𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎𝐔𝐒 || Harry J. Potter [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 5 ✎

"His arse does look nice though."
_______________________

Third Person POV

There were a hundred and forty two staircases at Hogwarts. Anything you can think of, Hogwarts had. 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 over.

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.

They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets.

Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch named Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.

Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost.

Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk.

At the start of their first class, he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.
　　
Professor McGonagall was, again, different. Harry had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking to the moment they sat down in her first class.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts." She walked down the rows of desks. "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 realized they weren't going to be changing furniture into animals for a long time.

After taking 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 and Jilly had made any difference to their match.

Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione and Jilly a rare smile, in which they awkwardly returned.

The class everyone had really been looking forward to was 'Defense Against the Dark Arts', 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, had been 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, when 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 that 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 wherever he went.
　　
Harry was very relieved to find out that he wasn't miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like him, hadn't had any idea that they were witches and wizards. There was so much to learn that even people like Ron and Jilly didn't have much of a head start.