Samuel Potter

The Hogwarts Years

By KingdomHeartsNerd


Disclaimer: Harry Potter, all related concepts and anything you recognise do not belong to me, I am merely borrowing them to bring you this story - and for my own personal enjoyment - as they actually belong to the awesomeness that is J.K. Rowling. Any OC's and things you do not recognise, however, are copyrighted to me, KingdomHeartsNerd.

Rating: K

Pairings: N/A

Genre: Adventure/Friendship/Family/Drama

Warnings: Please do not flame me for anything. I really do not care what the flamers have to say and if you don't like this story, then why in the name of Merlin's saggy left butt cheek are you reading it? Go and do something else instead of wasting the precious time of both of us.

Summary: We all know the story of how Harry Potter destroyed the Dark Lord; but what about Sam Potter? Harry Potter's younger twin brother who played a vital role in the destruction of Voldemort? Join Harry and Sam as they embark on the adventure of a lifetime, making friends and enemies... and maybe... a little romance?

Dedicated To: Everyone who has reviewed - if I listed you all, like I was doing, the list would eventually be longer than the chapter, so I'll do it this way. Your reviews mean the world to me and I hope that you all remain loyal reviewers as this story continues.

Shout Outs: Shout outs to everyone who favourited this story - if I thanked you all the list would be huge, so I'll do it this way.

Thank You: Thank you to xXxKaraBeckerCutterxXx for believing I could do this. If you like this story, show her some love and review this story and either (or all) of her Harry Potter Stories: The Dark Lord's Downfall and the Muggleborn Witches Series.


Chapter IV


After breakfast whispers followed Harry from the moment he stepped out of his dormitory; for Sam, who was neither special nor important to Hogwarts and the students, it was a much more peaceful start, though he did have a problem avoiding all the people who had doubled back to look at his brother. As he was trying to find his way to class, he wished they wouldn't.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump; some that were only stairs on a tuesday and were sliding ramps for the rest of the week. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending, like the one on the fourth floor. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Sam knew the coats of armor could walk, for the suits of armour in the armoury at Potter Manor could do the same.

The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction and the Fat Friar did the same for the new Huffepuffs, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors, a trick staircase, a torture chamber and a rotten banana if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!"

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry and Ron, Sam heard from Zacharias Smith - a tall, skinny blond boy with an upturned nose, who was rather unpleasent, pushy, insensitive, critical of Sam's weight, and the heir of Helga Hufflepuff - had apparently managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. Filch had apparently found them trying to force their way through a door that, unluckily for them, turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He hadn't believed they were lost, had been sure they were trying to break into it on purpose, and had threatened to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamp like eyes just like Filch's; most of the students - and several of the teachers - were sure she was his wife who had become stuck in her Animagus form and Filch had not been able to change her back, though this had never been confirmed nor denied by Filch, and his silence just made the rumours spread like wildfire. Mrs. Norris patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.

And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. Sam knew there was a lot more to magic than waving your wand and saying a few funny words for he had grown up in a wizarding family, but he did not know how much there truly was.

They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets; this often made Sam tired and very cranky Thursday morning. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout who was the Head of House for Hufflepuff, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for; for example, Hemlock was used for poison and was not fatal to a human unless more than one ounce of it was taken, something which Poopus le Poopford, a french wizard in the 1600s, had done.

Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed - three hundred and six, to be precise - when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up; Binns didn't even notice when Amanda Brocklehurst, who was commonly known as Mandy, made her book grow a pair of legs and do a jig on the table.

Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard with goblin ancestry who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Sam's name he continued blindly on, unlike the previous lesson when he had given an excited squeak at Harry's name and had toppled out of sight.

Professor McGonagall was again different. Sam had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to the moment they sat down in her first class: "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Justin Finch-Flecthley had made any difference to his match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Justin a rare smile which caused Zacharias to smack him.

The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Ernie Macmillan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.

Sam was very relieved to find out that he wasn't miles behind everyone else; unlike most wizards, who revealed their magic at seven, Sam hadn't performed major magic until weeks before his tenth birthday, though he had been regularly summoning books from his bookshelf since he was two. There was so much to learn at Hogwarts and lots of people had come from muggle families and had no idea about magic before hand, nor that they were witches and wizards.

Potion's Lesson confirmed to Sam that, despite being from a wizarding Family, he was not that much further ahead than the Muggleborn students. It was made worse by the fact that Professor Snape, a disgustingly ugly hooked nosed and greasy haired professor who hated Harry, seemed to loathe Sam just as much.

The door to the classroom burst open and Professor Severus Snape strode in; reaching the front of the classroom he whirled around to face them, his deep black soulless eyes scanning the class; his voice was a mere whisper, but he seemed to hold the class with ease, as he spoke.

"There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess the predisposition, I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death. Potter!" he snapped, catching sight of Sam and remembering him from the sorting ceremony, "Where would I find a beazor?"

Justin Finch-Fletchley's hand shot up, and he was bouncing up and down, almost as if he had wet himself, but Sam frowned, "I don't know, Professor,"

"Like your brother, you didn't even think to open a book, did you? Perhaps, Potter, you'll succeed in Potions when you take your head out of the fridge and put it in a book, rather than stuffing it!"

Sam bristled at the jab at his weight and opened his mouth to reply; Ernie kicked his shin in order to silence him.

"Alright, let's try again; a simple one, for anyone with a brain, at least. Also referred to as Wolfsbane and Monkshood, this plant is extremely poisonous and is shaped somewhat like a monk's cowl, hence one of its names. What, Potter, is the plant I'm referring too?"

Justin bounced up and down in his chair, thrusting his hand into the air. Sam frowned, "Uh... Husine? No, wait...I'm not sure. Is it Belladonna?"

"No, you stupid child!" thundered Snape, swooping down so that he was nose to massive nose with Sam; Justin put his head against his palm and shook his head at Sam's lack of potions knowledge, "It is neither of those! The correct answer, you stupid imbecile, is Aconite! It seems being James Potter's children dilutes the brain cells. How many more of you are there?"

"Two,"

"Merlin, help us," muttered Snape, stalking back to his desk and turning back to the whole class, "Well, why weren't you writing that question down!?"

"You... didn't ask us to, Professor," said Sam. Snape glared evilly at Sam, his face going almost as read as a beetroot; Sam, realising his mistake, yanked his book out of his bag and began writing the question down.

Snape plopped himself down onto the stool by his desk, waved his wand and summoned some questions onto the blackboard.

"Your classmates' idiocy has just lose Hufflepuff five house points. Perhaps you can redeem them by writing these down and answering them," he said; then, moments later, almost as if struck by a second though, he said, "And make sure that the questions and answers are neat; if they are not, I shall be taking one hundred points from Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw."

And, when the class was dismissed an hour later for a free period, Sam knew he had a new enemy in Snape. Thinking off his newfound enemy, he didn't notice when he walked straight into a tall boy with long, thick shiny dark hair, thin lips, heavily-lidded eyes with long eyelashes, and a strong jaw, who dropped his books to the floor.

"Oh, sorry!"

"My fault," said the other boy, crouching and picking his books up, "I wasn't watching where I was going."

"Sam Potter," said Sam, introducing himself as he crouched down and helped the boy pick his books up.

"Lestrange," introduced the boy, "Torian Lestrange."

Sam knew that name, but couldn't think why: "Lestrange? I know that name."

"Most people do - and not for a good reason. I asked Neville for a Quill in Transfiguration earlier and he totally ignored me; I don't blame him - my parents weren't nice people."

It finally struck Sam as to why he knew Torian's surname.

"Torian Lestrange?" he questioned, repeating Torian's name, "Didn't your parents attempt to torture Neville's parents?"

"It's pronounced Lestrawnge - my surname - and yes, they did attempt to torture the Longbottoms," Torian looked rather abashed, "It's... not something I'm proud of."

"I never knew that the Lestranges had offspring," said Sam.

"Yes," replied Torian, "Two of us. My elder brother, Cygnus, is the heir to the family; you'll probably see him soon enough,"

"Tor!" came a male voice from the end of the hallway; Cygnus Lestrange was tall, blonde, hulking and muscular. He sneered at Sam for a moment, then looked back to Torian as he spoke, "Leave the fat Half-blood and come with me. You've got a free period, right? You can study with we Slytherins in our Common Room."

"See you soon, perhaps, Sam?"

"Yeah," he replied, "See you 'round, Torian."

Torian left and, as Ernie, Wayne, Justin and Zacharias reached him, Sam mused that he had gained an enemy and a friend in one day.


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