Slytherin Raised by Wolfstar: Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone

Chapter Seven: The Potions Master

'There, look.'

'Where?'

'Next to the tall kid with the brown hair.'

'Wearing the glasses?'

'Did you see his face?'

'Did you see his scar?'

Whispers followed Harry from the momentary left the common room next day. People queuing outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, 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 classes.

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 l, 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 just like the ones at home, and Harry was sure the coats of armour 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, the Gryffindor house ghost, was always happy to point 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!'

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry managed to get on the wrong side of him on his very first morning. Filch found him trying to force his 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 he was lost, was sure he were trying to break into it on purpose and was threatening to lock him up in the dungeons when he was rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing by.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs Norris, a scrawny, dust-coloured 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 knee the secret passageways of the school 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 words.

Harry had been quite right to think Professor McGonagall wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to the moment they had sat down in her first class with the first year Hufflepuff's.

'Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. 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 realised they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After making a lot complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end only Theodore Nott had made any difference to his match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy. She looked impressed, but did not congratulate Theodore at all.