Harry amidst the Vaults of Stone
Chapter 21
Harry woke up to the disconcerting sensation of sunlight on his face.
The post-dawn glow from the windows, reflected in a myriad directions by the glass globes scattered around the east-facing room, had chanced upon a crack in the strange hangings around Harry's bed. Now it flooded across his eyelids.
Kevin Entwhistle was sitting at the long table beneath the windows, surrounded by pencils and screwed-up bits of parchment. He looked slightly hollow-eyed.
"Did you sleep?" Harry asked, easing the crick in his neck from the unfamiliar bed, then pulling on his school uniform.
The sandy blonde boy looked up. "Oh... Morning, Harry. Not much. Just trying to write a letter, I hope I didn't wake you."
Harry wandered over to investigate the discarded parchment wads, picking one up and blinking in surprise.
"Paper," the other boy supplied. "I bought parchment with my other supplies in Diagon Alley, but when I saw that real paper seemed to be in short supply for wizards, I brought some of my own."
"Most modern books are printed on it," Harry said. "And there is – newsprint, I think they call it. For newspapers, yes? Interesting." He put the ball aside and chanced a glance out the window.
Distant roofs and even further ground glared back at him. He shrank back.
"If you want to claim one of the shelves, I've already put my stuff away," said Kevin, chewing on his pencil. "And some of Terry's, since he left his trunk out."
Harry glanced askance at the boy. That seemed a little invasive, but perhaps it was a wizard thing. ...Ha, for all he knew, it was a human thing. He scowled, hoping he hadn't missed out on many social mores common to humanity.
Harry turned to the shelves. Things had been thrown onto them completely haphazardly. 'Haphazard' seemed to be Kevin's style; the boy had managed to get both sides of his collar crooked this morning, and a tuft of stray hair was sticking straight up on his head.
Kevin finished whatever he was doing at the table, then sat on the edge of the table and watched Harry stow his possessions. After a while, the boy glanced at his wrist. "Not far gone seven. Breakfast won't be served for more than an hour yet, according to the prefects. Want to wander around?"
"Yes." Harry turned to the third bed, which was emanating faint snores. "Should we wake Terry?"
"It's a little early for most people."
"Really? I would usually be up by now. And you're up, yes?"
"We might be the exception. I don't know how long he expects to sleep." Kevin took a pencil from behind his ear. "I'll write him a note so he knows we didn't just abandon him."
Harry was secretly relieved to find that the small, teardrop-shaped bathroom next door provided the same functionality in the same way as the ones in Underfoot. He had been a little concerned about weird wizard plumbing.
He readied himself for the day, then walked down through the empty common room with Kevin. Both of them detoured around the room's circumference to glance over the scores of books. On leaving, Harry immediately turned around again to experiment with the doorknocker.
"What goes up a chimney down, but not down a chimney up?" the bird - Kevin identified it as an eagle - asked promptly.
While Harry was still working through the syntax of this, Kevin said, "an umbrella", and the door swung wide. The explanation of how this fit the riddle took some time. Harry resolved to check the question first thing each morning, in case his only access to the common room involved the weird minutiae of surface weather.
They travelled down the winding stairs of West Tower, then stepped through the Exit Arch and spiralled back up the outside of it. Harry kept his face turned towards the stone wall. He had lived with depths all his life, in the tunnels and chasms and ancient magma vents beneath Underfoot. Depths he could handle. Heights seemed to be another thing altogether.
At the top of the steps squatted the dark and slightly rank Owlery. When they walked in, a small owl swooped down and perched on Kevin's head, ruffling his already messy hair. After some fumbling with bits of string, the muggleborn boy enticed it to deliver the letter he had written to his parents. He watched doubtfully as the creature winged off into the distance.
"Gringotts mainly uses message tubes for internal stuff, but owls are meant to be reasonably reliable," Harry said. "Nocturnal, though, so it might take a while to get there. Depending on where you live, I suppose."
"Bristol," said Kevin. "The southwest," he added when Harry shrugged helplessly. "I just hope it gets there at all. My mum wants me to write at least twice a week."
"Yes?" Harry adjusted his glasses for the darkness, looking up into the eaves. "Hmmm. The Owlery at home isn't nearly as varied. I suppose most of these are student owls."
"I guess."
They set off down through the ringing silence of the stone halls, bewilderingly empty of students – it seemed that Kevin was right; wizards slept late, and they didn't see a single other person. Of course, the enormous size of the castle didn't help.
It did help them get lost, though.
Harry thought he had a very good direction-sense, from hunting in the tunnels and occasional forays into the Unfathomable Maze below the vaults. The efficacy of the mental map he had been building up was rather reduced by the possibility, in Hogwarts, that you might walk down a staircase and emerge on a landing two stories above, next to a wall that deliberately tried to disguise itself as a different part of the castle each time you looked at it.
Kevin mumbled for a while about non-Euclidean geometry, and then began to wonder aloud whether they should have brought a ball of string.
They found their way from Ravenclaw Tower to a windowed corridor much too high to be the third floor of the main keep, even though that was the only point the tower actually touched. A faded portrait of an axe-wielding berserker paused in his morning jog to tell them it was in fact the seventh floor, before continuing on his way, axeblade slapping against his naked thigh. Harry had seen wizarding portraiture before – it was on his rather long list of things to investigate, occupying the first five pages of a new notebook – but it took a while for Kevin to calm down and stop prodding the empty canvas.
They set off to look for a downwards staircase, and instead found themselves in a series of octagonal rooms. Each room had four doors, most of them leading into another octagonal room very slightly different from the previous, although sometimes they stepped from a door into the room they just left. After five minutes of rising panic and scores of nearly-identical rooms, Kevin flung all four doors of the current room open, found that one led into a large foyer instead of another octagon, and stepped through.
Harry hastened after him, but resolved to come back with some chalk, a compass, a long rope and a backpack full of supplies as soon as he had a day free.
They stood in the shadow of a statue of a one-legged wizard holding a bunch of carrots, which dominated the seventh-floor foyer. The associated plaque named him "Lachlan the Lanky", and there may have been a story to discover there, but Harry and Kevin were more interested in the flight of marble stairs that led downward.
The sixth floor was a little more navigable, although it was disconcerting when a pair of ghosts drifted up through the staircase right in front of them, deep in conversation.
Harry grimaced. "Everything in this place is either two-dimensional or already dead. No rails, weird stairs, and I bet there isn't a thing to hunt."
"Oh, you hunt?" a familiar voice called in inquiry. "My dad bought me a slingshot to go after rabbits."
Jan Runcorn swung into sight, clinging to the rail of a staircase as it rumbled around across the abyss of the central stairwell towards them. She stepped off as it settled into its new position, and looked Harry up and down.
"There's not much to hunt in a goblin hole, is there?"
Harry silently vowed to correct this widespread idea that goblins lived in holes in the ground. "I think you would be surprised. Did you meet Kevin Entwhistle?"
"Hi Kev, I'm Jan. Cripes, you look a mess. Ravenclaw too, huh? Jolly good, though it's not for me."
She fell into step with them as they continued down the staircases, rattling her wand idly against the bannisters.
"Hey, have you got lost yet? Pretty easy to here. I got up to have a creep around, and still haven't found the ground floor. I wanna see what it's like outside. I heard from some of the seniors that there's a big tree out on the grounds that'll try to do a murder on you if you get too close."
Her eyes gleamed. "Cor! We should go find it, and heave rocks at it or something. Or go for a climb, even!"
Harry and Kevin shared a look.
"I've never climbed a tree in my life," said Harry. "I would probably want to start with something smaller than a 'murder tree', yes?"
"Yeah? Well, you gotta know how to climb! The big forest, you reckon?"
"Well, I was thinking the Great Hall, for a start."
They headed steadily downward, but stopped on a whim to peer around the wings of the fifth floor. The North Wing in particular looked interesting, as it housed a book-filled study hall on one side and was entirely bricked off on the other. Tattered warning signs hung on the walls. As they explored, Jan rambled on about how weird it was having to share a room with two other girls, and that the Gryffindor boys had it worse, since all four were stuck in one room.
Kevin and Harry felt the same, as neither had siblings. The topic 'family' was therefore quickly dispensed with, and they talked instead about their pets, whilst winding down the central staircases. Then one of Hogwarts' little eccentricities took them into a corridor leading from the second floor up to the fourth floor library, which was currently closed.
"This is going to be annoying to deal with on a daily basis," Harry observed mildly.
Two invisible staircases, one door woven into a tapestry and three moving suits of armour later – and after passing three different doors on three different floors, all of which were marked 'Hospital Wing' – they arrived at the Great Hall, just as people were starting to trickle in from various directions.
"Great," said Jan, wending her way towards the Gryffindor table, then yelling back across the room at them. "I'll see you later for climbing, yeah?"
Harry thought breakfast at half past eight was something of a luxury. He would have to find something to occupy his mornings. Luckily, going by some of the older Ravenclaws, books at breakfast-time weren't frowned upon.
There were pancakes and pitchers of juice on the table, and still more meat than he was used to. Sausages he recognised and could name; thin strips of hogmeat he could not, although the taste was familiar. Harry also tried 'scrambled eggs', and politely swallowed before moving the remainder firmly to the side of his plate.
"Good morning Mr Potter, Mr Entwhistle! I'm glad to see you made it down on your own! Here are your timetables, boys, try not to lose them."
Harry turned at the squeaky voice. "Ah - good morning, sir!" Professor Flitwick handed him two rectangles of card, and beamed. "It is! It is, a rather good morning indeed. I'll see you in Charms in a few hours, boys!"
Flitwick moved on down the table, his low head level with those of the seated students.
Harry passed Kevin one timetable and began to peruse his own. Each class was an hour and a half long, and they had three or four each day. The core classes seemed to be Charms, Herbology and Transfiguration, of which he had three periods each week.
There was a short break in the morning and a full hour off for lunch. It didn't seem to Harry to be a very busy schedule. There were gaps on Monday and Wednesday, too.
"And Thursday morning free, luckily," added Kevin. "Astronomy the night before."
Harry had to think for a moment before remembering: astronomy was the business of looking at features of the sky at night. "Ah. Understandable then, yes? So, Charms later this morning, and then three hours of Herbology."
"I'm looking forward to Charms," said Kevin, who didn't appear to be eating, but had secured a small jug of coffee for his own use. "Professor Flitwick seems cool. Don't know anything about plants, though. Do you?"
"Not really. Hold, there's Neville. Neville!" Harry called.
The boy flinched, then turned and wandered across the floor towards them, flinching away from a girl whose foot he stepped on in the process. He looked pale and distracted; upset, even. "Uh... hi, Harry..."
"Neville Longbottom, this is Kevin Entwhistle."
"Hi, Kevin."
"Good morning, er, nice to meet you, Neville. Did you have trouble sleeping, too?"
Harry regarded the smaller boy. "Indeed, you look rather ill, yes? Sit down and finish my scrambled eggs, they're... they're very nutritious."
"Oh... thanks, I'm not hungry. No, I..." Neville fidgeted and plucked at his robes. "Some of my dorm-mates were talking about, about the Lestrange breakout. It's... it's kind of upsetting. I'd better get to the Hufflepuff table, actually, or they'll think I got lost again..."
Kevin jerked his head at the boy's retreating back as he stumbled off, asking a silent question.
Harry shrugged, and leaned in to mutter. "Sensitive, I suppose. He seems rather... weak-minded. Unfortunate."
Hermione, Terry and the others made it down to breakfast later with the help of the Ravenclaw prefects – Terry thanking his two dorm-mates for letting him sleep in.
Harry was getting bored of listening to the excited chatter, which tended to repeat the same subjects over and over. Even Hermione was speculating endlessly about classes; he'd hoped she would prove more interesting.
Harry was just considering going over to find his three acquaintances amidst the Slytherins, when two of the prefects called the group together. Since the Ravenclaw first years had a free period now, they were to be dragged off for an official tour of the castle.
The terse male prefect from the previous night led the way. He was apparently called Robert, although Alice, the talkative blonde seventh-year who was also accompanying them, referred to him as 'Chalky' for some reason. The eleven new Ravenclaws were marched around, learning the main hallways, classrooms and lavatories, as well as the library, headmaster's office, and a few other locations of importance. Harry was amused to see that even the senior students took a wrong turning once.
They walked around for hours, then stopped for morning tea. Finally, they headed back up to the common room - "the answer is umbrella" - to gather their supplies for the day's classes. 'Chalky' Robert and Alice took them down a secret passage to the Charms classroom on the third floor, and then promptly abandoned the young students for their own classes.
Harry focused on learning his housemates' names, making an effort to talk to each of them.
A solemn, meticulous-looking boy introduced himself as Anthony, while Mandy Brocklehurst was pointedly ignoring him for some reason, speaking exclusively to red-haired Morag. A few others hung back from the group, skimming idly through textbooks or doing nothing in particular. Harry was just getting into an interesting argument with Michael Corner about why Hogwarts needed secret passages when the door to the Charms classroom swung open.
"Come in! Do come in, everyone!" called Professor Flitwick's excitable voice.
The Charms classroom was large and garish: stonework painted bright colours, a chandelier to rival those of Gringotts slowly swaying around the ceiling, and a selection of brass musical instruments on the walls. A huge gramophone stood at the back, next to a large glass display case containing taxidermied fruits and vegetables. One particularly large cantaloupe was moving haltingly around its stand on tiny legs. Several freestanding blackboards – none of them black – were set up around the room, some with ribbons and diagrams pinned to them. The desks themselves looked out of place in their very mundanity.
On a high stool, behind a table whose surface was entirely covered with books, sat Professor Flitwick. He waved his hand and the door closed behind the last of the students.
The Charms instructor immediately called the roll, asking each student to say something about themselves as they progressed. After that he talked about the 'Hogwarts experience', and told them to come to him with any questions at all, or ask a prefect.
Then they undertook strange and mildly pointless group activities such as word games involving people's names, and locating everyone's homes on an old, crackling map of Britain which Flitwick enlarged for the purpose.
It was all rather different from the one-on-one teaching Harry had received from Brother Filius during his forays into Underfoot.
Quite late in the hour, they actually began a lesson. It was at the most basic level, since some of the students had never used magic before: some fundamental theory of magic, a little on proper wand grip, and the invocation of coloured sparks. By the end of the class, everyone had managed to spurt sparkling motes across the floor, Michael had accidentally set his textbook on fire, and Kevin's hair had managed to accrue a scattering of strangely persistent sparks.
Flitwick was rattling on enthusiastically about the exciting history of the Rainbow Charm when he seemed to realise the time. "Ah! That's enough for today. No homework, but practise that wandwork! Enjoy your day, everyone. Mind you're not trampled on the stairs in the stampede for lunch – try wearing a tall hat, it works for me!"
Lunch was ...interesting. The food was nothing special, although Harry's vocabulary was still expanding with every meal. A lot of the words he had read, but he couldn't always match the sounds to the written form.
Most of the older students were loudly catching up with their friends, and his nearest housemates seemed to be arguing about whether only 'bad people' came back as ghosts, and he was getting a slight headache, but still it was ...interesting.
The main reason for this was the writhing, chittering ball of insects that appeared on his plate in the middle of the meal.
It happened while he was staring into space, thinking about the complexity of warding a building as fundamentally volatile as Hogwarts. There were no prefects nearby.
Harry instinctively jerked backwards as the vermin – centipedes, grubs and beetles, for the most part – appeared. Then he grimaced and stared around. A number of faces were turned towards him, from all over the Great Hall. The buzz of conversation rose, and there was a current of laughter.
"Jesus," said Kevin, who was sitting opposite. Terry, beside him, stared at the plate in confusion. A girl nearby bit off a high-pitched shriek.
Harry put an empty dish on top of the plate to stop the crawlers escaping. After a moment of thought, he pushed the platter away. He was finished anyway.
"Somebody's trying to take the mickey out of you, mate," said an older boy from along the table. He slid down the bench towards Harry, then leaned forward and tapped the metal bowl with his wand. He raised it again, showing that the plate was now empty. "Hey, ta-da."
Harry absently nodded his thanks, aware that eyes were still observing his reactions. He observed them right back. Obviously last night's "you don't seriously eat insects, do you" theme had been spread around.
At the head table, only one teacher seemed to have noticed; the Potions professor was staring uninterestedly in his direction. Hermione, though, had got up and was marching up to one of the prefects to report the incident, for whatever good that would do. Harry sighed, and rolled his eyes. If that was the worst he was going to get for being brought up goblin, then he considered himself lucky.
"I am bored already. Extremely bored ...already."
These were the first words out of Blaise's mouth when Harry approached him in Greenhouse One as they waited for class to start.
Herbology was held with the Slytherins, and they had a double period of it on Monday afternoons. Theodore lurked in the shadow of a large, purple bush, while Hermione compared Charms notes with Padma.
"Bored with classes?" Harry felt compelled to respond, even though he was trying to examine the large, strange structure of glass and metal pipes which was apparently how plants were grown on the surface.
"Oh, the classes we've had – Charms and then Transfiguration – aren't so bad. No, I'm bored with Herbology. All it is, is plants. Plants and dirt. Dirt, plants and dirt." Blaise drummed his fingers fretfully. "And if I'm this bored before it even starts, three hours from now there's probably going to be some sort of explosion."
"There's meant to be some really dangerous plants, though," Michael Corner chimed in from his seat nearby on a bag of compost. "Carnivorous, uh, poisonous, and things. Big teeth. Tentacles."
Blaise looked down his nose at the Ravenclaw boy. "Unless that stupid purple bush tries to eat Theodore, I'm not holding my breath."
"They probably wouldn't give us anything very nasty on the first day," Harry agreed. "Especially not in a room they keep unlocked." Nevertheless, he was feeling glad that he had thought to tuck his knife into the deep pockets of his robes. "As you mention it, though, Jan was talking about some sort of killer tree this morning."
"Boys," Hermione huffed. "Honestly. We're here to learn."
"Runcorn is supposedly a girl, actually," Blaise said. "I could see how you got confused though. In point of fact, though, nobody asked you."
"So, Padma," Harry said hurriedly, as Hermione opened her mouth to take the painfully obvious bait. "Are you doing well? You are glad you're not in the same house as your sister, yes?"
The Slytherin girl folded her hands neatly. "Yes, although I don't think I'm fitting into Slytherin terribly well."
"Why?"
She frowned. "The other girls... don't like me."
Hermione was suddenly listening with keen attention, as if desperate to pick up tips on why 'other girls' might not like a person.
"How do you know?"
"They've made it fairly obvious," Blaise interjected dryly. "The problem, you see, is that she is, shall we say, of a foreign appearance – a swarthy nature – an ethnic persuasion – a bit of a wo-"
"Enough," she said angrily. "I'm third-generation English. Why don't they bother you, anyway? You're- uh- Italian or something, right?"
He shrugged lazily. "Close enough. It's probably just my good looks and air of mystery that have them hanging on my every word, I suppose. And it helps that I don't really give a damn what they think of me."
Padma and Hermione proffered him identical frowns and cries of "language!" in unison.
Harry, feeling lost, asked for clarification.
"That sounds pointlessly complicated," he said a few minutes later, looking around at the various idling students. "I didn't know that skin colour denoted anything in particular. I had assumed it was the same as with goblins: just lots of, what would you say, variability within a single population, yes?"
"Really? How does that work? What about goblins from other countries?"
"I don't know, but I've seen all shades of skin from grey to green to orange, and a much wider range of physical characteristics than in humans, I would say." Harry began to tick them off on his fingers. "Lots of different eye colours, although yellow is usual, and different shape fangs, pointed chins or different noses, lots of different face shapes, occasional horns..."
"Alright, you chaps, listen up at the back there!"
They turned around. Professor ...Sprout, Harry recalled – he had read a book by another Sprout, now that he thought of it, something tangentially botanical – had bustled in. She called the class into a rough semblance of attention, and began.
The Professor seemed to be a rather easy-going person, and Herbology itself started off easily. The first-years would each have the responsibility of growing several non-magical herbs over the course of the year, to give them what Sprout called 'the knack'. In class, they would learn about, and sometimes tend to, flora of a more arcane variety.
They had their choice of various surface herbs, none of which were familiar to Harry. Potting mix was heaped in the corner, water was available from a spigot, and pots of all sizes bedecked the benches. It was simple, really. As they worked, Professor Sprout informed them that the Ravenclaw students could take their plants to their rooms, to keep on their windowsills, if they wanted.
Harry tamped down the soil over his seeds, and leaned over the gardening bench to speak to Blaise. "Don't the Slytherin dormitories have windows? Or are you just not to be trusted with herbs, yes?"
"We're in the dungeons, under the Lake, you know," Padma said, fastidiously sweeping the last of the stray dirt away from the table in front of her. "There's not much natural light."
Theodore and Blaise both looked at her in irritation. "You can't tell him that!" Blaise hissed. "It's meant to be a Slytherin secret!"
"Oh, really. What's he going to do? Sneak inside, magically disguised as a Slytherin, and interrogate us about matters of great import in our own lair where our guard is down?"
"My guard is never down," Blaise said, apparently oblivious to the fact that one of the Slytherin girls at the next bench was flicking pieces of twig into his hair. "But you never know. A few of our compatriots are stupid enough for it to work."
His eyes flickered to the three Slytherin boys not sharing their table.
"You lucky mole cubs," Harry sighed. "I'm stuck at the top of a big windy needle with the owls, and you get to be safe underground."
While Hermione launched into an avid defence of the apparently excessively historical Ravenclaw Tower – as if historicity was somehow relevant to the discussion – Harry followed Blaise's gaze to the other Slytherins.
The brutes who followed at Draco Malfoy's footsteps, along with two grinning Slytherin girls, were currently shooting glances his way. They were engaged in the business of miming to each other what he would guess were plates full of bugs. Malfoy himself was wearing a thin smile – if he had been a goblin, it would have been construed as either suggestiveness or indigestion – and kept turning slightly to look for Harry's reaction. Mandy and Morag were working at the same bench and seemed to be getting on well with their Slytherin cohorts, all taking turns to look pointedly at him.
Harry fought down a scowl. It was ...rather pathetic, really. As he turned away to put his finished pots in a neat row, Blaise vocalised a close approximation of his thoughts. "You know, I keep hoping those idiots have some cunning plot which involves looking like they're desperately seeking your attention. Tracey talked about you for half an hour straight this morning. I swear, one facial scar and suddenly the world revolves around you."
"Jealous, yes?" Harry bared his teeth at his friend. "Pass me that trowel and lay your head on the table. Forehead up."
Blaise looked thoughtfully at the implement indicated. "Nnnnno, no, I think I'll keep my face intact, just in case I have some use for it someday. I'm not sure that the attention of Tracey and Draco is worth it, anyway."
Harry continued to quietly exchange banter with Blaise, who described Draco's attempts to lord it over everyone around him, as the Slytherins at the other table grew louder and louder with their antics. It was more than mildly amusing.
He waited until Sprout called their attention again, before glancing at Draco, who was now looking angry at being ignored. Harry filed the boy away in his head under P for 'predictable' and 'pretentious'.
Professor Sprout, obviously noticing the growing raucousness of her class now that all their seeds had been planted, briefly explained how to care for the herbs as they sprouted. Then she moved on to the introduction of an magical plant, meant to showcase some of the interesting features of Herbology.
The plant was a sparkling bright-blue Nepenthes Praedictas Fatales, or Pixie Pitcher. Its sickly scent attracted small magical creatures like doxies, pixies and fairies, which fell into the curiously-shaped and paralytic-fluid-filled gourd of the pitcher plant. They were then chewed and digested for nutrition; the bright colours of the prey contributed to each plant's variable colouration.
The professor used various parts of the plant to introduce some botanical terminology, and cautioned that the vast majority of magical plants were not easily identified: many did not move or bite or glow at all, but had uses in potions, or grew exclusively in highly magical areas, or could only be seen by wizards.
Harry immediately began to wonder exactly what made a plant 'magical'. Surely there were mundane plants that could be used in potion brewing. And what of those plants that could be used in potions, but wizards didn't know it? Was it enough that a plant had magic in it – whatever magic was – for it to be a magical plant?
When he voiced his concerns, Professor Sprout looked surprised and enthused at the question. "In fact, my mention of potions may have been misleading. It's only that most plants used in potions are magical, so this is just one of the signs that you are likely dealing with a magical plant. Similarly, there are supposedly plants that glow or move around without any magical at all." She looked thoughtful. "So I would say, then, that a magical plant is any plant that either uses magic, or feeds on magic."
"So how would you, er, determine the magical or mundane nature of a plant, if it's not obviously magical?"
"Well, if you truly needed to be sure, then you could use one of several extremely advanced enchantments designed to draw the magic out of an area or object. If you performed such a series of spells and the plant died, or its function or form changed, or a potion made with it failed, then you would be safe to conclude that it was magical. Now, three points to Ravenclaw for an inquiring mind, and come see me in my office if you want to talk about it more. We need to move on..."
By the time Herbology ended at five, Kevin was thoroughly smeared with dirt, and Blaise was composing poetry out loud due to boredom.
Harry and his room-mates took their plants up to the large table and windowsills in their dormitory. He read a few pages of his Transfiguration textbook while Kevin and Terry played a few hands of some sort of card game. Then the the three of them wandered around the castle before dinner, Terry talking incessantly about a boat trip he'd once been on, until Jan Runcorn accosted them and dragged them off to the fabled murder tree.
The thing was nothing short of enormous, and it kicked up a storm at their approach. With a few handsigns, Harry activated the distance viewing charm in his spectacles and looked at the wooden marker at the base of the tree. "Whomping Willow," he said, reading the faded letters aloud.
"Heh." Jan started searching around on the ground, picking up sticks. "Cool." The first few in her volley fell short, but the last was viciously swatted out of the air by the tree's near-prehensile limbs.
"Race you to the base of the trunk and back?" Terry asked after a while, grinning.
Kevin and Harry exchanged glances. "I'm thinking: no."
"I wasn't serious, you guys," Terry said, then saw the expression on Jan's face. "I wasn't serious!"
She turned to stare at the Whomping Willow, which continued to shake enormous limbs at her.
After a while, when the tree had lost interest in them, Terry said, "I think we should go in. It must be close to dinner."
Kevin started and came down from whatever castle in the sky he had been inhabiting. "Oh... yes. Jan, are you coming? Jan?"
She reluctantly turned away from the tree, and sighed.
"Ah, horse puckey. Yeah, yeah."
Kevin glanced at her as they made their way across the grounds. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. Eh, maybe a little bit disappointed."
"Disappointed? In the lethality of the murder tree?" Harry couldn't help asking.
"No... no, not that. I just felt like I could have taken him."
"Could have 'taken'... the murder tree."
"Oh, he was a worthy opponent to be sure, but right at the end there he was beginning to show signs of weakness. Cracks in the armour, if you will."
"What? You can't fight a killer tree," Terry exclaimed. "You can't even fight a regular tree! It's a million times heavier than you!"
"And yet, there he was: right on the verge of surrender."
Dinner was a fairly cordial affair. No insects were involved, and Dumbledore didn't seem to do anything even tangentially related to squirrels.
Afterwards, the young Ravenclaws mainly congregated in the common room, although Hermione and Lisa Turpin were absent, presumably studying. Or "studying already," as Michael Corner disgustedly put it.
The older students had taken the best seats, but Pip cleared the first years a spot and asked them about their classes. By now, most of the Ravenclaws who were interested in the fact that Harry Potter was amongst them had taken their turn sitting near to him at meals to grill him with questions, so he was left alone. Harry took the opportunity to fixate on the nearest bookshelf, and began to avidly absorb one of the first tomes he picked up.
Kevin and Terry returned to their muggle card game. After a while, they attracted the attention of Stephen Cornfoot, who sat down and claimed to never have seen non-exploding cards. The pair did a fairly disastrous job of explaining the rules, contradicting each other constantly, and then shuffled the pack for a new game.
Kevin started dealing cards to Harry so that he could play as well. He was about to decline when Manager Bogripple's orders echoed in his mind. "Adopt the manners and mannerisms of your peers", and such.
So Harry put A Compendium Of Magical Groves And Springs wistfully aside, picked up his cards, and did what he always did: try to work out the rules.
And all too soon, it was the end of another day.
Author's notes:
→ I shall re-route any accolades or gratitude to my friend Tilly, whose enthusiasm was responsible for me finally finishing this chapter.
→ Criticisms and suggestions should be directed at me as usual, perhaps in a review! Even a few words is much appreciated. I read them all, and wish I had time to reply to them all.
→ The next few chapters will go into detail about each class, and after that I will pan out and leave most of the minutiae up to the imagination. Next time: fun in Potions!