Brice awoke to Owen running into the heater and screeching out in pain. Brice rolled over and looked at Gavin peacefully sleeping. His eyes fluttered open and looked into Brice's. He twisted his body to an upright position, and grinned at Brice, "Survived the first night eh?"

Brice laughed and started to get up. Owen was nursing his burnt arm, which now was sporting large blisters. Brice and Gavin dressed in their robes and lead Owen to the common room. The room was empty, and still messy from the night before. Owen tenderly sat down on a blue cushiony armchair. Brice looked at his watch and groaned. It was 6:00 am.

"Owen." Said Brice, "Why on earth were you waking up at 6 am?"

Owen shook his head, still in immense pain.

Raj stumbled out of their dorm room rubbing his eyes with sleep.

"Whats going on?" He asked

"Nothing, Owen just burned himself on the heater." Responded Gavin

Raj went back to bed, and the three boys waited until a girl came down from the girls dormitories. Brice spotted her Prefect pin, and stood up.

"Excuse me." Brice said timidly, "Out friend burned himself and we don't know where the infirmary is.

"Oh dear!" She cried, "I'll be right back."

She came back a moment later with another girl who looked about the same age as her but wasn't a prefect. The other girl took a look at Owen's arm and then said "Follow me"

Owen, Gavin, Brice, and the two girls made their way down the grand staircase, Owen still in his pajamas.

After walking for about five minutes, they stopped in front of a pair of large doors. The prefect girl knocked on the door, and after seconds passed, An older woman opened the door.

"Yes?" She asked, "Just woke up I did, you children and needing medical assistance at odd hours of the--oh my! Come here dear."

The heater had burned through Owen's pajamas and in some places melted the fabric to his skin. As the woman bustled about collecting supplies she asked, "Now how exactly did this happen Mr--?"

"Churchill. And I ran into our heater." Responded Owen.

"Well, Mr. Churchill I'm surprised this is only my third heater related incident in all the years I've worked here." She paced back to the bed, and set down her things on the bed side table. "Alright, were going to need to drain those blisters, and apply burn ointment. Thank you Ms Embry, Ms. Glass." The girls left and the woman sprayed a liquid onto Owen's arm, the bottle reading disinfectant. She then spread a numbing gel over his arm, and began tending to the blisters. She stuck a large syringe into the biggest one near the base, and slowly sucked out the pus and fluid. After doing this many times, and treating the burns, Owens arm was almost back to normal except for the now deflated flaps of skin that were once blisters hanging off his limb. She then soaked Owen's arm in a purple potion that slowly shrunk his blister skin flaps into his amenity and made him look as if he never ran into the heater in the first place, something Brice so dearly wished.

Eventually Owen was all treated, and Madam Pomfrey, the school matron, sent them back to their common room. The only problem was once they were outside of the big doors to the infirmary, they had no idea where to go. There seemed to be endless hallways, and the moving staircases didn't help either. Owen remember that Ravenclaw tower was on the fifth floor, so they patrolled around the fifth floor until they found a familiar spiral staircase leading to the Ravenclaw common room.

The boys made their way up the stairs, and were faced with a marble door with an eagle knocker.

"Crap! I forgot about that thing." Exclaimed Brice.

He swung the intricately designed eagle into the clean white surface of the marble. It spoke in the same old dusty voice s before:

"I'm teary-eyed but never cry

Silver-tongued, but never lie

Double-winged, but never fly

Air-cooled, but never dry

What am I?"

Owen thought for a moment and then shouted, "Mercury!

Gavin nodded, impressed, as the door swung open. Brice just shook his head in disbelief, how could he get mercury from that! Brice still wondered why he was put in this house, filled with kids like Owen, who were undeniably smart.

The common room was slowly becoming more alive, students yawning and stretching as they filled they filled the circular, blue-bronze room. Brice, was unsure of what to do, should he head down to breakfast? Should he grab his school books? He decided instead, to observer the older students, and took a seat by a big arched window looking over the lake he had crossed the night before, which seemed so long ago. He picked up a comic book entitled "The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle," Brice chuckled at the title, and opened the faded copy.

Of course Brice wasn't really reading the comic, only pretending to while he observed the other Ravenclaws. He scanned for other first years, recognizing Alyson Fitzpatrick from the sorting. She was standing in a group of two other girls, all with unfamiliar faces. After a couple more minutes of observing, Brice gave up and went to start reading the comic in front of him when Gavin tapped his shoulder.

"Hey Gav." Said Brice cheerfully.

"Hey!" Replied Gavin, "Wanna head down for breakfast, I'm kind of hungry."

"I'm Hungry too, but I'm not sure where to go, or what to bring." Replied Brice.

"Don't worry." Gavin laughed, "Raj's older brothers told us everything, we get our schedules today at breakfast and we can just sort of head down whenever. There will be time for us to come back after so we don't really have to bring anything."

"Oh! Sweet! Let's go then." Said Brice happily and the two exited through the marble door, following the older students as to not get lost again. Brice noticed none of the other students were wearing their robes like he and Gavin, but figured they were going to change later.

When the pair made it to the Great Hall, they were greeted with scents of sausages, and eggs, pastries, and Hot Chocolate. There were towers of toast, heaping piles of hash browns and jolly pitchers of juice in any flavor you could imagine.

Gavin and Brice sat down at the long Ravenclaw table and started bearing down on their food-stacked plates. Brice had just finished an omelette and a fresh glass of orange juice when hundreds of owls swooped in. Theron landed gracefully on the table, and nestled his face into Brice. The owl was carrying two small packages, one wrapped messily in brown paper, and the other nice and neat in a deep purple shade. Brice tore back the paper of the brown wrapped box, and lifted up the cardboard flaps revealing what was inside.

What Brice saw was a fat, egg shaped plant. It had brownish spots and was an almost glowing pink colour. As Brice reached in and pulled it out of the box he could feel it had a sort of base that felt like bark. The thing couldn't have been more than six inches wide, and Brice assumed it was only a baby plant. While Brice inspected the plant, Gavin reached inside of the box and pulled out a folded up piece of paper.

"Dear Brice,

This here is a Puffapod." He read, "Inside each pod are hundreds of beans which instantly flower and bloom when they touch anything but itself. I already grew one pod so you can test them out for yourself, just thought your new room could use some flora and fauna. Anyways, maybe you could come down to me hut later today and I'll tell yer' more about the plant.

-From Hagrid."

"Cool!" Said Brice, setting the plant down.

"Just make sure not to spill those everywhere, we'd be cleaning up the mess for weeks!" Laughed Gavin.

Brice started unwrapping the next gift. Inside were an assortment of homemade chocolates from Mrs. Weasley. Brice put the chocolates back in the box telling Gavin he'd save them for the night. Just then Professor McGonagall came around with their schedules for the year.

Brice scanned his schedule but looked back up at Gavin almost immediately.

"Gav, there's no Saturday or Sunday on this schedule." Brice said slowly.

"So we have today off then?" Asked Gavin.

"I think so!" Laughed Brice. "I mean we came up yesterday and that was a Saturday so yeah, we have the day free today!"

"What should we do?" Pondered Gavin.

As if to answer his question Charlie sat down next to them.

"We have today free, wanna explore the Castle with Tonks Aria and me?" Asked Charlie.

"Sounds great!" Brice responded, while Gavin was nodding. We'll finish up breakfast and meet you here in about half an hour while we get changed into some more comfortable cloths."

The group met like they said they would, half an hour later in the Great Hall.

"Where to first?" Asked Tonks.

"Why don't we just head that way" Charlie said pointing his finger towards the door opposite from where they were, "And see where it takes us.

Brice noticed strange glances towards Gavin from the group and quickly said, "Oh! And Everyone, this is Gavin, he's really cool."

Aria and Tonks gave him a warm smile, and Charlie simply nodded his head slightly up and down awkwardly. He seemed almost upset about something, but when Brice asked he pushed the question aside.

They walked back and forth through corridors, up and down stairs, and had just stopped to look at a statue of an old hunched over witch who seemed to be missing an eye, when out of nowhere a waste paper bin flew through the air and struck Charlie in the back. Charlie spun around, his face flushed red with anger. What he saw was Gavin Fry standing in the doorway of an empty classroom, with another waste paper basket in his hand. Well that did it, Charlie completely lost it.

"You." He shouted, "I knew you were no good. Acting like your best pals with Brice; Well guess what? You don't know a bit about him, you don't know him like I do! You don't know him at all!"

And with that Charlie stormed off leaving them all in shock.

"I--I didn't do it." Stammered Gavin, "It was that damn poltergeist."

Brice knew all about poltergeist, in fact many haunted Azkaban. Devilish creatures rattling chains around and keeping you up at night.

"Should we go after him?" Questioned Tonks worriedly.

"No." Responded Aria, "I think- he just needs some time to himself.

Brice most definitely figured out what was bothering Charlie, and that was Gavin. Charlie must've felt Gavin was taking his spot as Brice's best friend. Well he can't be that stupid. Thought Brice. He and Charlie had spent a summer together, Charlie was there when nobody else was, Charlie was his brother! And yet Charlie was jealous. Could this be because Charlie thought he was the only one that knew Brice's secret? Because Gavin knew. Did he think he shared a special and rare trait with Bryce? Because Gavin undeniably kissed him last night. Could Charlie see the way Gavin looked at him? Did he want that to be him?

Too many questions swirled around Brice's head, he thought it would explode. He just needed a break from everything, maybe he'd go see Hagrid. But one thing was for sure; Brice could feel something brewing and he didn't like it.