A silver and green lion

Chapter 2: The potion master

 "There! Look!"

"Behind the blond one!"

"Did you see his scar?"

"Oh, he noticed us!"

Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his common room the next day. They were in shrill contrast with the silence that awaited him with his classmates. The first years Slytherins didn't talk much to Harry. He had been sitting all by himself at the table in the big hall before Diana and Kali had joined him. The brunette boy who had been sitting next to him last night had introduced himself as Theodore 'Theo' Nott when Malfoy didn't look for a moment but the blond had spotted them quickly enough, making Theo turning away from him with a shrug. He had told him to apologize to Malfoy if he wanted it to end but his pride didn't let him. He'd rather spend the next seven years alone than saying sorry to the blond prat. So that was the reason he was walking a few feet behind his classmates, trying to remember how they went to their classes. The whispering made it harder than it already had been. There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led to a different place according to which day it was and some with a vanishing step in the middle of them you had to remember to jump over. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked them nicely or tickled them in the right place, and doors that weren't doors but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where everything was because the people in the portraits kept visiting each other and Harry was sure the coats of armor could move around. The ghosts didn't help either, it was always a nasty shock when they swept through you. And then of course there was Peeves. If you had a really bad day the poltergeist would drop waste-paper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, or sneak up behind you and grab your nose screaming 'GOT YOUR CRONK!'

But even worse, if possible, was Argus Filch, the caretaker. Theo, Harry and the Italian boy, Blaise Zabini, had tried to force their way through a door which unlucky turned out to be the restricted corridor on the third floor. If it hadn't been for Quirrel the three boy had been locked away in the dungeons on their first day. Filch and his cat, miss Norris, were hated by all students and many of them had the dream to kick miss Norris of the stairs. Diana had told him that you needed to run hard if you did so, because Filch knew the secret passageways almost as well as the Weasley twins.

And then, when you finally found the right class, there were the lessons themselves. Harry soon found out there was a lot more to magic than waving with your wand and saying some funny words.

Every Wednesday evening, they had astronomy where they had to study the night sky and study the names of all different stars. Three times a week they had Herbology with a dumpy little witch called professor Sprout. They learnt how to take care of all different strange plants and fungi and found out where they were used for.

But the most boring class was easily History of Magic, thought by professor Binns. Kali and Diana had told him that the professor had fallen asleep in the staffroom one day and had stood up the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him.

Charms was taught by Professor Flitwick, a tiny man who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At their first lesson he had taken the register and when he read Harry's name, he had given a squeak of excitement before toppling out of sight, making Malfoy and his cronies snicker.

Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor, had been entirely different again. Harry had been right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to moment they had sat down in their first class.

"Transfiguration is one of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts." She told them. "Anyone messing around in my class and will not come back. You have been warned." She gave Malfoy and his friends a cool look before she turned her desk into a pig and back again. To Harry's disappointment they weren't going to start with turning furniture into animals. After making a lot of complicated notes they were given a match and tried started to turn it into a needle. At the end of class, the only one who had managed to change the match a bit was Hermione Granger, the bushy haired girl who had asked him on the train if he had seen a toad. After McGonagall had showed her results, she had given the girl a small, rare smile.