McGonagall also handed out the reintroduction schedule for the second years, which included Julian and his friends. After that first week, the timetable would return to the same structure it had the previous year, aside from a small change in the hours. For now, though, the week ahead promised nothing but headache-inducing cramming. Monday alone was proof enough, with Herbology first, then Potions, and finally Defense Against the Dark Arts. Julian was especially not looking forward to Herbology, since this year they would be dealing with genuinely dangerous plants, and he did not exactly have the best relationship with most magical flora.
Thankfully, the first class was only going to involve repotting mandrakes, so he was not in danger of being attacked by anything except the venomous tentacula that was apparently teething. For anyone unfamiliar with magical plants, and Julian could hardly blame them, venomous tentacula were a special kind of vine plant with actual fangs growing along its tendrils. It used those fanged vines to inject poison, kill prey, and then absorb the corpse as nutrients. And if that was not bad enough, the poison it carried was among the nastiest a person could be bitten with, to the point that many who were too far from help had died from it.
Obviously, Hogwarts kept an antidote on hand for the possibility that someone might get "bitten" by the plant in the exact same greenhouse where it was kept. Even though Julian knew perfectly well how badly Lockhart's class was going to go because of the Cornish pixie incident from the book, he was still much more worried about the plants. Unlike how it had looked in the story, Cornish pixies were actually quite easy to deal with so long as one knew a shield charm and a stunning spell, both of which Julian already had. 'Still, I need to deal with the boys before I start planning ahead again,' he thought, shaking his head to clear away the usual distracting thoughts that tried to pull him elsewhere.
At the moment, he was sitting on his bed in his nightclothes, waiting for Harry and Ron to come into the dormitory. Both boys entered with smiles still on their faces, but the moment they saw two golden eyes fixed on them, they froze. Whatever good mood they had been in after receiving congratulations from most of their house vanished instantly, because they had been dreading this moment for almost the entire summer.
There was no running from it, and they could not pretend Julian was not there, since he would be around them for nearly every part of every day apart from weekends. "I see you've snapped your wand. Hand it over so I can check whether it might be salvageable," Julian said calmly, holding out a hand. Ron hesitated, but he still passed it over, and Julian began examining the damage. "The core is torn, the housing is completely ruined, and even the runes have been damaged. You could very easily kill yourself trying to cast even a simple spell with this thing if you keep using it," he said calmly as he handed the broken wand back. Ron immediately went pale.
"Fortunately for you, I have a few wands I made that might serve as a temporary replacement," Julian added before pulling two dozen wand boxes out of Greed. Ollivander had not minded buying the finished wands Julian made from him at cost, since he himself had put no effort into creating them. Because of that, Julian now had a small collection containing exactly one wand for every available wood and core combination. The lengths would all be wrong for Ron, of course, but in Ron's case beggars could not exactly afford to be choosers.
"Now that that is settled, I believe it is time we put this issue between us to rest. I did the best I could with the situation, and I wish I had not needed to keep it from all of you. I am sorry for deceiving both of you that way, but that burden belonged on my shoulders alone," Julian said seriously. Harry and Ron both looked conflicted, as though caught somewhere between forgiving him and wanting to curse him out for what he had done. The problem, however, was that they had already spent plenty of time thinking it through and had come to the bitter realization that Julian had been right not to trust them with that information.
Both of them knew they would not have been able to smile, stay quiet, and endure it in the face of what Peter had done. More likely than not, they would have ruined the entire plan in the process. That was the part they were truly bitter about. Not what Julian had done, but the fact that he had needed to do it without them in order for it to work at all. They were all tired, but this had to be settled before their friendship had any chance of moving forward.