well up inside you and grow until… Expecto Patronum!”

A silver scorpion sprang from Mum’s wand and lightly fell to the floor. Several students backed away from it, understandably so because it was almost a foot long from pincers to tail! It scuttled around for a bit, not seeming to mind that everyone was giving it plenty of space to move around, and then it completely disappeared and Mum started talking again.

“I don’t expect any of you to conjure a corporeal Patronus today, or by the end of next class. Maybe one or two of you might get something by the end of the class after that. Like I said, it’s a really difficult spell. There’s a lot of thinking involved, so you don’t need to get frustrated about it.” She smiled reassuringly. “Also keep in mind that getting upset will only make it harder to conjure a Patronus, and, as always, you may take a break if you need to.” She left it at that and let us begin.

It took everyone a few moments to regain our places in the room, and I thankfully ended up in the same spot, right next to Junie. Craig was on her other side, already concentrating with his eyes closed. Junie asked him, “Craig, do you already know the memory you’re going to use?”

He opened his eyes to look at us— well, probably just at Junie. “No. There are too many happy memories. I can’t decide which one to use.”

Junie giggled and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

I half-jokingly suggested, “Maybe you should just use all of them at once. All the happy things together might make you even happier.”

Both of them turned to stare at me. Junie’s eyes were wide, and Craig’s were blank. He asked, “How could someone think of multiple things at the same time?”

I felt my cheeks instantly heat up from embarrassment. “I don’t know,” I answered, meekly averting my eyes. “I was trying to be funny.”

Junie gave a light laugh. “It makes sense, though.”

I shrugged.

“So how about you, Cindy?” Junie touched my shoulder. “Have you thought of a good memory?”

“Not yet; I haven’t really gotten the chance to think about it yet.”

“Oh.” She retracted her hand. “I’ll let you do that, then.”

I exchanged a smile with her, so assure her that I had not been bothered by her, and then got right to thinking. I reflected on my life chronologically, starting from my earliest memories. Nothing really big happened when I was little, now that I thought about it: the only things I could remember from before Primary School were all about living with Grandma Hermione and Grandpa Ron, playing with Jase in the garden.

During my years at the muggle Primary School, still living with Mum’s parents, I had generally been picked on by my classmates for my funny hair. The only happy moments I remembered were really small, like sitting on top of the monkey bars with my then-best friend, Kelly, and her other friend, Cathrynn. We joked about starting Kelly’s name with a ‘C’ so we could be the ‘Three Cs’, which Cathrynn said was from some scouting thing she was in. They also wanted to change the ‘I’ in my name to an ‘A’ so I could be ‘Candy’ in reference to my hair color— ever-colorful, even though Grandma Hermione had tried to Transfigure it to stay natural every day. I wondered whether they ever thought of me sometimes. Did they remember me at all? Maybe not, now that I think about it… Their memories of me might have been Modified to protect Magic. This was a sad thought. Definitely not to be used for a Patronus.

Then came one of the biggest moments of my life: receiving my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Not that anyone had ever doubted that it would come, since I had been showing magic since the day I was born. But it still felt amazing to finally know that I would be going to the one place where everyone could learn magic and do so freely. And then there was the memory of finally getting on the train with Cassie and Tina, and then seeing the castle, and getting Sorted— Oh, wait… I screamed at my Sorting… I smiled to myself. I’ve changed.

Once I got to the memories of my time at Hogwarts, I discovered that I had a lot of big, happy memories from here: in third year, participating in the MusiComp as part of Hogwarts’s Advanced Orchestra and winning; attending the Yule Ball earlier that same year, feeling beautiful for the first time in the dress that Grandma Hermione had once worn to her own Yule Ball— another similarity between me and her was that we both went with the Durmstrang Champion; the student exchange with the Americans, through which I met the flamboyantly optimistic Kate McAndrews in fourth year; my sixteenth birthday, when I had my first kiss with Onyx— that was a magical day… even though we can’t even call each other friends anymore… I also remembered performing for Miki’s and Sam’s wedding in sixth year, and the vicarious joy I felt as I watched them exchange their vows and then kiss. It felt like being part of a fairy tale.

After that, I could not remember any more big, happy things. The closest was the relief of returning to Hogwarts after being used as bait to lure Onyx and Adbas to Egypt. It was the worst week of my life. I suppressed the urge to scream and moved on. Since then, my life had been pretty uneventful, consisting mainly of looking at American universities and preparing for the future.

I reviewed my mental list of happy memories and decided to use my first kiss. I checked the clock on the wall to see how much time I had used: there were twenty minutes left of the class. Everyone else had already been making attempts at the Patronus Charm for the last hour. Most of them, including Junie and Craig and Will, had managed to make silver wisps appear.  I seemed to be the only one who had not tried it yet. Let’s not waste any more time, then.

I thought about every detail, trying to let myself be absorbed into the memory of the kiss: the soft light of the sun poking through the trees; the dewy smell of the forest; the tickle of his short, spiky hair between my fingers; the wonderful, awkward pain of our teeth when they clicked together; the overall excitement of such a private moment. I lifted my wand as the emotion overtook me. “Expecto Patronum.”

I watched as a small silver cloud curled out from the tip of my wand.

That’s a very good start.

I mentally applauded myself for getting something on my first try, and then tried again. I thought harder on the same memory and focused on it as much as I could. This time the cloud was thinner, more condensed.

I continued trying for the rest of the class time, sometimes looking around at other people’s progress between my tries. By the time Mum dismissed us, I had managed to turn my cloud into a tiny, solid-looking disc. I was unsure of what that meant, but I figured that achieving something that vaguely resembled a shield was good enough.

Junie’s spell looked more like a silver helix after many tries. It was definitely more elegant than my disc, but it was difficult to determine which of us was closer to the final goal of achieving an animal form.

Craig was definitely the worst off of the three of us, given that he got frustrated over making no progress with his spell. His negativity crept into his Patronus, reducing it from a cloud to a weak mist. Junie tried to reassure him on our way out the door, but the pink tinge on his ears only became more pronounced.

Despite the situation, I awkwardly said goodbye to them and joined Will for a quick review for Astronomy before being tested on the mapping of the Moon’s craters and the magical significance of the network they create over the varying phases of the Moon.