The Forgotten Twin

Chapter 8

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, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was very hard to remember where anything was, because of how everything moved around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Delilah 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. The Bloody Baron was always, well, not happy, but willing to point new Slytherins 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!"

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. He 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 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 more to magic, as Delilah quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Thursday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the plants, which wasn't hard for Delilah given her semi photographic memory. 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 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 Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, mixing up Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball.

Professor Flitwick, the charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. He was very nice, helpful and one of Delilah's favorite teachers.

Professor McGonagall was, again, different. Delilah 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 said. "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 the 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, Delilah was the only one who had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave her a rare smile. Draco had teased her relentlessly at this.

The class everyone had been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons turned out to be 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. Delilah didn't believe it though. Quirrell's 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 didn't believe this story. For one thing, when Blaise Zabini 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, which was rumored to be stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.