Strange Teachers

Chapter 15

——Ginny——

The next few days went by in a flash, so that the day before the holidays was here. All of us were really excited by the prospect of all of our closest friends and family coming to Hogwarts.

Soon enough, I was in my last period Charms class, waiting impatiently for the bell. The class was almost over, so everyone had packed up their books and parchment, but Prof. Flitwick was giving us a small lecture to really stress the fact that weightlessness charms are to be taken very seriously and are dangerous.

I looked down at my watch.

5 minutes until the end of the day; mum, dad, and George were supposed to be walking into the Great Hall with Teddy right now.

I tapped my foot anxiously for what felt like a few minutes, then checked the time again.

4 minutes and 40 seconds until I can see my family; now mum would be chatting up some of the other gryffindor mums, while time seemed to be moving in slow motion for me.

This time I waited what felt like hours, but I knew was probably minutes.

30 seconds until class ended; Prof. McGonagall was most likely just about done explaining all of the rules that they'd need to follow. I couldn't wait to get out of this blasted classroom.

I thought about all of the things that I'd done here that my mother would never have approved of—some of which weren't technically against the aforementioned rules—and found that only a few seconds were standing in between me and the door right behind me.

4...3...2...1...

"Class dismissed," Prof. Flitwick said. "Don't forget to do the homework over the break."

The class finally ended, and about three quarters of my classmates got up at once, all of them being very eager to see their loved ones.

The remaining quarter must've simply had no one to invite, which made my heart ache. Even though we'd lost people, we had others to help us. These students were teenagers, and they were all alone.

I practically ran out into the hall, almost crashing directly into Harry, who was waiting for me with Ron and Hermione. Apparently I'd thought for longer than I meant to.

"Thanks for waiting. Come on. Let's go to the Great Hall," I said hurriedly before grabbing Harry's hand and starting to speed walk towards the hidden staircase that went directly down to the ground floor.

As soon as we entered the Hall, my eyes swept over the gryffindor table, which had been magically extended to fit the guests, quickly recognizing my family by the colour of their hair. I literally ran the whole rest of the way, pulling Harry behind me and dodging the crowd of people beginning to sit down.

When we got to their spot at the table, George had seen us across the table, but mum and dad were with their backs to us.

"Mum, dad, George!" I yelled, before hugging my parents and awkwardly hugging my brother over the table.

"Dears, we've missed you," mum said as she hugged Ron, then Harry, then Hermione. "How has your first semester been?"

So, we told her just about everything that had happened since September, leaving out my prophetic dreams, our demigod teachers and their missing friend, or any other things that would probably freak them out. Afterward, I realized that Teddy was nowhere to be found.

"Wait, mum, where's Teddy?" I knew that I sounded slightly panicked, but I didn't care one bit.

"Don't worry, dear; those new professors offered to take him so that we could talk to you uninterrupted."

She turned out to be pointing at the DADA teachers, who were playing with little Teddy and making him laugh. Well, he wasn't so little anymore. He'd really grown over the few months we'd been away. It made me sad that we were missing such an important part of his life.

Harry and I decided to go get him together, so we walked up to the staff table and stopped in front of the couple whose full attention was focused on Harry's godson. I could tell that they'd make great parents. Pretty soon, Prof. Jackson noticed us.

"Hey, guys. Ginny, is this your little brother? I didn't know that you had metamorphmagus blood," he said.

Teddy certainly wasn't subtle about it, either. Today he had indigo hair with a few locks turned gold. It was very pretty, but not something you see every day.

"No, I don't. Teddy is Harry's godson. His parents died in the war," I answered.

Harry's smile faded a bit, so I picked up Teddy and held him up in front of me.

"Hey, big guy. You've grown so much," I cooed to the baby.

I handed him carefully to Harry, who started to make faces and talk to Teddy despite his sudden sadness at the thought of Tonks and Remus. Satisfied, I turned back towards the couple.

"Are you inviting anybody else?" I asked them.

"No," Prof. Chase said while shaking her head. "Our kind attract monsters—the Greek kind—, so too many of us would be problematic. We've already had to fight a few hellhounds, a hydra, and several others. They all want a bite of the only two to have saved Olympus twice. It's counterintuitive; you'd think that that would scare them."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. On the other hand, maybe they're being compensated by someone or something," I suggested.

"Well, that's a scary thought: some new evil immortal sending monsters after us. Let's hope not."

And with that we started having a normal conversation, until we said goodbye and went back to our seats at the table.

"You seem close to those two," my father remarked.

To explain it without saying that we were the only people here to know their big secret, we told them about their classes, how they know what it's like to go through a war, especially at our age, how they were engaged, and pretty much everything except them being demigods.

— - — - —

The train for London was leaving tonight instead of tomorrow to make space for everyone. That meant that Ron and Harry ended up alone in their dorm, and the only person in our dorm apart from Hermione and I who stayed was Becca. When we'd finished catching up, dad and George took two empty beds in the boys' dorm, while mum took one in ours. I conjured a crib for an already sleeping Teddy and put him down. Harry and I were going to take turns having him sleep in each of our rooms.

"Goodnight mum," I whispered, receiving one in return.

This was going to be an unusual holiday break, there was no doubt in my mind about that.

— - — - —

A/N: it's a slightly rushed chapter, but i hope it's good anyway. Thank you for reading and maybe voting/commenting!

By the way, I'm really curious; how many of you started reading this when it had seven chapters or less and are still reading it? Please comment your answer, it would mean a lot.