Azul Black and the Sorcerer's Stone

chapter 8

"There look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with red hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispers followed Harry everywhere, since we woke up this morning and I have to admit it was getting annoying. People would line up outside of classrooms, many standing on tiptoes to get a better look at him. There were even a few who would double back to pass him in the corridor again, staring.

It made things harder than they should be, you know like getting to classes, not getting lost, Walking in general.

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, Neville kept getting stuck in it and we would have to pull him out. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, I never had a problem with these, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but we're wall just pretending. As you may guess it was very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in portraits could visit each other and I once caught one of the suits of armor walking.

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 Peeve 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!"

Though when he would pull these things on me I would compliment the simplicity of them and give him tips for next time, soon we had a bit of a partnership going. I help him come up with new ways to terrorise the students, and he makes sure to try each and everyone of them out on Buttercup and Draco before proceeding to the rest of the Hogwarts population.

However, even worse that Peeves , was the caretaker Argus Filch. Harry and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning, unfortunately I came looking for them and got caught in the collateral damage. It turned out the boys had tried to go through a door that happened to lead to the out-of-bounds corridor and wouldn't believe them when they told him they were lost. He insisted they were trying to break in on purpose, and was in the midst of threatening to lock them in the dungeons. I tried to help but he just blew up at me too and, Thankfully, Professor Quirrell came to our rescue as he was passing.

I made sure to thank him numerous times and found that we get along quite well. Though he still stutters through every word I was now his top favorite student. And being favored student meant I could sleep the class away.

Filch owns 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 wisk 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 my, I mean their, dearest ambition to give Mrs. Norris a good and well deserved kick.

And that was without the classes themselves , once you manage to find them of course. there was a lot more to magic, I soon found out, than just waving your wand around and knowing what words to say.