Twin Power *Cedric Diggory Love Story* (EDITING)

The first week of classes

Harry's POV

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with the red hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"With her bangs pulled back?"

"Did you see their faces?"

"Did you see their scars?"

Whispers followed Cassia and I from the moment we left our dormitories the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at us, or doubled back to pass us in the corridors again, staring. I wished they wouldn't, because we (mainly me) were trying to concentrate on finding our 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, 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 everything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot.

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!"

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Me and Ron 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 that 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 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 I quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

We had to study the night skies through our telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. Three times a week we went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where we 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 staff room fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while we 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 a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of our first class he took the roll call, and when he reached mine and Cassia's names he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.