War for Hogwarts: Episode 3 (A Harry Potter Fanfiction by Mark Borne)

Mark slept in until ten the next day, and he felt amazing when he actually got up. He went downstairs to find a feast in the common room. “Hey, Mark!” Hailey greeted him. “We were actually just getting ready to remove the food from the table. We were having a Hufflepuff-style breakfast!”

          Mark sat down in an empty seat and lots of Hufflepuff students started chatting away, trying to get Mark involved in a conversation. He turned red from embarrassment and shoveled food down his throat to avoid talking.

          “Hey, knuckleheads!” a tall boy shouted. He was the same boy who had sympathetically patted Mark’s back at the Great Feast. Many of the Hufflepuffs turned to look at him, but few actually seemed to listen to his next words. “Quidditch practice begins in five stinkin’ minutes! Get out here!” Several people, who were apparently members of the Quidditch team, rushed to go outside.

          Others quickly left, too, soon after, apparently to see what kind of team Hufflepuff had that year, leaving Mark, three boys, Hailey, and Sofi Freeman in the common room. “Why does everyone love Quidditch so much?” Sofi wondered aloud.

          Exactly, Mark thought.

          “Why do people like football?” Hailey shrugged. “Perhaps we’ll never know.”

          “Football?” Mark inquired. The other three boys nodded in agreement.

          “Football is a Muggle sport,” Sofi explained. “People go crazy about it. Well, Muggles do, anyhow. I don’t understand football any more than Quidditch.”

          Muggles…? These people must be mudbloods!

          “How do you know about Muggle activities?” one boy asked in amazement.

          “They’re not from magical families,” Mark answered for Sofi and Hailey. He turned to them. “Aren’t you? That must be why.”

          “Yes,” Sofi nodded. “Unfortunately, Slytherin figured it out, and they keep calling me mudblood.”

          “That would be the perfect prank,” Mark snickered. “What if we placed a curse on you so that anytime someone called you a mudblood, they got turned into a pig?”

          They shared a good laugh over that. Eventually, Sofi sighed in wishful thinking. “I wish Hogwarts actually taught curses like that.”

          “Me, too,” one boy agreed.

          “I think we all do,” Hailey laughed.

          “Hey, you’re the prefect, aren’t you?” one of the boys asked Hailey. “Shouldn’t you actually be present at practice?”

          Hailey turned a few shades of red and rushed out the door. “She’s new to it,” Sofi told the others. “Over the summer, she couldn’t stop raving about how she was going to be a prefect, and now she doesn’t exactly know how to be one.”

          “You live close to her?” one of the boys asked. He had a very thick Muggle accent that Mark couldn’t place.

          “She’s my stepsister,” Sofi nodded. She glanced at the door anxiously. “I’m going to go watch the Quidditch practice. I prefer to be near Hailey when I can.”

          She left. Mark glanced at the other two boys. “So…how are you?” he asked.

Mark discovered that it was much nicer to remain alone outside, far from the Quidditch arena, watching the clouds float by carelessly. He wished he could get by carelessly, too, but he figured that would lose more house points in Potions Class.

          So there he sat, alone. Until he heard someone say, “Um…”

          Mark stood up hastily and whirled around. “What are you doing here?” he asked Sofi.

          “Hailey told me about this place,” she shrugged. “She said that at night, you could actually hear singing from the Forbidden Forest.” Mark glanced at the dark forest, which, as the name implied, was forbidden to the students.

          “I hope you hear the good creatures singing,” Mark remarked. “Realistically, it’s probably a werewolf howling.”

          “Nothing’s realistic here,” Sofi told him. “I mean…really…could you ever imagine anything this beautiful?”

          This confused Mark. Suddenly, he remembered that she was a mudblood. “I guess it must be cooler for you. I grew up knowing a bit about magic.”

          “Not as exciting for you, then?” Sofi asked playfully. She gave him a wide grin.

          “Nope, if it was exciting, then I wouldn’t lose lots of house points in Potions Class.”

          “Ah, so that’s what’s bugging you,” Sofi nodded. “Everyone worries about that. And rightfully so, too. I don’t have to.”

          Once again, Mark was confused, although no explanation jumped to mind this time. “What do you mean?”

          Sofi took off a neckless she had been wearing, which had been concealed by her Hufflepuff robes, and Mark stared at the small bottle that hung at the end of the chain. In it was a molten gold liquid. “It’s called Felix Felicis,” she told him. “Liquid luck. It supposedly makes the drinker extra lucky, for a short period of time. I drink a drop a day, right before potions class. So far, I’ve never gotten on Snape’s bad side, so I guess it works.”

          “Where did you get it?” Mark exclaimed. “It’s way beyond your brewing level, I know that for a fact. Way beyond Kiera’s brewing level, even! And it takes six months to brew, and I’d reckon you didn’t know about magic six months ago.”

          “You know your potions,” Sofi grinned.

          “Well, I know of this one, and that’s because I tried to brew it once,” Mark shrugged awkwardly. “My family needed to buy a new house after that incident. But still, where did you get it?”

          “I don’t know,” Sofi shrugged. “I just…a package appeared in my room back in the Muggle world. There was no return address, but I know that it must have been from some influential wizard or witch.”

          “If you need help finding him or her, let me know,” Mark offered. “I kind of want some liquid luck, too.”