Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
You know that thought I had before I went to bed? I was right. Hogwarts was amazing!
There were over a hundred staircases that actually moved! I got the shock of my life the next day when us first years were making our way to breakfast and a staircase a few floors up moved just as an unaware Gryffindor first year was about to step onto it. He teetered on the edge, screaming, and his friend had to pull him back. Kat grinned as she caught sight of Molly's and my open mouths.
"You could've told us the stairs moved!" I finally managed to splutter out.
"What fun would that be?" Kat smirked evilly.
"Remind me again how you made it to Hufflepuff, Kat?" Justin said warily.
"I wanted either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, to annoy my parents, and I chose Hufflepuff," Kat said simply.
"Hi, Celina! Hi, Kat! Hi, Molly!" We looked up to see Hermione a floor above us, waving down at us.
"Hey!" we waved back. Hermione made her way down and joined us in walking the few steps we had left to the Great Hall - Ernie, Justin, Hannah and Susan didn't seem to mind her presence. At breakfast, Kat, Molly and I would sit at the end of the table so that we could turn around easily and talk to Sam and Syrena at the Slytherin table.
"Slytherin's not so bad," Sam shrugged to us. "At least Syrena and I have each other for company…though I don't know if that's a good thing." Syrena was cackling to herself (well, one of her imaginary friends) again and I slowly turned around and spooned some cereal into my mouth.
Poor Harry was always being stared at - whenever we ran into him on the way to class, people would be standing on tiptoes to see him or doubling back to stare at his scar.
"It's so annoying!" he burst out to me once lunch. "You'd think that they had better things to do!" Ron didn't look too sympathetic to me but I patted my cousin's shoulder comfortingly and then had to dash off with Molly and Kat to make it to our lesson.
Mental note number fifty six: when trying to navigate the castle, do not rely on any ghosts to help you find your way, except for the Fat Friar. The Friar would happily point us new Hufflepuffs in the right direction, and would even be so kind as to help people from other houses, but it was a shock when they randomly burst out of the wall in front of us.
Apart from moving staircases, the thing that annoyed me the most was the doors. Some wouldn't open unless you tickled them in the right spot or asked them very politely, but others were just walls pretending to be doors. The first time I ran into one of those, I had a headache for the rest of the day.
The poltergeist, Peeves, was annoying as hell if you met him when you were late to class (or if you just met him in general) - he'd drop bins on your head, pelt you with chalk, pull rugs out from under you or creep up behind you, grab your nose and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!"
As bad as Peeves might seem, there was one thing even worse than him: Argus Filch. At lunch, Professor Quirrell pulled me up and told me to keep my cousin away from the third floor corridor; apparently, Harry and Ron had tried to force their way into the corridor this morning by accident and were caught by the caretaker, before Professor Quirrell rescued them.
Filch had a pet cat called Mrs Norris, a scruffy, dust-coloured thing. She was Filch's partner in crime – err, justice; put one tiny toe out of line and off she'd run to Filch, who burst out of a secret passageway next to you a second later. Filch was the only one who knew about as much about the secrets of the school as Fred and George, and even then I was sure that the twins knew more than him. The students' biggest wish was to kick Mrs Norris but no one had ever achieved that feat.
Jet sure as hell didn't like her - I don't know when they ran into each other but when I saw her in our dormitory, she was in a very hacked-off mood.
Once we actually managed to stumble into our classrooms ten minutes late and incur a glare from the teacher, there were the lessons, which astounded me – I used to think that magic consisted of waving a magic wand and saying 'Abracadabra!', but it was far more than that.
Once a week, the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws would look at the night sky through our telescopes and we'd learn the names of different stars and planets and their movements.
Three times a week, we'd make our way out to the greenhouses for Herbology, which was taught by our Head of House, Professor Sprout, one of my favourite professors. There, we learned how to take care of the many different plants and what they were used for, and it was one of the few classes the Hufflepuffs had with the Gryffindors.
By unchallenged agreement, the most boring lesson ever to exist was History of Magic. Our teacher, Professor Binns, was a ghost – he'd gotten up one morning to teach and had left his body behind. The only exciting thing that happened there was when he floated through the blackboard, which got old fast. I suppose the subject would have been more exciting if we'd had a different teacher (who doesn't like blood and guts?) but Professor Binns droned on in a monotone and we were expected to take notes.
Hermione was the only one who could resist the power of his voice and in return for hanging out with her and getting our homework done, she'd lend me, Kat and Molly her notes so that we wouldn't fail.
"Do you three even try to take notes?" she said in amusement when we met up in the library.
"Nope," Kat, Molly and I chimed in unison.
"Are those History notes?" I heard Syrena's voice say and the pieces of parchment were snatched out of my hand as the girl read through them. "Man, this is just what I need!"
"Do your homework and I just might lend them," Hermione said, a little slyly in my opinion.
"I'd rather fail," Sam said while making a face and I giggled. I then spotted Zachery, Luke and Isabel reading over Syrena's shoulder and Kat gave a long-suffering sigh.
"Listen, we're actually paying in homework to read those notes, we can't have people reading them for free!" she said, trying to pry them out of Syrena's hand.
"History sucks!" Syrena yelled, doing a split for no apparent reason and throwing her hands up in the air.
"Get out!" the scary librarian, Madam Pince, screeched and I managed to pluck the notes from Syrena while she fled with Isabel, Luke and Zachery. Sam gave us a sheepish grin and followed.
"What are you girls doing?" Madam Pince barked and we hurriedly assured her that we were working. When she'd left, Kat said something about her that had me spluttering with laughter, Molly choking for air through her laughter and Hermione glaring at her disapprovingly.
Our Charms professor, Professor Flitwick, was so tiny that he had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. I'd giggled the first time I saw him as I wondered how anyone could be that small. He started off our first lesson by taking the roll call and, according to Hermione and a giggling Amami and Melody, he'd squeaked and fallen off his books at Harry's name when the Gryffindors had their first Charms lesson.
When I'd thought that Professor McGonagall was not someone to cross, I'd been right. As soon as we sat down in class with the Slytherins, she gave us a lecture.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complicated and dangerous magic you will learn," she said. "Anyone who messes around here will leave and not be allowed back. Don't say you haven't been warned." She then changed her desk into a pig and back, impressing all of us, though we were told that we wouldn't be doing stuff like that for years.
After taking down a lot of complicated notes, she handed out matches and we had to turn them into needles. By the end of the lesson, no one had managed to turn theirs fully into needles, though Kat, Molly and I had made ours shiny. Professor McGonagall merely nodded at our attempts before passing on.
"Betcha ten Galleons that Hermione did it!" Kat hissed to me and I struggled not to laugh as behind us, Sam let out a snort. His needle was a little pointy and looked a little clouded, like not-clear metal. Syrena's, meanwhile, was near-perfect and Professor McGonagall gave her what looked like a half-smile before moving on.
"Alright!" Syrena cheered quietly.
We'd all been looking forward to Defence Against the Dark Arts the most, but we were disappointed – they turned out to be a joke. Professor Quirrell's classroom had a really strong smell of garlic, which Kerri told me (in our common room before breakfast) was to ward off the vampire he was afraid was coming to seek revenge on him.
He told us that his turban was a present from an African prince for ridding him of a zombie, but we didn't believe that. When Susan asked him (very nicely) to tell us how he'd done it, he turned pink and muttered something about how nice it was outside. Also, we'd all noticed the same garlicky smell hanging around his turban.
"It's to keep the vampire away from him wherever he goes!" Kerri insisted at lunch when we asked her about it.
"Kerri, stop frightening the firsties," Gabriel mock-sighed and us 'firsties' glared at him.
"Hi, Celina!" Cedric waved as he passed to sit with his friends and I waved back, my face furiously red and hot.
"Ooooh, Cellie likes Ceddy!" Kat grinned evilly.
"Shut it! I do not! And don't call me Cellie!" I growled, pushing her, but the truth was that I did. He was so handsome and so kind! I noticed that he did hang around a second year Ravenclaw, Cho Chang, a lot and I didn't really like her. Amami liked her a lot though, since they were both Asian. I guess that when there aren't a lot of people like you somewhere, you tend to stick together with people who are like you.
My biggest relief was finding out that Harry and I weren't miles behind the others – I found out that half of the first-years hadn't even known that they were magical either, though Hermione was a special case as far as academic stuff went. Also, there was so much to learn that even Ron and Kat were down at our level of knowledge.
"Hey look, I think they finally managed not to get lost!" I whispered as we entered the Great Hall on Thursday morning to see Harry and Ron at the Gryffindor table.
"Took them long enough," Kat snickered.
"You shouldn't talk about people behind their backs," the Fat Friar said disapprovingly as I added two rashers of bacon to my plate.
"We're jus' jo'ing!" Molly said through a mouthful of kipper.
"What've you got next?" Kerri asked, spreading some butter on her toast. "Gabriel and I have Double Charms."
"I have Double Transfiguration," Cedric said.
"We're turning needles into matches, but I'm not very good at it." I then realised that I'd just admitted that I was bad at something to Cedric, but he just laughed.
"It's all about focus," he told me. "You have to completely focus on the transformation."
"Really?' Thanks!" I said.
"Any time, Lina," he smiled and my cheeks turned pink as I remembered that Harry had called me the same thing the night before we left for Hogwarts.
"What're you up to?" Gabriel asked Cedric. "We're Vanishing snails but it's like the spell hates me or something." He made a face.
"Like I said, focus," Cedric said. "Though that does sound really hard. We're up to learning about Animagi, which you guys'll learn about in your third year."
"Animagi?" Molly frowned.
"People who can turn into animals," Susan told her and my mouth dropped, along with Molly's. "I wonder how you learn to be one!"
"Time and a whole lot of difficult spells," Cedric winced. "That's why you have to register yourself, so that they can keep tabs on anything that might go wrong."
"I bet you could do it!" I said and he shot me a dazzling smile.
"Thanks for your belief in me, Lina," he said and I felt myself melt as I smiled idiotically.
"You're so pathetic, you know that?" Kat muttered to me with a grin and I glared at her. I noticed Susan murmur something to Hannah and they burst into giggles. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had been said and I glared at them.
"We have Double Potions next," Ernie informed us.
"Great," Kat groaned. "Snape favours those Slytherins, but luckily we have it with the Ravenclaws, Sam told me that he has it tomorrow with the Gryffindors. Greasy-haired git," she added as a mutter and Kerri burst out laughing as Gabriel and even Cedric tried to contain their snickers.
"You sound like you know him," Justin frowned.
"I do," the blonde said, an ugly look on her face. "He's Malfoy's godfather, so he showed up at one of those pure-blood parties, even though he's not one. He's a slimy greaseball." I found myself inclined to believe that when I looked over at Malfoy at the Slytherin table, having a good laugh with Zachery's brother about something.
"Amen," Kerri nodded and this time, Gabriel couldn't help but let out a small snort.
Potions took place in one of the freezing dungeons, away from the main castle. Personally, I felt that it was creepy enough without the animals floating in jars around the room – I really didn't want to know what they were. Professor Snape took a leaf out of Professor Flitwick's book and started by taking the roll call, and when he reached my name, he gave me a malevolent glare that made me want to run and hide under a rock.
"I wonder why he hates you so much," Kat whispered, voicing my exact thoughts. I gave a sort of half-shrug in reply.
When Snape finished taking the roll call, he stood up and started to talk.
"Potions is one of the most delicate arts you will learn," he said. His voice was quiet but we all heard him - like Professor McGonagall, he could keep everyone quiet with no effort at all.
"As there is no silly waving of wands here, many of you will not believe that this is magic. I don't expect any of you to understand the beauty of a simmering cauldron, or the subtle power of potions as they seep through your veins, ensnaring the mind and bewitching your senses. I can teach you how to make the most difficult of potions, as long as you aren't as big a group of dunderheads I have to teach." I suppressed a glare with difficulty; I was not a dunderhead!
"Miss Dursley!" Snape suddenly snapped. "What would you get if you mixed powdered root of asphodel with an infusion of wormwood?
Powdered what with what? I thought in bewilderment. I frowned as I thought but I just couldn't put my finger on the answer.
"I'm sorry, sir, I don't know," I admitted.
"Just as I thought," Snape said, a little satisfied I thought. "Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
What's a bezoar? I thought. I could've sworn that I came across the term once, but I couldn't recall it.
"I don't know," I said.
"So, the cousin of the famous Harry Potter clearly thinks that his status puts her above everyone else?" Snape said and my mouth fell open. What the hell was this guy's problem?
"She's only a Muggle-born!" Kat protested loudly. "How's she meant to know this stuff?"
"One point from Hufflepuff," Snape said quietly. "And I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself in future, Miss Greengrass." Kat muttered something under her breath as Snape turned back to me.
"Very well then, Miss Dursley, one last question. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
Monkshood and wolfsbane? Oh, I know this one, I do!
"They're the same plant, sir, and another name for them is aconite!" I said triumphantly. Snape looked like he wanted to jump off a cliff but said, in a voice suppressed with rage, "That is correct, Miss Dursley."
"Nice one!" Kat whispered.
"Now, pair up and prepare this simple Boil-Curing Potion," Snape told us, flicking his wand so that writing appeared on the blackboard. "Instructions are on the board."
Molly and Kat immediately paired up with apologetic glances in my direction and when I turned to ask another Hufflepuff, I saw that Ernie, Justin, Hannah and Susan had already formed pairs. I resigned to asking another person for help, when someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Do you want to work together?" I turned to see Isabel with a small smile on her face.
"Sure!" I beamed and she set up her cauldron straight away.
"So, do you have any idea of how to do this?" Isabel said with a sheepish grin. "I don't want to blow anything up, 'cause I have a habit of doing that at home whenever I try and make a potion with my older brother." I snorted at that and, looking around, I realised that the cauldrons looked just like pots at home.
"It's just like cooking!" I said. "Add too much or too little of anything, and you get a disgusting meal. Put the wrong things together, and disaster happens!"
"I'll trust you with that," Isabel said and started to chop up some ingredients while I heated the cauldron up.
At the end of the lesson, Isabel and I had produced a lime-green potion, which wasn't the exact shade of green that was required but was close enough. When Snape passed, he merely nodded down at it before passing on.
"Well, that was fun," I commented to Molly and Kat as we entered the Great Hall for lunch. "And nice work, Iz!" Isabel smiled shyly and skipped off to join Zachery and Luke at the Ravenclaw table.
"If I have to put up with Snape for seven years, I'm gonna lose it," Kat said, making a face and pulling some pie towards her. "He really does hate you, Celina, but how did you know the answer to the last question?"
"Well, one of my Muggle friends, Primrose, had a keen gardener for a mother, and she'd shown the two of us numerous pictures of poisonous plants and told us to watch out for them if we ever came across them," I explained. "Monkshood was among them and she told us that it also went by wolfsbane and aconite."
"Well, wasn't that lucky?" Molly grinned. As we left the Great Hall after lunch, Harry cornered us with Ron.
"Please tell us that Potions was a success," he pleaded. "Snape was giving me a real dirty look just before and if it was a failure for you, it's sure to be the apocalypse for me."
"He hates me," I shrugged and Harry groaned and ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "Just make sure you read One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, he might pile some questions on you."
"Well, tell me what he asked you!" my cousin said.
"He might ask you different questions," I shrugged apologetically. "The best you can do is just read as much as you can."
"Yeah, we'll do that," Ron said in a voice that indicated that he'd do anything but that. He and Harry left after that and Kat, Molly and I made our way to our next lesson.
"I don't know why Harry hangs around him," I said. "He seems like a nasty brat."
"Have you done anything to upset him?" Molly asked and I shrugged.
"Maybe Harry told him that your parents and brother hate magic and he automatically doesn't like you," Kat suggested.
"That'd better be all it is," I said in annoyance.
Next morning at breakfast, I actually received a letter. I'd gotten a huge shock the first time the mail had arrived and over a hundred owls had streamed into the Great Hall, letters and packages clamped in their beaks or tied to their legs. I noticed that Hedwig hadn't brought Harry anything yet - she'd just fly in to nibble something from his plate - but Malfoy was always getting sweets from home, which he'd open loudly at the Slytherin table.
This morning though, Hedwig dropped down and landed next to my plate, two pieces of parchment in her beak.
"What are you doing here, girl?" I said in surprise. "You're Harry's, not mine!" I took a letter from her and the snowy owl gave a muffled hoot before flying towards the Gryffindor table.
"What does it say?" Hannah asked. In reply, I read the letter out loud:
Dear Celina,
I know you and Harry get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig, and I've sent Harry a note just like this.
Hagrid
"Hagrid?" Gabriel said. "He's, like, the coolest! I needed help in Care of Magical Creatures with my essay on Hippogriffs, so I asked him about them and I got an O on it!" At our blank stares, he explained that O was the best grade you could receive.
"And there goes my experience with grading systems," I muttered. "Anyone got a quill I can borrow?" Susan handed me an off-white feather and ink and I hurriedly scribbled, Yes please, see you later, on the back. When Hedwig returned, I gave the parchment to her and stroked her, and she took off.
After lunch, I made my way down to Hagrid's hut by myself, Jet snuggled up in my robes, and knocked on the door. In response, it opened a crack and one of Hagrid's eyes peered out at me.
"Hey, Celina!" he said. "Back, Fang! Back! Can one of yeh grab him fer me?" I assumed that Harry and most likely Ron were already here, and my theory was proved correct when I finally managed to squeeze in and saw them sitting at the table, a black boarhound struggling against Ron's hand.
"Make yerself at home," Hagrid told me and when I sat down, Ron released Fang and the dog bounded across the room and rested his head on my knees, slobbering on my robes and tights. Like Hagrid, Fang was a softie and not as ferocious as his name sounded. In fact, he was really cute! Jet didn't seem to think so though, as she gave a frightened mew and tried to burrow deeper into my robes.
"Ah, Fang won' hurt her," Hagrid said and I fished my black kitten out and placed her on the floor. After looking at the frightened kitten for a moment, Fang lowered his head down next to her and Jet suddenly leapt onto it! Fang then began to walk around the cabin with Jet on his head, and Harry and I burst out laughing at the sight.
"They'll be grea' friends," Hagrid beamed. "Now, Celina, how's yer week bin?" I told him everything and he looked really happy when I told him about all my friends - Kat, Molly, Hannah, Justin, Susan, Ernie, Sam, Syrena, Isabel, Luke, Zachery, Kerri, Cedric, Gabriel…yeah, it went on.
"I knew yeh'd fit in," he said, setting down a plate of rock cakes. "An' what abou' yeh, Harry?"
"Only Ron," Harry admitted as I took one and tried to bite into it, only to find that one of my teeth might have cracked - they were literally hard as rocks. "And Amami Miharu and Melody Abellan have been really good to me too, they keep the crowds away from me. Most people just want to stare at my scar."
"Yeah, I can see why you'd have a bit of trouble there," I said sympathetically. "If it gets too much, just hang with Kat, Molly and I, we're usually in the library with Hermione if we're anywhere." I noticed Harry and Ron make a face at her name and I guessed that they still thought her a bossy-boots.
Hagrid quickly changed the subject as he noticed their faces, and we were really happy to hear him call Filch a git.
"And as fer Mrs Norris, she follows me everywhere I go when I go ter the castle," he said. "I reckon he puts her up ter it, I can' get rid o' her." Jet meowed in agreement and I cooed as I saw that Fang was lying on his back and she padded his stomach, before curling up.
"Yeah, she and Jet hate each other too," I nodded. Hagrid then asked about lessons, and both Harry and I complained about Potions.
"Ah, don' worry abou' Professor Snape, yeh two, he doesn' like any students," he said reassuringly.
"But he seemed to really hate me!" Harry and I said at the same time and then glanced at each other.
"Rubbish! Why would he?" But Hagrid didn't meet our eyes as he turned to Ron. "How's yer brother, Charlie? I liked him a lot, he was grea' with animals."
While Ron chatted to Hagrid about his older brother, Harry nudged me and showed me a newspaper clipping. I took it and read:
GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST
Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day.
"But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.
"Someone broke into Gringotts?" I exclaimed in surprise and both Hagrid and Ron turned to me.
"They did it on my birthday! We could've been there when it happened!" Harry said. Hagrid grunted and, no doubt about it, avoided our eyes as he offered us another rock cake.
Harry, Ron and I made our way back up to the castle later that afternoon, our pockets weighed down with rock cakes that we'd been too polite to refuse. Jet was snuggled into my robes, her head poking out of them, and I said goodbye to Harry and made my way down to the Hufflepuff common room, trying to put all the pieces together.
"What's on your mind?" Kat said when I sat with her and Molly near the fire, and I filled them in about everything as Jet jumped out and curled on my lap, near the heat.
"…and I'm pretty sure that the package that Hagrid took was what the thief was looking for," I finished. "I'll bet my kitten on it." Jet looked up and let out an alarmed meow.
Whew, done! I had a fun day on Friday and, being in the SRC, I got the WHOLE day off, except for one lesson! Woot! I had to set up in the morning with the other SRC members, help out with serving ice cream and hot food for nearly three hours and clean up afterwards (ugh, high school kids are SO messy!). And the only lesson I didn't get off was the one I hate the most, PDHPE. Ah well, you can't have everything!
The theme was crazy hair, so I sprayed my hair blue with purple streaks, and got a black star painted over my eye. Best school day ever! ^^ Oh, and I have a little spoiler: two OCs will die in the Battle of Hogwarts. Who? You'll just have to be patient and wait 6 stories ;) Ok, now to answer reviews:
Randy Butternubs: I have to let Cedric die, that's a key point in the story :( As for the drawing, Envy Her is going to draw scenes from this story, so if you want a certain scene to be drawn, just PM them!
BXE: Yeah, I've already written out OWL results for the subjects I already know about (obviously, I won't have to ask anyone about what electives they want their characters to take until about halfway through CoS), and Molly gets an O in CoMC. That's all I'm telling you ;)
Solaria daughter of Apollo: I'm so glad that I've got her down well! Ok, I'll remember that Avery is a Squib, and this enmity with Pansy will be interesting!