There, look.
Where?
Next to the blond kid.
Did you see his face?
Did you see his scar?
Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his common room the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again staring.
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 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. It was also very hard to remember where anything was because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk.
The ghosts didn't help either. It was always a nasty shock when one if them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Bloody baron was always willing to point a Slytherin in the right direction but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak behind you invisible, grab your nose, and screech, GOT YOUR CONK!
Even worse then Peeves if that was possible was the caretaker Argus Filch.
Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamplike eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe of line and she'd whisk off for Filch who'd appear wheezing two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone and could pop up as suddenly as any if the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.
And then once you had managed to find them there were the classes themselves.
They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses to study Herobology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange and fungi, and found out what they were used for.
Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.
Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took roll call, and when he reached Harry's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of the sight.
Professor McGonagall was again different. Harry had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking to the moment they sat in her first class.
Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts she said. Anyone messing around in my class and not come back. You have been warned.
Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. Harry closed his eyes taking hold of his magic. He imagined a needle, green and made of silver. He opened them and snapped releasing his magic. It worked and sitting in the place of the match was a green needle.
Did you just do a perfected transfiguration wandlessly Mr. Potter? Professor McGonagall said.
Yes, I've been able to do it since i was seven Harry said usually the age magic starts showing.
Not even the headmaster can do such things Professor McGonagall said.
Well i guess I'm better then Harry said with a "sheepish" grin.
Professor McGonagall was about to tell him off for arrogance but thought she better not.
Very well then 50 points to Slytherin Professor McGonagall said. She leaned in and quietly said I'm disappointed your not in my house.
The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but the professor's lessons turned out to be a joke. Quirinus Quirrel Draco told Harry his name was. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward of a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His Turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank you gift for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Blaise asked skeptically how he fought off the zombie, Quirrel went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, Harry joked it was stuffed full of garlic so he was protected whenever he goes.
