Ron Potter and the Next Generation by PEMDAS
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Ron woke up to Harry’s snoring at six-thirty the next morning. He grinned…Uncle Ron would be proud of that continuous grunt from his cousin’s mouth. He threw a shoe at Harry (the snoring subsided) and got dressed for the day’s lessons.
Half an hour later, Ron and a very sleepy-looking Harry walked down to the Great Hall for breakfast. At the opposite end of the Hall, the Head of Houses were handing out schedules. They walked over to McGonagall, who immediately handed them their papers. “You see that you have me first today, boys,” she said to them in an undertone. “Just as with your fathers on their first day, I will not tolerate tardiness in my class.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ron and Harry said at the same time before walking back to the Gryffindor table.
As they stuffed their faces with sausage, the boys examined their schedules. “We’ve got everything together!” Ron said joyfully. “Just like dad and Uncle Harry did!”
“Awesome!” Harry said. “Oh…bummer…we don’t have Defense Against the Dark Arts until Wednesday…”
“And we’ve got Potions after lunch,” Ron said, pointing to the small lettering on their slips of paper. “Blimey, if we didn’t have the same schedules, I’d be totally bummed…” They finished their breakfasts in silence. When the bell rang out across the entire campus, they stood up, grabbed their bags, and set off for Transfiguration.
Unfortunately, they were late for their first class. Luckily, though, McGonagall was being held up in the Great Hall, and they were barely in their seats before she walked briskly into the room. “Welcome to Transfiguration,” she said as she took her place at the front of the room. “Potter, Weasley…you’re late.”
“How’d she know?” Ron hissed to Harry. The latter merely shrugged: it was McGonagall, however.
McGonagall assigned homework at the end of the period, just as Professor Binns, the ghostly History of Magic teacher, did the following class. This class was used for Harry to catch up on sleep, and Ron to scribble down notes. After all, they didn’t have a smarty-pants girl to copy them from, like their fathers had....
Finally, after slogging through Herbology, Ron and Harry had lunch. They were about to sit down when a very excited Trevor Longbottom ran up to them. “I just had Defense Against the Dark Arts!” he said to Ron. “Your dad’s brilliant!”
“Thanks,” Ron said, grinning. After eating a few turkey sandwiches, Harry and Ron walked up to the North Tower for Astronomy. It was a bit boring...okay, it was VERY boring...but they managed to get through it. The professor explained the class and assigned them homework: to chart the moon until the end of the month.
After Astronomy, Ron and Harry walked down to the dungeons for Potions with Snape. Five minutes later, the bell rang. The menacing Potions Master swept into the room magnificently, causing a very abrupt silence amongst the class, Ron and Harry included. “I am Professor Snape, the Potions Master at this school,” he said in a belligerent tone. “This term, we will be…”
The door to the room opened again, and a very guilty-looking Trevor Longbottom trudged into the room. “Late, Longbottom,” Snape said harshly as the red-faced boy took a seat next to Harry and Ron. “I see that you have no more common sense than your useless klutz of a father…”
Trevor, shaking angrily at this, drew his wand and stood up. “My father is way greater than you’ll ever be!” he said grandly, surprising everyone whose parents had known Neville and his scaredy-cat reputation. Harry and Ron barely stopped themselves from applauding.
Snape merely looked amused. “Sticking up for your useless Auror, are you? …Or, at least, that’s what he calls himself.” He noticed the wand in Trevor’s chubby little hand. “Going to curse me, Longbottom? Even your father had better sense than that…”
Trevor stood there for a moment, shaking, and finally sank back into his chair. “I thought not,” Snape said. “Twenty points from Gryffindor for your classmate’s cheek…now…”
Several people screamed as a jet of blue light shot towards Snape, who only barely deflected it with his wand. It hit its original castor in the face…
Trevor groaned as his spell backfired on him, and he began to sprout feathers. The class laughed uproariously as he turned into a giant chicken, with the clucking and pecking and all.
Snape was smirking. “Poor, foolish boy,” he said. “Another twenty points from Gryffindor…someone should take him to the Hospital Wing, I suppose…”
“I will, Professor,” Ron volunteered, and without waiting for Snape’s consent, he grabbed Trevor under the arm (wing?) and guided him from the room.
Apparently, it wasn’t a long-term spell, as Neville eventually “molted,” turning back into a breathing, ranting human again. “I HATE Snape!” he yelled as soon as he regained his voice. “He-he insulted my father…I’m going straight to the Owlery to tell him…”
“We’re going to the Hospital Wing,” Ron said firmly. “Snape will probably contact Madam Pomprey after class to confirm that you actually got there…by the way, why were you late?”
Trevor suddenly looked glum. “Neville ran away.”
“Neville…” It hit Ron. “You have a toad named Neville?”
“Yeah…” Trevor said sadly. “I went up to the common room to get my Potions book, and Neville…jumped out the common room window.”
“No way!” Ron said incredulously. Trevor’s toad is suicidal! “What happened?”
“Well, I’m lucky it was windy, because the wind blew him right into the lake, if you’ll believe it,” Trevor said. “By that time, the bell had rung, so I’m really lucky I was only two minutes late.”
Ron patted him on the back. “Sorry to hear it.”
When they reached the hospital wing, Ron bade Trevor good-bye and headed back to the Gryffindor common room. There was no way he could endure Snape any longer after that. He went up to his dormitory, pulled his cloak out of the chest, and walked downstairs with it. He sat, invisible, in front of the fire, enjoying the feeling of being transparent.
When the bell rang, Ron returned his cloak to the chest. It was he and Harry’s break time at last, and he twiddled his thumbs, waiting for Harry to return from the dungeons. When he did, he bore a very grumpy look.
“We’ve got to write an eight-inch essay on bezoars,” he said. “What’s there to write? They come from a goat’s stomach…they cancel out poisons… He’s mental! Oh, and we lost another fifty House points when Marilyn Malfoy slipped a newt’s tail into my cauldron and it exploded…seemed to think it was my fault…”
“We’d better hope Flitwick gives us loads of House points,” Ron said gloomily. “I couldn’t bear losing Gryffindor 100 points per day…”
Unfortunately, Flitwick DIDN’T give them loads of House points; only five, in fact, when Harry helped the elderly Charms professor to his feet after a nasty fall from his chair. What he did give them loads of, though, is homework… “Your assignment is to keep a month-long calendar of every spell you cast,” he said. “At the end of the month, we will discern what percent of those were charms, hexes, curses, and regular spells!”
“Sometimes I wish Dad hadn’t taught us so many spells,” Ron said as they left Flitwick’s class, their last of the day. “Magic is just a part of life!” He gestured at the tiny boxes under each day of the month on his calendar-handout. “I cast at least twenty spells a day; how am I going to fit it all?”
Harry, who had fallen silent, suddenly said, “Why don’t we go visit Hagrid?”
“I can’t believe “ what?” Ron said, shaking out of his rant.
“Why…don’t…we…go…visit…Hagrid?” Harry said slowly and deliberately.
“Oh…okay,” Ron said absentmindedly, still fuming, not just about the calendar, but about all the homework they already had. It’s only the first day!
They walked down the sloping lawns to the small, wooden hut at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where Hagrid was chastising a few students that had tried to sneak into the forest. “Hi, Hagrid!” Harry called from behind the massive half-giant.
Hagrid turned. “Hullo, boys!” he boomed. “How was yer first day o’ Hogwarts?”
Ron shrugged. “We have tons of homework already.”
“That’s life, boys,” Hagrid said, half-smiling. Taking no notice of the students sneaking away behind him, he said, “Get used ter it. Yeh’ve no idea how many times yer parents had been down here to complain ‘bout their homework load.”
Ron grinned sheepishly. “Well, come in and tell me all ‘bout it over some tea,” Hagrid said, gesturing for them to come inside his cabin with him.
Inside, Ron and Harry talked while sipping tea and politely refusing rock cakes all at the same time. When they were finished, Hagrid said, “Trevor Longbottom came to visit me during break, ranting ‘bout Severus…you’d think I was the school counselor, or summat…”
After finishing their last gulps of tea, Ron and Harry bade Hagrid farewell and trudged back up to the castle, brooding over all the time they would lose doing homework that afternoon.