Goddess

Damn Potter!

Rose POV

This school is amazing. But crazy. There are whispers about me and my brother 'round every corner. It's frustrating. Since Persephone and Draco were practically joined at the hip, and Perse was determined not to leave my side, we were currently known as the "Unlikely Trio".

Rose and I were very good friends but Draco and I . . . not really. We were more like frenemies. And everything was enchanted, literally.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and I was absolutely positive the coats of armour could walk.

The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!"

There was someone even worse than Peeves. That was Argus Filch, the caretaker. We had to rescue Ron and Harry from Filch because they got lost and tried to go into the entrance of the out-of-bounds corridor and Filch wouldn't believe them.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-coloured one with bulging, lamp like eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later.

 Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him. I just wish somehow I could put Mrs. Norris just outside the Whomping Willow.

Most of the subjects were really easy. In Astronomy, we only had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. 

Three times a week  we had Herbology. We went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for. 

Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while we scribbled down names and dates, and most people got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up. 

Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry and my names he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.

 Professor McGonagall was again different. I had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave us a talking to the moment we sat down in her first class. 

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned." Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again.