44 A Very Magnus Day

(What? A double release? Go visit the cheese stash if you wanna read more.)

Magnus thought he was a pretty great person, all in all. Of course, he had his flaws...a lot of flaws...enough flaws to turn half a dozen Mary Sues into well balanced characters.

But if there was one thing he absolutely hated about himself, it had to be his habit to wake up at the most ungodly hours.

Nothing short of a drought of living death could keep him asleep, and there was nothing he could do about it. Copious amounts of coffee and some time away from his fellow human being and their maddening tendencies were a must, if he wanted to be cordial.

Today was different.

When he left the Ravenclaw tower, the sun had yet to rise and everyone from the Headmaster to the Weasleys were still enjoying themselves in the dreamlands.

Magnus shivered, pressing his cloak closer to his body as the crispy winds washed over him. By now, he had no need for a wand to cast his warming charms.

The castle felt colder in those times, calmer too. The portraits snored lightly, there were no students to chatter and banter through the corridors, no one but the school's famed armors to greet him as walked by.

He didn't like it, nor did he particularly hate it.

It just was, so he accepted it.

'Still, it's such a hassle to walk all the way to the kitchens.' Magnus thought.

Of course, he did anyway. There was just something about the breakfast the house elves made him that all but forced him to come back.

'Wouldn't surprise me if they spiked my coffee.'

Soon, he had to swallow his pride one more time and start tickling a pear of all things to open the passage. Why everything in the wizarding world had to be so impractical was still a mystery to the golden eyed young man.

"Mister Early Crowy's back!" Shouted a pinkish little elf called Flexy, who fought tooth and nail for the right to make his waffles.

The elves were excitable little things, hard working to the bone. He rather liked them, when they weren't complete creeps…

"At least they stopped calling me Maggy…" He muttered, letting himself be taken by the hand to what had become his very own seat in the kitchens.

The house elves worked their magic, and in less time it took for him to say 'Spew', his breakfast was ready.

"Thank you, dobby." Magnus said, looking at the most strangely dressed being he had ever seen, excluding that one wizard in king's cross…"Are those new socks in your hands?"

"You're welcome, scary friend of the Great Harry Potter!" He chirped, showing off his sock/gloves "It's a gift from Headmaster Dumbly Dory."

Yes, gloves were technically socks for your hands, but such lax transitions didn't sit well with Magnus. Human or not, there were some things you just didn't do unless you were starting a tv show...and some others you shouldn't do even then, he still had nightmares about that damned garterbelt.

Alas, Dobby was a free elf, and that was something he could respect.

He was also one of the people making his food, and keeping a good relationship with the cooking staff was a lesson Magnus learned years ago.

Three servings and too many cups of coffee later, the young wizard no longer looked like the chosen undead and could almost hold a civil conversation.

He thanked the little workers profusely, leaving a knut on the table for the little bugger the ministry freed as collateral after a minor but successful raid on the Malfoy manor and went on his not-quite merry way.

He had letters to write, illegal spells to explore and an insanely ambitious scheme to enact.

All for the sake of his peace and quiet.

'At least I'm not power hungry, or I'd be in Slytherin…' Magnus couldn't help but chuckle. 'Gotta love the house system.'

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

If the founders didn't intend for people like him to take advantage of the rules, they wouldn't have done something as stupid as sorting people based on the personality traits they had when they were eleven.

The Wizarding world was lucky that all he wanted was to live peacefully with his family, preferably in a lovely house by the sea far away from the British climate.

That, and immortality.

'But first.' Magnus thought, 'I have to take my owls.'

Unless he was willing to mess with the laws of space and time for the sake of his education, he only had three days before the mental gauntlet they call early examinations.

He'd once thought it wouldn't be so hard, cramming a year's worth of boring subjects into his brain was nothing compared to the fourth dimension chess he played to keep Dumbledore off his back and make sure Tommy's life was as hard as it could get.

Boy, was he wrong.

Who would have thought the archaic tradition driven society didn't like it when upstarts shook things up and think they are better than everyone else because of something as trivial as facts?

Apparently, a gentleman called Timias the Peculiar who of course became minister for magic somewhere in the seventeenth century thought that anyone under the obligatory age wanting to take their exams had to obtain at very least an Exceed Expectations on every single subject to be eligible for early passage.

"If they think they're good, they better be that good!" Was his argument.

Timias was later subjected to a vote of no confidence after it was revealed that he didn't, in fact, pass his owls. That, and his habit of testing the sturdiness of his male underling's bottocks to measure their virility.

The law stuck around for some reason, until it became old enough to be called a tradition.

Removing it would therefore give severe hemorrhoids to every single rich inbred bastard in Britain, something every arse kisser would much rather avoid.

E+S

"Good luck." Professor McGonagall told him, before closing the door.

The woman had looked more nervous than him, she kept asking him if he was sure about this or if he wanted some more time all the way until he entered the unused classroom chosen as his exam room by the powers that be.

Funnily enough, he had once used this particular room to cast a few rather strong fire spells when he still wasn't used to his new status as Heir to the most crazy and rich-ass house of Black.

"Magnus Sirius Black?" A gray haired gentleman asked with a smile, strangely enough, he wore a top hat and a manacle with a purple cape.

Then again, he was a wizard.

"I am Orpheus Balmora, your examiner for today."

He explained the rules one more time, as if Magnus hadn't already looked for every single exploitable loophole in them. Urged him to take a seat while he used his quick note quill to write something on an official ministerial parchment, cast a tempus and only then allowed him start the written portion of Owls.

The questions included things as important as Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration to the many uses of dragon blood with a good lot of them being utterly useless tidbits of trivia he will never use again once he graduates.

In short, it was an exam.

The practicals were hardly better, much to his disappointment.

"Can you transfigure this chair into a beast of your choosing?" Orpheus asked him.

Magnus shrugged.

"Draconifors." He cast, and the chair turned into a small horntail much to the examiner's delight.

"Good, good." He nodded approvingly. "Magical creatures give you bonus points, now vanish it please."

He executed himself, the charms portion was even more boring if possible, all he had to do was bring out the memories he'd seen in the mirror of Erised and conjure a patronus to make the examiner swoon.

The potion test involved concocting a cure for boils, a first year brew they reviewed every single year but was still beyond most of his classmates for some reason.

It was no wonder Snape was this bitchy.

He left the examination room a bit tired, but very, very disappointed.

'Why did I study so hard, again?' He couldn't help but think, the answer came on its own.

He was a control freak with a bad case of paranoia, but as a Black, he considered it a win.

Author Note:

Hey guys! It's Uncle Sheo again!

I was feeling a bit generous, so enjoy another chap. If you wanna thank me then leave a comment, maybe a review and throw in a couple power stones for the hell of it.

You can also visit the secret cheese society to read many chapter ahead and have access to FREE exclusive content every once in a while, I'll tell you more about it later.