Harry woke the next day confused and disorientated. He looked around the room, wand gripped tight, before the events of the previous day came back to him and he relaxed slightly.
The other boys were all in varying states of ready; Dean and Neville dressed in their school robes, Ron groggily rubbing his face and stretching, and sounds from the bathroom indicated where Seamus was.
Harry got out of bed and went over to his trunk, pulling his uniform out, surprised at how late he had slept.
"I swapped our trunks over." Neville said, and Harry glanced over at him. "You went to sleep in my bed."
"What?" Harry looked around and saw Hedwig's cage next to the bed Neville had slept in. "Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Neville said. "We can just swap."
"Right."
Harry dressed quickly, disappearing into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. His bed had moved. Such a small change, but he didn't think he'd done anything differently yet. What other things would be different now because of what he did?
He led the way down to the great hall for breakfast, stomach lurching when he saw the tapestry of Sheba Beowulf, not yet ripped to shreds by Fenrir Greyback.
"You must have such a good memory." Neville commented, looking awed.
"I guess."
"I would have gotten lost at least 7 times by now!"
Harry shrugged and sat down at the end of the Gryffindor table, helping himself to a bowl of porridge. He could see people craning their heads to get a look at him, and was rather relieved when Professor McGonagall came down to them and handed the five of them their timetables before giving them directions to their first classes. Harry felt well-rested - 10 hours sleep after being awake for at least 24, breaking into Gringotts and fighting for his life in that time would do that to a guy, he supposed - and he resigned himself to being stared at and whispered about for the foreseeable future. At least they weren't calling him a liar or a murderer yet.
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. 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. Harry remembered finding it extremely difficult not to get lost in his first few weeks the last time he had experienced first year. Now he was finding it hard not to remember which students had been killed underneath the large painting of tap dancing frogs on the second floor, and the way the banisters had been blasted off the staircases, the scorch marks that had damaged that wall. He tried to avoid the short-cuts and secret passageways he knew led all through the castle, knowing that the other first years would excuse him being able to find his way around, but there was absolutely no way he could know there was a path that cut between two rusted suits of armour that somehow managed to get from the first floor to the seventh.
Classes flew by in an unexceptional blur, and Harry spent his first few days simply enjoying not having to fight for his life. True, every time he saw professor Quirrell around the castle he was reminded of the small red stone that was hidden within its walls, and his stomach still lurched whenever he saw Cedric or Angelina or Crabbe or any of the other students and staff he had last seen brutally murdered as they protected the school they now lived and ate and socialised in, but it was oddly soothing not to have to worry about if he was going to be pushed or cursed or ambushed every other day, and he had forgotten how comfortable the Gryffindor beds and how skilled the house elves in the kitchens were. Harry mostly stayed quiet in lessons, watching Hermione and answering questions or 'managing' a spell a little after her, and as such had developed a friendship with her almost faster than he had with Ron. He didn't want to draw attention to himself as some sort of prodigy, but he had gone through 6 years of Hogwarts' education already, and the subjects covered in the first week of that time period weren't exactly challenging. He spent his time instead slowly making friends with the other students, socialising with older Gryffindors who were more his mental maturity as well as the first years from other houses he shared classes with. Harry was determined that the inter-house discordance that had allowed Voldemort to slowly divide the nation wouldn't happen this time around, and there was no better time to start bringing those divided houses together than right now, before 'tradition' or habit set in. If the new first years didn't expect that they couldn't visit each others' common rooms, why wouldn't they try?
At least, that was the theory.
Ernie Macmillan was still a pompous twat.
A/N: A short chapter, I know, sorry! But if I didn't stop it here it was going to end up at 5000 words+ and I needed to set up a few things! Like I said, there will only be small changes to the story, and not much to the plot itself for the first book, but eventually these small changes will snowball into bigger divergences to alter the story...
