Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (DISCONTINUED)

Severus Snape

"There look."

"Where?"

"Next to the kids with red hair?"

"Wearing glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?

Harry was followed by people whispering about him, the moment he left his dormitory the next day. People that were lined up outside of classroom, stood on their tiptoes to get a better look at him or doubled back to pass him in the corridors, staring.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircase at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping one; 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 door that weren't really door 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 portrait kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats along armor could walk.

The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock to when one of them glided suddenly looked 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 Poltergeists was worth two locked doors and a truck staircase of 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 that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry, Ron, and Alexandria managed to get on the wrong side of him on their first morning. Filch found them trying to force their 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 they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it in purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamplike eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridor alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she's 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 classes themselves. There was a lot of magic than waving your wand around 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 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 called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all strange plants and fungi, and found what they were used for.
The easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only class that was taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got to the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.

Professor Flitwick, the charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on 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.