Harry Potter - The Accidental Animagus

Chapter 24 - Halloween

On Halloween morning, the smell of baking pumpkin pies was already wafting up from the kitchens through the entire castle before breakfast. All the Gryffindors were excited for the evening feast and the general air of festivity. A few of the older girls had taken it upon themselves to decorate the Common Room with charmed orange lights and black and orange banners. Harry saw Ron trying fruitlessly to turn Scabbers orange for the occasion. Harry privately thought the rat's squeaks of protest sounded eerily human, but maybe that was just the holiday getting to him.

Halloween always had that weird bittersweet feeling for Harry and Hermione, no matter how much they always off memorialising Harry's parents to the following Sunday, but they were actually in a pretty good mood this morning because Professor Flitwick was finally going to teach the Levitation Charm in class today. Seeing as that was their best wandless spell, it was pretty important for them to learn it with a wand, and they would be glad to finally be able to use it in public.

After a long lecture on the theory of the charm, Professor Flitwick put them all in pairs to practice. Harry, as usual, was paired with Hermione. At the next desk, Ron was paired with Neville-a dangerous combination, although Neville and Seamus probably would have been worse.

Professor Flitwick had taught them the swish and flick, the same movement Harry and Hermione had been unconsciously using with their hands for over a year, and the incantation, "Wingardium Leviosa", but control was still a problem. When Harry first incanted, "Wingardium Leviosa", his and Hermione's feather shot up like a rocket and bumped into the ceiling. There were a few giggles at this, but the class was mostly used to seeing his wand go haywire whilst learning charms. The Levitation Charm was more difficult than usual because he needed to supply a continuous flow of magic, and it was very easy to lose control. He practised the charm a few more times, each of which ended in either no effect on the feather at all or a second or two of levitation followed by shooting up again to the ceiling.

Meanwhile, Ron and Neville were taking turns casting the spell on their own feather without effect. Neville was looking increasingly depressed about it, while Ron became very vocally frustrated. Eventually, Harry gave up on trying to get his feather to stay steady for more than three seconds and let Hermione have a turn.

"Wingardium Lev-Ahh!" There was a loud crackle and a flash of blue light. Ron had swung his arm back so wildly that it collided with Hermione's arm in the middle of her incantation.

"Hey, watch out!" Hermione squeaked. "You need to calm down. And it's Levi-o-sa, not Levio-sa."

"Well, why don't you try it, then?" Ron said indignantly. "Go on, see if you can do better than your brother."

Hermione rolled her eyes and cast the spell again: "Wingardium Leviosa." The feather rose smoothly off the desk and hovered for a couple of seconds, then shot up so fast that the shaft stuck into the ceiling.

"Oh my, well, this spell can be tricky to start off," Professor Flitwick said. He summoned the feather back down.

As if to illustrate the point, Seamus Finnigan tried again: "Wingardium Leviosa. Wingar-" BANG!

Ron might have been in a better mood about the whole thing, except that he still hadn't got much of anywhere with the charm himself by the end of class. As Harry and Hermione left the room, they heard Ron complaining to Neville in front of them.

"It's Levi-o-sa, not Levio-sa. Honestly, I know she's Harry's sister, but she's kinda mental."

"Hey, she was trying to help you," Neville replied. "You saw what happened to Seamus."