Hexad

Book one, chapter eight

Harry Potter And The Bleak World. That is the name of the first book.

Chapter eight of this spectacular book-in-a-book, The Potions Master.

I do not own Harry Potter. This is an AU.

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"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the girl with the braid!"

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his skin?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his dormitory the next morning. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring. Harry wished they wouldn't, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to classes.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones-- narrow, rickety ones-- some that led somewhere different on a day than the one before; 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 to be doors because they weren't doors. 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 Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. And if they couldn't, he was certain someone was moving them.

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 nice enough to help any first year, no matter their House, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth jack-crap and two locked doors with a trick staircase as icing if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop waste 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!"

Even worse than Peeves, if even possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry had already managed to get on the wrong side of him on his first morning of class. Padma had woken up early and spoke with her sister about their classes, and Harry was stuck trying to find his way to classes without her since Lisa slept in. Filch caught him, thought he was playing hooky, and dragged him all the way to Flitwick's Charms classroom.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs.Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamp-like eyes just like Filch's. Hydrus hated her. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one strand of hair out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was something many wished for as a Christmas present to give Mrs.Norris a good kick, preferably down a staircase.

Harry had to say, he did not like Filch, nor did he like Mrs.Norris. And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic than books said, and as Harry learned in some classes, he'd have to use his wand. Like Charms, and Transfiguration. Books wouldn't get him as far as they had in muggle school, is what he realised very early on.

The first years 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, none of which did Harry pay much attention to. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology with a 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. That was one of the very few classes Lisa wouldn't sleep in for the world-- she loved Herbology.