Making Friends

Lessons continued, and the first-year students were slowly getting the hang of it. In Transfiguration most people were able to change a matchstick into a needle after about two weeks of practice. Instead of moving to the next step they were tasked to turn a certain number of matchsticks each class, which professor McGonagall explained was because "Magic is in a way like a muscle, if it is used regularly it becomes stronger. Also like with a muscle you must build up your tolerance, or stamina if you will, to become able to hold spells for a longer amount of time. As you all know you are learning the levitation spell in charms right now. As far as I know there was so far only one of you presumptuous enough to think that it would be a good idea to just try that spell on their own. While the spell is not the most complex one that exists it still is a rather hard spell to master. And more importantly depending on the mass of the object you try to move and your distance to the object it is an exceptionally taxing spell that could easily knock you out within seconds."

And so, they continued to turn matchsticks into needles to the annoyance of everyone who could already do so easily.

Herbology was slowly getting more interesting because instead of just looking at plants they actually started working with them. And working in this case meant weeding them, which reminded Harry a little too much of hot summer days spend without water. While Harry's experience with plants meant that he was among the top of his class in Herbology he quickly realized that it was nothing that sparked his interest.

In Defence against the Dark Arts on the other hand they had just started learning spells. And while most of them were still confused about why the professor had told them, never to use Flippendo against any living thing lest they may face expulsion, most students were happy to have an easy spell that while tiering did not take them weeks to learn or weeks to practise. The only one to still have any problems with the spell turned out to be Neville, to the amusement of Draco and the other Slytherins of course.

In Potions the professor continued to bully Harry which brought him the empathy of most of his peers. While the potions got harder, the only reason Harry and Hermione ever failed to produce an at least expectable potion was when Malfoy got bored of sabotaging Neville's potion and turned to theirs instead.

Astrology and History of magic remained the two most boring classes they had, and while professor Sinistra at least tried defending her subject by saying that "there are many fields of magic that required knowledge about stars and constellations" Binns did not even pretend to care whether his students liked his class or not. In fact, most of them were doubting whether he had even heard the question of "when would we ever need to know any of this".

While the last few flying classes were fun they were also over rather quickly.
Harry was no exceptional flyer, which seemed to sadden Madame Hooch for some reason, but unlike Hermione he wasn't terrible at it either.

If not for Halloween Harry would not even have noticed that it had already been two months at Hogwarts. The frequency of his nightmares had been extremely low and while he had asked one of the Weasley twins to cast a silencing ward around his bed, supposedly because of Ron's snoring, he was even thinking about not asking them again the next months.

It was this thought that reminded him of the letter he had promised to send Ginny Weasley. He decided that he would sit down and write the letter after the Halloween feast, he would have done it right then, but he was too worried about the upcoming charms class. Because today would be the day they were finally allowed to try on the levitation charm, which they had been studying for almost two months now.

They were put into groups of two and Harry and Neville were among the ones who got paired up with the Hufflepuffs. He would work together with a girl called Sally-Anne Perks while Neville got paired up with Hanna Abbott. The professor sadly made the fatal error of pairing up Ron and Hermione, which in Harry's opinion was possibly the worst thing he could have done.

Hermione was of course the first one to manage the spell, which as Harry knew was because she had been practising the spell well before they were supposed to do so, which professor McGonagall had not been happy about if one considered how she had talked about it in class.

"Wingardium Leviosa" Harry said once again. And finally, the feather started moving upwards.
The class was already almost over, but professor Flitwick obviously still considered it a great success to be able to cast the spell at all within the first two hours of actively practising it and rewarded Harry with a point.
"How did you do that" Sally asked with a frustrated little smile on her face. Her feather had not moved a bit in the last one and a half hours, no matter how perfect her pronunciation or her wand movement.
"I honestly don't even know." Harry answered truthfully.
"I'm so looking forward to when we will be able to quick cast this spell, needing almost nine minutes to float a feather is just way to frustrating. You should ask Hermione for help, she was already able to quick cast this stupid spell about a week ago."
"Really," she asked with obvious surprise in her voice "but we were not supposed to start practising this before today."
"Yeah, well it's not like Hermione would let anyone forbid her from starting early when it comes to her grades. I think she said something about wanting to start planning for the exams before winter break or something like that."
"Honestly? How do you even put up with her? I heard everyone saying that she can barely hold a conversation for more than half a minute before she either shuts off or starts a lecture." Sally said while putting her stuff into her bookbag, but it was clear that there was no mean intention behind her words.
"True I guess." He answered with a lopsided grin, but before he could continue explaining that she just needed some time to warm up to people he saw Hermione storm off, crying.

Harry had felt terrible when Hermione did not appear to Herbology and Sally-Anne looked like she felt even worse than him, that was until they heard that Hermione had not even been upset about them, but that Ron had said something hurtful about her.
According to Lavender Brown it had been something along the lines of "No wonder the only person to even look at her is also the one Gryffindor to be on friendly terms with Malfoy."
While Ron was correct on calling him on friendly terms with Malfoy, this statement made Harry almost angry enough to start a fight in the middle of the greenhouse.

When Hermione did not appear at dinner Harry was getting really worried. He was about to go search for her when professor Quirrell stormed into the great hall announcing that, a troll had managed to get into the castle, and fainting immediately afterwards.

When Harry had just left the great hall, he heard Neville and Ron shouting his name.
"I'm searching for Hermione" he shouted over to them before taking off.
Because of Harrys bad physic they caught up with him after less than two minutes.

"Where are we even going" Neville cried out when he would not stop.
"I have to warn Hermione."
"Do you even know where she is?"
At this Harry paused for a second. Then he pointed in a direction with an uncertain frown on his face.
"I heard someone say she was in the girl's bathroom on the first floor" Ron quipped in.
"What are we waiting for then." Harry asked and started running in the almost exact direction he had been pointing at.

When they reached the first floor they could hear a mix panicked screams and wailing from the bathroom they were looking for.
Ron reached the floor first, opened it, looked inside, turned grey, and closed the door again.
"What." Harry shouted at him, but Ron looked like the thing he wanted to do most right now was running away.

After a few seconds of Harry glaring at him, Ron gulped turned back towards the door and opened it again.
In the bathroom stood a at least seven feet big mountain troll.
When Harry saw it he remembered something professor Quirrell had mentioned. "Most dark creatures have a fear inducing aura, that makes fighting them incredibly difficult even if you know how to do so", granted Quirrell had needed about two minutes for that sentence, but Harry now understood perfectly well what the man had meant.

"The two of you distract him, while I get Hermione" he told Neville and Ron.
While Neville looked like he was about to puke, he nodded and started throwing debris, which was littering the floor, at the troll.

The troll that was just about to smash his wooden club into Hermione, who's screams had long died on her lips, but then turned around to see Neville throwing pebbles at him.
Ron had just started running towards a smashed cabin to blast its broken door into the troll using Flippendo.

By the time Harry had managed to reach Hermione, Ron had already blasted the troll with the door, which seemed to only enrage it more.
Harry noticed in passing that the wailing they all had heard wasn't coming from Hermione, but one of the destroyed loos instead.
Hermione had been all but in shock, but once Harry reached for her and told her to run if she wanted to live she instead looked like she had not a fear in the world. Rather than running like Harry had advised her to, she pulled out her wand, pointed it at one of the former stone sinks.

"Wingardium Leviosa"

The big piece of debris that had formally been a sink slowly started moving into the air. It hovered over the troll's head for a second before crashing down into it.
The troll was not amused.

Harry looked in shock at the Troll, then to Hermione who had managed to knock herself out with the same spell that had already knocked her out once before.
The troll which did not understand where the sink had come from turned to the closest target once again, Neville, who was currently lying on the ground, because a piece of the sink that had just crashed into the troll had hit him.

Neville was about to die. He knew it, but was still unable to do anything about it. He would have tried to use Flippendo in the hope that the troll would fall over, but Neville was still the one person in class who was unable to quick cast that spell.
He was about to close his eyes for the last time, when he saw Harry pick up a long wooden splinter from the ground before charging the troll. Wand in one hand, splinter in the other he jumped on the trolls back before ramming the splinter up its nose.
The troll cried out, but otherwise ignored both the piece of wood and the wizard on his back, while closing the distance between itself and Neville.

"Flippendo" Harry cried out while pointing his wand at the splinter which made it shoot up further into the nose of the troll. The troll stumbled and fell. Right at Neville.

At this moment professors Snape, McGonagall and Quirrell came into the room.
Quirrell shot a Flippendo at Neville, before anyone else could do anything. He hit the wall, which was made of wool for some reason.

"What is going on here." Shrieked professor McGonagall who had her wand in hand.
Instead of starting to lecture her student's professor McGonagall turned to Quirrell.
"And what were you thinking, the boy could have died, had he hit the wall like that. And could you please stop wailing, Mrs. Warren? It's not like you were in any danger."
"H-he w-would h-have also d-died had I done n-nothing" Quirrell countered.
"And you had no other spell that could have gotten him to safety that would not have killed him too?" She asked in an exasperate voice.

Five minutes and ten points to Gryffindor later they all, expect professors Snape and Quirrell, arrived in the hospital wing.

To Ginny Weasley,

Hi, Harry here. Sorry for not writing you earlier, but I was busy with school stuff.
Hogwarts is awesome, even if it is a lot more dangerous than I would have expected.
We, that is Hermione, Ron, Neville and me, where attacked by a mountain troll today.

Don't worry, no one was hurt… much. Neville was hit with some shrapnel and Ron strained his left foot while jumping out of the way, but other than that everyone was fine.

Other than that Hogwarts has been great. We sleep in dorms with very comfy beds. We get to eat great meals. And most importantly we get to learn magic.

I managed to levitate a feather today in class and blasted a piece of wood into a troll's nose with the pushing curse this evening. I think this was the best Halloween I ever had.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will be like, since it's the day Neville beat You-know-who and all that. I should probably thank him for offing the guy who killed my parents, even if I would have preferred it if he had done so one day earlier.

Whatever, while I don't like my aunt and uncle they are still family, right?

I'm kind of sleepy since I drank that potion madam Pomfrey gave me, that woman really is overprotective, I wasn't even hurt, and she still wanted to keep me in the hospital wing for observation, only because I jumped on the back of a troll.

Anyway, I'm tired and going to bed now, if you have any questions ask me in your letter, I will ask Hedwig to stay at your place, so you can just give her your letter instead of having to send another owl all the way to Scotland.

-Harry

AN

Hey there, sorry this took so long. I could make excuses for why it did take so long and some of them would be quite good, but the last three weeks or so are entirely on me, so I won't even try to talk myself out of it.

There is a little joke hidden in this chapter but I'm not sure if I should point it out or not ^^

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful week.