Not many people knew about the small girl that lived in the cupboard under the stairs. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon liked it that way.
Harriet Euphemia Potter had incredibly messy hair and bright green eyes. The only thing she liked about her appe...
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"There, look."
"Where?"
"Next to the tall kid with the red hair."
"Waring the glasses?"
"Did you see her face?"
"Did you see her scar?"
Whispers followed Harriet from the moment she left her dormitory the next day. People queuing outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at her, or doubled back to pass her in the corridors again, staring. Harriet wished they wouldn't, because she was trying to concentrate on finding her way to classes.
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickey 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 everything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other and Harriet 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. 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 in your head, pull rugs from under your feet and just ruin your whole day.
Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was Argus Filch. Harriet and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. He 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 Quirell, who was passing.
Filch owned a cat called Mrs Norris, who 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. The students hated her.
And then, once you had managed to find them, were the lessons themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harriet quickly found out, then waving your wand and saying a few funny words.
They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movement of the planets. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned to take care of all kinds of strange plants.
Easily the most boring subject was History of Magic, which was the only class taught by a ghost. Professor Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates and got Emeric the Evil and Uric and Oddball mixed up.
