Selene Walker and the Sorcerers Stone (Book 1)

Chapter 4

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with the red hair."

Selene scowled hearing the whispers as they walked down the hallway. After getting dressed she had met up with Ron and Harry and went down for breakfast. 

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispers followed them from the moment they left the dormitory that day. People queuing outside classrooms stood on tip toe to get a look at Harry, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring. Harry wished they wouldn't, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to his classes. 

"come on its this way" Selene says as she lead them down a flight of stairs. 

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 Harry was 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. 

Selene found their reactions amusing but there were times where she too had a fight from the surprise. If there was anything that she had in common with Voldemort...it was that she too feared the dead. 

She did not fear death it's self, she just feared ghosts, skeletons, anything dead. Especially if it moved. 

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 waste-paper 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!' 

Selene was sure James had been the one to teach him that. 

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Selene was surprised that he was still around. 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 which 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. Selene was too busy watching them amused to help them out. 

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 (except perhaps 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 lessons themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.