At long last, History of Magic came to an end, and every student in the room, Hermione included, seemed to come back to life the moment they stepped into the corridor. They streamed out of the classroom with far more energy than they had had going in, glad to be heading to the first Charms lesson of the day.
Harry and Julian met up with Tracey and Daphne on the way, since the two Slytherin girls had Muggle Studies instead of Binns' droning lecture that morning.
"The kitchen was exactly where you said it would be!" Tracey burst out as soon as she got close enough, practically vibrating with excitement.
Julian put a hand dramatically over his heart. "You did not believe me? I am wounded. Deeply wounded," he said in a pained tone.
The performance set all three of them and Harry laughing.
"Joking aside, want a cookie?" Julian asked with a grin, holding out his hand. Three chocolate chip cookies popped into existence from Greed, resting in his palm.
"I am so jealous. I want a cookie stash ring too," Tracey muttered enviously as she snagged one.
Daphne and Harry each took a cookie as well, while Julian just stood there wearing a smug, victorious smile.
"You should be jealous," he said. "Do you know how hard I had to work to get this ring? Months of effort."
He shook his head in exaggerated despair. "The really tragic part is that making another one just like it would still take a ridiculous amount of work. Definitely not worth the hassle."
"You know, if you were a pureblood, you could just take one inheritance test at Gringotts, find out you were rich, and buy yourself a pile of rings like that," Daphne said casually, not quite looking at him.
Julian sighed. "Are you still stuck on that?" he asked. "I told you already, that is no fun. Where is the challenge? All that would do is make Malfoy and the rest of those idiotic bigots look clever. Completely not worth it."
"You realize you just insulted, what, seventy percent of the wizarding population?" Tracey said with a chuckle.
"If they want to cause trouble over it, they can find out I am not some pushover, dig?" Julian replied, slipping into a ridiculous seventies gangster accent.
Harry cracked up immediately, and the girls giggled.
"Not to mention, my good pal Harry here will chew their ears off if they come at me," Julian added, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulders and grinning wide.
Harry looked mortified, which only made the girls laugh harder, their faces turning pink from trying to breathe and cackle at the same time.
They arrived at the Charms classroom shortly afterward. Flitwick glanced up from the front, and his expression softened into a pleased smile when he saw a little group from two different houses chatting together as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
...
The Charms classroom was quite large, with two long rows of desks running along either side and an impressive pile of books stacked at the far front. Flitwick used those as a platform to bring himself up to the height of an average adult, so he could see and be seen over the desks.
Ordinarily, the two houses tended to separate instinctively: Gryffindors on one side, Slytherins on the other. This time, Julian's little group settled together on the Gryffindor side.
Harry and Julian took the outer seats, with Daphne and Tracey between them, so that the two boys acted as a sort of human buffer. They earned plenty of dirty looks from both houses for their mixed seating arrangement, but Julian was perfectly content to ignore every single one of them.
Once everyone had found a seat and quieted down, Flitwick spoke up.
"Welcome to Charms," he said, his voice bright and full of energy. "Here you will learn jinxes, hexes, and every form of spellwork that falls between them."
He clapped his hands together lightly.
"Today, we shall begin with something very simple: the basic light conjuring spell. Mr Iron, would you be so kind as to provide us with a demonstration?" he asked, smiling directly at Julian.
Julian did not look bothered in the slightest. "Do you want the standard version, or my own variation?" he asked.
"Why not both?" Flitwick replied, eyes gleaming with interest. "I am quite curious to see what you will show us."
Julian stood from his seat and walked to the center of the room. He raised his wand, gave it a small flick, and said, "Lumos."
A bright white glow bloomed at the tip of his wand.
"That is the ordinary version," he said casually.
Then he tilted his wand upward and rotated it in a smooth clockwise motion.
"Lumos Milleject."
This time, instead of one steady glow, a spray of tiny lights shot from the wand, hundreds of them, then a thousand, scattering upward like a burst of magical fireflies. They spread across the ceiling and hung in place, forming a glittering canopy of stars overhead.
Gasps escaped from almost every throat in the room, Flitwick's included. The dungeon like classroom transformed in an instant into a miniature night sky, brilliant and unreal.
Julian let everyone stare for a heartbeat longer, then pointed his wand down and spun it in the opposite direction, counterclockwise.
"Nox Senium."
The lights above began to fade out one by one, each tiny star dimming slowly until only a few remained. The effect looked eerily like a sky full of dying suns, shrinking and winking out in a strangely beautiful, somber rhythm.
"I call that the Starlight Dirge combo," Julian said with a pleased smile.
"The final song of the stars," Flitwick repeated softly. "A fitting name indeed. Ten points to Gryffindor for such a magnificent use of the Lumos charm."
He looked delighted.
"As Mr Iron has just demonstrated, even the simplest spell can be shaped into something extraordinary," Flitwick continued, turning back to address the whole class. "You may now begin practicing the Lumos charm as explained in your textbooks. Remember, wand movement is important."
He hopped down from his stack of books and began strolling among the desks, but instead of heading straight to another student, he angled toward Julian, who was still standing in the center of the room, wand loosely in hand and stars still fading from the corners of everyone's vision.