Can Hogwarts Make a Mistake?

Chapter 2

I made a spark! During Charms class, Flitwick was pushing me so hard to finally levitate something while everyone else was working on Alohamora. I got so frustrated that I must have flicked when I should have swished and swished when I should have flicked and next thing I knew, my stack of books (an extremely expensive stack, I might add,) blew up.

I know I said I only made a spark. That may have been a slight under-exaggeration. I made several sparks, mind you, that ignited my expensive stack of books. Under normal circumstances, the books would not have ignited. However, I had double Potions next period and brought a jar of peeled frog eyes, which, apparently, are tied with kerosene when it comes to flammability. Point being, by producing a few sparks, I lost almost a hundred Galleons. Like those muggle magicians: I shall now make eighty-nine Galleons, seventeen Sickles and ten Knuts disappear! Poof! Where'd they go? Not in my pocket, I'll tell you.

When I told Rose, she almost cried. Not out of happiness that I may finally be developing my magical abilities, no, but that my books exploded. Albus, however, had the right reaction. He didn't quite cry of excitement or wet his pants or anything, he yelled at me to do it again. I couldn't really remember, I was just so frustrated that I blew something up. So I swished and flicked and waved and poked around in the common room, and my result was that James's full head of untidy black hair, of which he is very, very proud, combusted, I exploded more peeled frog eyes, a practice potion that Evanna was brewing blew up, and I lit a nice, cozy fire in the fireplace, not to mention everywhere else. McGonagall busted in, demanding what the commotion was all about, saw me with my soot-ridden face and singed robes and hair, shook her head, maybe smiled sadly a little, (I know I saw it) and waved her wand in a big sweeping motion that drenched the entire common rooms in a deluge of water. When everyone shivered enough, she made sharp little flicks with her wand and dried everything nicely.

The next day after Herbology, I stayed to talk with Professor Longbottom.

"I heard about your incident in the Gryffindor common room last night," he began with a growing grin.

"Oh, yeah..." I responded, quite awkwardly. He smiled and shook his head, just, irritatingly enough, as McGonagall had done last night. "What?" I inquired, somewhat rankled.

"You have your father's gift of spontaneous combustibility and pyromanism."

Too many big words in a sentence. The blank look on my face probably communicated my confusion.

"Your dad blew stuff up randomly, all the time. So do you. That is where you get it," he said slowly, smiling. I nodded and smiled back.

"Do you go to any of Slughorn's parties ever?" I shook my head.

"You should. It's quite fun sometimes."