Chapter 6
As we said through Andromeda, both Hermione and Harry soon joined Griffir, and if the former was just greeted kindly as a newcomer, then Harry made a real splash. The Gryffindors just went crazy, some of them, like the Weasley Twins, started jumping up and down shouting "Potter is here!" and it even went so far that the Headmaster had to use voice enhancement magic to call the students to order. However, further distribution did not bring any surprises. As for our distribution, to be honest, we were not surprised that my brother was distributed so quickly. After all, we have the same mind between us, which the hat obviously managed to catch, and it simply didn't make sense for her to drag out the time for re-judging essentially the same person.
When the distribution was over, the director gave a short speech and the FEAST began.
The tables were literally bursting with an abundance of food and what was most pleasant among the dishes was our favorite fried potatoes, which had a simply amazing crust. It was only natural that while we were filling our stomachs, we also didn't miss the opportunity to look around the faculty table. And then the differences from the films immediately became noticeable. Snape especially stood out in this regard.
It's not Alan Rickman who, with his appearance and acting, has made Professor Snape the sexual fantasy of countless teenage girls. After all, a handsome man who will love you "always" isn't it beautiful? However, if we discard all this and go to the book version, which we apparently observe, then we will see a man who is much below average in terms of appearance and in addition clearly does not follow his appearance, which is only worth his dirty, greasy hair to the shoulders. And if the character is also the same. Then such a man would be a disaster for any woman in the marriage. And one of the few things we could respect about him is his incredible bravery. After all, to be a double spy, when at the same time one of the parties is a psychopath who can read minds and kill even his followers without a twinge of conscience, you need to have truly steel balls and self-control so as not to puncture yourself and stay alive.
There were also strikingly different more or less young teachers like Septima Vector, who clearly did not hesitate to use potions and spells in self-care, which was manifested in a rather pleasant appearance.
However, for too long we did not pay attention to the teachers and tried to gradually join in the conversations of the students sitting next to us, until finally the feast was over. Dumbledore was back in front of the whole school.
Dumbledore cleared his throat loudly. "Now that we're all full, I'd like to say a few more words. Before the semester starts, you need to learn something. First-year students should remember that all students are forbidden to enter the forest located on the school grounds. Some undergraduates should also keep this in mind for their own good…
Dumbledore's bright eyes rested for a moment on the red heads of the Weasley twins.
"At the request of Mr. Filch, our school superintendent, I remind you not to perform miracles during recess. Now about quidditch practice, it starts in a week. Anyone who would like to play for the national teams of their respective faculties should contact Madame Trick. Finally, I must inform you that this school year, the right-hand side of the third-floor corridor is closed to anyone who doesn't want to die a painful death.
As soon as the last statement was made, there were a few isolated chuckles that seemed to take the Director's words as a joke, but they quickly died down under the pressure of silence before the director continued.
"Now, before we go to bed, let's sing the school anthem!" Dumbledore shouted.
Dumbledore shook his wand as if it were a fly that had landed on the end of it. A long golden ribbon shot out from the wand, which began to rise above the tables, and then crumbled into words that hung in the air.
"Everyone sings to their favorite tune," said Dumbledore. - So, here we go!
Oh, it was truly terrible for anyone who has an ear, because everyone sang as they wanted, some softly, some loudly, some slowly, some quickly. And of course, there were enough of those who mercilessly faked while shouting at the whole hall. It is not surprising that everyone finished singing at different times. In the end, the only ones left singing were the Weasley twins, who managed to turn the Hogwarts anthem into a funeral march, which the Headmaster appreciated surprisingly well and even began conducting it with a round of applause at the end.
"Oh, the music! Dumbledore exclaimed, wiping his eyes, looking as if he had shed tears of emotion. "Its magic dwarfs what we do here. Now go to sleep. Trot-march!
We were led into the common room by Headman Percy Weasley, who had made sure that all the first-year students were sitting next to him at the table, so as not to lose sight of anyone.
And the path to this living room was rather ... peculiar. Not only did we have to be escorted twice through the hidden doors that were hidden behind sliding panels or a tapestry hanging from the ceiling, but on top of that, we had to climb a moving staircase five times, and honestly, Candida Ravenclaw probably had to be the strongest of the four founders, otherwise it's really hard to imagine why she was able to live so long after Hogwarts was founded.
When we arrived on the seventh floor in front of the portrait of the Big Lady that blocked the entrance to the living room, we were all very tired and sleepy, especially after such a heavy dinner. And apparently Percy noticed it too, so he didn't bother us with any more instructions and just said a few words about how the day would start tomorrow and sent us to our bedrooms.
The living room itself looked quite cozy, especially under the firelight. There were plenty of obviously extremely comfortable upholstered chairs and sofas. A spiral staircase led up to the bedrooms.
The bedrooms had already been prepared for us by the time we arrived, and the beds were distributed without our participation, both the boys 'and girls' bedrooms had exactly six large beds with four-post thresholds and dark red velvet curtains, one for each freshman. And maybe if everyone wasn't so sleepy right now, then now everyone would start getting to know each other, and so we calmly changed into our pajamas and went to bed.
Well, the others went to bed, but we had a problem…
From the very beginning of our lucid life, we had been sleeping together, and now that we needed to sleep alone, it was surprisingly uncomfortable. This nasty feeling like something was missing was just terribly annoying. Because of this, we fell asleep quite late.
And of course, there is nothing surprising in the fact that we did not get enough sleep and when the general alarm rang, we were mildly dissatisfied, although nevertheless we still took up our wands and began to use everyday charms.
"Tuum munda corps, paxter comas, paniculus dantes..."
"What are you doing?" - almost simultaneously, the same question was asked in two bedrooms, from the surprised first-year students who clearly did not expect that on the first day they would see someone performing morning procedures using magic, and not as they usually do.
"Just a couple of spells from the cosmetic enchantment book," we replied, unable to hold back a yawn.
"Can you teach me?" This was immediately followed by a request from Hermione, who watched enviously as Andromeda's disheveled hair, after just one spell, was perfectly coiffed and fell in waves to her shoulders.
"Later, somehow. Andromeda replied with another yawn.
— great. This is a promise! the girl said and hurried to the bathroom adjoining our bedroom.
While there were no other boys who were so interested in teaching freshmen, except for the red-haired boy Ron Weasley, who admitted with a touch of envy that it would be cool to be able to do the same. And soon after we were all dressed, we were finally reunited in the living room, where Percy Weasley was already fully dressed, along with a brown-eyed blonde who, like him, wore a prefect's badge.
"You're fast." - the girl was a little surprised. - usually after the welcome feast, everyone gathers for a long time.
"We helped ourselves a little with magic. Regulus answered her before we yawned in unison again.
"Hmm, I see the Weasley twins have some competition. the girl grinned as she saw us moving. – I'm Isolde Fossett, your prefect, and I'll be taking you to breakfast and class today.
"I'm Vega Regulus Black
"I'm Vega Andromeda Black."
"Blackie huh?" the girl muttered.
"Is something wrong, Isolde?" Percy asked.
"It's just that there's a kid among the freshmen whose parents were tortured to distraction by one of the Blacks. As if there were no problems.
"Blackie is related to half the purebloods in magical England, so it shouldn't be a problem. Even Potter is our cousin, even if not our closest.
"Oh, yes, the sacred twenty-eight. Our family has always refused to accept that we are part of them. Percy said proudly.
"Well, a sacred twenty-eight family sounds pretty cool to me. Regulus shrugged at Andromeda's nod of agreement. "although the theory of pure blood sounds like complete nonsense.
"Hah, the Blacks are about to be called blood traitors along with the Weasleys. Fossett chuckled.
"Nothing new, Malfoy's already done some tongue work, which earned him a couple of bruises as a reward. Regulus said dismissively.
"Hah, I've been using my tongue. Well, you said it. The girl looked amused before turning serious and looking towards the bedrooms. – we should be heading to the great hall for breakfast by now, or we might be late for class."
"I'll go check on the boys, and you take care of the girls, okay?" Percy suggested to his colleague.
- OK.
As soon as the prefects took matters into their own hands, we all went to breakfast in a crowd, where we were also given our schedule and it was probably quite free. As a rule, we had 2-3 lessons per day lasting an hour. Although there are also days like Thursday when there are first two potions lessons, and then one lesson in the history of magic. As a result, it turns out that we get free time quite early. And on days when we have Astronomy, which takes place at night, we usually have only 1 hour in the morning, after which we are free until the night. And on the first day, we had only two classes of herbology and history, where the headman Isolde accompanied us.
Honestly, this castle was designed by a real drug addict. That's why it was necessary to make fucking 142 stairs, each of which periodically changes direction and this is not to mention the doors to many of which need their own special approach to open, and some are completely deceptive.
During the day we spent in this castle alone, we managed to thank all the higher powers more than once for the fact that we have a perfect memory. Otherwise, we would have had to spend most of our time memorizing the passageways to the classrooms where classes are held, which only had a couple of them in the entire castle, which naturally raised the question, why does Hogwarts have so many empty classrooms? Naturally, this question was not so interesting for us to search for information on it.
By the way, as for communication with peers, it just so happened that by the end of the second day, we were communicating mainly with Hermione, and although our relations with others were not spoiled, even Harry quickly found himself in the company of Ron Weasley, who constantly told him stories from the daily life of his family although we weren't exactly in a hurry to start a conversation with others first, we were mostly interested in studying and exploring the castle, and perhaps that was also why Hermione chose to join us.
We also managed to get the first unloved item. Travalogy. We did not consider ourselves some kind of white hands before, but as soon as there was an alternative in the form of magic where you can do seemingly absolutely everything, even the slightest desire to dig through all this dirt manually disappeared, and here we were waiting for a bummer. In order not to affect the growth of plants, it is highly undesirable to apply magic to them unless you are trying to create a plant with special properties and even then strictly defined magic is used. In general, although we accepted it, but we did not like it. The history of magic was essentially useless to us, and we had already memorized the entire course. Therefore, for us, it was a subject on which you can just sleep under the measured and what a sin to hide the rather pleasant voice of Professor Binns, who was also a ghost, which, given his subject, was in some way even logical.
Defense against the dark arts, despite the fact that everyone was waiting for it, turned out to be a complete disappointment. It seems that Voldemort is putting too much pressure on Quirel's brain, otherwise it's hard to explain why he's such a lousy teacher. And his pretense was simply beyond reason. He behaved like a madman who was afraid to even read out the names of monsters, and in the end it all came down to self-study from books during class, for which he naturally did not earn love from the students.
Transfiguration, on the other hand, was very different from other items, including charms.
Although perhaps it would be more accurate to say especially char. If when using a spell, the first thing to do with the spell is to use the correct movement of the wand, accurately cast the spell, and imagination, then when using transfiguration, you need to accurately imagine the structure of the matter on which the spell is applied, and then just imagine how this structure should change, complementing it all with the spell formula. For most of the transfiguration spells studied at Hogwarts, at first glance not very clear sentences are given that you need to memorize by heart and then the spell will work, but if you think about the meaning, it quickly becomes clear that these are literally density, melting point, boiling point, thermodynamic characteristics, crystal structure parameters and chemical properties of both states. Which leads to the conclusion that as long as you know these values and can remember them on the fly, you will be able to use transfiguration even in combat, otherwise this is also the reason why even such a master of transfiguration as Professor McGonagall, whether in movies or in books, used charms during active combat.
This is what we decided to ask you about during the first Transfiguration lesson.
On this day, even Ron and Harry, unlike Canon, were not late for class, because most of the first-year Gryffindors quickly realized that the easiest way to get to class on time was to follow us.
"Transfiguration, one of the most difficult and dangerous parts of magic that you will learn at Hogwarts," she began the lesson with these words. "Any violation of discipline in my classes and the violator will leave the classroom and never come back here. I've warned you.
I don't need to say that the severity of her tone and facial expression was felt by absolutely all the students in the class. And after that, she turned her desk into a pig and back again as an example of transfiguration capabilities, which caused considerable admiration among the young wizards, but when she began to write on the blackboard everything that we need to remember for the usual transformation of a match into a needle, the recently inspired freshmen noticeably despondent. The only ones who are not affected by this are naturally us and Hermione, who have long managed to learn everything written on the blackboard.
And I think it's not surprising that following our guess, we quickly completed the task.
- Miss and Mr. Black, get their fully deserved 5 points each. Great job. - with a proud smile, the professor announced, and judging by the reaction of the others, they were no less surprised by the transformation of the table into a pig.
- Share with your classmates how did you complete the task so quickly? she suggested.
- of course. - we agreed, and Andromeda got up from her seat to share with the professor our theory.
- great! Ten Gryffindor points. You can go back to Miss Black's seat. " The professor said slightly excitedly before addressing the class. – as you have already heard your colleague, Transfiguration is really quite a science that studies substances, as well as their change and awareness of this is one of the most important steps in mastering this discipline, and for the same reason, to achieve success in transfiguration, you need to know a lot. However, there are exceptions to transfiguration.
"And the main exception is animagus. As she said that, she turned into a tabby cat with a pattern around its eyes that slightly resembled glasses, and in the next instant, it returned to its human form. - ability to randomly apply an animal shape
- For such transfiguration, in addition to calculations, a special ritual will be required, which will give the wizard a special type of magical energy and the ability to turn into an animal at any time, but this is also extremely dangerous, because if such a ritual is performed by a person with an insufficiently strong mind, he can forever remain an animal completely forgetting about human life. For the same reason, the number of officially known animagi does not reach even a dozen. However, if in the future I think that one of you has the necessary characteristics, then I can lend a helping hand in becoming an animagus.
Profesor was so inspired that she literally overwhelmed us with magical theory, as well as what heights transfiguration can reach, that in the end she spoke until the end-of-class bell rang.
"That's the end of the lesson. Your homework will be turning a toothpick into a needle. Please take this task seriously.
That's how our first Transfiguration class went, and the next day we had double potions…