The Mystery of the Philosopher's Stone.

Chapter 9: Talents revealed

Harry went down to breakfast on his first morning, having slept well and feeling excited about his classes. As he and Ron made their way to the Gryffindor table, he noticed that many students were staring at him and whispering feverishly to their friends. When his name had been called last night at the sorting ceremony, a hush had fallen over the hall, followed by murmurs of surprise and interest. Harry knew that it would be the same in the morning.

His foster parents had warned him about this and he tried his best to ignore it. While Harry was eating breakfast the post arrived. Lots of different owls flew into the Great Hall and a large barn owl dropped a package close to Harry, almost landing in his orange juice. Harry opened it eagerly and found a short note from his foster mother wishing him good luck on his first day and enclosing a copy of the Daily Prophet, the most popular wizarding newspaper, which she had bought him a subscription for, as a small present to start his school career. 

Also enclosed was a small packet of Fudge Flies, Harry's favourite wizarding treat. Unrolling the newspaper he saw that the front page had a moving picture of the very goblin he had seen in Gringott's Bank. The headline of the article said "Gringott's Break In." Harry read that it had happened on the 31st August, the night before the students came to Hogwart's.

The bank spokesgoblin insisted that nothing was stolen because the vault in question, (number 713), was emptied the previous day. Harry thought he would write to his family about this as they only bought the Daily Prophet occasionally. He had a feeling that this was important somehow, but he did not know why. When breakfast was over Harry and Ron headed excitedly for the Charms classroom.

The teacher was a tiny man called Professor Flitwick. It was an easy lesson in which Professor Flitwick taught them the correct way to hold their wands and stressed the importance of pronouncing the words of the charms correctly. 

"Never forget Wizard Baruffio who said "S" instead of "F" and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest," Professor Flitwick had said.

After Charms it was morning break. Then came the challenge of getting to a classroom distant from your previous class. Not only was Hogwart's a large and confusing building to navigate but the staircases moved for no apparent reason and at random times. There were doors that only opened on a Friday or needed to be scratched in just the right spot.

Peeves, the poltergeist, would drop things on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with unpleasant objects and grab you while shouting abuse at you. And if that was not enough, the caretaker, Argus Filch, was always keen to punish students for any tiny breach of school rules, assisted by his cat, Mrs Norris, who would always turn up, closely followed by Filch when any mischief was afoot. After break it was Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall. She was very strict and would not stand for any misbehaviour in her class. Her first words to the students were, "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwart's. 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. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realised they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After making a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match: Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.

Everyone was fairly exhausted and hungry by the end of the class and looking forward to lunch. Defence Against the Dark Arts class took place after lunch. But Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, was given to him by an African prince as a thank you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed a funny smell hung around the turban and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected everywhere he went.