Fortunately, by the time he and Ralph got to the third floor and their next class, they were distracted from Edgar Edgecombe by the young new Charms teacher, Professor Odin-Vann.
The professor was very thin, James noticed, and dressed to hide that fact in layers of dark robes and a high, stiff collar. His beard, though sparse, was combed and waxed into a point sharp enough to draw blood. As the class filed in, he sat behind his desk, bent over a sheaf of parchments and scribbling busily with his quill. James had a secret suspicion that the professor’s busyness was a ruse to hide his nervousness. The young man didn’t look up as the students found their seats, unusually hushed in the presence of a new teacher. When everyone was seated, Odin-Vann put down his quill and finally raised his head. A lank wing of his black hair covered one eye. He raised a hand and pushed it aside in what was certainly, by now, a purely automatic gesture.
“Welcome, class,” he said in a reedy voice, sitting up slowly in his seat. “As you all know by now, I am Professor Donofrio Odin-Vann.
I replace your previous teacher, the esteemed Professor Filius Flitwick, whom I sat under myself when I was in your place not that very long ago. I am sure you, like me, are sorry to see him go. But I also hope that you, like me, will make the best of a new opportunity.” He smiled, and although it wasn’t entirely a genuine smile, James sensed that it was less insincere than anxious.
The professor stood then and brushed his robes off, moving from behind his desk. He glanced back at the chalkboard behind him and startled slightly, apparently surprised at the drabble of handwritten notes remaining from his most recent class. He produced his wand reflexively, and then paused, the wand raised awkwardly in his hand.
“Er, Mr. Potter,” he said, scanning the class and fixing his gaze on James. “If you would, ahem, please clear the chalkboard for us?”
He waited, his eyes imploringly on James. James blinked at the professor, and then drew his own wand from the pocket of his robes, suspecting that the professor had called on him not because of James’ potential magical competence, but only because he happened to know James’ name. Why the professor didn’t clear the chalkboard himself, James had no guess whatsoever.
“Correptus,” James called from his seat, giving his wand a flick toward the chalkboard. With a puff of white dust, the scribbled words and diagrams vanished, leaving the board clean, if nominally smudged.
It wasn’t a spell he’d had much practice with.
“Thank you,” Odin-Vann nodded with palpable relief, glancing back at the board. Stiffly, he put his own wand away again. “To begin, then, please turn in your textbooks to chapter one, ‘elemental transcendents and transmutations’.”
“Well that was weird,” Ralph said an hour later as they made their way to the library for study period. “He didn’t do a single spell himself until nearly at the end of the lesson.”
“He knows his stuff, though,” Deirdre commented appreciatively. “There’s more to Charms than wand-work. There’s theory and new spell writing, charmed objects, wand reflexology—”
“What’s wand reflexology?” James asked.
“Training a wand to do stuff on its own,” Rose explained, joining them at an intersection. “The witch or wizard has to have it in their hand for the magic to work, but it saves time. A wand can reflexively complete a chain of pre-incanted spells or some especially hard magic, so long as the witch or wizard has embedded it properly.”
“Well that’s sort of the point, innit?” Ralph shook his head and glanced aside at Rose. “It all still ends up with a wand in a hand, doing magic. That new bloke, Odin-Vann, barely touched his wand until class was almost over. Although when he did, he was brilliant with it. Made the coatrack scuttle-dance around the room to the beat of a Rig Mortis song on the wireless.”
Rose shrugged. “He’s probably just nervous, what having the Head Boy in his class and all.”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” the bigger boy grumped, nettled.
“Actually, I’m very happy for you,” Rose softened her voice and patted him on the shoulder, which was quite a reach. “So this will be the last thing I say on the subject: it’s a worthy accomplishment, and you’re like a brother to me. But the Weasley in me insists that I warn you: if you ever pull rank on me, I’ll pull wand on you. And even that overgrown broom-handle of yours is no match for me in a duel.”
She smiled sweetly up at him and batted her eyes. Ralph blinked at her, then at James, who merely raised his hands in a keep me out of this gesture.
At dinner that evening, James watched Cedric Diggory’s ghost flit happily over the Hufflepuff table. He was happy for Cedric, but joined his own house in bemoaning the lack of an official Gryffindor Ghost. As they discussed this, their gazes roaming over the other tables and their attendant spectres, James’ eye was caught by the glare of Edgar Edgecombe. The small, blocky boy was seated in the middle of the Ravenclaw table, flanked by his two friends, whom James now recognized as Quincy Ogden and Polly Heathrow, both first-years. He vaguely remembered them from the Sorting. All three craned to peer at James, to assure he saw them looking. Edgecombe grinned and his brow lowered. Pure spite beat from him like waves of radiation. Then, still staring at James, the ginger boy leaned and muttered something to his friends, who burst into shrill, nasty laughter.
James shook his head dismissively and looked away. What was the deal with the little prat? Maybe he would find out later. He hoped it wouldn’t come to a confrontation. He wasn’t particularly good in such situations. The stress of confrontation always muddled his mind, blew away his words, made his reactions feel clumsy and stupid.
And suddenly it occurred to him: perhaps that was what it was like for Professor Odin-Vann. Perhaps the nervousness he’d shown at the beginning of class resulted in the magical equivalent of stage-fright, the way some people developed stutters or nervous tics when under stress. Maybe the professor couldn’t trust himself to do magic when he felt tense or selfconscious. Later, of course, when the professor had warmed to both the class and his subject, he had used his wand naturally, and with great skill.
Still, James thought, if an extremely competent witch or wizard couldn’t rely on their magic in stressful or confrontational situations, that would be a rather debilitating limitation. It was no wonder, perhaps, that the young man had gone into teaching instead of, say, magical law enforcement.