Harry awoke with a start the next morning. He was shocked to find himself not in his own different and it took him a few seconds to remember where he was and what we was doing there. Beside him, Ron continued to sleep soundly. Most of the other boys were already up- only Kevin Entwhistle and Anthony Goldstein were still snoring. Harry got out of his bed, put on his clothes and his glasses and headed downstairs.
He found Hermione there waiting for him. For some reason there weren't many other people there.
"Honestly, Harry" she said rather severely "you do sleep in far too late. It's almost half past ten!"
"You think I sleep in too late? Wait till you see Ron, he's like a log. Where's everybody gone?"
"They've all gone downstairs to eat breakfast, like I could have if you didn't make me wait so long"
"Sorry Hermione" he said rather sheepishly "I'd just better go and wake Ron and then we can see if there's anything left"
It took a couple of shakes before Ron was moving about but Harry managed in the end. Ron sat up straight and spoke.
"I'm in Ravenclaw. How the hell did I get into Ravenclaw?"
"You should know" said Harry "and I'd have expected you to notice it before. What house did you think you were in?"
"I know" said Ron "it just hadn't really sunk in yet. I'm the first Weasley in donkey's years not to go to Gryffindor. What's everybody else going to say?"
"They're you're family "Harry replied "I'm sure they'll be fine with. Besides, didn't you say it was Ravenclaw than Slytherin? Come on, let's get some breakfast"
The three of them climbed down the long, spiral staircase of Ravenclaw Tower and tried to make their way to the Great Hall. It proved to be rather difficult to retrace their steps so far, especially since tiredness had given them only a dim recollection of what happened the night before. Nevertheless, thanks to Hermione's excellent memory they were able to get there in just over ten minutes.
When they arrived, the Great Hall was far from being filled up and it was rapidly emptying. The majority of the older students had left for lessons. The first years were fortunate enough not to have any lessons on the first day but many of them had departed for the common rooms or gone off to explore the castle. Mandy remained at the Ravenclaw table- she smiled and waved at them across the room.
They all sat down next to her.
"I saved you some" she said, holding out a plate full of bacon, sausages and eggs
"Cheers, Mandy" said Harry "you're a lifesaver"
They spent the next few minutes eating their breakfasts, occasionally pausing to converse through mouthfuls of food. It was really quite nice, while it lasted. Unfortunately within a couple of minutes they heard a snide voice from behind them.
"Ravenclaw, eh Potter? How did you manage to con the Hat like that? More importantly how did Weasley?"
Harry looked behind him to find Draco Malfoy glowering, with Crabbe and Goyle flanking his sides.
"Go away Malfoy" said Hermione "we're in no mood to deal with you"
"Yeah" said Ron "why don't you go back to all your slimy new mates in Slytherin?"
Malfoy ignored them "you enjoying Hogwarts so far, Weasley? I can't stand having to sleep in a room with five other boys but I suppose you'd be used to that, living the way you do. I heard that your house only has one room, is that true?"
Ron visibly bristled, his hands clenching into fists. Mandy put a hand on his shoulder.
"Ron, don't rise to it, he's not worth it" she said, giving Malfoy a nasty glare.
"Sticking up for Weasley are you, Brocklehurst? Interesting name that" replied Malfoy "it's not a wizard's name I know. And I know all the wizard names so either you're father was a muggle or you're a m-"
"What seems to be the problem here?"
Ron's twin brothers, Fred and George had arrived. Malfoy had stopped mid- sentence, his mouth hanging open.
"You three, scat, now" said one of the twins "we'd like to talk to our brother"
"And if you don't do it quick you'll find out why the Gryffindor Quidditch Team made us beaters"
Malfoy looked like he wanted to argue with that but Fred and George were older than him and bigger even then Crabbe and Goyle, so he left without a fuss.
"Getting into fights already, little bro?" said the one who'd spoken first "maybe you belong in Gryffindor after all"
"We didn't start any fight!" shouted Ron "it was all Malfoy"
"Lucius Malfoy's son?" said the other one "yeah I think he'd do that. But the more important question is, what are you doing sitting at this table, my smallest brother"
"Are we sure he's even our brother? After all, every Weasley has been in Gryffindor. And if he's not in Gryffindor, maybe he's not a Weasley…"
"Fred!" cried the other one. Ron looked angry again.
Mandy chimed in "you do realise that this say's something about your mother, don't you?"
A look of horror crossed their faces. Ron looked renewed.
"Ha!" he said "wait till I tell mum what you said. You'll be getting howlers till you're fifty"
"Never mind" said George "we just wanted to say that we don't care which house you're in. and Percy'll probably tell you the same once he's done with his prefect stuff"
"We would like to know, though" he continued "how you ended up here. We never got the impression that you were, shall we say, the perfect Ravenclaw"
"Who knows" said Ron "you'll have to ask the hat"
#
For the next couple of days, Harry settled into his routine at Hogwarts. It turned out to be rather more difficult than he expected.
For one thing, just getting from place to place was far from easy. Hogwarts was enormous, full of twisting corridors and winding staircases, which tended to look very similar to one another. Harry was very fortunate to have Hermione with him- she was able to find her way when the rest were unable. There wasn't much she could do, however against the obstacles.
And obstacles there were. Hogwarts was a magical school and that came with magical pests. There were door that required a password, doors that needed to be asked nicely or tickled in the right place and there were doors that were actually walls just pretending. Even getting entry to Ravenclaw Tower was difficult at times- to enter one had to solve a riddle and if you couldn't solve it, tough luck. Even trying to get a sense of the geography was difficult- the staircases moved around constantly and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that the rest of the castle did as well when nobody was looking.
Another problem was Peeves. He was, as Harry learned not a ghost but a Poltergeist, a spirit of raw, chaotic energy. And he certainly acted the part. If you were unfortunate enough to come across him he would soon unleash all manner of jokes. He would throw waste paper around, rap you on the head with a stick of chalk or grab your nose, yelling "got your conk!" The only thing Peeves seemed to fear was the Bloody Baron, the ghost of Slytherin. Not being on terribly good terms with Slytherin, this wasn't much help for Harry.
Even worse than Peeves, if such a thing were possible was Filch, the caretaker. Filch seemed to openly loathe the children and was always happy to punish them for anything he could. And Filch was hard to avoid. His cat, Mrs Norris, seemed to have some way of summoning him, for wherever she was ,he would turn up soon after. He knew the secret passageways better than anyone, which meant that he could appear out of thin air whenever you were doing something you shouldn't.
Then there were the lessons themselves.
Harry came to learn that there was a lot more to magic than just waving your wand around. There was a mountain of studying and homework that he was required to do. Harry suspected that being a Ravenclaw meant that he was being given harder work than the rest of the year, especially since he was also The Boy-Who-Lived.
Every lesson was different in its own way. The teacher with a turban on his head, who Harry learned was named Professor Quirrell taught Defence Against the Dark Arts. Hermione had been looking forward to this- she had told him that they would be learning how to defend against the worst dark magical creatures and that Professor Quirrell had been in Ravenclaw himself, so surely he must be good at his job.
They had no such luck. Quirrel was a total wimp, who stuttered like Porky Pig and seemed terrified of everything. He did seem quite nice but they were at a loss to explain how he had ended up teaching a defence class. Ron said that his brothers had heard that Quirrell had a nervous breakdown after he had a nasty encounter with a vampire in Germany. Hermione had said and they had all agreed that somebody who was this much of a nervous wreck probably shouldn't be teaching.
Herbology was taught by Professor Sprout, a squat little witch with short, grey, wavy hair. Her lessons involved a lot of digging and planting in the earth of the greenhouse, which left everybody covered in muck. To make matters worse, they had Herbology with the Slytherins, so Harry was forced to endure the snide presence of Malfoy and his minions while he was digging.
Charms was taught by Professor Flitwick, a very short little man who was their head of house. On their first lesson, while he was taking the register, he saw Harry's name and promptly fell off his desk. They all had to spend the next few minutes with their hands on their mouths, to stop themselves from laughing.
Flitwick was not the only one who seemed very concerned with Harry's fame. Wherever he went he heard whispers following him and he saw pupils pointing him out to their fellows. At first Harry found this all very annoying but it didn't take long for him to accept it as part of the background noise of the school. He still wished they wouldn't though.
The worst lesson of all was Potions. Potions was taught down in the dungeons, a cold, draughty, miserable place, full of bits of dead animals. But far more miserable than the classroom was the teacher. Professor Snape, the hook nosed, sallow faced teacher who Harry had seen at the welcoming feast taught Potions.
They had heard that Snape was head of Slytherin and always favoured them but fortunately they had Potions with Hufflepuff, so it didn't seem that it would be much of a problem. On their first day, Snape read out the register and paused when he came to Harry's name.
"Harry Potter" he said "our new celebrity"
Authors Note: Comments and reviews are always welcome.