First Day
September 2nd 1991:
It took some time for Charlus to wake up, open up the green silken hangings to his four-poster bed, freshen up, and pack his school supplies into his bag. His room-mates — Dante, Blaise, Draco, and Theodore — had already finished packing their bags. They were either reading a book, double-checking their supplies, or chatting to each other.
Around 7:30—AM, they exited their dorm, joined the crowd of Slytherins in the common room, and headed out of the dungeons. They walked into the entrance hall and entered the Great Hall for breakfast.
Charlus sat on the bench and munched on his buttered toast, taking his class time-table out from one of the inner pockets of his robes. 'Charms with professor Flitwick, Defence Against the Dark Arts with professor Quirrell, Transfiguration with professor McGonagall, and Double Herbology with Ravenclaw taught by professor Sprout.'
"Yeesh." He heard Daphne Greengrass mutter to Tracey Davis from further up the lengthy wooden table that the Slytherins were seated at on the right end of the hall. "Busy day, isn't it?"
"I'm pretty excited for Transfiguration." Dante said, eating his sausages and skimming through the classes on other days of the week on his schedule. "What'd you think?"
"Charms should be fun." Charlus replied. 'Hogwarts has all kinds of secret passageways and rooms.' A memory of an old dream flashed in his mind. 'The Room of Requirement, wasn't it?' He chewed his toast. 'And the tunnels to the Shrieking Shack and Honeydukes at Hogsmeade.'
Dante's face turned thoughtful. "Getting around the school is gonna be hard. My mom told me there's at least over one hundred and forty staircases here! And I'm not sure if the Bloody Baron will point us in the right direction." Shaking his head, he picked up a gilded cup and drank his water. "I'm also excited about Potions with professor Snape! That and Transfiguration were my uncle Dan's favourite subjects back in his Hogwarts days."
Owls were fluttering into the Great Hall through its high narrow windows and dropped off parcels, packages, and letters to countless students. Dante received letters from his parents and uncle, Charlus saw, and tucked them away into his Hogwarts robes to read later. Spectre landed on his shoulder, spiralled up from it, and left the school through a window.
The two of them spent some more time chatting about their classes and teachers, then departed the entrance hall amongst the sea of their school-mates. Their time-tables had maps etched into them on one side to help direct them to their different classes and around the rest of the school.
Charlus went up the marble stairway to the third floor, entered Flitwick's class-room, and took a seat at the back row. Dante sat beside him on his left. His class-mates trickled in and picked out their own seats. There were three rows of desks in the room and the teacher's desk was bordered with two black-boards. [Charms] had been written on both black-boards, but the letters on them bounced around the place and only stopped moving when Flitwick walked into the room in a cheerful gait. He was a short smiling man with white and black hair and shining teeth and wore robes of striped blue and brown.
"A good morning to all of you!" Flitwick's smile was delighted. "I'm professor Filius Flitwick and I am thrilled to be teaching your first ever Charms lesson at Hogwarts!" He clapped his wands. "Charms, I would say, is an adaptable branch of magic. So many different spells with so many different effects on their target and caster come from them. There is the Disarming Charm — Expelliarmus — for one. It, of course, helps you disarm your opponent of their wand and can even knock them back."
He paused for a moment and went through the register fast. His voice trailed off at the 'Potter' surname in elation, but he moved on with the class.
Charlus had brought out a piece of parchment, a bottle of ink, and a quill from his bag. Jotting down notes, he listened to Flitwick name more and more different kinds of charms like Reparo, Difindo, Spongify, and other ones. Flitwick pulled his wand out from his robes, twirled it in a semi-circle, and fired off a charm that created harmless flashes of winking light. It was an offshoot of Lumos, Charlus learned.
In the first half of the lesson, they wrote extra notes about varying Charms from what they heard from Flitwick's several explanations of them. In the second half of the lesson, however, Flitwick performed these charms in front of the class. It disappointed Charlus that they hadn't been able to practise spells with their own wands, but he hadn't expected the teachers at Hogwarts to rush them through the basics.
Once Charms had ended, Charlus put his schooling materials into his bag and followed his class-mates out into the third-floor corridor. Halfway down it, a suit of armour burst from a tapestry and snapped its helm left and right. Seconds later, three more suits of armour ran out from the tapestry and chased after it. They vanished around the corner. Theodore Nott and Tracey Davis had been startled by them. Daphne helped her friend up to her feet in amusement. Draco just waved his hand at Theodore and Goyle got him up to his feet.
They had fifteen minutes at the end of lessons to reach the class-rooms for their next lesson. 'Plenty of time to wander around a little.' Charlus split off from the main throng of Slytherins and Dante accompanied him. In one hallway on the fourth floor, they found a staircase chiselled from elm that spiralled downwards behind a silken tapestry. It guided them to the first floor, where the Transfiguration class-room was located.
"We got Defence Against the Dark Arts." Dante pointed out, peering at his light blue watch and holding out his time-table to scrutinize its map. "On the third floor like Charms."
"Yeah — let's go."
They turned back to the spiralling elm staircase, climbing it to the fourth floor and heading to the third floor afterwards. Dante and Charlus managed to enter the class-room two minutes early and secure seats in the middle row. The DADA class-room had sconces that flared with multiple flames of crimson, purple, and blue. A purple velvet banner depicting a witch and wizard fighting off a horde of creatures hung on the far wall to one side of the room beneath various circular windows.
All of the Slytherins had settled into their seats and had gotten their supplies out when the green door to the class-room opened with a clear snap. Quirrell — a somewhat haggard but hearty brown-haired man with eye-bags in dark blue robes — sauntered to the foremost part of the room and extracted his wand from a sleeve.
"A pleasure to have you all here in my class today." Quirrell tapped a black-board beside his desk with his wand and 'Professor Quirinus Quirrell' was scrawled across it in deep yellow. "I will be your teacher in Defence Against the Dark Arts during your next few years at Hogwarts." He slipped his wand into his sleeve. "For those who are expecting me to focus on the spellwork portion of this course in the first lesson, you might be a tad disappointed because we will not. We will work on basic spells of defence against dark magic in our fifth lessons, that much I can guarantee."
Some students looked a little annoyed and disappointed since they had only practised theory in Flitwick's lesson. Charlus dipped his quill in ink. Daphne was seated on his left and she was scribbling down rough doodles of dragons in one corner of her roll of parchment. Dante was more focused than his sister, though his dark blue gaze shifted from the shelves in the class-room to their jars that held the remains of countless beasts and creatures in gooey red liquid.
Quirrell took the register, then spoke. "Defence against the dark arts, in my opinion, is impossible to understand in its entirety. Random is what I would call the dark arts and what can be designated as defence against them." His wand peeked out from his sleeve and several images popped up on the black-board—of curses, of poisons from venomous magical creatures, and of vengeful phantoms. "I am not trying to undermine this course, however. The dark arts are random, so you must be decisive and sharp when confronted by them."
'No stuttering. Not even a hint of the nervous person from my dreams about those weird books.' Images of his dreams flashed in Charlus' vision. Although his memories of them were distorted, he recalled Quirrell was not the most competent of teachers. 'It wasn't just that. He was after that stone…I can't remember much else.'
Much like in Flitwick's class, they occupied their time writing notes and listening to Quirrell explain the basics about the Defence Against the Dark Arts. He had introduced them to a spell that conjured a sharp scent of garlic that redirected a vampire's attention elsewhere through manipulating their senses, though the effect wasn't designed to work for long. Quirrell also gave them a run-down of light-hearted jinxes.
The bell rang once more, signalling that it was time for their twenty minute break. During these breaks, they were allowed to head into the Great Hall for a light snack, laze around at various places on the Hogwarts grounds, study in the library, prowl around the castle, or relax in their common rooms and chat with their house-mates.
Dante slung his bag over his shoulder, falling into line beside him and heading down a secluded hallway on the second floor. "What'd you wanna do?"
"What else?" Charlus grinned. "I wanna explore this place."
For the next fifteen minutes, Charlus and Dante roamed the corridors, spoke to the sentient portraits and paintings, avoided Peeves the poltergeist, and discovered more and more staircases out of the other one hundred and forty-two that popped up around the school often. At the fifth floor, they had squeezed between a narrow passageway that had somehow taken them back down to the third floor. When they had gone searching for it a second time, it had already vanished.
They had passed a decent number of fellow first-years, second-years, third-years, and the occasional fourth-year in the hallways. Whispers had been floating around Charlus. 'The twin brother of the Boy-Who-Lived.' He wasn't the biggest fan of the attention, but he shrugged it off. 'It's whatever.' Dante and him kept to secluded paths.
In a first floor corridor, they came across Draco Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle.
"You two will see — I could get my name into a chocolate frog card." Draco was muttering to his friends in annoyance. Paying no mind to them, Draco walked on and resumed their conversation. "On the other hand, you two…"
"Oi." Goyle grunted. "I'd get my name into a chocolate frog card way faster than you lot!"
"Sure—." Crabbe laughed. "—Sure you would." The three of them disappeared behind a velvet tapestry that opened up into another hallway that had an alternative pathway to the Transfiguration class-room.
Dante and Charlus ignored them, turned several corners, and headed into the Transfiguration class-room. It was a folksy room, he reflected, and it was furnished with shelves that contained items geared for transfiguration — like tattered socks, leather shoes, wool gloves, pens, pencils, glasses, and a bundle of cups. A black-board was next to the teacher's desk, but had nothing on it.
Daphne hurried to sit down next to him in the back row with a mischievous grin. "You know those Weasley twins?" She whispered. "They handed me these water balloons that were enchanted to Spongify whoever they hit."
Charlus was unimpressed. "Detention?"
"Detention."
Dante leaned over to them and muttered. "Dad's gonna throw a fit."
"Worth it." Daphne shrugged. "At least I'll have Tracey there tomorrow." Tracey was sitting beside Dante and she just shook her head at them and cracked an exasperated smile.
They cut their talk short — McGonagall had walked into the classroom. Her green robes were unruffled and her black hair was tied in a neat bun. She stood behind her desk, took the register, and began walking up and down the class-room. 'She seems pretty no-nonsense.'
"Welcome to your first Transfiguration lesson at Hogwarts." McGonagall said. "I am not sure if your teachers have told you this yet, but we will not always be the ones to handle your lessons. Our schedules are quite packed most times, but it is tradition, so to speak, for the main professors to teach your first lessons." She brought her wand out. "Fear not, other qualified secondary professors will teach you."
"Onto Transfiguration." McGonagall announced. "It is a very difficult branch of magic to learn, practice, and master. Work and study hard and you will succeed." Her eyes turned to each of them from behind her gleaming spectacles. "Transfiguration involves changing one thing into another thing in the barest sense of it. Of course, there is much more to the theoretical and magical portions of the art." She pointed her wand at the black-board and tidy lines of information materialized on it. "Copy these down please and turn to page forty-seven of your text-book. The Benefits and Challenges of Transfiguration is the chapter title."
Charlus wrote his notes down. Transfiguration involved unhesitating wand movements, unparalleled focus, and a clear image of the transfigured item in one's mind, according to the text-book.
It was like this with most branches of magic — the movement of the wand and the intent of the caster were the two most vital cores of spellwork. More advanced Transfiguration and Charms took it to another level of skill, focus, and grit. Basic Transfiguration entailed the caster having a delicate feel and hold of their magic and wand and a potent enough intent. Other factors like the weight, size, attributes, and components of what the caster wanted to transfigure an item into also played a role in the overall results of a complete transfiguration.
'A lot of information to unpack.' Charlus put his quill into his bottle of ink, carving more notes from the black-board into his note-book of parchment. 'Just like Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts.' He wanted to practice spells and he flexed his wand hand in anticipation.
Thirty minutes after a lecture about the basic applications of Transfigurations for beginners, McGonagall flicked her wand down and dozens of matches appeared on their polished wooden desks. They had the rest of the lesson to transform their match into a needle.
It was the first time they had been assigned a task involving the use of their magic, so everyone hastened to take their wands out. Charlus slipped his wand out of its holster. 'A simple transfiguration like this one calls for a whole lot of focus and intent.' Skimming through his notes, he stared down at the match and waved his wand. Only half of the match morphed into a bronze needle and its bright edge glittered.
Unlike him, Dante had transformed his entire match into a needle. Daphne's needle had somehow grown small metallic wings and it rocketed into Tracey's unchanged match. Charlus scanned the room — Crabbe and Goyle's matches were untransformed. Draco's match had grown tiny legs and crawled to the corner of his desk. Blaise had been successful in turning his match into a needle. Theodore's match was unaltered. For the most part, the class was unsuccessful with it.
At the end of their lesson, McGonagall allotted them some homework. 'First bit of homework for the school day.' They had to write five inches of parchment about the most simple applications of Transfiguration. Checking his watch, Charlus realized that it was time for lunch.
Charlus' smile was wry. 'The schedule for Hogwarts is just as unpredictable as the damn castle.' He tucked his time-table into his robes, put his belongings into his bag, and left the room with Tracey, Daphne, and Dante. Walking down the marble staircase, they talked.
"Don't think I introduced myself!" Tracey's tone was chipper. "Name's Tracey Davis!"
"Charlus Potter."
"Nice to meetcha!" Tracey smiled and soon she was rambling about Hogwarts. It reminded him a little about Harry rambling to him about Diagon Alley at the end of their trip to it a month ago. "You know that ghost or poltergeist or whatever he's called? Peeves, I think his name is. Fifth year told me that. He was jumping outta walls and kept screaming at us!"
Daphne and Tracey split off from them in the Great Hall at the Slytherin table to eat lunch with a group of other first-year Slytherins.
Charlus and Dante slid onto the bench midway along the table. Golden bowls, gilded plates, and glinting gold cups were set up on it. He picked out a platter of sausages, well-cooked fish, and a steaming hot burger. The meal was washed down with a cup of cold orange juice. Dante finished his mashed potatoes and smoked salmon, ate a pie coated in various delicious berries, and downed his cup of fresh water.
"Double Herbology after this." Dante sighed. "Not too excited about that."
"Sounds fun." Charlus got off of the bench. "Come on. I still wanna explore the castle."
Dante hopped off of the bench. "We haven't seen the library yet."
They walked out of the Great Hall and into the entrance hall. Heading upstairs to the first floor, they got directions from the map on their time-tables and sauntered down a wide hallway. Portraits lined the walls and two suits of armor stood around a green tapestry.
Dante and Charlus entered the library. It was a massive high-ceilinged room with various kinds of tables and an incredible number of book-shelves. Students of all years were either milling around the library, studying, whispering to their friends, or taking and returning the books. Candles flying above them illuminated the room in soft hues of light. The librarian — Madam Pince, he recalled — stared at the students in distaste from over a book with a red cover and glowing title.
When it was time for Double Herbology with the Ravenclaws, Dante put the books he had borrowed back into their shelves and shook Charlus awake. They left the castle through its oaken doors. The numbered greenhouses where Herbology took place were located behind Hogwarts and across from a vegetable patch. Dante and him travelled over the vegetable patch and joined the students pooling around outside of Greenhouse One. A few people pointed at him for a short moment, glanced at him, or muttered about him.
Professor Pomona Sprout cut into the swarm of students and unlocked the entrance to the greenhouse. Charlus followed Dante into the main greenhouse room, looking at some of the plants. One potted flower with jagged thorns opened its mouth and belched out pink goo.
"Put on your gloves." Professor Sprout was a somewhat stern, but amicable woman with grey hair in protective dragonhide robes. They slid on their gloves and she said. "I'm professor Sprout, your teacher for Herbology. It's a difficult subject, I'll tell you that. Every plant you'll take care of in your future lessons will have all kinds of irregular and special features to them." She smiled. "But, in my opinion, it's quite fun learning and tending to all of these plants! I hope you do enjoy these lessons."
She spent the remainder of the lesson introducing them to the plants that they would learn about and take care of in future classes and handed out a few plants around the room. One plant with sharp teeth, Charlus had viewed, had stretched its stem out and retreated back into its pot. After they saw a few more plants, the lesson ended.
They had enough time until dinner to return to their dorm, freshen up, and head on out into the Slytherin common room. Daphne taught Charlus how to play Exploding Snap and won all of their games. He let Dante play a match against her and lazed around til it was dinner time.
Exiting their common room, they went to the Great Hall. Charlus ate spaghetti for dinner and drank his water. Once dinner was finished, they returned to their common room and settled down into seats.
Charlus leaned his head against his high-backed seat. Daphne was staring at a piece of parchment in her hand in boredom. Dante and Tracey were completing their Transfiguration homework early. 'Curfew should be at 8:00.' Time elapsed and people began trekking to their dorms. Charlus and Dante returned to their room. His wardrobe, Charlus had discovered, had an expanded space within it where he could change into a different outfit. Tonight, he wore grey robes.
His room-mates soon turned in for the night, shutting the green silken hangings to their four-poster beds and going to sleep. Charlus remained awake. 'Great first day.'
He went to sleep.