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After the Dawn: The Philosopher's Stone
Chapter Five: A Visit to the Library
"There, look."
"Where?"
"With the red dog!"
"Oh!"
Whispers followed Harry – the strange new boy who hadn't actually been invited to Hogwarts, but had come anyway – from the moment he left the Gryffindor dormitories.
If his own house with this inquisitive, Harry thought, the rest of the school would going to be torture. He left the Gryffindor Common Room as fast as he could, ducking away to avoid anyone else coming out of the room.
"Ardeo? Can you get me to the Great Hall by less travelled passages?" Harry asked his godfather pleadingly. Sirius nodded his head at once and started moving.
Harry followed easily, and was relieved to see that no one was walking the same paths that they were – it was a good thing that Sirius knew where he was and where he was going.
Soon enough, Harry walked into the Great Hall, and everyone immediately turned to look at him. Uncomfortable, Harry quickened his steps, moving towards the Gryffindor table, his hand sneaking out and his fingers tangling themselves in Sirius's long, silky fur.
At the Gryffindor table, he found a seat away from the majority of the House and sat down to eat a hurried breakfast. He accepted his time table from Percy without a word, which seemed to annoy the older student. Harry didn't care.
He examined his time table, finished eating, and was about to leave the Hall when Dumbledore stood up and gestured for silence. He got it. Instantly.
"As you all know, we had an unexpected arrival last night. Nemo has joined the ranks of the Gryffindors, and has told me something of his past. Despite his strange arrival, he will be remaining in Hogwarts and learning, just as you are.
"I must ask that no one asks Nemo anything about his past. If he wishes to let it be known, I am sure he will speak, but if I hear of anyone attempting to get him to speak unwilling … The consequences will not be favourable. The tale is his to tell, when he is ready to. Thank you all!"
Harry smiled slightly to himself, silently thanking the Headmaster. He stood up and left the Hall, aware that everyone was still watching him with curiosity. He ignored them completely.
He hurried up to the Gryffindor tower to pick up his books for the day, then, following Sirius, made his way downstairs again and easily finding his way to the Transfiguration classroom.
He was the first one there – no one else made it until the bell rang, and Harry saw, with some amusement, that all of the Gryffindor first years had followed their Professor.
"Mr Protectium," Professor McGonagall greeted. "I had wondered if you would be able to find your way to the classroom."
Harry just smiled – faintly – and nodded his head once. "Professor, would my dog be able to come into the classroom? He will disturb no one, I promise."
After a moments consideration, the woman nodded her head. "In this case, I will agree. If he makes a disturbance …"
"Then he will not enter any classroom in the school while a class is in progress," Harry promised.
"Then very well," McGonagall gave him a brief smile and opened the door. Harry smiled slightly in triumph as he walked inside, but no one saw – save one. Sirius.
Harry took a seat quietly in back of the classroom, glaring at anyone who might have sat near by. If Harry's glare didn't work, Sirius would bare his fangs – silently.
Everyone sat down, leaving a large space around Harry – as he wanted.
McGonagall gave him a slightly disapproving look – Harry assumed she wanted him to make friends with the students. Well, he wasn't going to! Friends just led you to get hurt. Sirius was the only one that Harry hadn't really pushed away.
McGonagall quickly marked the roll and glared over the class. "Transfiguration is something most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she told them. "If you mess around in this class, you will leave and you will not return. I do not suffer fools here. You have been warned."
With a swish of her wand she transformed her desk into a pig, and then back again. Harry smiled at the impressed looks on his classmates faces – surely they realised that they were not going to be doing anything like that?
Apparently not. Every one of them had a disappointed expression on his or her face as they started copying down notes on how to transform a match to a pin.
Harry gave a slight smile, remembering the Weasley Prefects words from the night before. This must be a fairly standard first lesson in Transfiguration.
Each of them was given a match and instructed to being. Harry lifted the ebony wand in his hands, flicking it gently, using his right hand and murmuring the words that they were supposed to use.
Nothing happened. With a slight frown, Harry changed hands, putting his wand in the left one, and again performing the spell. He was gratified when he saw a slight silver tinge spreading across the match.
He glanced up to check the progress of the rest of the class, and realised that none of them had been able to make any difference to the matches.
He hid his from view, in case the teacher should single him out, and continued working on it. By the end of the lesson, he'd managed to get it almost to a pin. You could still see the wood underneath though, and the tip of it was red.
Still, it was the best in the whole class – only one other had made a difference. The brown haired girl he'd overheard talking with the prefect the night before. It had gone all silvery. But it wasn't pointed.
She gave both Harry and Hermione a rare smile and given them each five points for Gryffindor. Harry was pleased by this – he liked the idea that he was helping his house out, even if it was only a small contribution.
The brown haired girls name, he learned, was Hermione Granger. There was one of the red-haired Weasley family in his class too – a boy called Ron.
These were the only ones that he'd marked as yet, though he remembered a few other names. It was useful to know these things, Harry knew, though he wasn't likely to use many names, at least not for a while.
He noticed that the whole class was watching him and Hermione with jealousy and slight dislike. I guess I'll have to be careful about getting everything right, he thought to himself. He didn't want to be friends with everyone, but he didn't want the reputation of a teachers pet, goody-goody person either.
Next class was Charms, in which Harry met Professor Flitwick, who had been Charms teacher in the Marauders sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts.
He hadn't believed Sirius when his godfather had told him how small Flitwick was supposed to be, and hid a discreet smile at the pile of books that the Charms Professor clambered up on. He read through the role, then, when he'd gone through it, magically added Harry's to it.
The week passed slowly. The only time that Harry left the castle during the first week was to go to Herbology.
He quickly learned that some of the classes were a lot more interesting than others. History of Magic was easily the most boring – but then, Harry had expected that.
Sirius had told Harry the story of the only interesting thing he ever remembered happening in one of Binns' classes: the day that the teacher had died.
"It was quite interesting actually. Old Binns was always a bit vague with anything that didn't have to do with his precious history, so one morning, while your parents, Remus, Peter and I were in our sixth year – it was near the end of the year – he actually walked through the classroom door and didn't notice!
"All the class was muttering, but Binns didn't notice. He sat right down and started talking about the formation of the Ministry of Magic, then I put up my hand.
"He looked at me. He was quite surprised – no one had ever stayed awake and attentive for long enough to ask a question of him before. Then he says, 'Yes, Mr. Black?'
"And then I said, 'Hey Sir, you died last night,' and he looked at me all funny, and then he looked down at himself and realised that he was transparent.
"Then this funny look passed over his face and he muttered something about being able to watch history unfold itself for all eternity, then looked at the class and said, 'well, no matter,' and continued to teaching!"
Harry quickly realised that nothing had changed since Binns had died. He was still boring and talked on and on and on about something that Harry could never concentrate for long enough to discover what it was.
In the end, he opened his History of Magic book and started reading that instead, figuring that if it was the set text, the information must be in there, and that even the dullest reference book in the world couldn't compete with Binns as a boredom inducer.
Astronomy Harry enjoyed. He'd always liked the night sky, and had spent many a night outside with Dan – he felt a pang of grief at the thought of his friend – watching them, trying to find constellations.
Now he was learning about it properly. He'd never really asked Sirius, he wasn't sure why, he just hadn't.
The Astronomy teacher, Professor Sinistra, seemed to like him, but Harry pretended not to notice – he didn't want friends. He only needed Sirius.
He'd quickly taken to avoiding people as often as was possible. He came early or late to meals, so that there were few people in the Great Hall, and spent a lot of his time roaming obscure parts of the castle.
On Thursday afternoon he made his way to the Library for the first time. Professor McGonagall had given them homework on the theory of changing matches into needles.
No one else had given them any homework as yet. Harry had been hoping he'd get some from Professor Quirrel. That was the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He was a joke.
He was terrified of his own shadow, he stuttered and his laugh was a quivering, trembling note that didn't sound right. His classroom smelt strongly of garlic, and Harry highly doubted that he'd ever had the guts to face a dark creature, let alone defeat one.
Quirrel himself had an odd smell, one that Sirius did not seem to like. Harry overheard one of the Weasley twins telling their brother Ron that Quirrel's turban was stuffed full of garlic, in case he ever met a vampire.
Harry slipped quietly into the library. Dinner was just getting started down in the Great Hall, but Sirius had told of Harry of a better way to avoid crowds – get food straight from the kitchens. The house elves were more than happy to pander to Harry's every whim.
"Why aren't you at dinner?" a sharp voice demanded from Harry's right. The boy turned to see a stick then, upright lady with brown hair that was just starting to grey.
She wore it in a stern bun, and had glasses perching on the tip of her nose. She wore a black skirt, a white blouse and a black jacket, looking very prim and proper.
"I have already eaten," Harry replied quietly. This must be the librarian.
"So you've come to get your sticky fingers all over my precious books?" she asked him suspiciously, confirming Harry's suspicion.
"I've washed my hands," he informed her coolly, holding them out.
She grabbed hold of his right hand, and examined it in great detail, before letting it go and snatching the other one. Harry let her.
"Hmph," she told him. "So you have. Well, what are you here for?"
"Doing homework," Harry replied, somewhat nervously.
"Well why didn't you say so before? If you get a book out, put it back in the place you got it from, got that?"
"Yes Madam…?" Harry waited politely for her to give her name.
"Madam Pince," she told him. "Hogwarts librarian."
"Madam, I have a dog, his name is Ardeo and he has been my life-long companion. I promise you that he will not disturb any person, or book, if you would allow him into the library. Professor McGonagall has given her consent for him to join me in classes. Will you allow him into the library?"
Madam Pince's heart, which many believed to be made of stone, went out the young boy with pleading grey eyes and very good manners. She saw, looking around the boys legs, the adorable doggy face of a red setter.
For a moment she hesitated. It had been a long time since she'd had anything to do with the students, apart from berate them about books and noise in the library.
The last student that she'd felt any friendship for was a young girl by the name of Lily Evans. Something about this boy reminded Madam Pince of Lily, she wasn't sure what it was …
"Well, very well, he may enter the library on a trial today. I will decide whether or not he may stay at a later date," Madam Pince said.
Harry smiled. "Thank you," he said softly and walked passed her into the library.
As he moved out of sight, it struck Madam Pince what she'd recognised of Lily in the boy – the look in his eyes. The look that seemed to say he'd seen more than his fair share of death and loneliness, but who, in spite of that, was a great person and eager to continue with life.
The new boy, Nemo, seemed quite distant, as Lily had when first she'd arrived. But Lily had gotten better, more social … Imra Pince had no doubt that this Nemo would do the same.
Meanwhile, Harry was looking over the books in the transfiguration section of the library and had no idea where to start on this assignment.
Sirius whined softly to catch Harry's attention, and nudged a book with his nose. Harry knelt and tugged the book free of the shelf. The book was small, and was cramped between too much larger books.
Transfiguration: Simple Spells, was the title. Harry smiled. "Thanks mate," he murmured to Sirius, resting a hand lightly on his godfathers head for a moment.
Sirius gave a soft whine, seeming to urge Harry to read the book. Harry flicked it open, pulled a piece of parchment and a quill towards him and started reading, jotting down notes as he did so.
Harry borrowed the book from Madam Pince when the first few students started drifting into the library, taking his work elsewhere, so that people wouldn't be watching him.
He ended up slipping into an unused classroom on fourth floor. There he settled down to read the book and continue making notes. Eventually, when it was getting late and was almost out of hours, Harry put away his book and homework sheets and headed out of the classroom.
He decided that, despite the fact that it was difficult to keep away from the students most of the time, he liked being at Hogwarts. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he let down his walls and allowed someone to make friends with him.
He quickly shrugged off this thought whenever it came. He couldn't. Friends would just get him hurt. If he kept away from people for long enough, and was rude when they tried to make friends with him, he'd be fine. They'd all stop trying soon enough.
Slipping into the Gryffindor Common room, he was annoyed to find that everyone still turned to look at him. He scowled. One of the boys – the red-haired Ron Weasley – had tried to talk to Harry on numerous occasions.
Harry had quickly resorted to rudeness to try and get the other boy off his back. Now Ron was glaring at him angrily, sitting between the two boys he had befriended – Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas.
Harry glared back and walked up to the dormitories and lay on his stomach on the bed to do some more work on his homework.
He had most of the points that he would need for his essay now, but the Transfiguration book intrigued him. With a sudden 'pop' Sirius transformed beside him.
"Should you really do that?" Harry asked softly.
"No," Sirius answered, just as softly, "but I thought I should point out to you that you should read that potions book – Snivellus aint gonna go easy on you tomorrow."
"Why not?"
"He's good at holding grudges," Sirius replied. "He'll try and catch you out tomorrow, since you wouldn't talk to the Headmaster in front of him."
"Thanks mate," Harry said, and was about to say more when both of them froze at the sound of footsteps on the stair. Sirius transformed in a second.
***
Peter Pettigrew breathed a sigh of relief. He was hiding in a pocket in Ron's jacket at the moment, and had just decided that the new boy and his dog were not Harry Potter and Sirius Black.
For a moment, he'd wondered if they might be. Sirius was, after all, a dog Animagus, but nothing had happened since they'd arrived. Of course, Peter had changed his own form somewhat, but he thought that Sirius would have recognised him anyway – Sirius had always been annoyingly good at that.
But no – this was probably just one of the dark lord's other enemies or victims, hiding away out of sight, but unable to resist sending their child to Hogwarts.
Well, if the Dark Lord did arise again, it would be easy enough to take the boy to him, present him with one of his enemies and so he, Peter, would be welcomed once more into the ranks of the Dark Lords most trusted servants.
The rat gave a slight nod and curled himself more tightly in Ron's pocket, drifting into a sleep full of dreams of serving the Dark Lords orders and eventually being promoted to his second in command.
***
That'll do for now! See you all next chapter!