Medicine - T. Nott

two

September 2nd, 1997

The first night back went as usual. We went to the Great Hall for the welcome feast, and the entire atmosphere felt tense as Snape made a speech and introduced new professors. Then the six of us hung out in the common room until Draco and Pansy had to leave for Head Boy and Head Girl duties.

I'm in the middle of eating breakfast when all of the owls fly in. Their screeches echo throughout the Great Hall and letters and packages are being dropped all over the place.

Theo gets a letter that unfortunately hits him in the head before landing on the table right near my tea.

"Figlio di puttana," Theo mutters under his breath, reaching for the letter.

I stifle a laugh and take a sip of my tea.

Pansy had also received a letter, but hers had landed in the middle of her breakfast plate.

Professor Slughorn walked over to us. "Hello kids, I've got your timetables for the year," He says. He flips through a stack of parchment and begins to distribute our timetables. "Miss Greengrass, here's yours, and Mister Malfoy-"

Theo groans from beside me and folds back up the letter he had received, shoving it into his book bag.

"Hold on, Mister Nott, here's yours," Slughorn says, unaware of the letter Theo received.

"Uh, thanks Professor," Theo replies, grabbing his timetable from our Head of House.

Professor Slughorn finishes giving us our timetables and then moves on down the table to the next group of Slytherins.

"Everything alright, mate?" Blaise asks, half looking at Theo and half comparing his timetable to Daphne's.

"It's fine, just a letter from my father," Theo replies, taking the bacon off of Pansy's plate.

"Oi, that's mine!" She complains.

Theo takes a bite. "Not anymore," He teases.

We set all of our timetables in the middle of the table to compare them. I have every single class with at least one of my friends, and most of us have several classes together.

I glance over at the Hufflepuff table, which has about half of the people it did last year. I spot Matthew pretty quickly. He's laughing with his friends about something when Professor Sprout walks over to distribute their timetables.

"I'm just glad that Potter's not here," Pansy says out of the blue. "Danger seems to follow wherever he goes."

She's not wrong.

"Yeah, where is Potter? Weasley and Granger, too," I ask.

Everyone looks at Draco.

He shrugs, "How am I supposed to know where Potter is? Last I heard he was still on the run. Doesn't seem like the Gryffindor hero now, does he?"

The conversation shifted to the new professors until it was time for us to part ways for class.

My first class of the day was Charms, which I had with Theo. We started our trek towards the third floor while Draco and Blaise went to the dungeons for Potions and Pansy and Daphne went to the Muggle Studies classroom on the first floor.

"You seem upset," I say.

"About?" Theo asks, glancing over at me.

I met his eyes. "I'm not sure, you tell me," I say. "Possibly something to do with your dad?"

"It's nothing," Theo replies.

"Okay."

We walk a little bit further. There's not many people passing in the corridor and it just seems empty. All of Hogwarts seems empty this year.