JohnnyZ
patreon
[Casting] Chapter 16
🕑 Added 2024-11-10 13:20:14 +0000 UTCOh, have I not told you yet how I became mates with Hagrid?
We first met at the end of the first week of term, in the evening after dinner. That morning, at breakfast, the post came, with owls swooping down left and right, dropping letters, newspapers, and parcels to their owners.
I hate that part. Not everyone has Seeker reflexes, so parcels often miss and end up plopping into plates, goblets, or onto people’s heads, scattering crumbs and splashing juice all over. And sometimes, in the rush to grab a letter, students flail around so much they elbow each other or fall off the bench.
Then there’s the birds themselves, doing victory laps before dive-bombing onto plates, snagging bacon with their filthy claws or sticking their unwashed beaks into pitchers. Feathers everywhere… it’s a mess.
So, to avoid eating breakfast with feathers in our porridge, we started coming in a bit early—eat in peace, wait out the owl rush, then head out. Worst comes to worst, if they spill pumpkin juice on us, we can always use charms to clean up.
Anyway, Hagrid sent Harry a letter inviting him over for tea in the evening. Everyone was keen—even Neville thought it was brilliant to meet a real giant and visit his hut. So the five of us trooped along. Harry didn’t expect all of us to tag along and looked a bit nervous—probably worried about Hagrid’s reaction to the whole gang showing up. But after the infamous Potions lesson, he couldn’t think of much else besides Snape’s hatred and unfairness.
When Hagrid saw us all, he seemed a bit taken aback. But he rustled up chairs and found enough chipped mugs for everyone.
The tea was delicious, too—tasted like wild herbs, summer berries, and a hint of sunshine. The cakes, though, were impossible to eat, so we all pretended we’d eaten loads at dinner and tucked into some fragrant honey and pickled apples instead.
As for Fang, Hagrid had to tie him up behind the hut. When the friendly beast saw the crowd of us, he got so excited, howling and yipping, he almost knocked down the hut and even managed to break a couple of mugs.
It turned out Hagrid was actually great fun to talk to. He entertained us with stories about all the creatures in the Forbidden Forest, had a laugh at Filch and his cat, and shared stories about the twins’ latest tricks. He even mentioned how he was a bit envious of Charlie, who’d been invited to work at a dragon reserve. I read him a letter from my brother, which had just arrived that morning.
Charlie wrote to me every week after he left. Nothing special—just little snippets of life at the reserve, mainly about what their team gets up to.
In today’s letter, he mentioned that some poachers had killed a couple of dragons. Dragons are valuable for pretty much every part of their bodies, but poachers only take the heart, liver, horns, glands, and back leg tendons. Eggs and young dragons fetch even higher prices. The rest they leave behind—too hard to hide, and it doesn’t sell for as much.
Hagrid was fuming with anger. I couldn’t help thinking he’d rip those poachers to shreds with his bare hands if he worked there. But you need proper training to work with dragons. Strength alone isn’t enough—you need a whole group of wizards to handle them with magic. So Hagrid just sighed and carried on with his… questionable breeding experiments. And I started wondering if maybe he wasn’t all that thrilled with his job as gamekeeper—just had nowhere else to go.
The poachers got away, apparently, but Charlie’s team managed to save one young dragon and a couple of eggs.
The lads spotted an article about the bank robbery, lying on Hagrid’s table while he was refilling our tea—it was doubling as a coaster, probably to stop the table from getting any grimier than it already was.
Seamus and Neville both get The Prophet, so they brought up the robbery, and Harry eagerly joined in. But Hagrid quickly shut down that line of conversation and, handing us a load of rock-hard cakes, shuffled us out the door. That day, we didn’t hear a word about Flamel.
We heard about him later—after Harry made the team as Seeker. Seamus and Dean had headed off to their “Exploding Snap” club, and Neville, who’d just been released from the Hospital Wing after breaking his leg falling off the stairs, stayed in the common room. So it was just Harry and me who went to see Hagrid—he was bursting to brag.
That same article was still under Hagrid’s teapot, and this time Harry managed to get Hagrid talking about Flamel. But we didn’t think much of it—just found it interesting and moved on.
At the end of our first week at Hogwarts, they put up a notice about our upcoming flying lessons on Tuesday. And with the Slytherins, no less. We hadn’t had a single class with them all week, and now…
The others were nervous about it—except for me and Seamus, who could already fly pretty well. Lavender and Fay had probably tried it at home, too, but Parvati, Kellah, and Hermione were visibly worried. And Harry was properly on edge, along with Neville, who’s terrified of heights. Can’t blame him—he manages to find trouble on the ground, so the sky’s a whole other matter. In the end, no one could think about anything else besides flying.
Tuesday came, sunny and clear, which cheered everyone up a bit. But the chatter was still all about the lesson.
Hermione had spent the weekend reading every book on the subject and was quoting interviews with Quidditch players and lines from manuals at breakfast, making everyone even more tense.
Meanwhile, at the Slytherin table, Malfoy was also in fine form, regaling his listeners with stories about how he’d dodged Muggle helicopters. I couldn’t help but wonder how he even knew about Muggle tech. My dad’s obsessed with Muggle stuff, and he’s only just learned what a car is. I’m starting to think Lucius is secretly doing business with Muggles, and I made a note to look into it.
Neville’s Remembrall and his attempts to explain it to Hermione helped calm everyone down a bit—but only for a moment. Then Malfoy came over, trying to snatch it out of his hands.
Our whole gang jumped up at once, even Hermione, who looked ready to launch into a speech, but Professor McGonagall came by and scattered us before it turned into a scene. I suggested Neville hand the Remembrall over to Percy for safekeeping, since none of us had bags with us. We didn’t need a rerun of that classic book scenario.
The brooms looked dreadful. Even back at the Burrow, we've got a "Comet" from twenty-odd years back—Dad probably flew it back when he was in Hogwarts—and it’s in better nick than these. They’re Cleansweeps, but completely wrecked. They must’ve been written off at some Quidditch club and generously donated to the school.
Madam Hooch, our flying instructor, turned out to be a sharp-tongued woman with a training style a bit like Snape’s, minus the dripping sarcasm. She must’ve been a Quidditch pro herself once, probably annoyed she’s stuck teaching kids instead of training pros. Honestly, half the professors here need to be shown the door.
Neville ended up tumbling about thirty feet, hitting the ground flat. The girls screamed in horror, the lads just stared, and Hooch acted like it was no big deal. She bent over, checked him for injuries.
"Up you get, lad," she urged, tugging poor groaning Neville to his feet. "You’re fine. Just a broken wrist. Get a move on, I’ll take you to the Hospital Wing. Come along, I’ve still got a lesson to run."
The poor boy, limping and wincing in pain, let Hooch help him hobble towards the castle.
"As for the rest of you—set those brooms down, or you’ll be flying straight out of school," she snapped at us all.
I watched this chaos and thought about what Dad had always said. He was so right.
In the wizarding world, things are different. No one’s going to sympathize with you or worry after you. Wizards’ safety—kids included—is their own business.
In any Muggle school, they’d have sacked a teacher like that with a ‘good riddance,’ maybe even hauled her off to jail. But here, Neville’s somehow at fault for not handling the broom. It’s like they’re still in the Middle Ages, not just with the decor, but the thinking. Like back when most kids didn’t survive infancy and people didn’t fuss about it—just God’s will, survival of the fittest.
Wizards must reckon magic keeps you safe from everything, and if you end up dead, well, that’s your destiny.
The lad fell from a height equal to a three-story building, and the teacher didn’t even cast a spell—just checked his limbs! He’s probably bruised his organs, could have a concussion, cracked bones, and bruised ribs, too. She shouldn’t have even touched him, should’ve just called the nurse. She didn’t even try to stop the broom, catch him, slow the fall, nothing! Just yelled from the ground, "Where are you going, boy?... Come back…”
And then she left nearly twenty kids, Gryffindors and Slytherins, to their own devices. Trouble didn’t take long to brew.
By the time she got back, it was to a full-blown skirmish. I thought maybe without the Remembrall this fight might have been avoided, but no. Eager to show off, Malfoy, not realizing the monster he was waking with his big mouth, started mouthing off.
First, he went on about Neville’s clumsiness, then sneered about Muggle-borns, and threw in how Gryffindor was full of riff-raff—half-wits and scum.
Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe not, but as he said the last bit, he shot a sneering look at Dean and Kella.
Dean saw that and charged him first, seeing it as a racial insult. Seamus, his best mate, joined right in, and soon the whole lot of us were at each other’s throats.
Kella, bless her, was scrappy enough to take on Goyle. I went after Nott. Dean somehow ended up with Crabbe, who must have shoved him aside from Malfoy, so now Harry had taken on Draco. Lavender and Parvati were both ganging up on Bulstrode.
Only Hermione was running around helplessly, looking completely panicked, trying to appeal to everyone’s common sense, which had clearly been lost in the brawl. When I’d managed to take down my opponent and looked around, I saw two Slytherin girls sitting on a big boulder, watching it all unfold. The blonde one with striking blue eyes was quite pretty, though she seemed a bit aloof, but her dark-haired friend, with short hair and a glint in her brown eyes, looked like she’d be a scrappy one too. Strange she didn’t join in.
The lesson was a wash, and any talk of flying was over. Furious, Hooch docked fifty points from each house and marched us all up to the Hospital Wing, where she handed us over to the bewildered nurse. Moping, Madame Pomfrey must never have had so many patients dropped in her lap after a basic lesson.
Luckily, most of us just had scrapes, bruises, and scratches, all of which she quickly patched up. Kella and Dean joined Neville as the only ones needing to stay a couple hours. As for the Slytherins, Crabbe and Bulstrode joined Zabini, who’d already been in the ward since the night before.
On the way back, we ran into our Head of House—and let’s just say, the living envied the dead. She poured all her fury on us, hissing like a ferocious cat, and stripped Gryffindor of another fifty points—nearly every point we’d scraped together over the first week. And we got even more flak from the older students—thought we’d get a beating, but once they found out who we’d fought and why, they laughed, gave us veiled approval, and that was that.
And a week later, Harry showed everyone his skill in flying class, and Professor McGonagall added him to the Quidditch team.
Neville followed us around after that, practically our shadow. Dean must’ve told him about the fight, and he thought we’d started it for him. But then, around two weeks before Halloween, he drifted off on his own, just after we ran into that troll.
The lot of us used to play ‘the Path,’ and there was hardly a place it didn’t take us. In a month and a half, we’d explored nearly half the castle. And one day, it led us to the dungeons and took us right to the Menagerie.
Finding abandoned classrooms and potion labs was great fun, not scary in the least. But when a stone wall slid back to reveal a dark passageway, I felt a bit spooked. I’d never have gone alone, or even with just Harry. But with five of us, we braved the unknown.
As soon as the passage closed behind us, torches flared along the walls, revealing a stone staircase leading downwards to a massive gate.
Under its creaky groan, we stepped into a broad corridor with tiny windows high up, gazing around in silent awe at what lay before us.
The corridor was lined with cells—like a prison, with iron bars. This is exactly how I imagined Azkaban. Most of the cells were empty, but some had odd animals that were clearly magical in nature. Nearby was what looked like a potions lab.
I started to think maybe we'd stumbled upon the place where Hagrid breeds his little "experiments." Or maybe this is where they keep live ingredients for potions—there were a couple of tanks with snakes and toads, and another one with rats.
The whole thing was giving me the creeps, and I felt like legging it. Neville was practically fainting; he kept backing up until he bumped into an empty vat, then jumped back against the wall and shrieked like a banshee. We turned and saw it. No, him.
A massive, human-like figure, easily four meters tall, wearing nothing but a loincloth and chained to the wall. He smelled like earth and the forest—sort of like an animal—but there wasn’t any actual stench; must’ve been a charm on the cell.
The giant stirred, stood up to his full height, let out a deep, growling roar, and threw himself at the bars. The chains yanked him back, but we didn’t stick around to watch; we’d already turned tail and were running like mad through the doorway that had appeared in the wall. At that point, we didn’t care if it dropped us into Snape’s bathroom while he was taking a shower.
But ten minutes later, we found ourselves back at the corridor leading to our tower. Odd, really—I could’ve sworn we’d been running straight the whole time.
Later on, I found an old paper from the late 1700s, and apparently, this place really was an official menagerie, where they kept magical creatures for Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.
The collection was funded by the Board of Governors—they used to send the Care of Magical Creatures professor and top students on trips around the world during the summer holidays to gather specimens. Back in the day, Hogwarts had the largest collection around, even rare beasts like werewolves, centaurs, merpeople, and vampires. They’d even gotten international praise.
The unicorns must’ve been released into the Forbidden Forest from there. They used to breed them for sale, along with other magical animals and creatures.
But then society decided to “civilize” itself, and the menagerie was deemed inhumane. There was political upheaval, and the Board eventually stopped funding Hogwarts altogether, including the menagerie. The animals were mostly set loose—some into the lake, some into the Forbidden Forest, and others were just, well... disposed of.
So now all that’s left are a few greenhouses and the groundskeeper’s little vegetable patch. The self-sustaining Hogwarts of old is long gone. No wonder our brooms are rubbish, and the castle could really do with a few repairs. It’s all fallen to pieces.
After we finally caught our breath, the lads and I chatted about it for a while. But eventually, everyone started drifting off. Neville first, claiming he had other things to do whenever we’d go off exploring. Then Dean and Seamus openly said they weren’t keen on risking their necks sneaking about the castle with us. They didn’t have that innate sense of magic, so they couldn’t fully trust it. They did use the Path, though—but only to get to class faster. The Path doesn’t force anyone if they’re unwilling. You just need to picture where you want to go and trust the castle’s magic.
So it ended up just me and Harry—two explorers. We still got on well with the others, but it was never the same. Everyone started finding their own interests, like they do at any school. By Halloween, Hermione was hanging around, even though I thought Neville would be our third this time. But no, he was too timid and a bit of a homebody.
On Halloween, I was keeping an eye on Hermione—just in case.
Charms class went fine, then History of Magic, also smooth. The last class was Potions, and that went as usual too. I was nearly convinced the whole troll business was just in my head.
Harry and I finished our History homework, hung out in the common room, and played chess—Seamus let Harry borrow his set. Then we went down to dinner with everyone else.
I was halfway through my plate when I overheard Lavender and Parvati talking about Hermione, and looking around, I realized she wasn’t there.
Didn’t even have time to think it through. Going to the teachers didn’t seem like much use—who knew if a troll was even coming? But waiting felt wrong—what if they didn’t get there in time to save her? Still, I wasn’t planning on going myself. One troll encounter was enough.
The second Quirrell burst into the Great Hall, babbling about a troll before fainting, I was up. Panic broke out, everyone yelling, girls shrieking, and students rushed the exits. And that’s when Dumbledore showed us his true colors. A wave of power rolled off him, and everyone froze in their tracks. Then he let up and passed control to the prefects.
“Where do you think you’re off to, Ron? Harry, stop!” Percy shouted, but I was already pushing through the crowd, hoping to catch McGonagall.
I managed to grab her by the door and told her where Hermione was hiding, not knowing about the troll.
And do you know what she did? She told me off, going on about breaking evacuation protocol and that it wasn’t my job to save my classmates. Then she sent us back to the Tower with everyone else—like we were just supposed to let the grown-ups handle it.
But I kept insisting, and she finally caved. Plus, the girls' bathroom wasn’t far—we got there in less than five minutes.
As we reached it, Hermione stepped out, red-eyed and puffy. McGonagall was all ready to start in on her, but then we saw a massive shadow at the end of the hall.
Gotta give McGonagall credit. She was quick. She conjured a Patronus, sent it for backup, and then whisked us into the bathroom, shutting the door behind us.
A bluish shimmer of locking—or maybe even distracting—charms washed over the door, and everything fell silent.
Hermione started pestering us with questions. Harry was about to explain something when suddenly there was a deafening bang on the other side of the door. Whatever it was hit it a couple of times, making the wood shudder, but it held.
About fifteen minutes later, as Tempus showed, we were let out and sent back up to the tower. Gryffindor lost some points for rescuing Hermione, though they gave them back later, and I got a personal “thank you for your bravery” from Dumbledore and a week of detention with Filch from McGonagall. They never canceled that detention either—for being cheeky to a teacher and “improperly pushing my luck as a student.” I came away with a solid conclusion: all the Hogwarts teachers are stubborn, aloof adults with far too much pride and a maddening belief in their own infallibility.
By the time we left, only a small puddle of slimy muck, a stinky rag, and a club about our size were left of the troll, so we didn’t actually see the thing.
Hermione was angry with us at first—for telling a teacher she’d been hiding in the loo, and for coming in there after her. But a couple of days later, when she’d learned all the details, pored over every book on trolls she could find in the library, she quietly joined our group. From then on, she tagged along everywhere with us, even cutting into her precious library hours. And she actually blushed when she thanked us for not forgetting about her. She probably reckoned that if we cared enough to come looking for her, it meant we liked her and considered her a friend. We just accepted her friendship without fuss—it’s not like we were going to turn her away.
As for why she’d been upset in the first place, it was so simple I wouldn’t have guessed. She’d been pestering all the teachers about her grades—wanting to know exactly where and why she’d messed up. Most of them went along with it.
Only with Snape, it didn’t go as planned. She’d gone to ask why she got an “Unacceptable” on her potion instead of the “Acceptable” she’d thought she deserved. He just laid into her with some remark about overachievers and know-it-alls who think they’re better than everyone else, and showed her the door. That was all there was to it. I realized that no matter how careful you try to be, if you’re meant to end up in trouble, you will.
