Tory Potter and the Pathological Liar

Potions

‘Suspicious’ is the first word that came to mind as the people in the halls looked at us.

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with red hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

"What about the other boy?"

"Yeah, it's definitely him."

Whispers followed Harry and I from the moment we left our dorm room the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tip-toe to get a look at us or doubled back to pass us in the corridors again, staring. We wished they wouldn't, as we were trying to concentrate on finding our way to classes.

There were one hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that lead you somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely or tickled them in exactly the right place. There were doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. The people in portraits kept going to visit each other, and I had a suspicion the suits 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.

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington was always happy to point the 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 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!"

Even worse than Peeves, if possible, was the caretaker, Mr. Argus Filch.

Harry, Ron, and I managed to get on the wrong side of him the very first morning. Mr. Filch found us trying to force our 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 that we were lost, was sure we were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock us in the dungeons when we were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

Mr. 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 one 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. Mr. Filch knew all the secret passageways of the school better than anyone - save for maybe the Weasley twins - and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated the man, but I held some sort of respect for the man being able to memorize and entire castle. In any case, it was the dearest ambition of many to give the poor cat a good kick, though I wanted no part of animal abuse.

And then, once you found them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic, I realized, than waving your wand around and saying a few funny words.

We had to study the night sky through our telescopes every Wednesday night at midnight and learn the different names of the stars and the movements of the planets.

Three days a week, we went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout where we learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi and found out what they were used for. Unfortunately, I didn't have a green thumb, and that was easily realized in the first week after I killed just about every plant I touched, which admittedly wasn't many because I already knew I had the hands of death.