oooooooooo
Potter – The Stone
Chapter 07
By Cory D. Rose
(c) 2005
oooooooooo
The portrait of the Pink Lady swung open to reveal a large hole in the wall that led to the Gryffindor common room. The whole thing was decorated in red and gold and seemed to sparkle as the nearby wall torches lit the room. Harry counted at least twenty plush arm chairs and several wall couches all around the room. Most of them were well used, but in pretty good shape. Then Percy got their attention again.
All of this was to the left of the portrait hole. To the right was a spiral staircase that led up to the next level. Percy led them up to the next level where the stairs divided, each one leading off in a different direction. Harry could tell the design wouldn't have fit in a normal tower, but this was a magic castle, so he shrugged it off as normal.
"Alright everyone, the girls can head up those stairs on the right. The first year dorm is down the small hall on the right. It's labeled so you can't miss it. Everyone's trunks have already been sent ahead and placed in front of your room." Percy said.
He glanced at Harry for a second. "Boys can not enter the girl's area of the dorm. Wards are in place to make sure of this, so don't even try to go up there. Every year one or two boys try and end up in the hospital wing. The boys dorm is up the other stair case."
After that, Percy had one of the older girls lead the first years girls to their room while he led the boys. They went up a short set of stairs opposite the girls area, turn a corner and headed past several doors. He stopped in front of a heavy oak door and tapped it with his wand. It creaked open to reveal six canopy beds.
"This is where the first years will sleep for the rest of the year. Each year you will be moved into a new dorm. Potter, remember to place your trunk there in front of the bed without a trunk." He said pompously.
Harry smirked at him. "Of course." Glancing around Harry spotted several beds and realized that the boys would all be sleeping in the same room. He glanced around nervously and realized that he'd never shared a bedroom with anyone before.
Even the cursed Dursley's had forced him to sleep in a cupboard by himself, with all the linen and spiders. Not a very good way to grow up, though the spiders would say other wise. They tied him up more than once. Ranma had just given him his own room and let him decorate as he wanted. Harry wasn't to sure what he thought about sharing a room with anyone. The other boys were Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean. Some of the boys Harry hadn't really noticed at the Sorting.
At least the beds had curtains around them to provide for a bit of privacy. He looked around, spotted the bed without a trunk in front of it at the end of row. He quickly walked over and pulled out his trunk. Ron and the others watched as they found their own beds.
Harry sat the trunk on the floor and unshrunk it. As he looked at it he realized that if he was going to use the trunk in the way he wanted he would have to set the trunk somewhere else. He glanced around his bed and noticed a spot on his headboard where he could set the trunk. It settled gently into the headboard, fitting snuggly.
"That thing is amazing!" Ron said, admiring it. "Why are you putting it there?"
"Yeah, it belonged to an ancestor of mine. I found it in the family vault at Gringotts." Harry shrugged. "Also, it seems easier to put it there than at the end of the bed."
Ron nodded. "I might do that as well. It seems that the headboards are made for that kind of thing."
"Yep." Harry said. "I wonder if it did anything else?"
Ron shrugged, tossing Scabbers on the bed. The pet rat rolled over and looked like he might be sick. The red headed boy ignored the thing with a huff. "Hard to say."
He quickly opened his trunk, a rather beat up one, and pulled out some pajamas and started dressing for bed. The rat was passed out on the pillow before any of them even got into bed. Harry took a few seconds to make sure the trunk was alright as he shucked off his clothes and also got ready for bed. All he was wearing was a pair of shorts though.
The others could only gape at Harry's muscular body. For an eleven year sold he look like he could cause some damage. They quickly followed suit though, and within a few minutes they were all crawling into bed and drawing the curtains closed.
Harry closed his curtains, but instead of crawling under the covers he opened his trunk. The top opened and front folded outward to reveal the small ladder. It hadn't done this before. He figured it was because of the trunk's position as he descended into the trunk.
"Ranma!"
"In the kitchen."
Harry moved through the door and glanced around. His mentor was sitting at the table leafing through several books from the vault. "What are you doing?"
"Still working on trying to do some magic." Ranma explained.
"You figured something out?"
"Nope."
"Well it's just the first day and they haven't taught us anything yet."
Ranma shrugged. "I learned the hard way that it's best to keep ahead of things. So, why are you wandering around in your drawers?"
"Humph!"
"That good huh? You better get on more than that. I can't tell you the number of times I've been caught wearing next to nothing in front of large packs of girls. Always in my bedroom too."
"I just came down to see if you were alright and to pick up some stuff to wear from my room."
Ranma nodded.
"I'll talk to you later, I think it would be best if I slept in my Hogwarts bed tonight at least. People might start to wonder if I didn't."
oooooooooo
A little while later, just as Harry was dozing off, he could swear he had a dream about falling through a cloud of green energy of some kind. A burst of flaming feathers and the roar of a motorcycle flying through the sky while an eerie laugh filled the background.
After that things got a bit odd as a turban tried to tell him that he needed to transfer to Slytherin where he belonged. It even sneered at him and called him a traitor. A pair of large yellow eyes glared down at him and something hissed his name several times.
He awoke with a start and wondered what the hell that was. Rolling over he went back to sleep after spending several minutes meditating to clear his mind, just as Ranma taught him.
oooooooooo
The sun was just breaking the horizon the next morning when Harry opened his eyes and looked around. The room was just bright enough that he could see that everyone still asleep. Sitting up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and opened his trunk again.
Climbing down he shut the lid behind him and found that he could see out of the many dots that circled the lid of the trunk. He hadn't noticed this feature the last time he came down, but he wasn't looking either. Seconds later, he descended into the first room and made a quick trip to the kitchen. He started fixing a couple of egg sandwiches. After polishing one of them off he took the stairs down to the training room.
Ranma was going through his morning workout. "Morning Harry."
"Sir."
"So what's this school like?"
"We're inside a huge castle full of secret passages, ghosts, and hundreds of people. It's amazing."
"I'll have to explore around a little." Ranma said as he took the other sandwich and ate it in a few bites. "I want to make sure you keep your edge."
"Yes sir." Harry said as Ranma jumped at him.
About forty minutes later Harry exited his trunk, slowly. As always Ranma pushed him to the edge of his endurance and just a little beyond. Harry was just glad that the trunk had a large shower and tub available. He always ended up soaked in sweat after their work outs, though Ranma say he was getting better. He just had to build up his endurance a bit more.
After that they sat down in the living room and discussed some of the material from the first years books. Harry was sure he had a good idea what they would be doing tomorrow when classes started. That didn't stop Ranma from quizzing him from the books.
He answered questions for about half an hour, even pulling out his wand and practicing more of the patterns used for some spells. Ranma even made him perform three of the twelve wand kata they developed over the summer. "Well Harry, that's good enough for this morning. You seem to be getting this stuff down and you can concentrate on perfecting it all over the next few months."
Harry nodded as he stood up and stretched. "If you don't mind, I'm going to head back up and see if the others are awake yet."
"Sounds good. I'm going to finish my own practice and finish going through those books."
"Which ones are you looking through?"
"Something about wandless magic. I think it's the key to using magic with Ki." Ranma explained. "That book I was reading earlier talked about theory and practice. I'm going to try and see if it works."
"Cool." Harry said as he headed for the entrance and the ladder.
"Have fun."
"I hope so." For now he wanted to take a look around and see what the school had to offer. He quickly dressed in his robes, which he noticed had acquired the Gryffindor house patch on the chest. This magic stuff was going to take a while to get used to if it kept this up.
He quickly found that he would have problems fighting in the robes, but luckily he was strong though to rip his way through them if he needed to. Hopefully he wouldn't ever have to do that except as a last resort. Hopefully he could learn some spells that would allow him to quickly adapt when he needed to. A few minutes later he donned his glasses and headed down stairs.
Harry reached into his robe and pulled out his potions book. He'd already read it a few times already, but since they had the day off to get acquainted with the castle he had a couple of things to look into. Several of the older students were already in the common room talking. They didn't say anything to him as he came down though.
He found a nearby chair and sat down to go through the book a little more. Of all the books he had, this was the only one that seemed to require the student to memorize ever fact and recipe in the book. Some of it seemed to be to complicated. Then there was the ingredient list. Thousands of weeds, scales, plants, and animal parts. All of them that could do one thing or another when mixed.
No matter how often he looked through the book his mind would balk at memorizing the book's contents. Even using the method that Ranma taught him didn't seem to make the process easier. He was rubbing his eyes a little while later when he heard someone call his name.
"Hey Harry."
He looked up as Ron came downstairs. The boy yawned for several seconds as he stumbled over to a chair, spun around, and fell into it. "How can you even function at this time in the morning?"
"Been doing it for years." Harry said and shrugged. "Want to head down to the hall and get breakfast?"
"Yeah." The boy said, suddenly jumping up and heading for the portal.
Shaking his head, Harry followed after him. "Do you remember how to get there?"
Ron stopped. "Bugger."
"Ask your brothers." Harry suggested.
"Oh right, let's ask the practical jokers how to get somewhere. We'd end up in the girls bathroom in the Ravenclaw room after wandering around for over two hours." Ron said with a loud sigh.
"What about Percy?"
Ron gave him a look that said 'are you crazy?' and shook his head. "That git has been insufferable ever since he got that stupid badge of his. He won't let anyone forget that he's a Prefect now. He buffs it with his sock before he attaches it to his robes in the morning."
"Shouldn't they give us a map of this place so we don't get lost?"
"I've never heard of them doing anything like that." Ron said.
"Well maybe we just have to ask for one." Harry said eyeing the older students, but they didn't seem to be paying any attention to them.
"From who?"
"McGonagall?" He suggested.
"I guess, she is our head of house." Ron said with a shrug. "Right now I don't care. I just want food."
They stepped out of the portal and looked around, completely lost. "Why did this place have to be so complicated to find?"
Some time later they were on the seventh floor and Harry looked as if he was ready to punch the wall. Even the portraits were trying to give him a wide birth if they could. Ron just looked like he wanted to gnaw on something as they kept taking a wrong turn. What was worse was that they couldn't find any of the other students.
"It's got to be ten by now." Harry said as they found another empty classroom filled with dust.
"This all your fault." Ron muttered as they looked around.
Harry just rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yeah yeah, I heard you the first few times."
As they were leaving Harry spotted something at the back of the room and walked over to take a closer look. There, buried in the dust, was a leather bound book. He picked it up and wiped the dust off the cover and read the barely legible title. "Long Forgotten Jinxes and Curses."
"What was that?" Ron asked.
"This book."
The red head walked over and took a look at it. "Hey, that thing is a rare book. It was just sitting there?"
"Yeah."
"Keep it, that thing is expensive. My older brother has a copy for his curse breaking job and had to spend a small fortune on it."
"Cool, we can share it then." Harry said as he flipped through it a little. The pages were still easy to read and looked almost as if it was brand new.
"There's a charm on it to keep it in good shape." Ron explained.
Harry nodded. "I hadn't thought of that. Must be my muggle upbringing or something."
"Maybe." Ron muttered and shrugged.
As they stepped out of the room they headed down the hall, turned the corner and suddenly found themselves right in front of the great hall. Shouting, The two of them headed inside for breakfast. Harry spent several minutes looking through the book while he ate another breakfast.
A Saotome, even adopted, never turned down a meal. Even on their death bed, covered in bandages, or on the run from amorous female amazons. According to Ranma anyway.
oooooooooo
Because they had missed most of the early morning breakfast the day before, the whispers didn't start following Harry around until the next morning. They also found out that if they had waited for one of the Prefects to get up, they would have gotten a better tour of the castle on the way to breakfast.
Harry was a little irritated that no one bothered to tell them about this until after the fact. Getting back to the common room had taken nearly as long as finding the great hall. By which time Harry was in a very bad mood and growling at everyone.
Ron just kept his distance.
By the time Harry left his trunk this morning, once again walking slowly, Ron was back to normal. His stomach was growling and wanted to get to the great hall as quickly as he could. Food would always come first. That was why Harry had to put up with the whispers as they entered the great hall.
"There He is!"
"Which one?"
"That one, with the glasses and the messy hair."
"I've seen better."
"Who cares, did you see that scar? It's so cool!"
Normally it wasn't this bad, but when people started to form groups and follow him around and comment on him as if he couldn't hear was when he started to get irritated. People would stand on tip toe so they could gawk at him as he walked down the hall. Whispering with their friends loud enough to be heard by everyone within twenty yards. It got worse when people would use the secret passages to get in front of him to get a second chance to gawk.
He ignored it as best he could, but the groups seemed to just appear wherever he was at the time. They just seemed to appear from out of nothing. He noticed that the teachers were watching him too, though they were a bit more discrete about it. This was odd because they didn't seem to understand that he wanted it to stop.
Instead they just smiled at him. Or in Professor Snape's case, sneer and give a death glare. The only one that didn't seem to care about Harry, was Professor Quirrell. Once the teachers were out of sight the groups would pop up again yelling about autographs and such.
For a few seconds he considered attacking one of the groups. Just to get them off his back, but was forced to back down when they reached the great hall. Then the whispering spread through the room before he could even sight down. Why was the only person that would show him even a little respect, was Ranma? Growling, no one noticed as one of the nearby pitchers of pumpkin juice started to boil over.
He plopped himself down at the Gryffindor table and hunched over, holding his head in his hands for a couple of minutes. He used this time to count to a hundred and calm down before he started to grab some food. Eating a light breakfast, he quickly exited the room, headed for the front gate of the castle, and made his way outside.
The counting hadn't helped him much and he needed to work off some steam. From there he could work on ignoring the rest of the students and maybe come up with a way to make them leave him alone. He just hoped they would leave him be once he was outside.
Not that he believed it for a second.
It only took him a few minutes to make his way down to the edge of the lake. Once there he took off his robe. He was wearing a pair of loose pants and a muscle shirt underneath. Rolling his robe into a ball, he tossed it to the side, and started to run through some moves. He had a lot of anger to work off and this was the best way to do it.
Snarling, he was soon throwing punches, kicking, and jumping around at a rapid pace. Sometime he was on the ground, a whirlwind of movement. Or he would jump into the air and seem to hanger there for several seconds, moving faster than the eye could see.
His punches were cracking the air as he pushed himself to the edge of his abilities, a slight glow radiating form his body. Even after his morning practice with Ranma, Harry found that he had tons of energy left for this second work out. However, Ranma would scold him for letting his anger get the better of him. He just didn't really have a better way to get rid of it at the moment.
"MR. POTTER!"
Startled, he spun around in mid air and saw that Professor McGonagall was stalking over to him looking quite put out. He landed wrong, dropped, and did a few rolls before coming back to his feet. Shaking his head and dusting his clothing off, he nodded to her. "Yes?"
"What are doing?"
"Working out."
"This is not the time or place for this foolishness! You have classes today and will be late if you don't hurry." She scolded him.
Harry shrugged. "I'll be there, I still have half an hour or so."
"Well get your robe and head to class." She said. "And don't forget your books."
"Yes ma'am." Harry said and realized he must have messed up.
His anger was still just below the surface though. Just waiting to be released once more. He hated all the attention he seemed to attract, and he was really beginning to wonder if this place was worth all the fuss these people were making to bring him here. This was only the second day and he felt like a caged animal.
Ranma was interested in finding a cure for his curse, but Harry was already starting to wonder if this place was worth the hassle. His magic just made him stand out even more and he didn't like it one bit.
As he was headed back to school he noticed that over half the school was there gawking at him. Sighing, he glared at them for a few seconds as he walked up the front doors. Several of the Slytherins were standing there blocking his way into the school.
"Always got to be the center of attention don't you." Malfoy sneered at him.
"You want to start a fight Malfoy? Then attack me, if not, shut your trap and keep those opinions to yourself." Harry snapped back.
"Potter! Get to class now!" McGonagall yelled, making Malfoy back down.
Harry growled again, clenched his fists, and turned to glare at the woman who seemed to be oblivious to the fact that Harry couldn't get through the wall of people in front of the door. "How?"
"Excuse me?"
"How?" He asked, gesturing at all the people blocking the doorway.
She looked at all the people. "All of you, off to class. NOW!"
No one moved for several seconds, but after that it was a stampede of people as they ran off. The only one's left after that was Malfoy and his two body guards, who were watching Harry. For some reason the two large boys reminded him of his cousin Dudley. Big and dumb.
The Boy Who Lived controlled his near boiling anger, not even jumping as a nearby brick suddenly exploded. The Slytherins flinched as little pieces of rock rained down on them as Harry passed by all of them and back into the school. Behind them McGonagall frowned at them all in disapproval.
As they all vanished into the school she turned to look at a dark corner. "Well?"
"I've never seen anything quite like it before." Dumbledore said as he appeared from out of the shadows.
"He's angry."
"Indeed. I don't think he's dealing with his fame very well. I could feel his anger building as he approached the great hall. It got worse once he arrived. It's why he got up and left before you passed out the schedules."
"I'm not sure what to do with him."
"I think you just made him angrier by treating him that way, Minerva."
She huffed. "I doubt that, he just needs to find a way to channel all that anger."
Albus nodded. "We'll have to think of something. Remember what Hagrid told us about his early life. The Dursley's were quite abusive. That's probably where most of his anger comes from."
"Maybe." Minerva conceded.
"Let's give him a few days to get used to things. Can you talk to him and see if you can calm him down?"
She nodded. "I'm just not sure what to do with a student like that Albus. He did something on the train that scared Mr. Malfoy and those two students that follow him around. Scared them so bad that they had to be forced to get off the train when it arrived."
"Don't jump to conclusions just yet Minerva, he just got here. Let's give a few days at least, at most a few weeks."
"He's got so much anger in him Albus. He could be a danger to the other students."
"It'll work out." Albus said.
oooooooooo
Notes: I originally had Minerva treating Harry like Snape usually does. She was snappish, rude, and insulting. As I read over it though it just didn't fit the character type I wanted, so I made her concerned about Harry's anger instead. Most eleven year olds, when they get angry they lash out and that's it. With Harry, it seems to simmer. This is, of course, because of what he did on the train. The after effects of that Aura of Anger are still affecting him a couple of days later. Of course, Snape isn't going to help matters either.
oooooooooo
Omake
The cat gave a hell of a chase, but the red headed demons finally managed to chase her down. Fred grinned as he held up a Mrs. Norris
"Brother, a unique opportunity awaits us." George said as they rode the staircase to the third floor corridor.
"What might that be?" Fred asked, grinning a grin that said he knew exactly what was about to happen.
They giggled as they snuck down the corridor, right to the locked door at the end. One pulled a wand and pointed it at the door, it gave a little click and slowly swung inwards. They stepped inside as the massive form of a three headed dog rose up and glared at them.
Fred held Mrs. Norris up to his face and grinned. "You're about to make history."
"Yes indeed, brother mine. That is one lucky cat." George said. They cackled, then George cast a spell on the cat, and tossed it into the room. She landed just as the door shut.
"That spell will hold?"
"She won't get a scratch."
They giggled.
WOOOOF! WOOOOF! WOOOOF!
ooooo
Later that night Filch is in Dumbledore's office. "But sir!"
"Mrs. Norris will be fine." Albus said. "She just fainted."
Filch holds up Mrs. Norris. She's stiff as a board, eyes nearly popping out of her head, and every inch of fur standing straight up. The caretaker is waving her around by the tail. "You call this fine?"