Gideon Drake and the Fire Within (Harry Potter Sequel/Spinoff)

Chapter Eleven: A Matter of Time

The first week at Middling Academy didn't go as Gideon hoped. To start with, his efforts to connect with his classmates went badly. He found that the ones who weren't afraid of revealing themselves were mostly painfully shy, deeply moody, or openly hostile. Others simply didn't want to associate with "the odd-eyed short kid".

Then, after all the reading Gideon had done, he often thought he knew the answers to questions in classes only to find he was mistaken. When they discussed the topic of levitation during a Charms session, for instance, Gideon knew the wand movement, incantation, and even the estimated range and power of the spell. However, Mrs Hastings wanted to hear about the reasons behind those things, when a witch or wizard might—or should—use the spell, and how Squibs would perform the intended function.

Herbology lessons were similar, not least because there were no greenhouses at Middling Academy. That would be too dangerous. They learned about magical plants and the like from their books. However, Mrs Hastings informed them that there would be school trips to the enchanted greenhouses of Kew Gardens at the end of each semester.

Potions class was especially disappointing. Their teacher was an imposing man whose booming voice often caused the nervous students to drop things. Then, there was the fact that the potions they were making primarily came from Arsenius Jigger's considerably less popular book, Non-Magical Draughts and Potions, which was essentially a list of innocuous tonics and herbal remedies. The point, Mr Moorhouse told them, was to learn the "essence of potion-making", so they could better understand how and why "real wizards" used them.

Gideon struggled with Astronomy. This wasn't because of Middling Academy's interpretation of the subject. On the contrary, he thought studying the enchanted ceiling while the pupils lay on bean bags was a clever idea. It was simply because Gideon found the shapes of constellations harder to memorise and recall than information such as facts, names and dates.

Break times in the Green Room were bizarre. Some students played games and sports in the distance but there were an awful lot of individuals darted around, sitting alone reading, writing, or drawing as Gideon did. He was used to spending time alone, of course, but seeing so many of his peers doing the same thing was unnerving for some reason.

Gideon wanted to try approaching some of them, but the truth was his mind was elsewhere. Every day that week after school finished, he had caught the lift to the library as agreed with his mother, where she waited with a mug of hot chocolate and a chocolate-chip cookie wand for him, and completed his homework at one of the empty desks. However, when he finished, he used any remaining time to search for answers.

The answers he was looking for, Gideon had concluded, were not going to come from his family. He would have to find them for himself. However, after five days of searching, he hadn't come up with any. The problem was, Gideon had no idea what he was looking for, or if he was going to find it in any of the dusty tomes that he was randomly pulling off shelves.

He had barely understood what his father and grandmother were whispering about when he had overheard them talking in the study. What he did know, is that they had a secret, a secret about him. That his grandmother thought there was something wrong with him. That there might have been a procedure of some kind, which he thought she had referred to as "The Weaving".

After spending hours in the stacks scanning vertical titles with his head tilted, looking for even a hint of this phrase, Gideon had developed a deep frustration, not to mention a sore neck.

The irony was, he had access to a knowledgeable source for finding information in the library right in front of him—his mother—but he couldn't risk asking her or her colleagues without knowing what "The Weaving" was. He also suspected she might be in on the secret and didn't want to alert her to his discovery.