Harry Potter and the Seer who helped him escape his relatives

School is still School even when Magic is Involved

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the blond kid and girl with red hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispered followed Harry when he left his room the next morning. Word got around that it was really him at Hogwarts. People lining up classrooms got on their tip-toes to get a good look at him with was hard to do since Draco and Kate blocked their view of him with their taller bodies. Some kids stood back to let him pass in the halls while staring at him. Harry wished they wouldn't as he was trying to find his classes.

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 politely asked them, or tickled them in the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all. Plus, it was really hard to remember where everything was when places moved all over the school. So much for trying to find them the first free day.

The ghost didn't help either, it was always a shock when one passes through the door you were trying to open. Peeves the Poltergeist was a lot, two locked doors and a trick staircase if you meet him when running 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, grab your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!" Luckily, Bloody Baron chased him off if he was around.

Even worse than Peeves was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry, Draco, and Ron already got on his wrong the side the day they were able to explore the castle. Filch found them trying to force open their way through a door that turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He wouldn't believe that they were lost and was sure they were trying to break in. He was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when Kate walked up. She was apparently on Filch's good side since when she explained to him that they were truly lost, he let them go.

Filch owned a cat named Mrs. Norris, a dust-colored cat with bulging, lamp like eyes like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her and she would whisk off for Filch. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone and could pop up suddenly as any of the ghost. The students all hated him, and some gave Mrs. Norris a good kick which Harry thought was wrong since he was kicked like that for most of his life.

The classes, Harry found, was a lot more than saying funny words as you waved your wand. There was a lot more to magic than Harry thought.

They had to study the night sky through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight, luckily, they could sleep in the next day. They learned the name of stars and how plants moved, Draco pointed out the constellation he was named after saying it was a Black thing. He then had to explain that his mother's maiden name was Black.

Three times a week they had to go 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. A lot of them were potion ingredients.

The most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost who apparently fell asleep in the staff room and woke up the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind. Professor Binns was his name and he droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates. He 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 look over his desk. At the start of their first class, he took roll call and when he got to Harry's name, he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.