Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

A/N: I would like to thank everyone for their continued support, especially when the previous chapter took so long.

Based on several reviews, it seems there was some confusion over what the twins saw on the Marauder's Map in the last chapter. When I stated that they saw three names on the map, I meant they saw the names Fred Weasley, George Weasley, and Harry Potter. In hindsight, I can understand how this was confusing, but I refuse to accept that a group of school children could have created an artifact which can divine the true names of someone's soul. So while the map is a powerful and useful artifact, and will somewhat restrict Harry's movements in Hogwarts as long as the twins have it, it isn't going to give him away as Naruto Uzumaki or the container of the Juubi. I will probably go into more depth of the exact capabilities and restrictions of the map for the purposes of this fic in a later chapter.

Here is the new chapter though, and it's even on time. And of a more reasonable length too! Hope you all enjoy it.

Chapter 10 – First Classes

The morning seemed to come especially early for Harry. It was possible that might have been at least partially because he didn't go to bed until after four in the morning. But Harry could operate on three hours of sleep for quite a while before it really started to negatively impact him. For that matter, he could go about a week with no sleep at all without any significant loss of focus, though it started getting pretty annoying after a while. Still, chakra really was a wonderful thing, especially when you had it in truly enormous quantities.

And anyone who said that the ability to breath fire or move at superhuman speeds were the best part of being able to use chakra never had a chance to laugh at their barely conscious roommates as they stumbled into doors after only receiving those few hours of sleep without the benefits of chakra. Ron in particular didn't seem very appreciative of his amusement though.

But Harry didn't let that bother him, so he just waved over his shoulder and called out, "I'll see you guys in the Great Hall" as he hurried down the stairs into the common room.

The Gryffindor common room was still pretty messy from the prior night, but most of the current occupants were ignoring that. The majority of them were older students he had met in passing during the party, and they were generally gathering in small groups before heading out of the common room, presumably for breakfast. The only exception was also the only other first year already down in the common room.

Hermione Granger seemed to be spending her morning alternating between reading the rather thick tome on her lap and looking around with obvious disapproval at the signs of the previous night's excesses, which she had gone to bed far too early to have been a part of.

"Hey Hermione," Harry said with a smile and a small wave as he headed in her direction.

Of course this just focused her obvious ire on him, rather than the mess that had been left in the common room.

"Harry!" she exclaimed. "You really shouldn't have encouraged them to throw a party like that. According to Hogwarts: A History, it was against all kinds of school rules, and I think a few laws too! And if that wasn't bad enough, it was the night before the first day of class. Now people are going to have to go to their first classes of the year exhausted or even hung-over," she whispered harshly with an accompanying glare at one student a few years older than them who was clearly wincing at the light in the common room.

Not that the boy paid any attention to the glare, or even noticed it for that matter. He clearly had other things to concern himself with. And if he had been paying attention, he probably would have, like Harry, focused more on Hermione's feat of giving that entire tirade without taking a breath rather than any ineffectual scolding.

Hermione just continued with her little rant though. "We should have been reading through the first few chapters of our books again, or at least sleeping to make sure we are well rested for class. Not staying up unreasonably late and...partying."

She said the word with an impressive amount of scorn for an eleven year old. So much so that Harry was barely able to catch himself from bursting into laughter. That probably wouldn't have gone over well.

Instead, he just shook his head and waved for Hermione to follow him. "Come on Hermione, let's go to breakfast. We can talk on the way."

"Oh!" Her eyes widened and she seemed frozen in surprise at the invitation for a moment before she pulled herself together and flushed slightly as she quickly stuffed her book into her bag and stood. "Ok Harry," she answered in a softer tone.

They were silent for the few moments it took to walk out of the common room through the portrait entrance. And it wasn't one of those comfortable silences either. Actually it was pretty awkward.

Harry just ignored that and started talking once they were walking through the hallways. "Hermione, first of all, as I understand it, there is a potion to cure any hang-over anyone might have. And there is even one to give energy if someone is really so exhausted they can't focus. So any students really suffering can just go to the...school nurse? I guess?"

He gave a casual shrug and continued, "Well anyway, they can get fixed up in just a couple minutes. Besides, even if that wasn't true, this is just the first day of classes. While I haven't ever been to a magical class before, I refuse to believe that there is enough difference between magicals and muggles that the first classes of the year will be all that different. You know all they will do is hand out the syllabus and discuss what we will be learning this year. Maybe they will demonstrate a little of the magic we will be learning, and at best students will review what they have forgotten over the summer. So it really doesn't matter much if we are not quite at one hundred percent this morning."

Hermione looked horrified at the implication that what they were learning today might not be critical information requiring all of their focus to master. But she rallied herself and responded, "That's...That's not the point! The professors should have our full attention regardless of exactly what they are teaching. And even if their...condition can be fixed with magic, they really shouldn't be bothering the medi-witch with the problems they brought on themselves!

"And more importantly," she continued, "that doesn't change the fact that you were breaking the rules. Why, you could have all received detention on the very first night. Before classes even started!"

Harry just gave a shrug which virtually radiated his total lack of concern. "Yeah, possibly. That is our choice to take that risk though. I can't imagine that any student at the party last night didn't understand that we would probably get in some trouble in the unlikely event of Professor McGonagall deciding to drop in on us at one in the morning. But each of us decided that having some fun and meeting some new people was worth that risk. And also worth being tired and possibly hung-over in the morning. No one other than possibly ourselves were hurt, so that was our choice to make. Besides, there wasn't even enough alcohol there for anyone to drink enough to get dangerously drunk even if they wanted to. Not even with the pretty low alcohol tolerances of a bunch of teenagers."

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, probably angrily if her expression was anything to go by, but Harry quickly continued before she got a chance, "Look, you are clearly someone who cares a great deal about following all of the rules whenever possible." At her hurt expression, he quickly continued to reassure her, "And there isn't anything wrong with that. Really, there isn't, though some people will probably tell you there is. The world needs people like you at least as much as it needs people like me who have a certain casual disregard for the rules when necessary." He gave a thoughtful expression and tacked on, "Or entertaining."

That last comment didn't seem to reassure the girl, so he hurried on with, "Even Gryffindor, which seems to largely share that attitude of seeing the rules as more of a general guideline than a hard and fast line not to be crossed. But if you want to follow the rules, that should be your business. Other people should be allowed to make their own choices as long as they are not hurting anyone."

Hermione was clearly now thinking about what he said now, rather than just reacting in anger, but it was just as clear from her frown that she still didn't like it or approve. "But the rules are there for a reason. Someone didn't just randomly come along and decide how things should be just because they felt like making the students unhappy. The rules are there for our own good. So they should be followed by everyone, not just those who happen agree with them."

Harry nodded, which made Hermione start to smile, but then he said, "Well it's a good point, but not really realistic. First because not all rules are really for our own good. Frequently the people who created the rules didn't think through all the implications. Or sometimes they were even purposefully malicious in creating them." Cutting off Hermione's objection before it could begin, he once again continued, "People who create rules are people too. People with their own goals. Sometimes those goals are for everyone's best interest, and sometimes they are just for their own best interest.

"Anyway, even if that isn't the case, rules tend to be over-generalizations about what people need that don't really apply to all people or in all situations. For example, the particular rules in question from last night's little gathering...For many people, yeah, it probably would have been better for them to get a few more hours of sleep and not drink so much. For me though, I don't need as much sleep as most people, and as far as I can tell, it is literally impossible for me to drink enough to become intoxicated. Probably just something weird about my magic, but my point is that the reasons behind the rule not to stay up late drinking just don't apply in my case."

"Even if that is true," Hermione answered in a tone that said she still didn't agree, "You still acted as a bad example to a lot of other students that did suffer from those things."

"Yeah, but they are the ones who chose to do it. Besides, it could be argued that in this particular case the benefits of forming new friendships with our house-mates are greater in the long term than any of the minor consequences of last night anyway." Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair, which did absolutely nothing to change the short spikes it was in. "Regardless, people who decide they don't like or just don't want to follow a rule are going to find a way around it. It's hard enough to try and keep people from breaking rules in ways that do harm others. Wasting your time trying to convince people who are never going to listen not to break rules that at worst only harm themselves is ultimately going to be...Well, a waste of time. Not to mention drive people away from you."

Hermione had already been opening her mouth to make a retort when Harry's last sentence made her shut it with an audible click as she looked down at the floor in thought as they walked. Harry was content to give her time to think through his words, so they continued through the incredibly confusing hallways of Hogwarts vaguely in the direction of the Great Hall for another minute in silence.

Finally Hermione looked up at him and asked quietly, "Do I drive people away like that?"

Harry sighed before answering, "I've known you for less than twenty-four hours, so you probably know the answer to that question better than I do. But a lot of people who place high importance on following the rules tend to...well, no offence, but they tend to harp on about them to everyone around them who they see breaking rules. It's ok to explain your reasoning about why someone shouldn't do something, but if someone is going to do it anyway, going on and on about it doesn't do anything other than annoy them most of the time.

"If you want to follow the rules, more power to you. You should do it for your own good though. If others want to break the rules, as long as they are not hurting anyone, you need to be willing to let it go. You don't have to join them if you don't want to, but you have to let others make up their own minds, and maybe learn their own lessons from the consequences of taking those actions, if it comes to that. And even allow them to learn from their own mistakes sometimes. Or yes, you will drive them away."

He then gave her a comforting smile and continued, "Which I hope you don't do, because you seem like a very interesting and intelligent person. If you are willing to let people make up their own minds rather than force your own views on them, I think a lot of people will want to be friends with you."

Hermione's smile was a little tentative, and it was clear that she was still considering the implications of the conversation. But Harry was fairly certain that she would take it the right way once she worked everything out in her head.

The girl who reminded him so much of Sakura clearly had poor social skills and a skewed view of human interactions. But that was something he could help her with, and if she was willing to work with him, he looked forward to getting to know her better.

Breakfast had been a fairly quiet affair, at least initially. Hermione was still clearly working through her issues, so while they did speak about small things in an effort to get to know one another better, there were also long gaps in the conversation. And Harry left her to it. They could discuss it more in the future, but for now, he gave Hermione her space.

Eventually most of the rest of Gryffindor joined them, and things livened up quite a bit. This was especially true once the Weasley twins showed up and started carrying on as appeared to be usual for them. Though apart from the occasional long considering glance in Harry's direction, they seemed to be ignoring the events of the previous night.

They probably hadn't realized that most of the night's adventure had been a prank on them at Harry's hands. Not that he expected them to realize that any time soon, but that didn't make it any less funny. He did hope he could be there for their expressions when they did finally realize the degree to which a first year had screwed with their heads before classes even started. That should be almost as entertaining as their reactions last night had been.

But eventually Professor McGonagall came around and passed out the schedules for the year, so Harry quickly gathered Hermione, Ron, and Neville together to grab their books from the Gryffindor Tower and start their search for the Transfiguration classroom, which it turned out was first on Monday mornings.

The castle continued to be a little frustrating with its unwillingness to conform to basic three-dimensional space, making finding the right way to get to a given location a little difficult. But fortunately the four of them left half an hour before class started, and so managed to arrive almost ten minutes early as the first people in the classroom.

Well the first except for the cat sitting on the teacher's desk in the front. Though he wasn't sure it was actually a cat. Apart from the cerberus of the prior night, it was the most magical animal he had seen yet. The magic was far too complicated for him to have any idea what the cat could do with it at this early stage in his magical training, but it was definitely too much magic for it to just be a normal cat. Perhaps one of those kneazles that he had seen mentioned in his books.

But he disregarded that as unimportant for now and physically dragged Hermione to the back of the classroom with Ron and Neville, in spite of her obvious struggles to escape and sit in the front. But she didn't end up saying anything, so Harry just manhandled her into the seat next to his, giving her a bright grin in response to her annoyed glare at the treatment.

But she quickly seemed to forget her anger as the four got into a conversation about what sorts of things they might learn to use Transfiguration for this year as other students slowly trickled in.

Eventually the last couple students hurried into the room several minutes before half past eight, when the class was scheduled to begin.

Once the last student had taken his seat, everyone began looking around for Professor McGonagall. Like Harry, the others in the class really didn't think that McGonagall was the sort to be late to her own class, but as the minutes ticked by, it seemed more and more likely.

Then, rather suddenly and without warning at the exact scheduled beginning of the class, the cat which had long been sitting quietly on the desk leaped off, rapidly transforming into Professor McGonagall before her feet even touched the ground.

Without pausing for any questions or even allowing the murmurs of amazement which began to sweep through the room, the stern professor began her speech, "Welcome to my class. I am Professor McGonagall, and this is Transfiguration, which is the art of changing the form of things. Transfiguration is an incredibly useful and versatile art which will serve you well throughout your lives should you put the necessary time and effort into learning it.

"But Transfiguration is also some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she continued with a threatening tone. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

She then demonstrated several uses of Transfiguration which were probably far too advanced for first years. They were interesting though. Apparently not only could objects be changed into different objects, but even into living organisms, which was demonstrated by turning a desk into a pig and back.

This was rather fascinating to Harry, because although he could create objects, animals, or whatever else he wanted from nothing with the extremely advanced chakra technique The Creation of All Things, he could not change the form of something which already existed. So the idea of being able to do so with magic, especially when it was simple enough to be taught to eleven year olds, greatly interested him.

Unfortunately, after that initial demonstration, most of the rest of the class was fairly boring. Professor McGonagall seemed to be a decent teacher, if a bit excessively stern. But Transfiguration on Mondays was a double class, meaning it lasted slightly over three hours. That was a long time to go over a bunch of dry magical theory and transfiguration laws Harry was pretty sure he could figure out a way to break by the end of the year.

After all, if magic could shift one thing into another, there was no reason it couldn't be used to change something into food or gold. Especially since animals could be created, which were just food which hadn't yet been cooked. Personally he expected that those 'magical laws' were created by the government to prevent the disruption of the economy and taught to students as absolute laws to prevent anyone from even attempting such things.

But regardless of if he eventually found a way to break these laws or not, it was pretty boring learning all about them.

Finally, in the last half an hour of class, Professor McGonagall began the first practical segment of any of the student's magical training. A wave of excitement washed through the class as the professor passed out a match to each student. Not even Harry was exempt. Although he could already create displays of power which dwarfed even the best Professor McGonagall could produce, much less the very first spell taught to first-year students, this was still his first foray into gaining direct control over his magic. And magic would someday open up entire new avenues of possibilities for him.

But not today, it seemed.

Once the matches had been handed out, Professor McGonagall demonstrated the basic spell to turn them into needles and set the class loose. It had only taken a single viewing of the spell for his Sharingan to memorize it. But as he very quickly found out, simply being able to make the wand motions for the spell exactly perfectly and getting his pronunciation just as the professor had demonstrated were not enough to use the spell. Even knowing the exact flow of magic needed to make the spell work didn't help when he couldn't control his magic enough to make it do what he had witnessed.

So instead of ending up with a small needle, he ended up with a rather large explosion, given the size of the match he started the exercise with.

Fortunately, after the results of his wand-testing a month ago, this outcome was not totally unexpected, so he had already fortified himself with chakra before the explosion, preventing any injury.

His desk was not so fortunate. Or the three pieces his desk was now in were not so fortunate, to be more precise. At least they had not been blown very far. One piece had just fallen into his lap, if 'blasted with enough force to break the ribs of an ordinary child' could be described as 'fallen'. The second slid across the floor for a dozen feet, and the last was still connected to the desk's legs, if barely.

But right now the more important factor was probably that everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and were staring at him. Well Professor McGonagall was staring at him and marching over in his direction as fast as her legs could carry her short of breaking out into an undignified jog.

"Mr. Potter!" she exclaimed in what had to be her sternest voice. "What did you do?" She then paused, and just before he could answer that he just attempted the spell she had demonstrated, she proved his earlier assumption about the maximum severity someone's tone could reach incorrect as she asked, "And why do you have a dagger?"

This caused Harry, along with the rest of the class, to look down at his wand. It was only then that it really dawned on him that none of the teachers had seen his wand before. He normally kept it within one of the concealed storage seals tattooed onto his right palm, which allowed him to release or re-seal it with barely more than a thought, just like the rest of his weaponry.

And because he was so used to carrying around all kinds of various sharp metallic objects, one more hadn't really seemed unusual to him. He had known that most wands were wooden from his experience with Ollivander, but he hadn't really considered that the professors might object to him doing magic with a piece of metal sharpened to a needle sharp point. Wands were weapons already, so what was the difference?

"Ah...I think the technical term is 'stiletto'." He held up his wand to allow a more careful examination. "See? No actual blade, just the point, so it isn't really a dagger." He gave a shrug while very carefully concealing his own amusement at Professor McGonagall's expression of shocked outrage.

"Anyway," he continued. "This is my wand. Or at least it's what Mr. Ollivander gave me to use. And for the point, he said that would improve its quality as a wand or something. Something about how the shape impacts its ability to channel magic, but you would have to ask him about exactly how that works."

And all of that was technically true. The fact that he had specifically asked for the point and that making it into a higher quality wand was exactly the opposite of what someone with unnaturally massive stores of magic, and virtually no control over that magic should get was irrelevant. Well...maybe not irrelevant, but certainly those facts wouldn't be appreciated by Professor McGonagall, and Harry wouldn't want to burden her with knowledge that might make her even more annoyed than she already was. It was really for her own peace of mind that she not know.

Finally Professor McGonagall reached up and adjusted her glasses as she gave Harry a disapproving glare. "And what happened to your desk?"

"No idea," Harry responded with a grin he didn't bother to hide. "I tried the spell just like you showed us, and the matchstick...well, it blew up. A lot."

With a very put-upon sigh, Professor McGonagall waved her wand, making the desk reassemble itself, before placing another of the matchsticks in front of Harry.

"Very well then. Please attempt to not cause any more explosions today, Mr. Potter."

To Professor McGonagall's great dismay, that wasn't even the largest of the many explosions which would follow.

Harry was grinning as he left the Transfiguration classroom to head back towards the Great Hall for lunch. In spite of some mild disappointment that he hadn't managed to gain any measurable control over his magic, it wasn't particularly surprising at this early point in his magical training, given his immense magical reserves.

"So...That was interesting," Neville hesitantly stated as the group walked through the hallways of Hogwarts.

"Yeah, I don't think Professor McGonagall likes me much," Harry replied as he scratched the back of his head abashedly. "I'm not sure why. I didn't fall asleep in class or anything. Not even when the lecture got really boring."

Hermione had been fuming since well before they walked out of class, and she could clearly hold it in no longer. "You disrupted the entire class! No one else was able to focus on getting the spell to work because you were too busy blowing up your desk. And the floor that one time too!"

"Don't blame me," Harry replied defensively. "She told me to try again."

"She also told you not to cause any more explosions," Hermione ground out through clenched teeth.

Ron, with what was starting to appear to be a normal lack of foresight for him, decided to break into the conversation at this point. With a friendly pat to Harry's shoulder, he exclaimed, "I thought it was amazing mate! Especially that time you got the entire top of the desk to go flying almost all the way across the room. You even almost hit Professor McGonagall with that one! She really did not take that well, did she?"

Harry chuckled along with Ron at this, but it proved to be an unwise comment as it swiftly brought Hermione's wrath down on Ron. Turning to face him, she continued her rant, "It was not 'amazing'. It was destructive, and a huge disruption. Some of us were actually trying to learn magic, rather than waste our time watching Harry blow his desk up over and over again."

"Hey! That's not fair," Harry interjected. "It's not my fault Professor McGonagall told me to keep doing it, and she is the one who kept giving me matchsticks...I think because she was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. But it wasn't like I was trying to screw the spell up. The fact that I'm awesome even when I can't manage a spell correctly is hardly my fault."

Hermione just gave a slight growl and turned away with a scowl. Though she did at least stay with the group rather than stomping off, which Harry counted as a win.

Since the first Transfiguration class of the week was a double, that made it the only morning class on Mondays. So the group quickly headed back to the Great Hall for lunch, which passed relatively peacefully until Draco Malfoy decided he needed to come join Harry at the Gryffindor table.

"So Potter," he sneered as he approached their table with Goyle and Crabbe. "I hear you were quite pathetic in Transfiguration. I don't know why everyone is so surprised. I could have told them that you were all talk."

Harry rolled his eyes with obvious contempt before responding, "Well, if it isn't Mr. Bad Faith himself. Did you need something?"

Malfoy sputtered incoherently for a few seconds before finally recovering. He seemed to force himself to take a slow breath to calm himself before speaking, though his normally pale cheeks remained slightly flushed with anger, if you couldn't otherwise tell from his fairly obvious glare.

"I just came over to point out what some of us already knew," Malfoy scoffed. "That the Boy-Who-Lived isn't so special after all. You probably only got into Hogwarts in the first place because of your fame anyway. Once everyone learns how pitiful you really are at magic, you're sure to get thrown out."

Ron and Neville were both clearly fuming at Malfoy's words, and even Hermione had a growing frown, though she had also shrunk in on herself slightly at the schoolyard bully's words. Probably based on long experience having to deal with people like him, unfortunately.

But before Ron or Neville could respond angrily and counterproductively to Harry's efforts to belittle Malfoy, he smirked back at the boy and quite calmly responded, "Oh really, Bad Faith? Everyone else in Transfiguration tried and failed to learn how to turn a matchstick into a needle. I learned how to make explosions at will, apparently. Is it just me, or does that seem better to you too? So if you are done being jealous of me being so awesome, why don't you scurry along and find someone else to annoy."

"Why you..." Malfoy trailed off, apparently not quite sure how to respond to someone else speaking so condescendingly to him. But after a few seconds he yanked out his wand and continued in a furious tone, "How dare you speak about me like that! I am a Malfoy, and you are just a blood-traitor who can't manage the simplest Transfiguration without screwing it up!"

Harry's lips twitched in amusement at Malfoy's attempt to intimidate him, but he managed to hold his laughter down.

"What was that, Bad Faith?" He asked, barely preventing the amusement from leaking into his tone, and instead just making it sound like an honest question. "Oh, I see. You wanted me to show you what I learned in Transfiguration today, was that it?"

He unsealed his own wand and casually pointed it vaguely in the direction Malfoy was standing, causing the blond-haired boy to shift slightly away from him with a suddenly nervous expression.

But the Slytherin quickly rallied and gave what was at least a fairly strong front to conceal his fear, "It's not like you could do it with anything other than a matchstick anyway. And stop calling me that! I am a Malfoy, and you will respect me as I deserve!"

Harry just rolled his eyes again and turned away from Malfoy and back to the Gryffindor table, clearly dismissing him with a, "Whatever Bad Faith."

Harry also resealed his wand as he turned, using the movement to conceal exactly where it went. Besides, it wasn't like he would need it if it came to that. He would be able to feel the movement of magic long before Malfoy could cast a spell even if he did try something. Though there would be some amusement in beating him with magic.

Because Malfoy was very wrong about him not being able to repeat his 'success' with making matchsticks blow up on a different object.

While the control needed to perform any sort of Transfiguration remained far beyond him at the moment, he had seen not only the magic used to change a matchstick into a needle, but also several other Transfigurations McGonagall performed as an introduction into what Transfiguration was capable of. From this, he had found that all transfiguration seemed to work along similar principles. First, the caster's magic was injected into the object to be transfigured. Then the magic was manipulated to cause the object to change form. The second step did appear to differ a little in the specifics of how the change happened for each type of object.

But his spells were not even getting to that point. What was causing the matchstick to explode was simply sending both far too much magic into the matchstick and the massive fluctuations in his magic as he inserted it.

Which meant that his matchstick to needle spell could be applied to pretty much anything and it would make it explode. Normally once the spell got to the second part, if the manipulation of the magic wasn't right to change the object correctly, nothing would happen, but when the injection of the magic itself was causing the explosion that didn't really matter.

But, fortunately for Malfoy it didn't come up, since regardless of how infuriated the little prat was, he apparently wasn't quite prepared to cast a spell at the back of the Boy-Who-Lived in front of dozens of witnesses. So instead he just growled slightly and called out, "Wait until my father hears about this," as he turned and walked away with his two bodyguard.

Several long seconds passed before Ron burst out, "That was great! Almost as good as the first time you dealt with that snake back on the train!"

Neville nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it's really great to see you stand up to him. Usually he is always talking down to everyone. It's nice to see him get the same back every once in a while."

Harry just grinned and slapped Neville on the back, clearly taking him off guard as the pudgy boy flinched away, but then gave a tentative smile back to Harry as he listened. "Hey, you can do it too. Bad Faith over there is just a bunch of hot air. He has been told his whole life how great he is, but he doesn't actually have anything to back it up."

The two other boys and several of the surrounding Gryffindors who had been eagerly listening in laughed and nodded along. Though if they would ever have the courage to stand up to the bully themselves remained to be seen.

Once the laughter died down, Hermione hesitantly added, "Well, I guess so...But you really shouldn't have threatened him like that. What if a teacher had heard you? You could have gotten in a lot of trouble."

In response Harry shrugged before giving an expression of such intense innocence that no one would ever possibly believe it was real. "Threaten him? When did I do that? I just offered to show him what I learned in transfiguration today. I thought he might have wanted some tips." Unable to hold the expression any longer, he broke down laughing before continuing, "Besides, no harm done, right? You need to learn to relax a little and have some fun Hermione."

If her huff of annoyance meant anything, Hermione wasn't convinced, but Harry did note the small, almost invisible smile she couldn't quite conceal.

The next several days seemed to pass rather quickly. Like the other students, it took a little while for Harry to get a feel for his various teachers, and it was really too soon to make any final judgments. But so far, Harry was enjoying the Hogwarts experience a great deal.

Transfiguration remained by far the worst class, and even that was extremely entertaining. It was the only class in which the professor kept asking him to blow things up, at least. Well, she hadn't used those exact words, but given that blowing things up was the result of every transfiguration spell he attempted and she kept asking him to do it again, he wasn't sure how else you could describe it, regardless of Hermione's many frustrated attempts.

For that matter, keeping himself from bursting out laughing at Professor McGonagall's mounting frustration with his attempts was becoming more difficult. She seemed mildly obsessed with figuring out why his perfect wand movements and spell pronunciations were having such abysmal results. At first she had been convinced it was because of his wand, but apparently after having a conversation with Ollivander at Harry's urging, she had dropped that line of inquiry.

He could have told her that because Transfiguration was the area of spellcasting which required the greatest finesse and control over your magic, he was channeling not just far too much power, but an inconsistent flow of power into the object to be Transfigured, causing it to blow up. It was something he was quite familiar with from his original attempts at chakra control and early difficulties with similarly sensitive areas of chakra manipulation in his prior life. Unfortunately, he couldn't exactly explain to McGonagall how he understood exactly where his difficulties were coming from, so she would have to figure it out on her own.

In the meantime, he found the process rather amusing, as did most of the other students. And most of his other classes were going significantly better.

Fortunately, it had turned out that Charms had a far lower degree of required control to make the spells work. He did tend to massively overcharge the spells, but unlike Transfiguration, this generally didn't make the spells outright fail, but instead just made them a lot more powerful. Unfortunately so in some cases. For example, the lumos spell they had learned in the first class had produced a light so bright it had temporarily damaged the sight of about half the class to the extent they required a trip to the hospital wing.

Still, at least the magic worked, and he was perfectly willing to put in the time and effort learning to tone down such spells to a more reasonable level. And unlike McGonagall who continued to become more and more frustrated and almost angry with him, Flitwick seemed quite excited by the whole spectacle. Of course, from then on his first attempts at a spell were performed in a shielded area Flitwick created, but that wasn't really a problem.

Herbology was a lot of fun too. He had always enjoyed gardening, and having actively aggressive plants made the whole process a lot more interesting. And the occasional subtle use of the Mokuton bloodline effectively gave him a green thumb of absurd proportions. While technically the Mokuton was a wood control bloodline, over the centuries of his use of the ability, Harry had learned to use it to control any sort of plants. Even magical ones, it turned out, though they were marginally more difficult to manipulate. And the possibilities of all of the different things various magical plants were capable of, or would be capable of when combined with the use of the Mokuton, kept Harry very interested in the subject.

And his other three classes - Astronomy, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and History, were all effectively free periods, which he enjoyed.

While they were told that the knowledge of astronomy was required in planning of most advanced rituals, and even some high end potions brewing, nothing he learned in that class was really necessary to him personally. With the Sharingan, he could map the entire night sky in moments, recalling anything that could be found in it instantly and with greater clarity than all but the best modern telescopes, much less the pathetic medieval ones Hogwarts had them using. He could find any sort of required celestial alignments already if it ever came up, so spending years memorizing various constellations and star movements was really unnecessary. At least Professor Sinistra seemed fine with him leaving early after the couple minutes it took for him to fill out that night's star chart. Well she let him go as soon as she got over her amazement that he had completed an assignment meant to take an hour without even using his telescope.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was the area of magic that Harry was by far the least interested in. He already knew how to kill people more effectively than any school would ever teach. Adding magical methods seemed relatively unnecessary. He was far more interested in the other things magic could do than in the ability to throw some pointless curses around. Apart from possible pranking applications, he really couldn't see much point in most of it. And even those potential pranking applications were for the most part rather childish, though he would still plan on learning them eventually. Fortunately, the teacher was totally useless, and Harry could safely ignore him to work on more interesting things during class such as his continued studies into Ancient Runes.

And History of Magic was best of all. Not only did he not need to pay attention in class, but the ghost who taught the class apparently didn't even notice if you actively slept right in front of him. It was practically ideal.

Eventually Harry would probably just start sending Shadow Clones to those classes. There wasn't any point in him attending when he could be working towards greater (or any) control over his magic as well as the regular ongoing physical training he continued to put himself through.

So the only class left that he had yet to attend was Potions - a class which was quickly growing to near legendary levels in the minds of the first-years as the older students told them all about their own experiences with the infamous Professor Snape. Everyone else was quickly becoming rather terrified as the stories grew. Even Hermione seemed nervous when the topic came up.

Harry, on the other hand, was almost giddy with anticipation.

Apparently not only did Snape unreasonably dislike him for some unknown reason, he was also just generally a terrible teacher and thoroughly unpleasant person. Which was all the excuse Harry needed to move past minor petty pranks and really mess with the man.

The only problem was that Harry had to remind himself that he couldn't go too hard on the poor guy. He hadn't really done anything significant to Harry yet at this point, and Harry always preferred to dish out well deserved justice with his pranks rather than preemptively target someone just because they were likely to do something stupid in the future. Unless it was really funny. Then it was ok.

And more importantly, if Harry went all out on Snape, he highly doubted the man would last the year at Hogwarts. And that would be most unfortunate, because he was really looking forward to Snape being a source of entertainment for years to come.

Still, even limiting himself to a more reasonable level of vindictiveness for the time being...Tomorrow was going to be fun.

A/N:

Hermione definitely hasn't gotten over all of her various issues from just one talk with Harry, but this should be a good start. Probably almost half of the negative reviews I get for this story in some way deal with people not liking Hermione. Which I sort of understand. She can be pretty annoying, especially in the early books. I still like her though. She has some pretty serious issues, as any good character does, but she has a lot of good traits too. Introduce her to a Harry who will actually help her grow as a person instead of being totally spineless and just putting up with her absolute lack of any social skills and certainty that she is always right, and she has the potential to become a great character.

Not sure how well the mini time-skip went, but the chapters were moving through the plot slowly enough without covering every single class in detail. So next chapter will cover the first Friday of the school year, and then we will finally be a week into Harry's Hogwarts education! Why at this rate, I might reach his second week before I pass the total number of words in the entirety of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!

Finally, please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.