The rest of her first week passed on fairly quickly. On Wednesday morning, during breakfast, a brown owl landed on the Gryffindor table as they ate breakfast, delivering a short note for Emilia.

I’ve arranged for our first special training to take place on Friday at 5 in the afternoon. Please see me in my classroom located in the Astronomy Wing once you finish your lessons that day.

Professor T. Crane

Rosie immediately questioned her about the letter, however Emilia was forced to brush it off and lied, saying it was from Ash to confirm their Friday date, which as she just then realized, she had to cancel.

A wave of sadness came over her at the thought. For the rest of the day she was quiet and lost in thought, she sat in complete silence during Divination, which had Atticus questioning her about it the entire time that they sat together during the lesson, the girl ignoring him completely which visibly pained him.

Afterwards she had charms class and she sat with Rosie and Jaz, just waving her wand around half-heartedly, her spells being weak and losing power almost immediately. When the class ended, Jaz convinced her to go watch her during Quidditch practice, ensuring Emilia that it would cheer her up.

But instead it made things worse.

She was sitting on one of the benches at the Quidditch field, almost freezing to death because of the very cold weather that day paired up with the never-ending rain falling from the sky. She was using her wand to cast a small fire to warm her hands up before she looked back up at the field and noticed a small, dark-haired figure in a blue uniform entering the field. She got up immediately and walk down the steep wooden stairs and headed back to the castle. But just as she left the field she heard a voice calling her from behind.

She turned around to see Ash running up to her with his broom in his right hand.

‘Emilia.’ – he greeted her, his usually styled hair already beginning to get messy from the rain. – ‘I just wanted to come and say hi.’

‘Hey.’ – she replied, feeling even more miserable, knowing she had to break the news to him.

‘What’s wrong? You seem down.’ – he asked with genuine worry in his voice as he stepped closer.

‘Um… I’m really, really sorry, Ash, but I have to cancel our trip to Hogsmeade on Friday.’ – she glanced up at him with an apologetic look on her face.

‘What? Why?’ – the sudden sadness and disappointment in his voice made her even more depressed.

She paused, looking down at her wet boots, not sure how to answer.

‘I have these… extra lessons. With Professor Weasley. To help me adapt quicker. I had no idea it was going to be on Friday. I just found out this morning.’ – she finally replied, pausing for a moment after each sentence, feeling horrible about having to lie again.

He just looked at her in silence for a second.

‘Oh. Yeah, no, I completely understand.’ – he then stated, trying to brush it off with a smile, but a hint of disappointment was still visible in his eyes.

‘I’m really sorry, Ash, I am.’

‘Don’t be, really.’ – he reassured her again, taking a moment to bring out his calm, positive-self back again before adding. – ‘We will just go some other day, right?’

‘Of course.’ – Emilia agreed, smiling, before doing something unexpected.

She stood up on her toes and gave him a quick kiss on his wet, cold cheek, before stepping back again, her face still managing to turn red despite the waves of cold wind freezing her entire body.

A wide smile appeared on his face as he looked in her eyes.

‘Heh. Now I’m just going to be distracted for the rest of the training, thinking about that.’ – Ash raised his hand and brushed the cheek that she kissed. – ‘Let me know when you are free, I won’t let you get away without that Hogsmeade trip, alright?’ – he laughed, before stepping over his broom, ready to take off.

Emilia nodded, smiling, and watched him fly off back to the Quidditch field.

As she was walking back to the castle, she kept thinking about how nice his soft cheek felt against her lips despite being so cold, a wide smile engraved on her face.

When she was passing the line of trees right next to the Forbidden Forest, she heard sudden rattling in one of the bushes, and she turned around scared, immediately pulling out her wand and pointing it towards the forest. A glimpse of a furry, gray tail swung out of the bush before instantly disappearing in the depths of the woods. Startled, she picked up the pace and continued back into the castle.

...

Her last class that day was potions, it was her first time on that subject as well, so she was pretty nervous, as she heard from the girls that it was one of the harder ones that were taught at Hogwarts.

She walked down the countless sets of stone stairs until reaching the Dungeons. The potions classroom was a dark, cold room that had 4 brewing stations standing in each corner of the room and each station having 3 cauldrons and 3 sets of potions equipment. By the time she was able to locate the classroom, most of the students had already come in and the lesson was about to begin. She took a moment to look around before deciding to join two boys that were sitting by the table in the far left corner, seemingly arguing about something.

She came up to them silently, getting a better look at both of the boys before greeting them.

One of the boys was taller. He had brown, messy hair and dark brown eyes hiding under his thick eyebrows. His face was completely covered with freckles, and he had a wide smile on his face as he was stirring something in his cauldron, while trying to explain something to the other boy.

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As Emilia had just then noticed, the shorter boy was blind, he had completely white eyes and was using the ends of his fingertips to read his potions handbook in Braille. His hair was ashy blonde and he had a lot of small moles all over his slim face. His face was pointed downwards but the girl could still see the annoyed look on his face as he argued with his friend.

She stepped closer to greet them, and asked whether she could join them by the station and they agreed, realizing she was the new girl that had just started that week and that she never had taken potions before.

They introduced themselves – the blonde boy’s name was Ominis and the other one was Sebastian. Emilia quickly realized that despite arguing with one another almost the entire time, they were very close friends and also they were very fun to talk to.

Especially Sebastian, who seemed to definitely be the reckless type. He declared himself to be “quite a potioneer”, and yet, whatever it was that he was brewing in his cauldron, blew up right into his face before the lesson even started, causing a mess and it’s horrible stench reminded Emilia of spoiled milk. Ominis on the other hand seemed to almost father Sebastian most of the time, trying to cover up all of his mistakes and talking sense into him, while at the same time still having a hard time not laughing at all of his terrible jokes.

Right after the bell rang, and the teacher, Professor Sharp, greeted his class, the door suddenly burst open and Atticus ran into the classroom, fashionably late as usual. He sat down with some other Slytherins at the station next to the one Emilia was sitting in, before looking up from behind his round sunglasses and noticing the girl. However he did not smile as usual, his expression turned even more miserable when he looked at her, before turning away from her. Perhaps he was still offended by her ignoring him during Divination.

...

After all of that day’s classes were over, the girl sat down to eat dinner. Both of her friends were nowhere to be found. Emilia suspected that Jaz was probably still at the Quidditch field, but she had no idea where Rosie could have been.

Having no one to talk to, she buried her nose in the charms book that she was reading, in order to prepare for the extra lesson with Professor Weasley that she had later that day. She was practicing the wand movement with her right hand whilst holding the book with the other and reading the incantations in her head.

Suddenly, the tip of her wand brightened up and sent a small flame onto one of the plates, burning the entire meal on it until it was nothing but a pile of ashes, making some heads turn towards her as her cheeks burned with humiliation.

She heard a laugh behind her and turned around to see Atticus standing behind her. He looked down at her, significantly less sad than he did during potions. He gave her a small smile and sat down next to her.

Some younger Gryffindor girls began whispering to one another emotionally while looking towards them discreetly, but Emilia just brushed it off, as she had already gotten used to being the main topic on everyone’s lips.

‘Hey.’ – she greeted the boy with a smile.

‘Hey. So, you’re no longer mad at me?’

‘I was never mad, I just had a pretty bad morning.’ – she explained with an apologetic look on her face. – ‘I’m sorry I was ignoring you.’

‘It’s fine, I was just worried that maybe Ashton told you some shite about me that made you not want be my friend anymore.

‘No, he didn’t, we’re still friends, Atticus, don’t worry.’ – she smiled and put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it to reassure him.

‘I’m glad.’ – a soft, unusually kind smile appeared on his face as he looked at her, pausing for a moment. – ‘So, did you and him get a chance to talk during herbology?’

She sensed something weird in his tone but brushed it off.

‘Yeah, actually, he’s really nice. We were paired to work together and it was surprisingly fun. He’s also asked me to go to Hogsmeade with him this Friday.’ – she revealed.

A subtle change appeared on Atticus’ face but Emilia couldn’t quite place it. He breathed in slowly before replying.

‘That’s great.’ – he simply said.

‘I’m not going, though.’

‘Oh?’ – he raised his thick brows as he heard her words. – ‘Why’s that?’

She pointed at the book she was studying and replied:

‘Extra lessons with Professor Weasley. On Wednesdays and Fridays. So I won’t be able to go.’

‘What a shame.’ – he smirked as he added sarcastically, met with Emilia rolling her eyes in disapproval.

More Gryffindors began gathering around their dining table and Atticus and Emilia were getting more and more looks, so he stood back up.

‘I better get back to my own table.’ – he said with his tone lowered and left immediately.

Emilia felt extremely bad, everyone was treating him as if he was some unwanted stray dog that should be avoided. She couldn’t see the bad things that other students were saying about him. She didn’t know whether she should believe her friends or just trust her own gut instead.

Troubled, she decided to just go to Professor Weasley early, leaving her dinner unfinished.

....

The extra lessons turned out to be long, difficult and frustrating. She spent three hours in the transfiguration classroom with Professor Weasley, practicing spells and charms over and over again until perfection.

When it was finally over and she got to get back to her dormitory, she immediately fell onto her bed, face down and fell asleep within minutes, still in her uniform. When Jaz came back from her afternoon training session and saw the state Emilia was in, she took the covers from Natty’s empty bed and put them over her friend in order to keep her warm, before storming off to the showers, to wash all of the dirt and sweat off of her.

...

The next two days passed on fairly quickly, and suddenly, Emilia realized that she’d been at Hogwarts for a whole week, and with each passing day she was feeling more comfortable, was enjoying the classes more and had grown closer with both of her Gryffindor friends, as well as her potions partners, with whom she actually got to hang out outside of the classes as well.

On Friday afternoon, right after having dinner with Jaz and Rosie, she made her way to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. When she entered the class, she was greeted by a very old, short and fragile looking man. His face was as wrinkly as a raisin and on his head he had nothing more but a couple of white hairs. His tired eyes were framed with a pair of big round glasses, and he had to use a walking stick to move around slowly.

As Emilia quickly realized, despite his age, Professor Crane’s mind was still sharp and he had incredible knowledge about not only dark arts, but also every other side of magic, like ancient types of it, runes or artifacts, other cultures’ magic and abilities and all sorts of stuff.

Firstly, he’d forbidden Emilia from using a wand. She was only supposed to be using the magic that was within her, conjure it with her hands rather than through a ‘vessel’ as he called it.

Next, he took out a knife and slit his own palm straight open and then ordered Emilia to heal it, to be able to study the power of her healing ability.

Then he began teaching her about how to tame her powers as to not overuse them, how to calm down her mind and soul in order to have more control over the magic in her.

All of it felt very spiritual to her, but she didn’t mind. It actually did help her feel more in control but also powerful at the same time. Although, this training was extremely draining and after about two hours she felt like she was about to pass out.

Yet Professor Crane insisted, that before he would let her go she would have to heal one more injury. From underneath his desk he had pulled out cage with a beautiful and majestic phoenix, with deep red feathers and cunning eyes inside of it. The creature had a broken wing and Emilia was ordered to try and heal it.

As the teacher opened the cage and the bird sat down on the desk, the girl came up to it calmly in order not to startle it. She first gave the animal a small stroke on his head to prove that she didn’t mean any harm, before beginning to touch the broken wing with the ends of her fingertips. The moment her magic started working and the animal’s wing was suddenly snapped back into it’s original shape, the feathers of the bird began turning white, right from the place which she used the magic on.

Professor Crane’s eyes widened in shock as he fixed his glasses and moved closer to the bird to examine it. Emilia’s hands still had a faint white halo around them, which as she noticed appeared every time she used her healing magic on someone. But no one and nothing before had ever turned white after she healed it.

‘Fascinating…’ – the teacher whispered as he lowered his head and began looking at the bird, which’s feathers had already begun to turn back into it’s original, deep red color.

Suddenly the door to the classroom opened and before the girl turned around she heard a familiar voice.

‘I’m very sorry, Professor Crane, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just wanted to give you my finished essay that was due today.’ – Ash stood there by the door and gave them a surprised look, whilst holding a long piece of rolled up parchment in his hand.

‘It’s alright, Mr. Evergreen, but please knock before you enter my class outside the school hours next time.’ – the teacher scolded, and walked up to the boy slowly with his walking stick, and took the assignment from his hand.

Emilia noticed Ash looking at the half-white phoenix sitting on the desk and then glancing at her glowing hands discreetly.

‘I apologize. Thank you, Professor.’ – he nodded respectfully before walking out of the class, closing the door behind him.

Anxiety flew right through Emilia’s guts as she realized, she was just caught with a lie.