Harry woke up to crinkling and hushed hisses. Rubbing his eyes, he squinted at the foot of the bed, where Bob was apparently trying to teach Charybdis to read.
"Hmm…nine."
"Yessss, nine. Nine o'clock. Can you tell what that one is?"
"Potty-ons."
"Potions. English is weird."
Harry shuffled down to see what they were reading.
"Oh! This is my class schedule… Sorry Charybdis, but I'm going to need this. I didn't realise you wanted to learn to read!"
"Mmmm, yes… Found a nice fashion magazine I want to read."
Charybdis shuffled her coils to uncover a slightly crumpled magazine.
"…Bob, can you read this?"
Peering at the pages, Bob nodded.
"La Mode Illustrée – when did you learn French?"
"…I do not recall."
"And – wait, Charybdis, where did you get this?"
"…Hmmm, don't know."
Shaking his head, Harry decided he didn't need to know. Looking at the schedule, it said breakfast was served until 08:45.
"Bob's coming to class with me, but what would you like to do, Charybdis?"
"I will lounge by the fireplace and look at the water creatures."
"Right – sounds good. I'll come visit during lunch!"
Breakfast was nice, though it was much less crowded than the dinner the previous night had been. Only a few of the teachers were at the head table - Harry supposed a lot of them were off preparing for classes. Harry grabbed some pumpkin juice (weird), smoked mackerel (nice), and some kind of pasty (also a bit weird).
"Oh, I should pick up food for the toad. I wonder what toads eat…"
"No need."
Harry narrowed his eyes at Bob. "You're lucky I didn't name it yet… Harder to say goodbye to things with names. Also, share next time!"
"Yessss, will give you first bite."
Peering at the massive clock that hung on the back wall of the Great Hall, Harry realised it was almost time for Potions. He quickly gulped down a few more smoked mackerel before heading to class, following the directions printed on his schedule.
Walking into the Potions classroom, Harry was immediately impressed. The room was dark, cool, and slightly damp. As the classroom was in the dungeons, there were only small windows at the top of the walls, so the rest of the classroom was lit by sconces on the walls. The flickering light of the flames made the stacked rows of glass jars seem to sparkle and glimmer. Charybdis would like this place.
The desks were already laid out with ingredients, so Harry wandered over to a free space and sat down, pulling out his Potions book. The blackboard at the front of the classroom had instructions for the Cure for Boils, so Harry flicked to that page. In small bowls around his desk were ingredients: snake fangs, slugs, dried leaves, translucent slime, something that looked like onions, some kind of powder, and porcupine quills.
Harry wasn't sure what all the ingredients were, as his Magical Drafts and Potions book only listed snake fangs, horned slugs, and porcupine quills as ingredients for the Cure for Boils. Perhaps figuring it out was part of the lesson. Harry poked the slime. It didn't do anything. He sniffed the powder – it was powdered ginger! The onions were obvious enough – he picked one up and went to take a bite. Harry got as far as sinking his teeth into the first layer of the onion when a hand reached out and grabbed his chin, stopping him from biting further. It was Professor Snape.
"Do not… eat… the ingredients."
Crying slightly from the extremely pungent onions, Harry nodded, spitting the onion into Snape's hand. It appeared that he wasn't expecting that. Professor Snape froze, clenched his jaw, then counted to ten under his breath. Harry could recall his teachers at regular school doing that sometimes, and it was usually when he was in trouble. Amazingly, Professor Snape didn't yell at Harry, instead dramatically turning on his heel and stalking to the front of the classroom. Harry zoned out for a bit while Professor Snape started monologuing about Potions, as he knew Bob would listen for anything important.
"Pssst – pay attention!"
Harry blinked, looking over at Hermione, who was sitting next to him. That 'pssst' noise had been rather close to the word for palm tree in Parseltongue. He looked toward the front of the classroom just as Professor Snape said '…Begin'. Right! Time to make a potion…
"Bob, did he say anything important?"
"No, just self-important blather."
"Like what?"
"He says he can brew glory and stopper death."
"Stopper death… So, he makes medicine?"
"Hmmm, I suppose."
"What do you think brewed glory is?"
"Ah, perhaps this is like the brewed iron that Dudley drinks."
"What makes you think that?"
"Iron is glorious."
"Right. Okay, well… Potion time."
Harry and Bob made a good pair – Harry made the potion while Bob made notes in Parselscript. At the end of class, Harry bottled his potion and presented it to Professor Snape. Picking up the bottle, Professor Snape inspected the colour and viscosity, then tested a bit on a conjured rat with boils. With a slight hmph, the Professor marked Harry's Potions sheet with an 'O' for Outstanding. Nice.
The next class was Transfiguration. Harry was so excited for Transfiguration that he ran all the way there. As such, he arrived before everyone else and was able to choose any seat. He went with a seat near the front but not in the very first row. As he waited for the other students to arrive, Harry and Bob talked about potions.
"Do you think we could make things with my venom?"
"Yeah, I bet we could. I mean, there were snake fangs in today's potion, so I don't see why not."
"Perhaps we could experiment with some shed skin. Charybdis has wonderful colours… Maybe her sheds could make pretty potions."
"Oh, that's a good idea! I'll ask if we can save some next time."
Their conversation came to an end when a cat wandered into the classroom and sat on the Professor's desk. Harry was a bit unnerved by the way the cat was watching them. It reminded him a bit of Mrs. Figg's cats.
By the time the rest of the class sat down, Harry had been in a staring contest with the cat for twelve minutes. When the cat jumped up and turned into Professor McGonagall, Harry was relieved the cat wasn't some kind of strange fae creature but was a bit weirded out that he had just had a twelve-minute staring contest with a teacher.
The lesson of the day was to turn a matchstick into a needle. It wasn't very fun. Harry did it on his first try, because he had done that kind of thing throughout his regular school years as part of the Friends of Bob business. He then flipped through to the next page, which listed instructions for turning a button into a beetle. He didn't have a button, so he turned the needle into a button, then into a beetle.
Hermione gasped from the desk next to him. "How did you do that?!"
Looking at the beetle, which was trying to walk off the side of the desk, Harry shrugged. "Dunno – just did."
"But – we haven't even gotten to that section yet… And you didn't say any words! Or do the right movement!"
Harry raised his eyebrows. He was a bit impressed – she'd obviously read ahead to know what the right words and movements were. "Yeah, dunno – just did it and it worked."
Hermione sputtered a bit, going on about how that's not how it worked, and he should follow the instructions, and so on and so forth… She abruptly stopped when Harry popped the beetle into his mouth. In fact, a large chunk of the classroom went quiet as well, and all that could be heard was Harry's crunching. It turns out the students near them had been watching the scene play out.
Professor McGonagall had also been watching and walked quickly over to Harry's desk.
"Mr. Potter… It is your prerogative to eat beetles and other insects, but you must know – in fact, all of you must know – that transfigured food and living things hold no nutritional value and will retain the properties of the original object. As such, you have just eaten a matchstick."
"Oh."
Harry didn't mention the fact that he had created food out of nothing before, as it seemed a little unkind to Professor McGonagall. Also, he bet Hermione would have thrown a fit.
At the end of class, Harry hung back to ask Professor McGonagall about turning into a cat. He was very put out by her insistence that human transfiguration and the Animagus transformation were advanced beyond his years and that he would not be able to learn them until Year Five at minimum.
As Harry left the classroom and headed to lunch, Bob piped up from around his neck. "You're going to learn that stuff this year, yes?"
"Of course. We just need to find a book that explains it all…"
