Rosabella Black|Daughter of Sirius Black| (Book 1)

The Potions Master

Rosabella's Point of View:

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with the red hair and that girl with black hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispers followed Harry from the moment we left the common room the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoes to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring. Harry looked uncomfortable about this and I could understand why. This castle was hard to navigate and all the attention didn't help.

There were a hundred and forty - two staircases at Hogwarts. Wide, sweeping ones and 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 I 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 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!"

I had managed to convince Peeves it would be a massive inconvenience to have someone take off all the toilet seats in Hogwarts. I eagerly followed Peeves into a girl's bathroom but I didn't know which floor it was on. Peeves took off all the toilet seats, making a lot of noise in the process. A ghost that looked like a girl around my age started shrieking and wailing. I quickly grabbed a toilet seat and I sent it to Uncle Remus. I think I had earned some respect from Peeves.

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. I had been forewarned about him by Jason and Jacob.

Harry, Ron and I managed to get on the wrong side of him on our very first morning. Filch found us trying to force our 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 we were lost, was sure we were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock us in the dungeons when we were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

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 my twin brothers) 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. Which I did after she kept staring at me waiting for me to do something.

Harry confided in me that when he thought learning magic wouldn't be that difficult. He thought it would just be waving a wand and saying some funny words.
    
"Oh, you don't know the half of it. It just gets harder and harder." I replied to Harry as I threw Dungbombs at passing groups of Slytherins from a banister.