chapter seven
Percy lead them to the common room, which was behind a painting of a fat lady, it opened up once Percy told the password ‘Caput Draconis’, to a long tunnel, which eventually led into the common room, it was a big room, easily able to fit over a hundred students at a time. The walls were hung with red and gold carpets, some paintings waving at them, there were big, leather chairs around the campfire and a few couches strewn about. Everything was decorated in red and gold, with some shades of brown and black.
“The girls dormitories are on the left, the boys are on the right”, Percy explained, “don’t try to go into the girls dormitory if you are a boy, the stairs won’t allow it. Once you are up there, you will find seven doors, one for each year at Hogwarts, they are numbered, so just go into the one with the number one on it, your trunks are already in there”
With that helpful bit of information, they were let loose.
Harry went directly up into the dormitories and secured himself the bed next to the window, from where he would be able to see out into the scenery, which looked fantastic by the way. It was all so whimsical and fun.
It wasn’t much later that he found himself falling asleep.
In his dream, he was wearing a turban and a voice was coming out of it, sickly sweet, “You should have been sorted into slytherin, you could be great there, the hat said so, you were sorted wrongly”
The next morning, Harry awoke to the first rays of sunshine. The other students were still asleep, so Harry got up and dressed himself for his first day at Hogwarts. His robes, which had previously been pure black, now had accents of gold and red, his tie too was now red with gold stripes.
Once he was done dressing himself, he went into the bathroom to wash his teeth and go to the loo.
By then, slowly, some of his yearmates had started to wake up and a sleepy Ron was dressing himself, eyes still half closed. His uniform too had the red and gold accents. The house elves must’ve been busy all night, changing the Uniforms to match the house they were sorted into. He wondered if the house elves did that to every uniform or if the older years simply bought uniforms with the right colors, food for thought.
By the time all the Gryffindor first years were done doing their morning routine, Percy was already waiting for them down in the common room, “Everyone here? Good, good, I will escort you to the great hall. Be careful to pay attention, this is the last time I will be able to walk you down there or up here, after today, you are on your own. Now come, everyone, to the great hall”
The way down was the exact path they’d taken up the previous day. Harry was trying very hard to memorize the way down, so that he could find his own way down and up after this. It wasn’t all too hard, he oriented himself with the portraits lining the wall, left at the unicorn with a tophat, up the stairs at the painting with the burning witch, right when the two trolls beating themselves were over the archway. All in all, it was easy to remember.
Downstairs, in the great hall, they were eating breakfast, as their syllabuses flew down from the ceiling, in front of the students.
The next few weeks passed with surprising ease. Classes were slow and steady, with basic theory on the different subjects. In charms and transfiguration, they’d learned how to hold your wand right, in potions they’d learned how to prepare ingredients and so on and so forth. When the roll call happened in charms, tiny little professor Flitwick fell from his book tower when he came to Harry’s name.
Professor Snape had a very different reaction to reading his name, “Ah- mr Potter, our now Celebrity… let us see if you are as special as they say… what would I get if I added a powder root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood”
After a bit of thinking, the answer came to him, “A sleeping drought”
Snape seemed surprised that he’d gotten it right but instead of praising him, he asked another question: “Where would you look if I told you to get me a bezoar?”
“In your ingredients cabinet”, he replied snarkily, before telling him, “though it is originally found in the stomach of a goat”
“Don’t get smart with me Potter, last question: What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
This one took him several minutes to figure out. Snape’s face was filled with glee when he didn’t answer but it turned sour when he gave the correct answer only a little later, “they are the same plant sir”
“Very good”, the words seemed to pain him, “take a point for Gryffindor for your studying the subject before entering my classroom, now let’s continue with the lesson”
Defense against the dark arts was painfully slow, just like History of magic. The first because the teacher's stuttering made it impossible to follow and the second because the dead teacher was painfully bland. Yeah, a ghost taught the class but the most interesting thing that happened was the teacher, Professor Binns, levitating into the classroom from a wall. Fighting off sleep was almost impossible, many didn’t even try. Harry tried to pay attention but after the first few lessons, he resigned himself to just studying the things outside of the classroom by himself. He mostly did that in the library, where he read up on the goblin rebellions, which seemed to take up most of the class time. It was actually pretty interesting if it wasn’t taught by Binns.
After classes, in the evenings, he’d spent most of his time in the Gryffindor common room with Ron, playing wizarding chess. As opposed to normal chess, in wizarding chess, the pieces were alive and would ‘kill’ each other when one took the other but thankfully, they rebuild themself after a few minutes. They could also talk and gave more or less helpful advice. Ron’s figures trusted him and his judgment but the figures that Harry borrowed didn’t know him and thus didn’t respect his decisions, often telling him this or that. It was really distracting but even without that, he doubted that he would have won against Ron even a single time, he was just way too good.