A flurry of owls flew in from the top of the Great Hall, handing out letters to students. I didn't expect to receive anything, but a wide-eyed gray owl gracefully landed in front of me and stared, tilting its head.

"Uh, hello, you're certainly a cute fella, what's your name?" I said.

The owl hoo'd in reply, a letter was wrapped around his leg.

"This is weird. I wasn't really expecting anything," I untied the letter and opened it up.

"Who's it from?" Daphne asked.

"It's from my grandpa," I read it silently to myself, hearing his soft, gentle voice.

Rollie,

I hope your first day of Hogwarts treats you well, this is our owl I recently acquired, Benson. He'll be transporting letters between us. He knows his name rather well, so it should be easy to find him if you need. If you call him "Benny," he'll respond to that too.

Don't worry I won't bother you too much during your time at Hogwarts. All I ask is to send me a letter once a week (if it's not troubling), just to let me know how you are and how things are going. As I understand, your parents never wrote to you at Huntshrow. That's a shame. Even if you find it annoying, it's still pleasant to receive a reminder from a loved one that, yes, you are indeed loved. Don't forget, I was your age too, you know.

Which brings me to another point. I know that you got in trouble a lot back in America, and parents these days want to solve issues immediately, but sometimes you have to grow out of them. I was quite the instigator in my days, I won't lie. It seemed like every other day, I was in a snag with my behavior at your age, but look how I turned out! Living on a farm in a wizarding village after a successful career. It's a beautiful, quiet life, and I know you can achieve it too.

Anyways, Zane (talk about troublemakers back in their day, ha!) is on his way. You remember Mr. Zane Thumblebatch? He came over for lunch briefly one afternoon, he was the rather stoic wizard who didn't say too much. Well, we're going to have dinner tonight, and I have much to prepare. Have fun at Hogwarts, don't forget about Quidditch tryouts! If you make the team, I'll be sure to come see you play. Good luck and much love.

Grandpa Magpie

When breakfast was over, we all filled the halls and rushed back to our dorms to grab our books and materials for classes. Everyone took their sweet time in the Great Hall that we almost forgot we had to go to class. My first class was Defence Against the Dark Arts, and I had made it just in time. Some students scurried in late. Professor Shacklebolt paced up and down at the front of the class.

"Don't worry about tardiness. This always happens on the first day. Students are excited, and therefore time slips by seemingly faster. Not to mention getting adjusted back to school is a process itself," Professor Shacklebolt looked up at the oak door just as the last kid snuck in.

I was sitting next to Daphne in the back, Bran and Edna sat in front of us. Professor Shacklebolt took a moment to survey the students silently.

"Welcome back, everyone, to your first official class of the school year. Now, if you've had my course before, you know that I like to mix up the seating a little bit. You'll spend all of your years getting to know the people in your house quite well. What about the other houses? Not so much. So I'd like to take this time to divide the room. Let's get the Hufflepuffs on one side and the Slytherins on the other."

Everyone slumped out of their seats and rolled their eyes. The Hufflepuffs lined up on the right, the Slytherins on the left.

"Very good, now I do this quite simply, I point to one person, and then I point to the next. Just the way you've lined up now is how fate determined your seating," Professor Shacklebolt nodded and pointed at the Hufflepuff line and then at the front of the Slytherin line.

Professor Shacklebolt floated his hand over to the first available desk, so on, and so forth. Until the whole class was sitting next to someone they barely knew. None of the Hufflepuff's looked thrilled to be sitting next to another Slytherin, but they also didn't seem upset.

However, I had to sit next to Leon.

Both of us stared straight ahead, clenching our jaws.

"We will get into complex material this year, Patronus practice will be more frequent later in the semester, and we will get to the Unforgivable Curses, but first we're going to take a look at land curses. This is significant because the ministry and myself believe that's what we're dealing with in the Forbidden Forest. So please, open up your books. We're going to be jumping around through some of the chapters. Let's start with chapter five," Professor Shacklebolt boomed.

I lifted my book out of my bag and plopped it on the table, the rest of the class did the same. As I started to rifle through the pages, Leon was digging through his satchel, which led to him glancing underneath our desk. He straightened his posture, took a deep breath, and stole a glimpse at my book.

"Is everything all right, Leon?" Professor Shacklebolt asked.

"Uh yeah," he feigned a smile.

"Sorry, class, I didn't think it was asking too much to come prepared on the first day back. All of you received the list of materials, no?" Professor Shacklebolt scanned, but no one said a word.

Picking my bag up off the ground, I pulled out another copy of our book and slid it over to Leon. He gazed at me, wide-eyed.

"Thank you," Leon whispered. "How come you have two books?"

"That's an older edition you have in your hands. My grandpa gave it to me," I nodded.

"Let's have a dialogue about land curses. Does anyone know anything about them before we start our lecture today?" Professor Shacklebolt asked.

Daphne shot up her hand in the air.

"Always the most enthusiastic, while I appreciate your zeal for academics, Ms. Poisonwood, I would like to hear another voice in the class. Anyone? Anyone at all? I would happily take a guess, you might be surprised how much you already know."

Leon's friend on the train raised her hand.

"Sable?" Professor Shacklebolt pointed.

"A land curse allows the caster to mold the soil and earth how they want it?" Sable shrugged.

"Correct, and this often adversely affects the ground it's on. Let's say you build a house on a pillar of rock that you created with a land curse. That rock pillar will deteriorate much faster from weathering than normal rock. Depending on how good the caster is, a rock pillar could last a year or a handful of years. But there's even more to it than that. Does anyone else know what a land curse can do?"

My heart sprinted in place, and I raised up my hand as my mouth went dry.

"Yes, Mr. Magpie?" Professor Shacklebolt said.

"Can they invade your mind, with uh, whispers?"

Stifled snickering spread like a plague in the room. Professor Shacklebolt took a step closer to our desk.

"I wasn't expecting a guess like that. Have you had any experience?"

"No, not really. I just thought I heard something about that happening with land curses," I shrugged.

"Very well then. To be honest, you could be absolutely right," Professor Shacklebolt strode back to the front of the class. "The thing is, we don't know much about land curses. There aren't many that are well-known or documented. The common one we see is destroyed soil, ruining the ability to plant crops for a full year."

The rest of the class flew by as Professor Shacklebolt went down a rabbit hole of land curse history, having us perform a few readings from our text.

As we all stood up and gathered our belongings at the end, Leon slid the book back over to me.

"Thanks again," Leon said.

"Keep it if you'd like," I said.

"I have the book. Just didn't think he'd make us crack it out on the first day."

"Yeah, Huntshrow, the first day back was a breeze, I didn't know what to expect here, so I brought all the required materials."

"You made the right move," Leon spun around and linked up with Sable and his other lanky friend that sat next to him on the train.

Edna and Daphne were approaching, but Bran sauntered up to me first. "So, how did you like your first Hogwarts class?"

"It was cool. I think it went rather well," I grinned.

"Excuse me, Rollie, but would you mind seeing me after classes today? I would like to have a chat with you about a few things," Professor Shacklebolt said.

"…Sure," I uttered, as my friends witnessed the whole exchange. We stepped out of the classroom.