I Was Younger Then

Career Advice

Penny could have kissed Hermione, who made some murtlap essence for her to soak her raw hands in. Her lips pressed together in disapproval, she submerged Penny's hand and then began massaging them for her. The sensation was awful and wonderful at the same time. Penny winced several times, Hermione pulling away, but Penny assured her it was helping.

"Are you sure we shouldn't tell McGonagall, this seems extreme, even for Snape," Hermione finally said.

"Absolutely not. I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing I complained."

"You sound like, Harry," Hermione said, shaking her head in exasperation before returning to her transfiguration book.

"Speaking of the devil, where is Harry?" Penny asked, glancing around the emptying common room.

"He rushed off with Ron earlier, neither wanted to start on their homework with me," Hermione answered, sounding irritated.

"Did he say how his detention went with that hag?"

"Only that she made him do lines. Oh shoot, look at the time, we should probably head to charms, but I didn't even make it through the first chapter. Do you think our OWLs are going to be as hard as everyone says?"

Penny nodded, packing her bag with Hermione. "By the look of the obscene amount of homework they've already assigned us, even if the OWLs aren't hard, this year is going to be a giant headache."

Unfortunately for Penny, her prediction turned out to be true, the teachers apparently having formed an unspoken agreement to make their first week back at Hogwarts the most miserable yet. Even Professor Flitwick assigned them more homework than ever before and, like all the other teachers, he lectured them about taking their OWLs seriously and to begin considering their careers.

It was a topic Penny had not thought much about; what would she would do after Hogwarts? For whatever reason, she just assumed she'd never leave, the idea seemed absurd. Hogwarts was her home and held everything she loved. But in reality, the wizarding world was huge and she'd only seen a small part of it. What worried her most though was the fact she did not know what she wanted to do nor what interested her.

Life had changed too much in the last six months, and a part of Penny worried about what the next six months would look like. While they all sat safe in school, under the protection of Dumbledore, a war was ensuing, Voldemort gathering his forces and the Ministry refusing to do anything to prepare anyone. It was an unsettling thought, imagining what the world would be when she finally graduated.

By the time they reached transfiguration, Penny was already drowning in her worry, and ignored McGonagall's spiel completely. Glancing at Harry, she realized he, for once, had listened and looked as worried about the future as Penny, though she felt he had considerably more reasons to be worried, seeing as Voldemort would stop at nothing to kill them.

Professor McGonagall started them on vanishing spells, which pulled Penny from her turmoil. Her wand felt awkward in her hand while she tried hard to get it to perform the magic she wanted. She'd been practicing only relying on her wand since Imposter-Moody had lectured her about doing so. Although, he was not the only reason. Some part of Penny had decided that using her expression would only strengthen Tom, and so she'd developed a fear of reaching for it, though at times, she did so without realizing.

The predicament proved problematic, because her wand skills were abysmally worse than her expression, and if she had any hope of achieving an OWL she'd either need a miracle, to use her expression, or to stop avoiding the giant problem named Tom. She still hadn't mentioned it to anyone, and in all honesty, because of events, forgot all about the problem. During the summer, she was accustomed to not using or thinking about magic, but now she had to make a decision, a decision which gave her an obscene amount of anxiety.