"Hm. This really isn't that bad… I can understand why my movie counterpart was so thrilled," I laughed to myself with a kind of frightened euphoria in my head as I moved easily and naturally on a battered-looking school broom. Flying on this plain, unimpressive stick was insanely exciting and ridiculously fun.
Adrenaline hamred through my blood. My heart pounded like mad, and the urge to squeeze maximum speed out of this ancient piece of equipnt pressed on my mind. But for now I kept myself in check. I wasn't going to cost my House points or take stupid risks. Later—next year… in just one year I'd buy my own broom and cut through the air around Hogwarts every free mont I had.
"The main thing is not getting onto the Quidditch team. I don't want to waste my ti on that too," I cooled my own enthusiasm a little, having already learned about the school's favorite ga and how seriously many older students treated House competitions.
And yes, I liked Quidditch as a concept, despite its silly and blatantly unbalanced rules. Draco, a passionate fan of this "sport," had shared magical records with —newspaper clippings, basically, which partly replaced television for wizards—of several professional and semi-professional matches, loudly comnting on the most spectacular monts… and there were plenty of those.
In that sense, Quidditch was more like team wrestling than football or any honest competition. Spectacle, speed, and serious risk to the health and life of every participant were the main priorities. Though that last part was sowhat conditional.
Magical dicine, at least in anything involving ordinary injuries, was leagues above even the most advanced Muggle technology… With diseases—especially chronic and hereditary ones like diabetes—wizards had it a bit worse, but still manageable. The real question was cost and how long treatnt took…
I'd specifically asked Daphne about that. Unlike our blond friend, she was a bit more imrsed in the topic. Her aunt—or maybe a great-aunt, I never quite understood—ran so departnt at St. Mungo's, so the Greengrass heiress knew a thing or two about magical healing. Not enough to tell offhand how wizarding dicine handled nearsightedness, though.
But that problem could be solved with a couple of letters to Daphne's dear relative and a full consultation in reply, the essence of which boiled down to: vision can be fixed, but it will be expensive. And if an examination finds a magical cause, it will take longer, with a possible need to travel to Austria. Austrian wizards, apparently, were best at undoing curses tied to eyesight.
"So basically it's the sa as my old life—there are treatnts, but not everyone can afford them… and even if you can, you might not want the hassle, since there are still risks," I sumd up our little investigation with Daphne. Mostly as a way to keep myself from doing sothing stupid on a broom that was absolutely not ant for it.
"Mr. Potter! Down! Down, I said!" Professor Hooch's irritated shout reached .
"Sorry, Professor Hooch. I was thinking," I apologized to the woman with a rather striking appearance… basically an older female version of a witcher—gray hair, yellow eyes with a slightly warped pupil, sharp, mildly predatory movents…
A forr professional athlete who clearly didn't shy away from magical doping. And as far as I knew, it was allowed in Quidditch, though not very accessible to ordinary wizards. As always, it ca down to money and the right connections—potion-brewers, healers, and even alchemists.
"Be more attentive next ti, Mr. Potter! You have good flying ability, but that is no excuse to ignore my instructions and commands!" the woman barked. Still, she didn't drag it into a full conflict. She didn't even take points, just dismissed us along with everyone else. She had a Slytherin team practice soon…
"What a nasty old witch. She'll take any excuse to yell at soone," one of my classmates muttered bitterly under her breath. Padma Patil, I think… a hereditary witch from India, whose family had recently moved to the islands. She also had a twin sister in Gryffindor, if I rembered right. Hooch had yelled at her too today.
"She's too used to training House teams. We only have her lessons in first year," I said calmly, understanding the girl wanted so kind of reaction from .
"So what? That's an excuse to scream at everyone?" the Indian girl kept complaining, not pleased with my calmness.
"Well, sothing tells it's the only way she can make our athletes listen. Quidditch players, from what I've heard, can only be stopped by a bat to the back of the head, a Bludger to the face, or Madam Hooch screaming like a banshee," I tried to turn it into a joke—and it worked.
One of the brightest girls in our year laughed, accepted the argunt, and stopped trying to spit venom at everything around her. Instead, Patil tried to get talking about Quidditch and whether I wanted to join the school team, since I was so good at staying on a broom.
In short, another conversation about nothing—sothing that regularly happened between and most of my own Housemates. Ravenclaw might be known as a House of fierce individualists, but none of us could go without social contact completely. That would require either deliberately avoiding everyone, or having serious problems in the head.
And neither applied to . So conversations like this weren't new. The only difference today was that over ti, other Ravenclaws joined in, turning the talk into a full Quidditch discussion and persistently trying to push toward joining the House team.
They didn't care that first-years weren't taken. The point was that it was cool, and you should announce your intentions as early as possible… maybe an older student would notice your passion, and next year it would be easier to pass tryouts. Ahem. I fought them off as best I could—these fans, burning with enthusiasm as the season approached.
This year, of course, Gryffindor and Slytherin opened the schedule, so the first match would be theirs. That didn't stop the excited Ravenclaws from bubbling over anyway. Though before the match, we still had the celebration of October thirty-first—Halloween.
It wasn't that this foreign holiday mattered to , even if it coincided with the anniversary of Harry Potter's parents' deaths… A date so aningful to many was an empty sound to , notable only because we'd have shortened classes that day and…
"I'll have a chance to test how closely this world follows the events I rember from the films," I thought coldly, having already found many similarities and differences between reality and what those movies showed under my current na.
On one hand, Snape's first lesson really did resemble what I rembered… despite the fact that I had read the textbook and prepared for Potions. I'd also spent that entire introductory class carefully monitoring my mind, trying to notice any foreign intrusion—without success. I'd only wound myself tighter and gained no real benefit.
That wasn't a reason to stop. Despite the warnings about ntal magic for wizards under fourteen, I'd learned so theory already and wasn't going to delay practice forever.
I might look like a boy, and the environnt had made a bit younger ntally as well, but I wasn't truly a child. I had reasons to believe the risk of "staying a child forever" was exaggerated—at least for . From what I'd learned in books, the main problem with studying ntal magic too early was the brightness and instability of a child's emotions.
Trying to control all that could affect the formation of mind and personality in a bad way. And foreign ntal interference in a child's mind could do the sa—while also risking the intruder. A traumatized child's mind could lash back painfully. That was sowhat comforting and, in theory, gave a reason not to rush… but for it still wasn't acceptable.
At fourteen or fifteen, soone would try to scan with ntal magic anyway. And if I wasn't ready in advance… I could face problems far worse than "childhood mind trauma." Not to ntion, my mind wasn't a child's at all, which ant the usual dangers of studying Occluncy shouldn't apply to .
Still, Daphne's warnings carried weight, so I wasn't going to rush into practice. First I'd absorb all the theory available, and only then move carefully toward sothing more. I wasn't about to pretend I was the smartest person in the world after only a couple months in the magical world. If it weren't for the overall difficulty of my situation and my frankly wild fear of ntal magic, I wouldn't even consider learning Occluncy earlier than the usual tiline.
But that's not the point… The main point was that Severus Snape didn't differ much from the film version. Aside from looking younger than the actor who played him—nothing really stood out.
Much more interesting was the other wizard I was watching: our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Quirinus Quirrell… According to what I knew, his body was supposed to house either the Dark Lord himself or a fragnt of him, which should have caused health and magical issues, but…
Nothing. Just a stuttering man, a bit timid, and strangely obsessed with vampires. My sensitivity read him as not especially talented, but he could teach us the basics of his subject well enough—and my scar didn't react to him at all. In short, accusing him of possession didn't really work.
Which left with a dilemma—how much to trust my old-life knowledge, and whether to trust it at all. It was a genuinely difficult question, and only on October thirty-first could I draw any real conclusion. Right now, every contradiction I'd noticed was too easily explained away by my Ravenclaw placent, my own shortsightedness, and the blunt inaccuracy of my mories.
I wasn't a die-hard fan of the Harry Potter franchise. I'd watched the films back in school and university and never really rewatched them… sothing I'd been regretting for the last couple of years. But I couldn't fix that now. All I could do was cling to fragnts of old mory and rely first and foremost on the conclusions I was drawing right now.
Because the film knowledge I had so far looked painfully contradictory and… naïve. Like a fairy-tale show for young viewers, not sothing even remotely close to reality.
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