𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝

- 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 -

"There, look"

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with the red hair"

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see her face?"

"Did you see her scar?"

Whispers followed Lucia from the moment she left the dormitory the next day. People queuing outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a good look at her, or doubled back to pass her in the corridors again, staring. Lucia wished they wouldn't, because she was trying to concentrate on finding her way to class.

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 Lucia was sure 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 waste paper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under you 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 that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Lucia and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. Filch found them trying to force their way through a door which unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out of bounds corridor on the third floor. He wouldn't believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it on purpose and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs Norris, a scrawny, dust coloured creature 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 (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs Norris a good kick.

And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the lessons themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Lucia quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

They 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 they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learnt how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi and found out what they were used for.

Easily the most boring lesson was History of Magic, which was the only class taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates and 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 lesson he took the register, and when he reached Lucia's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.