Chapter 33: Chapter 33
Defence Against the Dark Arts was kind of pointless. Quirrell, for all the mystery surrounding him, didn't seem to care whatsoever about teaching. What they did learn was mostly limited to dealing with magical household pests. Milo was forced to wonder what the Muggles did when confronted with a Bowtruckle in their trees, or if the magical creatures had an inbuilt sense of decency and fair play, and as a result only targeted humans carrying wands. Milo caused quite a stir when he suggested the best way to deal with vampires was to impair them with Webs, Glitterdust, and Grease so that your non-spellcaster allies can take them out with wooden stakes.
"You would bring Muggles with you?" Quirrell had asked, sounding genuinely shocked.
"Well, sure. You don't see many a Wizard pumping irons or practicing hand-to-hand combat, now do you? Deck 'em out in full plate, give 'em a pointy stick, and point 'em in the right direction." It was incredible. They seemed to never have heard of the concept of a meat shield, and even the Slytherins were shocked and appalled when he attempted to educate them. That there was something morally questionable about sending the heavily armoured, greataxe-wielding barbarian with mighty thews out front to soak up damage had never occurred to Milo. It seemed to him that the wizards here were remarkably selfish, never giving a thought to how their nonmagical allies would feel when the spellcasters hogged all the glory and XP with their vastly superior powers.
Broomstick lessons, however, were dreadful. Milo had come to the conclusion that the broomsticks weren't actually magical at all, but that the local wizards had a spell or class feature that let them animate certain broomsticks (probably with a specific cost requirement, which is why they didn't use ordinary cleaning mops) for flight. Milo, not having said spell or perk, was completely unsuccessful at making the thrice-damned stick float, and finally gave up and Levitated the accursed thing. This let him go up and down, but to move horizontally he had to awkwardly kick off of walls and objects. He felt like a six-year-old who'd accidentally been signed up for swimming lessons for eight-year-olds, and was desperately trying to dog paddle around the room while everyone else was demonstrating backstrokes.
The worst, the absolute worst, was Potions. Snape seemed to go out of his way to make Harry's life as miserable as possible, which was annoying, but the concerning thing was how he always kept a very close eye on Milo. The thing was, the potions didn't work. He chopped up the ingredients exactly how the book suggested and made sure to turn the spoon clockwise three times and counterclockwise one-and-a-half times, or whatever, but nothing happened. Even Neville's potions occasionally exploded, or melted, or screamed, or caught fire, or in one case got up and ran out of the room blabbering about the Kennedy Assassination. But Milo's potions, though Milo would bet his spellbook he was doing everything right, were just water with stuff floating in them. Whenever one of Harry's potions failed catastrophically, Snape would deduct house points and scold him, but whenever he noticed that Milo's was use-impaired (Milo was hesitant to call them useless, because they could still be, and frequently were, employed to put out fires) Snape just smiled to himself and made a note in the compact, leather-bound notebook he carried about his person.
It was that evening that Milo learned about Hallowe'en.
"So, what are you going as?" Hannah Abbot asked him. She seemed to enjoy sitting next to him at meals for some inexplicable reason. Milo only bothered to go to the Great Hall for dinner (as opposed to munching on Everlasting Rations in his dorm) because he'd noticed a correlation between mealtimes there and having important conversations.
Milo blinked in surprise. Being knocked out of a timeskip was rather like spending the whole day reading a good book, then remembering you had a party to go to, but the book was so good that you read it the whole way on the bus and were completely distracted and absent-minded all evening, until you hear someone say your name from the other side of the room, and snap. Broken out of your reverie, just like that.
"Sorry, say that again?" Milo asked. "I was distracted."
"I was just asking what you were going to dress up for on Hallowe'en," Hannah asked.
"No, that still doesn't make any sense. What's Hallowe'en?"
Hannah blinked, shook her head slightly, and blinked again. She looked like someone had just asked her what a Natural 20 was.
"You don't even know? Everyone knows what Hallowe'en is!" she exclaimed.
Milo sighed.
"Look, I've been over this. I wasn't raised by wizards, etcetera etcetera, fill me in?"
"No, but even Muggles know about Hallowe'en!" Hannah said.
"I'm not from around here, remember?" Milo reminded her.
"Well, I guess, it's a holiday where everyone dresses up as monsters and goes around taking candy from strangers," Hannah said. "Which always confused me a little, because that's exactly what me mum is always reminding me not to do."
"I see," Milo said. "that seems... terribly mundane, actually. Surely I didn't get pulled out of compressed time for that?" Milo frowned. "Harry," Milo said, turning to his left, "is Hallowe'en written on your list, anywhere?"
"Ah, lemme check," Harry said, and flipped through his lengthy list of notes. "Nope, not at all."
"Try All Hallows' Eve," Hermione suggested, "and Samhain."
"Hey, I thought you weren't helping?" Ron pointed out.
"I'm not," she said defensively. "I'm just... advising. Oh, and Harry, try just looking for October Thirty-First."
"Advising is helping. And of course Hallowe'en is significant for Harry," Ron said. "Everyone knows—oh, right, sorry. I forgot. Anyway, it's the day that Harry defeated You-Know-Who ten years ago."
"You mean, the day when my parents..." Harry sighed.
"Uhm. Right. Sorry," Ron said apologetically.
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