Harry Potter and Dreams Lost

Transfiguration started off slightly better than Potions did.

 

McGonagall questioned me on how I ‘apparated’ around Hogwarts, but quickly gave up after my answers. Apparently, ‘just because I can’ isn’t a good answer. I can’t really give anything more substantial than that.

 

Thomas probably knows why.

 

Something about how my will is technically the everything’s will. Or some motivational garbage like that. Don’t really care. Just hungry, to be honest.

 

Which I always am!

 

The others arrive, slowly. I summon a pack of cards from somewhere (The Ether, I think?) and modify the kings and queens and all that jazz to be a little more…me.

 

A solid black deck, moving pictures for magic-ness. I replaced the figures with people important in my life. There’s me as the king. Me as the queen. Me as jack. Me as ace. Me as all the numbers, too!

 

Obviously, they all aren’t the same picture. It would be impossible to play.

 

I start a game of solitary Spider…

 

How do I play this again?

 

The others arrive with little fanfare. I help a little with a faint trumpeting sound heard in the distance for each of them. Nobody noticed. Shame.

 

Then the lectures began. Theory and postulates and laws galore. BORING! I rest my head down on the table, arms to the side, and eyes wide. McGonagall continues saying things that I don’t understand.

 

They don’t make sense! Why do humans put these silly constraints on the things that they do?! Now, the inevitable heat death of everything, THAT makes sense. ‘Cause decay is…yeah.

 

“—and… Miss Archimedes? Are you listening?” Professor McGonagall grabs my main attention again. I wasn’t directly listening to her, but I did have to hear her to complain about what she said.

 

“Don’t use a spell without knowing exactly how it works and how to undo it,” I drawl, sagging in my seat. I think I get the idea across with my apathetic posturing when she looks like she’s about to tell me off, but then stops once she realizes that I had indeed just recited her.

 

“Please maintain proper decorum and posture, then…” She switches gears fast. Unfortunately for her, I haven’t really read a dictionary. I only really use some of the words Thomas spouts out.

 

“I would if I knew what that meant.”

 

“Behavior in keeping with good taste.” Taste? I can do taste. I’m very good at taste.

 

“Okay.” I sit up straight, audibly cracking my back in the process. I replicate the prim and proper facades that Thomas’s actual daughters wear…sometimes. His eldest actually is like that, but his younger is an arsonist.

 

McGonagall gives me one last glance before continuing her boring lecture. Ugh. You know what? Imma gonna stare.

 

I stare at McGonagall, unblinking. Passive. Not twitching a single muscle except the ones in my eyes—the human ones. I’m not even breathing, just staring and following McGonagall.

 

She begins to notice after about twenty minutes, so she skips a few non-vital ­parts of our lesson in turning a toothpick into a needle. I turn my unblinking attention towards the wooden pick on the table. It’s balsa wood.

 

“Heuh. Haugh. *Cough*” Inducing that weird gag reflex that I think is completely not-needed, I regurgitate some sewing needles I stole from Thomas’s wife, Sophia, that I had subsequently ate.

 

They’re a little rusty and goopy.

 

It’ll probably pass.

 

I raise my hand to call Professor McGonagall over, but she simply shakes her head no. Apparently, she heard and saw my regurgitation, and so did the rest of class. They’re a little pale. Not green. I don’t know why people say that. People only turn green when they’re covered in mold.

 

So, following the dramatics, I pull my wand out with a flourish, then, while keeping my eyes locked with the Professor’s, I press the tip to the point, wordlessly changing the molecular structure of wood and dead flora into a lifeless chunk of steel. Yeah, that’s right. All points, no quills.

 

Or something like that. Anyway, wordless magic. Mmhmm!

 

“Ahem!” Professor McGonagall coughs. “20 points to Hufflepuff.” Huh?! Only 20? What I just did is impossible for even you! Transfiguration wears off, but I just did freaking alchemy!

 

Ugh, whatever. I’m going to grab a snack.

 

One of my duplicates begins existing outside the kitchen portrait. You know, the one that’s a bowl of fruit. I tickle the pear, making the door handle appear. I crawl through the opened door/portrait, greeting the spatially repressed elves.

 

I honestly prefer some elves of different worlds. Except for the ones that tried to power a bomb using the lifeforce of a planet. The ones that are an all-female race, or are secluded, or-or-or. Yeah, I kind of like elves, but only pretty ones!

 

I don’t have issues. I am issues.

 

Not-me-but-still-me carries my snack down the hallway, wrapping the metric tons of food in her tentacles. She huffs at the poor design choices of Hogwarts—the ones that limit the size of things that can go through doors.

 

Somehow a troll can get through here, but food can’t?

 

Well, I’d guess a troll wouldn’t care about the integrity of the walls either…

 

Back to the real me as the other me tries to navigate the halls, I’m feigning sleep.

 

Now! Back to the food porter, she has promptly remembered that physics is merely a suggestion, and her metaphysical brain-child, which means it has to obey the orders of its elders. So, she walks through the wall, ignoring the molecules bouncing around like they’re on drugs, and flies up the pointlessly-moving staircases.

 

Then right as she is about to knock on the door, we both come to the same conclusion: we’re the same person. While one sleeps, the other can eat. So, that’s exactly what I do. While the me in the classroom is sleeping, the me not in the classroom snacks a little.

 

I forgot I can become the personification of multitasking sometimes.