Chapter 10

Magic perhaps

Helltanz's notes: Hogwarts is a fairly large school in this, most elite super school in all of England or what not. Short chapter, potions will be chapter 11

Disclaimer: come on you should know the drill by now

-Chapter begin -

The common room, and the dorming were certain new experiences for Harry. It was actually patently unnerving. Harry had never done sleep overs with any of his peers. In point of fact outside of one person who would not be named in Harry's prescence on assured pain of death by raging wizard, the sum of Harry's experience with his peers was the library and the rather minute reading club for fantasy and science fiction which existed in Surrey. It left him quite out of place.

By early morning, and Harry used that term only by the legal definition of what morning was, he was out of the four poster bed and in the common room peering over a half written manuscript; anything to take his focus elsewhere. Katie was not the first to nearly walk right past him, and was unlikely to be the last either. She rubbed her eye sleepily. "You're daft Harry if you're seriously working this early."

Nobody was really in the common room at this time in the morning. Most people were still asleep, probably still used to sleeping in from the summers, or if they were up already out and about the castle. Some of the older students, the only people who Harry had seen to already be up, had been rushing about, probably finishing any last minute summer work given the frantic scribbling that had been ongoing.
He grunted, "I am not daft," Another few marks with the ballpoint pen before the ink was nearly out, and he cursed irritably at the indent on the paper. The dry pen went into the fireplace, and he went fishing for a fresh one. He finished another sentence before snapping the book shut. "Is breakfast already on the tables?"
"Err probably," She replied after a minute of thinking, "you hungry?"
He didn't respond immediately, but stood up. "Lets go then," I'm not missing food, certainly not before it gets crowded. The new pen went in his pocket, and the book in the satchel. After that they both exitted through the portrait hole, which Harry still thought seemed a poor safety measure, but at least the portrait wasn't drunk like last night.

Today was going to be the first day of class, and that didn't make Harry feel particularly good, seeing as he had no idea what classes were today, but they certainly couldn't be any more frustrating than anything he was stumbling through making at the moment

- Scene Break -

Hogwarts was an almost living maze. There were countless doors and false doors never mind the hundreds of staircases, which went every direction, and moved. It was labyrinthine in layout, and understandably easy to get lost in. Katie spent the trip down explaining the sheer variety of types of doors and stairs, and what they did sometimes on the way down from the common room.

As it turned out the Great Hall was fairly empty. The majority of Hogwarts some thousand plus students had yet to drag themselves from the posh four poster beds, or their common rooms yet. It didn't mean it was any more quiet though. The people who were already up and about were already boisterous, carousing with friends and discussing their schedule.

There was no sign of Malfoy, or the youngest Weasley boy, which was far as Harry was concerned good news. In fact looked like most of the "Good morning Harry," and he'd thought too soon, at least it wasn't Nott though. Going by the schedule McGonnagal had passed him to him on the way into the hall his first class was out on the grounds for a class titled herbology, which sounded boring as hell.

Harry set his schedule on the table, "Hello," He paused, "Daphne," He added after a moment. How exactly was he supposed to refer to her. The four houses were what exactly, it was like the school was encouraging them to fight. History said there were four founders each with there own ideology about students, considering numbers weren't even between the houses Harry had no idea how students got into the houses, but that was for later.

Gryffindor table had plenty of spare places to sit, not that Harry expected that would have stopped the pureblood from taking a seat. Harry sampled the available food, and read his schedule off to himself. As it stood one boring sounding class, and a class with the head of house. Worse still was they had herbology three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tommorrow the Gryffindor first years would have some history of magic class, and Charms, which had Harry not have read anything on the subject would have though was going to be pathetic. Wednesday night they would be having astronomy, and Thursday marked their introductory class for defense against the dark arts this sounded like a really bad combination since Defense was supposed to be an early morning class. Friday seemed like the best to get any real work done as they would be getting the majority of the day off, and the only class was an extended, double period, of potions with Slytherin, as Daphne pointed out.

"So we've got a class together at the end of the week," He stated. It didn't really change anything it was a stupid class, why she was pleased made about as much sense as the staircases here. Harry went back to eating, it didn't matter he assured himself. Friday would be a stupid class, and then he could do important things, and maybe read. Katie leaning over to read his schedule snapped him out of zoning out.

"So you've got Mcgonnagal after lunch," She remarked, "Well it should be better than Herbology, I mean Sprout is alright, but it's a class about plants."

"Boring in other words," He grunted he didn't need to be told that, he could speculate that on his own well enough. Potions sounded the same way.

A few more students entered the great hall, and the girls settled into talking and eating. Harry would ocassionally get distracted by some bout of noise from another part of the hall but by the time he'd mostly had finished his breakfast he'd already cracked open one of his journals. "Didn't you have a friend on the train?" He pried a bit looking up from the page.

"Tracy isn't going to get up until she has to."

Sleeping in, lots of people did it, Harry tended not to because of actually having trouble staying asleep, so he took naps to compensate. Still if her friend was asleep, why was she down here instead... who cared. He stared down at the other vexing problem before him.

"What is it?"
He certainly wasn't going to admit it wasn't something he hadn't yet figured out...

- Scene Break -

As it turned out Herbology was in fact just as boring as he had expected it to be, and that was before a few of the other first year boys decided to act like five year olds and throw clods of dirt around, while the teacher wasn't looking. It was stupid, about as stupid as repotting the plants. Lunch had been as bad, if not worse. Probably worse, seeing as it'd been loud, and he had been stared and gawked at, and the whipsers had been a pain in the ass.

Transfiguration started an hour after lunch, a quarter after one o'clock according to the schedule. How precisely they were supposed to know what time it was exactly without clocks, though there was the bell that tolled, he had had no idea until he'd mentioned it to Katie, and was shown the rather hand time telling spell. That made sense, though he'd yet to see anybody else actually demonstrate the spell. There was also the fact not everyone had been on time to the class.

It was possible she had gotten on to them simply because they belonged to her house, but it didn't really matter. McGonagal had threatened them all that if she caught them goofing off she'd kick them out as well. Whether she actually would, Harry doubted it. Given the ruckus some, a rather sizable chunk, of his 'fellow' Gryffindors had caused during Herbology without any punishment he doubted she'd be able to kick them all out even if only half messed around in this class.

In any event after explaing the rules, she turned her desk into a pig, and back again. This received far more attention than anything she had said. Attention that was promptly lost as she began the lesson itself. Harry could agree, this was going to be worse than Herbology, they were turning a freaking match into a needle. He'd thought for sure that'd just been a practice example to get them started on their own.

"Mr. Potter," Everybody turned, Harry glanced up, what had he done, "Are you going to take out your wand and complete the assignment?" He grabbed the match, and it sharpened into a perfectly normal silver sewing needle. Mcgonagal's lips pursed, and turned back to the rest of the class the needle flared white hot.

This was so stupid, he thought, letting the metaled piece of metal fall onto the desk. Everybody else weren't really paying anymore attention to the class than he was. Most of the other first years were talking occassionally flicking their wands in half hearted attempts to look like they were working. It was pretty easy to say everyone was disappointed that they weren't working on anything bigger. Still no body had gotten it right, what the hell. Harry leaned back. Transfiguration, or polymorph, was a lot more difficult on the larger scale, especially with living things, Harry knew it, and that was why he had been looking forward to this class. This, this was immensely disappointing.

It'd probably had been the lack of attention, that had to be it, but finally people finally started showing results. The bushy haired intellectual had managed a little after half way through the class to perfect the transformation, that ended up provoking others to do it right, or at least try harder. Still it was embarressing the number of people who hadn't completed the task before class ended.

Still it meant that was the end of core classes for today, after all for mondays they just had Herbology in the morning, and then after lunch they had transfiguration. Herbology was shorter, and it met three times a week, while Transfiguration met only twice a week. Harry couldn't really say he was looking forward to Wednesday.

Finally the bell tolled signalling the end of class, and everybody headed their seperate ways. A lot of people headed back to the common room. Harry headed out to the grounds, intended to kill time until... well Katie got out of whatever she had said didn't get out until three. Besides he needed to work on earth manipulation.

- Scene Break-

After the let down of monday classes he really shouldn't have been surprised. Introduction to Defense against the dark arts was well the less said the better, and History of Magic was just an open invitation to do other things. The first year charms class suffered from much the same problems as their first transfiguration class had. That was to say what they covered was boring, so the whole thing went on with people talking during to their friends.

This kind of behavior got a pass when it came to History of Magic, Harry wasn't sure whether the teacher even knew it was going on, but at least McGonnagal and Flitwick tried to keep it to a minimum in their classes. Getting caught in Herbology just meant you were stupid enough to be fooling around while Sprout was looking in your direction. On the plus side the ability to do whatever, plus the average two classes a day meant Harry had plenty of time to do other, in his opinion more important, stuff.

As far as development went Katie's progress with fire was notably anemic, she'd managed to burn herself trying to figure out what Harry meant with the exestential question of what is fire. That she'd done it right in front of him made it that much more amusing, even so she had made a bit of progress, small though it was. Still she'd no longer need to have matches ever again... not that she really needed them if she had her wand, but that was neither here nor there.

It was disappointing. Harry had on his own blown most of his time working with earth and magic, and knocking himself into a tree, or rock, or the lake repeatedly. As far as things went earth manipulation was a lot more difficult, the other thing was just a control issue, that wasn't to say it didn't hurt it just was a slight bit less frustrating. Earth came down to right now two features, actual dirt, and rocks, slightly easier depending on what he wanted to do, to infuriatingly frustrating, when dealing with plants.

With the latter it wasn't so much making them grow as making them grow fast, and in the way he wanted them to in a timely fashion. The thoughts behind the magic was a more problematic focus than something relatively simple like fire, there was also the fact that plants were still living material, or Harry assumed that was a factor, maybe.

He sat up knocking clods of dirt out of his clothes. "In any event all I've got is double potions this afternoon,"
"With the Slytherins you mean," Katie, who had gotten out of Transfiguration about an hour earlier, added.

He shrugged. The class was going to be a mess, at least that was what he was going to guess. For one the teacher was going to have a double period with likely eighty, really less than that, kids on a friday. There was also the fact there was the whole rival house thing going on, which really seemed to be a big deal; the red headed twins were already talking about their first big prank of the year on who else but Slytherin. Not that Harry had had any problems with Slytherin in the last five days, there hadn't been any trouble with Malfoy or Nott, because really he hadn't had to deal with them.

"Snape is Slytherin's head of house,"
Harry nodded still writing down his findings, "I know, I've been told."
"He's got in for Gryffindors especially."
Well that was just wonderful. "Ok," He grunted, that didn't sound good at all, maybe he should buddy up with Daphne, "Okay set another leaf on fire again."
"You're not even watching," She retorted as Harry's magic surged into the earth causing a sinkhole to form.

He stood back up, "So, I told you its the basics, if you can't do it right you've got to practice."
"The leaf is burning," Which was true, the leaf had caught fire and curled in on itself, except, Harry grabbed another leaf and it snapped under the sudden influx of heat as it burned into nothing but ashes.

"Basics are important. They're the fundamental blocks of all learning."
Harry glowered at the Ravenclaw, "She's right," He admitted, not that he'd have said it like that. "Why is it she can get the simple thing right and you can't," He added, actually he already had a solid guess. In any event he was surprised that so far not many other students had dropped in on them, on the other hand it was less annoying that way. As far as things went Katie had a grasp on what she was doing she just wasn't taking it to the next logical step, which was really simple either add more fuel, or make it burn faster, or both, which was a proportionally more difficult.

"We could invite more people," Katie suggested, after burning yet another leaf.
"No," Harry responded, first of all he only let their third 'member' tag along because she wasn't a burden and managed to set things on fire, he certainly wasn't running some kind of club. He still needed to eat lunch. He certainly wasn't going to a double class hungry, but that could wait. A pillar of earth jutted out of the ground, he'd have shattered it, but well didn't for obvious reasons. It really needed to either be bigger or pointier, or both. His hand started glowing and a bolt of flame melted the rock into a mound of rather shiny black stone. Fire was so much simpler than making plants grow.

"You could make stuff like that," Katie remarked, Harry didn't both reminding her that the stone would still be hot, by this point she knew already. It'd only taken once, and Harry wasn't going to admit he had once made the same mistake too.

"Have you learned anything at all of use in defense?" He finally asked after a few moments of fiddling with sending magic through the earth.

"Not really Quirrel's nice, but he's kind of useless as a teacher."
Well at least it wasn't just my class, Harry mused before standing up. "I'm going back to the dorm," He certainly wasn't going to go eat with dirt all over his robes.

-Chapter conclusion-

Helltanz's notes: This chapter was a pain in the ass to write, I did however add spacers between scenes. In any event we'll get to see more higher level showings from wizards as the story goes on, by which I mean Dumbledore will actually be able to kick much ass with transfiguration, and well Voldemort will do impressive things... yes totally. Anybody else I still need to figure out.