"There, look."
"Where?"
"Next to the bushy-haired buck-toothed girl."
"Wearing the glasses?"
"Did you see his face?"
"Did you see his scar?"
As soon as Harry stepped out of his dorm the next day, everyone was constantly whispering about him. They weren't being discreet at all, craning their necks and standing on tiptoes just so they could get an eyeful. Sometimes they just stared.
Things were a little better for Harry when he headed to the Gryffindor common room and rendezvoused with Hermione. She guided him along, holding his hand. She had a good memory for where things were, so when he was walking with her (he always wanted to walk with her) they didn't really get lost that much.
Hermione stayed behind in Charms the first day to ask tiny Professor Flitwick a question, and she told Harry and Ron to go on without her. Inevitably, since they both had mainly been relying on Hermione to tell them where to go, they got lost. They managed to get in trouble with Argus Filch, the caretaker—they had been trying to force their way through a door that apparently was the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor.
"We were just lost, Mr. Filch, I swear," Harry was saying.
"Don't lie!" Filch hollered. "I know you were trying to break into the Forbidden Corridor!"
"Why would we want to die a very painful death?" Ron said.
"I don't know," said Filch, "but I'll lock you in the dungeons, I will, I—"
But they never heard the end of the sentence, luckily, for Professor Quirrell turned up then and rescued them.
Sirius had told Harry about Filch, but he didn't tell Harry about Filch's foul cat, Mrs. Norris. That was probably because Filch didn't have a cat in Sirius's day—cats don't usually live upwards of twenty years. What struck Harry as weird was that they seemed to have some kind of connection, so that when Mrs. Norris noticed you doing something wrong, somehow Filch would know.
Harry's classes at Hogwarts were very different from his classes in primary Muggle school. Every Wednesday night they studied the skies in Astronomy; three times a week they studied Herbology with the Hufflepuffs in the greenhouses; they even had a class taught by a ghost, History of Magic. The only exciting thing about that class was Professor Binns, the teacher, entering the classroom through the blackboard.
Professor McGonagall, as it turned out, taught Transfiguration. Harry reckoned he was right in thinking she wasn't someone you wanted to piss off. In fact, the first-year Gryffindors' first lesson with her began with a lecture.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Howarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then, to demonstrate Transfiguration, she turned her desk into a pig and back again. After that everyone was excited to begin, but she kind of rained on their parade by telling them they wouldn't be turning desks into farm animals for years. Instead, they took a lot of notes, then they were each given a match and were instructed to turn it into a needle. By the time the bell rang, only Hermione had managed to turn her match into a needle. Harry and Professor McGonagall both smiled at her.
Everyone was looking forward to Defense Against the Dark Arts, but it turns out that class was what Sirius probably would have called "pathetic". The classroom smelled like garlic, which was supposedly to ward off vampires. His turban smelled funny, and the Weasley twins said it was full of garlic too.
There was also a ton of homework, much more than Harry had ever gotten in primary school. Each teacher didn't seem to realize, when assigning homework, that his or her students actually had other classes with other teachers who also assigned homework, so the students would end up with a mountain of homework at the end of each day. If you didn't do it all at once, it was likely to hang over your head and haunt you. Luckily, Hermione was willing to help Harry with his homework, and encouraged him not to put it off.
Friday was an important day for Harry, Ron and Hermione. It was the day they would finally have Care of Magical Creatures class with Sirius—or "Professor Black".
"I'm so excited!" said Hermione. "We get to go to Sirius's class today!"
"I know, it's great," Harry agreed. "Have we got anything else?"
"Double Potions with the Slytherins," said Ron. "Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them—we'll be able to see if it's true."
It was a good thing Harry had Care of Magical Creatures to look forward to that afternoon, because Potions ended up being horrible. Judging from the way Snape acted in their very first lesson, Harry was sure Snape hated him, even though he couldn't remember wronging Snape in any way.
When Snape took roll call, he paused at Harry's name.
"Ah, yes," he said softly. "Harry Potter. Our new—celebrity."
Harry heard Malfoy and his lackeys laughing behind their hands. Snape didn't do anything except finish roll call and then stare at the class, his empty, dark eyes boring into everyone. His eyes reminded Harry of dark tunnels.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," Snape was saying. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
Harry thought this was a little unnecessary, especially after a speech during which Snape had basically fetishized his subject. Hermione was on the edge of her seat. Harry knew that she wasn't a dunderhead.
"Potter!" Snape said sharply. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry didn't know what Snape was talking about. Hermione raised her hand.
"I don't know, sir," said Harry.
"Tut, tut," Snape sneered. "Fame clearly isn't everything."
Snape totally ignored Hermione's hand.
"Let's try again," said Snape. "Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
Harry didn't even know what a bezoar was, much less where he could locate one. Hermione was still raising her hand, as high as it could go without leaving her seat. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were laughing silently.
"I don't know, sir," Harry repeated.
"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?"
Harry kept looking into Snape's dark-tunnel eyes. Of course he had looked through his books! But unlike Hermione, he couldn't remember everything in them!
"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
When Harry didn't answer him, Hermione stood up, her hand still in the air.
"Please, Professor," she began eagerly, "asphodel and wormwood together make the Draught of Living Death. Bezoars can be found in—"
"Silence!" Snape snapped at her. "Potter, ten points from Gryffindor for being a dunderhead—and Miss Granger, five points from Gryffindor for being a show-off. Unless I've called on you specifically, you keep your mouth shut."
Hermione put her hand down very quickly, her face very red; her eyes were swimming with tears. Harry felt that he had never been so angry in his life. Before he knew it, he was on his feet.
"You hurt her feelings on purpose!" Harry shouted. "What's she done to you?"
Silence. Then—
"Detention, Potter!" Snape barked. The entire room had been hanging in hushed silence; now the Slytherins burst into laughter. Hermione looked even more upset. Harry could feel his own face getting hot.
After things had finally died down, Snape told everyone to get into pairs and assigned them to make a potion to cure boils. At least Harry wasn't the only one he was criticizing; he was criticizing almost everyone except Malfoy. Snape seemed to like Malfoy. Harry felt his belief about Neville being a "why-does-everything-happen-to-me" person was confirmed when Neville melted Seamus's cauldron into a twisted blob. Neville was covered in boils.
"Idiot boy!" Snape cleared the faulty potion away with his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"
Neville whimpered. Boils were popping up all over his nose.
"Take him to the hospital wing," Snape spat at Seamus. Then he turned to Harry and Hermione, who had been working right next to Neville and Seamus.
"You—Potter—why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."
Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but as Snape turned away, Harry whispered, "No! I don't want you in detention, too."
One hour later, Harry was panting with effort as he climbed up the dungeon stairs. He had offered to help Hermione with her books, but he sort of wished he hadn't, because she had a lot of books in her bag. As he puffed along, he wondered out loud why Snape hated him so much. Snape had given him a detention that consisted of cleaning the owl poop and regurgitated rodent skeletons off of the Owlery floor.
"I don't know why he would hate you," said Hermione.
"Snape hates everyone, except the Slytherins," said Ron. "He's always taking points off Fred and George."
…
After lunch, it was finally time for the Gryffindors to have their very first Care of Magical Creatures lesson. They were all hoping this would go better than Snape's lesson had. One thing they could guarantee was that there would be no cauldron explosions, although Harry predicted poor Neville would probably suffer an animal bite or sting, knowing his luck.
Sirius's lessons were to be held near the pumpkin patch, on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. (Harry was unpleasantly surprised to see that they were apparently having Care of Magical Creatures classes with the Slytherins.) At first, the class couldn't see whatever animal Sirius was going to show them. But when they got there, they saw what looked like a Jack Russell terrier on the ground, and—
"PUPPIES!" squealed Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil together. They ran as fast as they could towards the litter of puppies, who were snuggling against their mother.
"Welcome, class," said Sirius, picking up one of the wriggling puppies in his arms and laughing as it licked his face. "You can call me Sirius. Today we'll be studying Crups. Does anyone know what a Crup is?"
Hermione raised her hand, and Sirius called on her.
"Crups are wizard-bred dogs," Hermione said, "signified by the fact that they are loyal to wizards and ferocious towards Muggles. They are indistinguishable from Jack Russell terriers except for their forked tail, which is cut off at six to eight weeks of age."
"Good job," said Sirius. "Five points to Gryffindor for you."
"You earned back the points Snape took!" Harry whispered, and she beamed.
"You'd think they'd have been able to breed out the forked tail," said Sirius. "Anyway, the mother—her name is Earnest—her tail has been removed. But since her puppies—or, as they're sometimes called, Cruppies—are only a few weeks old, you'll notice they still have the tails. Does anyone want to hold one?"
Sirius sat cross-legged on the ground, and a couple of the Cruppies wandered towards him. One crawled into his lap. Harry noticed that the Cruppies' frantically wagging tails were indeed forked.
"I want to, I want to!" Lavender Brown shrieked.
"Me too!" added Parvati.
"Come on," Harry said to Hermione.
There were seven Cruppies in Earnest's litter, so seven students got to hold one at a time. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati held the first five. Neville looked scared at first, but Sirius assured him that the Cruppy wouldn't bite, and eventually he was holding Cruppy number six. At long last, a Slytherin girl named Pansy Parkinson gave in and admitted that she wanted to hold the seventh.
"Do the Cruppies have names?" Hermione asked Sirius.
"None of them do yet," Sirius replied. "I was thinking our students could name them. Lavender, Parvati, Neville, Pansy, yours are the girls. Harry, Ron, Hermione, you've got the boys."
"I want to name my Cruppy Thornton, after Thornton Harkaway," Hermione announced, holding her Cruppy up in the air. He licked her face and wagged his forked tail. "He was a famous breeder of Crups."
"Mine will be Sweetheart," said Lavender.
"I'm going to name mine Precious, because she's so precious!" said Parvati.
"Mine will be Alice, after my mum," said Neville, a little shyly.
"Good idea," said Harry. "Mine will be James."
"I'm going to name mine after the great wizard Merlin," said Ron.
"And mine will be named after me," Pansy declared.
Thornton, Sweetheart, Precious, Alice, James, Merlin and Pansy had fun playing that afternoon. The students got to feed them treats, give them belly rubs, scratch them behind the ears, and chase them around the pumpkin patch. By the end of the lesson, they had learned about Crups and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. To their relief, Sirius didn't assign them any homework.
"I figure you've got enough homework," he said, winking at Harry. "Now, have a good weekend. Class dismissed."
The Cruppies walked back to Earnest, and most of the students walked back up to the school. Harry was going to go with them when Sirius called his name, so he turned back.
"Do you want to visit me in my teacher's quarters, now that class has let out?" Sirius asked.
"Sure," Harry said excitedly. "Can Hermione come too?"
"Absolutely." Sirius smiled at Hermione, who was standing right next to Harry. So after Earnest and her Cruppies had been put back into Hagrid's cabin, Sirius walked with Harry and Hermione back up to the school.
Sirius's teacher's headquarters were on the first floor. When Harry and Hermione walked in, they gasped. It was not much smaller than the flat Harry and Sirius shared back in London. The only difference was that there was only one bedroom instead of three. Back in the flat, they needed those for Sirius's room, Harry's room and the guest room. But since it was only Sirius in the teacher's quarters, he only needed the one bedroom. They sat on the couch in his drawing room.
"Thanks for having us over, Sirius," said Hermione, setting her book bag on the coffee table.
"Not a problem at all," Sirius replied. "Can I get either of you anything?"
"No thanks," they both said.
"All right." Sirius smiled and sat down. "So…how do you like Hogwarts so far?"
"It's been pretty good," Harry told him. "But we got into a bit of trouble in Potions."
"Potions?" Sirius frowned. "Doesn't Snape teach that now?"
"Yes, he does," Hermione said sadly, and she and Harry started to tell Sirius about what had happened in the lesson.
"And I knew he meant to hurt her feelings on purpose," Harry was saying. "So I stood up and I said, 'What's she done to you?' and then he told me my detention was to clean the floor of the Owlery."
Sirius had been listening, the look of disgust on his face deepening ever further as Harry and Hermione talked.
"I can't believe he did that," Sirius said finally. "Well, yeah, actually, I can. I'm sure he's just as terrible of a teacher as he is a person. So…pretty terrible."
"You know him?" said Harry.
"Yeah, we went to school together," Sirius said casually. "We didn't really like each other very much."
"Well, then can you tell me why he hates me?" Harry asked. "I don't know why he singled me out like that."
"It's not so much because he hates you," said Sirius, sounding tired all of a sudden. "I guess it's because he hated your dad. They were bitter enemies, you know. James was funny, popular, good at Quidditch, good at pretty much everything, and then Snape was just this greasy-haired oddball up to his eyes in the Dark Arts who knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in seventh year. I expect he was jealous. And then, the fact that Snape and Lily used to be friends—"
"They did?" said Hermione in shock. "Harry's mother and Snape?"
"Yeah, they did." Sirius nodded. "But as he meddled ever further with the Dark Arts, and hung around with a bunch of kids I'd bet my life became Death Eaters…well, as the years went by, she began to drift away. And one day he called her Mudblood."
"He didn't!" said Harry in horror, remembering when Malfoy called Hermione the same name.
"He did," said Sirius. "So as far as I can tell, they weren't friends anymore after that, because I noticed they stopped hanging out. And then in seventh year, she started dating James, and I guess Snape never really got over the girl he fancied going off with his worst enemy. I was always afraid he would crash the wedding or something, but he didn't."
"Oh no, please don't tell me Snape fancied my mother," said Harry.
"Too late," said Hermione.
"Anyway…" Sirius sighed. "If you want I can go to Dumbledore and try to get you out of that foul detention. It's really unfair."
"I don't know," said Harry uncertainly.
"Come on…don't you want to see the look on Snape's face when you worm your way out of detention?" Sirius insisted.
"Well, okay," Harry agreed reluctantly. "Thanks, Sirius."
"You're welcome," said Sirius. "By the way—did you two hear about the Gringotts scandal?"
"Yeah, we did," Harry told him. "Why do you ask?"
"I thought you might like to see the newspaper clipping," said Sirius, and Harry read the article that Sirius showed him.
GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST
Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on July 15, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day. "But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.
"Sirius," said Harry. "July 15! That was the day we were in Diagon Alley, remember? The attempted robbery could've been going on while we were at Gringotts!"
"It's possible." Sirius shrugged.
"Oh my God…" Harry just realized something. "That thing Hagrid was retrieving, the You-Know-What in Vault 713—that might be what the thieves were looking for! Hagrid might have emptied it just in time!"
"So where is it now?" Hermione asked eagerly.
"Like I said, if Hagrid was retrieving it, it's probably somewhere at Hogwarts," Sirius told her evenly. "But I can't say for sure. Anything else exciting happen this week, though?"
Harry and Hermione set to telling Sirius about the rest of their week at school and all their other classes. By the time they were finished with their conversation, it was 5:30, and dinner would be ready soon. Harry and Hermione said that they really must be going.
"We'll be back to visit soon, Sirius," Harry promised.
"Yes, very soon," Hermione added.
Harry was about to go with her, but Sirius held him back.
"What is it?" said Harry.
"I thought that was really admirable, how you stood up for Hermione in Snape's class," said Sirius quietly, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder.
"You—you did?"
"Of course." Sirius smiled. "Snape shouldn't be allowed to talk to Hermione like that, should he?"
"No," Harry said firmly. "She's my best friend. I would never let anybody talk to her like that."
"You're a good friend," said Sirius. "Hmm. Do you know what sort of flowers she likes?"
"Well, I know her favorite color is violet, so—"
"Say no more." One flick of the wand, and Sirius had a bouquet of violets. "Give these to Hermione. I'm sure she'll like them."
TO BE CONTINUED!