Journey To Hogwarts, old - thread closed Options

[evlpez]

Okay folks. I know many of you have no care to explore 'ships and alt universe stuff, but I wanted to get something else moving in our brains.
Here is a short installment of an AU story about James Potter, son to Harry and Ginny. This is all that is written so far.

Rather than chapter-long installments, let's try just a few paragraphs at a time and see how it develops.

The story begins with James' first ride on the Hogwarts Express. I see James as a bit of a loner, coping silently with being related to a celebrity and unsure about his own place in the world. He is more mature than his age and is intelligent, brave and has a darkness about him. (He isn't evil or bad, though.) I see a bit of a 'young Remus' in this James. I have written in one baby brother, but there may be up to 5 children in the Potter family, considering Ginny's experience with a large family and Harry's feelings about having a different, lonlier childhood.

JOURNEY TO HOGWARTS

James Potter sat in an otherwise empty compartment of the Hogwarts Express, looking out the window and eagerly waiting for it to pull away from the platform. He could barely sit still. He felt only a twinge of guilt at his hasty good-bye to his parents, having felt awkward as always standing there with one of the most famous wizards in history. He needed to get away and be by himself on this train before he was bombarded by cousins and other curious people. He loved his cousins, but he always felt a little different from all of them. Not better, but something about being who he was had made him… alone. He preferred being alone at important times like this; important to him, anyway. His first trip on the Hogwarts Express, this was the beginning of his journey to become someone. To make a name for himself that wasn't automatically followed by 'the son of Harry Potter'. He glanced at the cage he had set on the bench opposite only moments before. His new owl, a young brown Tawny, stared back at him. He still hadn't given him a name, despite his mother's prodding.

"Just pick something, James. He's just an owl, not your firstborn child," she had said that morning while juggling a breakfast pan with her wand hand and his baby brother with the other. His father intervened as he took baby Albert off her hands.

"Now, now… this isn't just any owl. It's his owl. James will name him when he needs to. It's important to some people, Gin. This little guy is going to be more than just his owl, he'll be a friend." James smiled at his dad then. He understood. He understood a lot of things about James that his mother just couldn't, not that she didn't try.

James' new owl hooted, reminding him of a penny whistle. It was such a different voice than Hedwig's. James smiled. His father had known that this owl should be as different as he could be from Hedwig.

Continue, introducing at least one new character, maybe a Weasley Cousin (one of the twins' kids?).

[agrippa]

The herbology exam was every bit as difficult as the first-year Gryffindors had been expecting. There were 200 different plants, herbs, and fungi that had to be identified as the students milled around greenhouse from pot to pot, scribbling down the names of the plants, describing how to care for them and listing their properties. They had only an hour to complete the exam, and students were nearly elbowing each other out of the way to get to the pots they needed to see.

James was looking at what he desperately hoped was some kind of shrivelfig bush – what kind exactly, he wasn’t so sure – when Professor Longbottom yelled, “Accio parchment!” James nearly jumped out of his shoes, and the parchment flew by his ear on the way to the teacher’s desk.

The whole class was staring at the professor. “Mr. Dursley!”

Duke did not look up. He appeared to be concentrating very hard on a bag of potting soil.

“What,” asked the professor, “is this?”

“Just a spare bit of parchment,” replied Duke.

“Mr. Dursley, this parchment is not exactly scrap. I’m going to have to ask you to leave the greenhouse now.”

“But I’m not finished with my exam!” Duke’s voice was now at least two steps higher than it had been a moment ago.

“On the contrary, Mr. Dursley, you are finished. We’ll take this up with your head of house.”

“But…”

“Now, Mr. Dusley. Leave the green house now. We will discuss this later.”

Duke slouched out the greenhouse door, casting a dirty look in Professor Longbottom’s direction as he left.

“Does in one else want to confess that they, too, have some scraps of parchment they shouldn’t have brought to the exam today?”

No one spoke.

“This is your last chance. If you bring up these sheets to me now, your punishment will be much less severe.”

Again, the room was silent.

Professor Longbottom pointed his want at Duke’s parchment. “Duplices ardentes!”

James heard screams from the back of the room. He turned around to see Claude, Pollux, Castor, and Athol – along with several other Slytherins he did not know – waving their hands in the air or sticking them into pitchers of water. On the floor, flames were swiftly eating up pieces of parchment that James assumed must have been the copies of Duke’s cheat sheet.

“If you have a bit of a hot hand right now,” said Professor Longbottom, “you also need to leave the greenhouse now.”

He watched sternly as the Slytherins filed out, hands in their pockets.

“Sorry about that interruption. I will give an extra five minutes to compensate you honest students for the disruption.”

******

At lunch that day, the incident in the herbology exam was the only topic of conversation. The Duke and the rest of the Slytherins who had been thrown out of class were conspicuously absent.

“So what do you think will happen to them?” James asked Lily.

“I don’t know,” said Lily thoughtfully. I don’t know that anyone’s ever been caught cheating like that before.”

“I do,” said Finley from across the table. “In my first year, a Darcy Hooper had the answers to a potions exam written on the side of her wand. Or at least we think she did. Her wand burned up in a flash of purple flame. As everyone knows, if you put ink on your wand, the results can be catastrophic.”

“But I’ve never heard of anyone cheating on this scale,” declared Fiona. “I mean, there were – how many of them with the same parchment?”

“Seven,” said Philip.

“Wow,” said Fiona. “I mean, why do that? You’ve got to know all this stuff. Otherwise, you’ll never be a proper wizard or witch. And in the first year! If you can’t hand first year herbology – well, I can’t imagine how difficult N.E.W.T.-level potions is.”

“And to put dear Professor Longbottom in such a bad position,” said Lily. “And Professor Jacobson-”

“What does Professor Jacobson have to do with this?” Philip said sharply.

“Well, he’s the new head of Slytherin house, isn’t he,” replied Lily. She shook her head. “And just his first year here, too.”

“I just had a horrible thought,” Serena said, suddenly looking up from her roast beef. “What if the Slytherins have been cheating for ages, but nobody was stupid enough to get caught until this crew?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Philip said thoughtfully. “And if they’re cheating and not getting caught, and the rest of us are surviving only on our wits – well, it’s not a level playing field, is it?”

“If that’s true,” declared Freddy solemnly, “then it is our absolute duty to defend the honor of Gryffindor by cheating ourselves!”

Fiona and Findley shot him such a dirty look that James, sitting next to him, could almost feel the heat of their stares.

“I’m just kidding,” said Freddy. “I bet the professors catch nearly all the cheaters.”

“And besides,” said Fiona, looking less menacing now, “on the only exams that matter – the O.W.Ls and the N.E.W.Ts – there are so many anti-cheating charms that no one could possibly…”

She trailed off, apparently lost in a world of her own. The Gryffindors had just enough time to finish their lunch before the tower bell announced the beginning of afternoon classes.