There was not only curly-haired Hermione at my table, but also red-haired Ginny Weasley and her equally red-haired brother Ron, who also happened to be a prefect and who was looking at me with a strange mixture of interest and disbelief. Although he still tried to pretend that he wasn't looking at me, most of the other students didn't hesitate to stare at the famous Harry Potter. Some even pointed their fingers and explained, apparently to the less enlightened, who I was and why I was so famous. The little ones stared at me with undisguised delight, as if I were a real Santa Claus.
"Do you already know what courses you will study?" I looked at Hermione and realized that she had been explaining something to me for about five minutes.
"Excuse me?" I asked, focusing my mind.
"I said, what courses will you be studying?"
she repeated patiently. At least after being in the same cell with me, she didn't see me as a living legend.
"Do you even have to choose them? Remus didn't say…"
I glanced at the teacher's desk. Remus was whispering something to Dumbledore. I looked at my new father Pat, who gave me a sharp look and then turned to McGonagall. I turned around and looked at my friend. Pat was looking at Snape with narrowed eyes and a searching expression. Then, apparently sensing my gaze, he turned to me, rolled his eyes, made an extremely unpleasant face,and scowled. That meant we were in trouble, buddy, and I'd tell you in person what I thought of this whole mess and who had gotten me into it.…
"And that big-nosed guy over there, that's Severus Snape, isn't it?" I asked Hermione, not sure why. She nodded.
"Yes, this is the Potion Master. He's still the dean of Slytherin. Do you know each other?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that…"
"Yes," said Ron vaguely, already snatching at the food that had appeared on the plates of its own accord, "only you, Hermione, will enjoy seeing him this year"
"A dubious treat," the guy sitting next to Ron chuckled, and I recognized him as the round-faced, stern-faced guy I'd seen in Diagon Alley.
"Why?" I didn't understand.
Ron chuckled ominously, still holding the chicken drumstick in his hand.
"It's Snape! What good is it to suffer in his classes for two more years? I hope that someday he will cook something wrong, try it on himself, and we will get rid of him forever!" The table laughed, and there was an approving "Yes… It would be nice... that's for sure..."
Yeah, well ... it felt like Daddy Pat was well-known here.
They know it and hate it.
"What, everyone else has given up on this item?"
"But to-day Hermine ploughed pfrefospno through the mudflats!" Ron muttered, his mouth already full.
Hermione shot him a scathing look and suddenly pulled out her wand and pointed it at Ron "Anapneo" This apparently caused the food to speed its way into Ron's stomach. Ginny, sitting nearby, giggled. Hermione chuckled with satisfaction.
"What he meant was that Professor Snape only admits people who have an excellent degree in OWLS to sixth-grade classes.
"Why did you do that?" Ron asked with more difficulty, his eyes watering. It was red, like the Soviet flag. "Maybe this will teach you some table manners!"
"It's none of your business!"
"I'm tired of seeing how…"
My God, where am I?…
The first thing I saw when I woke up was a face looming over me with spherical eyes.
I screamed, threw up my arms, got tangled in the blanket, and fell off the bed onto the floor. Dobby house-elf (and it was him, I realized after a few seconds) was already gone with a distinctive click.
"What are you doing on the floor?" Ron asked in surprise, apparently woken up by the noise.
"Lying down, resting," I said grimly, wriggling out of the blanket and cursing. Ron blinked his sleepy eyes several times in confusion, and with a meaningful "ahhh..." turned over and continued snoring. He'll probably think he was dreaming. Well, thank God! I've been missing stories about the strange behavior of the Boy-Who-Lived since day one. As I tossed and turned for about fifteen minutes, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight. It was getting light outside, and I found my watch and found out that it was five-thirty. Sitting up in bed, I began to go through a terribly difficult process — I began to think. In fact, I'd forgotten all about Dobby's visit to my room and his warnings. But his reappearance should probably mean something. What did he say to me then? Some kind of conspiracy?
Okay, who are these house-elves anyway? Well, it's simple. I'll have to ask someone. Hermione's is better. Neville, the one who really dislikes Potions, managed to tell me that she was the best in the class. Moreover, she already knows me, and will not be surprised at anything. The second question is whether he came by himself or someone sent him. If so, who sent it? Someone who doesn't want me to go to Hogwarts. Or maybe he was a wizard. Who doesn't want that? The Dursleys, for example… No, I won't go very far on this path, it's just crazy. After all, logic is not my strong suit, I am used to acting according to circumstances. And last but not least, the question. Is there really a danger? This Dobby guy looks like an alarmist. What if he was telling the truth? What if he was referring to Voldemort's rebirth? Everyone around us is alarmed…
No, that's all. That's enough. Funny thoughts in the morning early. I'd better go wash up.
At breakfast, I carefully scanned the Slytherin table for Pat, but I couldn't find him.
Instead, I found a blond guy with a ferret-like expression I knew from Borgin and Burke. Hermione sat down next to him and opened a textbook.
"Hermione, do you know anything about house elves?"
"about house elves?"
Her eyes immediately lit up with an unhealthy enthusiasm. Ron, sitting nearby, grunted into his glass of pumpkin juice.
"Oh! It's going to be spewspew"
Hermione gave him an icy look.
"How many times have I told you — S. P.E.W. Society for Promotion of Elfish Welfare"
In fact, Harry — "she turned to me," house-elves are slaves whose labor has been exploited by wizards for centuries!
"They like it, Hermione," said Ron, rolling his eyes.
Hermione was about to take a deep breath to launch into an angry tirade, but I cut her off.
"Stop. I didn't understand anything. Who are they and what do they do?"
"They are a magical people who, according to the Convention, are one thousand five hundred…"
They work in wizards' homes" said Ron impudently, "and there's a whole bunch of them at Hogwarts. Although they usually belong to old magic surnames."
"What do you mean they belong?"
"I told you, they're slaves," Hermione insisted, "and they wear these humiliating rags as a symbol of their slavery. If only the wizards would give them clothes, let them go, and pay their salaries… Oh, good morning, Professor McGonagall!"
"Potter, come with me." I barely managed to keep from saying, "it's not me." Professor McGonagall looked like a colonel. She took me to her office and asked me what I would be studying.
"Have you already thought about your future profession?"
"Well... actually ..." I hesitated, "I was going to go to university, but I haven't decided exactly which department to go to yet… It is not a fact, of course, that I will enter at all…" Professor McGonagall looked at me sternly through her square glasses.
"Potter, I was referring to your future among wizards." I told her I didn't know.
So I was given a schedule of what McGonagall thought were the most important courses. First on today's schedule was Potions.
I caught a second-grader and asked for directions to the Potions room. He stared at my scar in shock and said, " We need to go to the dungeons." And ran away. How do I get to the dungeons? I was relieved to see Ron Weasley's red head on the horizon.
"Hey, Ron!" I called out to him, and he turned around, looking at me with the same mixture of interest and disbelief as if I was about to turn into a soap bubble. "How do I get to the dungeons?"
"Potions? I have free time" he said happily, and explained the way.
Then he wished me luck, and said
"I hope I forget my way there as soon as possible."
There was an atmosphere in the dungeons that reminded me vividly of the Spanish Inquisition, which we went through in history.
There were five people standing in a small group outside the Potions office, one of whom I recognized as Hermione, and standing apart from them was the blond guy from Slytherin with the ferret face.
It was as if he was trying to pretend that he didn't know them.
"What did McGonagall want?"
Hermione asked.
"She wanted to know what I was going to do in the future."
It turned out that there were three Ravenclaw boys and one Hufflepuff boy, Ernie, who spoke as if he were reciting poetry with an expression. No one was in a hurry to introduce me to the Slytherin, he didn't ask for it, and it was only then that I began to suspect that there was something wrong with this Slytherin. But where the hell was Pat? Professor Snape flew up to the classroom like a huge bat and motioned us inside with a sharp nod of his head. Up close, it looked even scarier. It was necessary to sit down four people at a desk.
The Ravenclaws and Ernie quickly took one, and Hermione and I went to the desk opposite. The blond Slytherin who came in last and saw that there were no more seats, with a look of utter disgust on his pale, long face, sat down at the same desk with us, as far away as possible from us. Hermione's face took on a sneering, haughty expression.
"Where's your friend?" — What is it? " she suddenly whispered to me.
I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe he gave up on this item? Because you don't want to look at your dad again?
Snape's cold gaze swept over the pitiful group of students, and it seemed that the already cold office was about two degrees colder.
"So," he said in a low, ominous voice, "I see a few people who have managed to pass the OWLS perfectly. Except for some ... exceptions" he shot me a look of contempt, and his lips twitched in what must have been a sneer."
The Slytherin (his last name starts exactly with the letter M...) chuckled. After all, I definitely didn't like this albino.
"Well" Snape continued, his voice as smooth and intimidating as death "just because you've been able to scrape together something on OWLS doesn't mean you'll be just as lucky in the future. At the NEWT level, I will teach you how to make potions that you have never encountered before in terms of difficulty…"
There was a knock on the door, and then Pat came barging in, looking annoyed and annoyed.
"Sorry I'm late, can I come in?"
My friend looked anything but remorseful. The class, including the professor, was shocked. Apparently, no one else has ever allowed themselves such behavior in this office.
"You're already in, Mr. Random," Snape said quietly, looking at his son with a mixture of bewilderment, annoyance, and interest.
"Well, I can go out and knock again." Silence. The Ravenclaws fell out, and Ernie looked at my friend as if he were a kamikaze.
"You'd better go back to your seat, Mr. Random, and I'll ask you not to be late in the future," Snape said even more quietly.
Pat swaggered over to our table, looked at me, grinned, and plopped down an Advanced Potions textbook.
"So, we'll be making some very difficult potions… Which, of course, you have never prepared…"
Snape looked confused, and his whole appearance suggested that this was new to him.
"Where have you been?" I whispered to my friend. He looked sleepy and annoyed.
"I talked to the mirror for fifteen minutes," he told me.
I see. This morning I almost had a fit when the mirror barked at me: "Comb your hair!".
I didn't say anything to him, but Pat does care about everything…
"Potter!" Snape called out suddenly.
I almost jumped on the spot.
"What ingredients are included in the polyjuice potion?" Snape's lips curled in a grin. When a teacher wants to fail me, I always see it. This was exactly the case.
"Polyjuice potion?" I asked, trying to ignore Hermione's shot-up arm and Malfoy's giggling (I remember! I remembered!) — " um ... leeches… Knotweed ... crushed bicorn horn… Silkwing flies" the composition began to surface from the depths of my memory, as if by itself "seaweed collected at high tide… A boomslang skin...and bits of what you need to transform into."
Malfoy stopped giggling, Snape's grin turned into a grimace, Hermione looked at me with increased respect, and Pat looked surprised.
Apparently, I answered correctly. We spent the rest of the lesson writing something down (have you tried writing with a pen? I had blotches across the line), and I was busy comparing Pat and Professor Snape. In principle, a DNA test is unlikely to be needed here. Take Pat, grow him up in a closet, grow his hair (and don't wash it), put him in his twenties. And so — eyes, lip line and cheekbones, chin, nose. Even the facial expressions are basically the same. With one big exception. Pat could smile.
"Well done, Harry, that was a tough question," Hermione congratulated me as we left the office.
"I'm surprised, mate," Pat said from the other side.
"We've been laughing at this recipe for about ten minutes, don't you remember? especially over a boomslang skin?"
"Why?" Hermione asked.
I hesitated.
"Well, I don't know. The word is funny."
Then our curly-haired cellmate suddenly remembered that she had Runes, and ran off in the other direction. We walked out into the courtyard in silence. People stared at us. I thought, of course, that everyone was looking at the famous Harry Potter.
It never occurred to me at the time that it was quiet.
A Gryffindor and a Slytherin side by side is a much cooler sight than the Avada-Kedavra Survivor Boy. The autumn sun was shining on the street, nothing resembling yesterday's abomination. When Pat took out a cigarette, I noticed that his hands were shaking. Although, no. He was shaking all over.
"Did you see that?" he finally asked, trying unsuccessfully to extract a light from the lighter. "Potions... bullshit…"
"You've always liked chemistry, haven't you…"
I began cautiously.
He stared at me in horror.
"What are you comparing?! Chemistry is science!
"And this... this ..." he couldn't find the right word and threw out the useless lighter ,"this is soup!"
I chuckled. That's the right word. I like.
Pat took out his wand, extracted a tiny flame from it, and lit it with relish.
"And the damn department!" Pat continued to pour out his misery to me — "Hell, I could have gotten into your Gryffindor class with you!"
"What do you mean?
" The ragged hat couldn't possibly have chosen a house. And literally gave me a full choice!"
"Ah! She asked me to go to Slytherin, too!"
"And?"
"Well, I kind of refused…" Pat looked up at the sky indignantly.
"And I sat and thought-why is it that the hat talks?"
I laughed.
"Pat Random style."
Pat smiled grimly.
"yes. This is how God created me!"
"I don't know about the Lord" I couldn't resist saying, "but a nosy guy I know has obviously done his best here!"
Pat shuddered.
"Don't tell me about him. Where did my mother look?!"
I don't know exactly where my friend's mother looked, but definitely not at external data.
"I wish he was a bandit," Pat said grimly.
And after a few seconds he asked me carefully:
"Tell me honestly, is it just me, or do I really look that much like him?"
Pat looked at me with the hopeful look of a terminally ill person. I couldn't lie to my best friend.
"Kill me," Pat said sadly.
"Mr. Random!" A voice suddenly rang out behind us. Professor McGonagall appeared beside us, looking like a hawk. She was glaring at Pat with fierce indignation.
"What?" he asked.
"No smoking on Hogwarts grounds!"
"I'm not in the castle! Moreover, there is no such rule, I personally looked at it."
The professor waved her wand, and Pat's cigarette disappeared. He looked like a child whose candy had been ripped out of its mouth.
"Don't worry, it will now. However, it always seemed obvious to me!" McGonagall exclaimed, "Five points from Slytherin."