A Fresh Start in Familiar Terrains

September 1st crept up on me like a tiger. I knew it was coming, but it still surprised the heck out of me when it did finally arrive.

I'd gotten used to living in the new apartment, although it was hard to be alone for most of the day. I was surprised at myself when I felt lonely, and found myself missing the Weasleys' cheerfulness or my mother's affection. Heck, I even missed Rudy's scowls and snubs, though that was probably a symptom of depression or self-loathing I didn't want to touch without a lot of preparation (and maybe a shrink or two).

Still, walking to school with my mom on the first day of school made me realize I was more of a kid than I'd realized. I craved her love and attention, and I held her hand tighter than I'd thought I would. As we approached the gates, a tingle of childish, immature fear at the thought of not seeing her for the whole day surged through my body.

Being reborn had reset my body, but I'd always assumed it wouldn't affect my mind. I was wrong. And that worried me.

'Puberty is going to suck,' I groaned to myself as I thought about going through that hell a second time.

"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Wisteria Hunch asked me, speaking for the first time since we'd left the apartment. "You know that I can still ask my parents to take you in as an apprentice…"

"We both know that the job would be a pity position, mom," I said quietly. "I'd be allowed to brew nothing but first and second year level potions, and more likely be left in charge of tending to the ingredients and cleaning up after the 'real' potion brewers than having a chance to do much else."

I shook my head as the gates to the Woolingsby Academy loomed on the horizon. "No, mom. This way is the only way I can find my own path."

"The Muggle way," she murmured.

"The Muggle way," I confirmed.

We stopped outside the gates to the school, which were already packed with other students being dropped off by family members. Mother and I hugged, a sense of desperation lingering between us as we broke apart and went our separate ways.

As she walked away – probably to find a spot to apparate back to Lumpkin's Patch – I doubled checked my backpack for my school stuff.

'Lunch? Check. Notebook? Check. Pencils and pens? Also check. Anxiety about having to spend time in school again? Check-a-roo!' I thought to myself with a bitter hint of amusement.

Everything was prepped, and I forced myself to stop trying to idle around and instead get inside the place I'd be spending the next five years of my new life.

As I entered, I noted that the halls of Woolingsby were pretty much like any other school I'd seen in my past life. Clean-ish linoleum floors, plasterboard walls, with sterile white lights overhead. Lockers and cubbyholes lined the halls and classrooms, and uncomfortable desks made of plastic and metal were lined up in rows facing white and blackboards and the teacher's desk (which tended to be cluttered with stuff, even at the beginning of the school year). None had projectors on the ceiling, yet. It was still too early for that technology to be spreading widely.

Overall, it wasn't a bad setup. Woolingsby was what would be known as a Secondary School to some. Basically. a place that combined Middle and High School together into one or more buildings. Woolingsby went a little further, and included the British equivalent of Elementary School as well. This meant there were a lot of students packed into the place, and thus chaos on the first day of school.

But, I made it through the seething mass of dribbling, snotty children (dutifully doing my best to ignore the fact that I was, in fact, one of said children again) and into the classroom that was, according to the schedule they'd mailed to me a couple days ago, my homeroom for the rest of the year.

'Welp, here I am, an 8th grader once more, or Year 9 as they call it around these parts,' I mused to myself as I sat down in a painfully uncomfortable chair. 'Okay, first things first; find out how to make a chair comfier using runes, because if this is the quality I have to work with for the next five years, my butt will be permanently disfigured by Christmas.'

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