Unworthy

First Year - 11

With final exams quickly approaching, Erica decides to spend all of her free time studying. In addition to her sessions with Cedric before dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she now sits with with Lucille on Tuesdays and Thursdays during midday breaks to study potions material, and uses the potions classroom after dinner to practice brewing, which Snape begrudgingly agreed to. Her Saturdays and Sundays are dedicated to studying with Luna, but she also finds time to simply enjoy hanging out with her.

Her grades have slowly been improving, though her magical abilities less so. As she said, Cedric definitely has his work cut out for him.

"Come on, with more feeling!" Cedric orders. "Magic comes from the heart! Put more emotion into it!"

"I don't think I have any heart left for this." Erica says, defeated. "I'm not even certain I'm a witch anymore."

"Fine." Cedric crosses his arms. "Pretend I'm Malfoy."

Erica frowns. "Is this supposed to inspire me?"

"In a way." Cedric says. "Sometimes anger can inspire us to perform our best. Now imagine I'm the blonde weasel and I've just insulted you. Think of the worst insult he's said to you so far and channel that anger into the knockback jinx."

"Seriously, Cedric?" Erica scoffs. "I barely just learned the levitation spell, an offensive spell is completely out of my range right now."

"Just humor me, please."

"Whatever." She begins to think back to the fight she had with Draco in the common room. She remembers the hateful words, the way he made her feel about herself and how he made someone so passive turn to violence so quickly. She points her wand at Cedric, redirects her anger and frustration into her spell, and shouts a loud "Flipendo!"

Both she and Cedric are caught off guard when the flash of blue light illuminates the entire room, and he goes flying back with enough force to leave cracks in the wall behind him.

"Oh, gosh!" Erica jumps forward to pull Cedric up. "Are you okay?!"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine." Cedric rubs the back of his neck. "I just... wasn't expecting that." He nods. "That uh... that was good."

"It felt liberating." Erica says. "But I don't want to rely on hate and anger to cast spells."

"No, obviously not." Cedric says. "We're only using such emotions to help you get a feel for spell casting. Eventually using magic will be second nature to you."

"I hope you're right about that."

Even in her first year, Luna proves to be quite a good teacher, and her patience with Erica's ignorance in such subjects seems to have no limit. Astronomy and Herbology both prove to be Erica's strongest areas of study, with both being practically just like a muggle science class. If History of Magic wasn't so information heavy, Erica would probably be just as strong in that subject as well - but Professor Binns crazily compact curriculum does not give a confused Muggleborn much wiggle room.

Meanwhile, Lucille's stern attitude, but helpful hand seem to be exactly what she needed for Potions. Pointing out the subtle differences in certain similar ingredients and how to properly mix potions clears up most of Erica's confusion. Though she's sure she'll never be an ace in potions, at least she can confidently say she knows how to brew a common mixture now.

The day of exams are tense, most of the Slytherins are prioritizing last minute study sessions over harassing people, and even the Hufflepuffs seem a bit more snippy than normal.

"So, this Werewolf Code of Conduct is real - but technically null and void?" Erica asks. "Why? If it was passed by a council-?"

"Because it required signatures to bind a werewolf to this code, and well... no one showed up to sign." Luna explains. "Outing oneself as a werewolf can have dire consequences on your social and economic lifestyle. I suspect the Ministry created the code with the full intention of creating a werewolf registry, but ultimately that failed."