The War Hammer of Hogwarts - Harry Potter

Potion Seller, I'm Heading Into Battle...

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 pretty sure the coats of armor 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 trash cans 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!"  Then there's the caretaker, Argus Filch.  Harry 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 that 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 colored 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... well, except for maybe 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 classes themselves.  There's a lot more to magic then you'd think.  We had to study the night skies through telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets.  Three times a week we went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology with Professor Sprout, where we learned how to take care of all kinds of 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 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 we scribbled down names and dates, and got Emetic 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 our first class, he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.  Professor McGonagall was again different.  I'd 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.

McGonagall: Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts.  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.  We were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized we weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time.  After taking a lot of complicated notes, we were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle.  By the end of the lesson, only Pieck, Hermione, and I had made any difference to our matches.  Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver for Hermione, who gave a big smile, then showed that Pieck's had gotten a little longer.  Then she came over to me and stared at my match, stunned.  Or what used to be a match.  It was now a two inch long stick bug.