No one is expecting him to be awake at four in the morning. No one, in fact, is expecting him to be awake before around seven in the morning, it appears. The dorms' silence is only broken by the soft snores, and the common room doesn't have even that.
Each player has a few magical cards and the cards are turned face-up and put on top of each other in the middle of the table and when a card is put on top of another card that has the same picture you have to touch it with your wand. If you do you get all the cards on the table, but if you get it wrong the cards explode in your face. The longer the game goes on the faster the cards go, and whoever ends up with no cards loses the game. All three boys are covered in soot and giggling at each other.
Quirrell's lesson turns out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smells strongly of garlic, which someone mentions is to ward off a vampire he's met in Romania and is afraid will be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he tells them, was given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but the kids aren't sure they believe this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asks eagerly to hear how Quirrell fought off the zombie, Quirrell goes pink and starts talking about the weather; for another, a funny smell seems to hang around the turban, not dissimilar to that of his classroom.
At 2:30 sharp the doors slam shut and the cat jumps from the table, turning into Professor McGonagall in a fluid motion that makes several students gasp in surprise.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she says without preamble. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then she wordlessly waves her wand and changes her desk into a pig and back again.
"Hmm. Makes sense, I guess. Well, project 'befriend Draco and bring him to the Light Side' is going well, he still won't speak to me but I managed to leverage that into making Pansy Parkinson speak to me—she likes being contrarian—and I bet I can reach him before year's end."
Their next class is Herbology, which happens behind the castle in the greenhouse, and is taught by a short dumpy witch called Professor Sprout. It is comparatively more relaxed, and she explains that each class will be dedicated to one plant or fungus and how to care for it and what its uses are.
They share Charms with the Hufflepuffs on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. It's taught by a tiny little wizard who has to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he takes the roll call, and when he reaches Victor's name he gives an excited squeak and topples out of sight.
And then the giant bat walks into the room.
He is of course not really a giant bat but the way he stalks and his cloak billowing behind him as he does give that very strong impression. When he reaches his table he starts taking the roll call and, like Flitwick, pauses at Victor's name, but not to gasp in surprise.
"Ah, yes," he says softly, "Victor Evans. Our new—celebrity." That last word is said with something that is almost—disgust, his mouth curling in distaste and his eyes narrowing with disdain.
The Professor eventually finishes taking the roll call and starts speaking.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking," he begins. He speaks in barely more than a whisper, but they catch every word—like Professor McGonagall, Snape has the gift of keeping a class silent without effort.
And he looks at Victor after saying every fourth word.
"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes," he continues, his eyes lingering at Victor again, "the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach." And at that word he is definitely looking directly at Victor—he doesn't even try to disguise it.
"I wasn't, sir, but Victor didn't know the answer to those questions and was clearly looking terrified which is not a helpful thing for eleven-year-olds to be in their first class and that's honestly bullying, you're supposed to be a Head of House and if this is the behaviour we get from the third most important person in Hogwarts faculty—"
It's on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes are outside the front door.
When they knock they hear a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid's voice rings out, saying, "Back, Fang—back!" Hagrid's big, hairy face appears in the crack as he pulls the door open. "Hang on," he says. "Back, Fang!"
He lets them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound. There's only one room inside. Hams and pheasants are hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle's boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stands a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.
"Make yerselves at home," he says, letting go of Fang, who bounds straight at Ron and starts licking his ears.
It's a cutting from the Daily Prophet:
GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST
Investigations continue into the break-in at
Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the
work of Dark wizards or witches unknown.
Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing
had been taken. The vault that was searched had in
fact been emptied the same day.
"But we're not telling you what was in there, so
keep your noses out if you know what's good
for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.
"I expect he would have bullied you for a while longer and then been satisfied with some more low-key bullying for the rest of class, and would think he could keep doing this with no ill consequences, and the Slytherins would feel very satisfied, and nothing would change. Not that I expect this in particular to change anything but I feel like Snape and I are going to have a long, intimate relationship, like a splinter and a toe, and I am a very insistent splinter."
"How to be a Slytherin. There is no sensible goal he could have possibly most effectively and efficiently achieved by bullying eleven-year-olds—he was just being plain old petty, that's not a conduct appropriate to an adult much less an adult in a position of authority over children, and he acted like some other kid jealous of Victor's fame."
"Well. The reason I called you two here in particular was because I wanted to talk to you without giving much away, believe it or not I do in fact get it that you would want to be a secret. And if he was here it'd be easier to pretend I was just talking to him if we need that. But also I—feel like we didn't end yesterday's conversation on the best of notes and I wanna fix that."
"I don't know what his fears are. Snape isn't going to kill or torture me, and if he tries it will be worse for him, Veritaserum is a thing that exists and if I'm missing time I left myself a note telling myself what to do, and I got an older Slytherin to enchant something else—anyway he won't do it, and then he'll give me detention and take points from me but meanwhile maybe other people will get the idea that, hey, the third most powerful member of faculty in this school shouldn't be bullying eleven-year-olds!"
"How confident are you that he couldn't dodge a truth potion if he really wanted to? How confident are you that he wouldn't guess you've got all those safeguards and go after Victor instead? He hasn't, but you don't know enough yet to be sure that makes you right as opposed to lucky."
"I meant a truth potion for myself not for him, and anyway yeah but he's a Professor at a school, these things don't happen, I may not be paranoid enough for the worst-case but I'm pretty sure I'm paranoid enough for school. The answer to a teacher bullying you isn't keeping your head down because he may murder you."
"Wait until you know more," says Victor. "Maybe there are rules about how teachers are allowed to behave. If you know the rules, then you can notice when someone breaks them and tell the - tell someone about it. I'm not sure if the Headmaster is the right person. Maybe Professor McGonagall."
"He, er, clearly likes Potions a lot but I don't think he likes children very much," he says. "And he, um, he asked me some questions that weren't in the textbook and then when I didn't know the answers he said I obviously hadn't opened any books before coming to class. And when one of the Slytherin students told him to stop doing that sort of thing because it wasn't very educationally helpful, he took five points from Slytherin for backchat. And when he criticizes students and they get nervous and make mistakes he criticizes them more for the mistakes."
"Well, that conduct is very unbecoming of a Potions Master, and especially of a Head of House," she says with utmost seriousness, but her eyes twinkle with pride. "I recommend you file a formal complaint, so this can be taken up to Professor Dumbledore and we can properly discuss it."
"Oh, I have the form here—" She opens a drawer inside a drawer inside a little cabinet inside her top drawer and gets a form. She taps it with her wand, duplicating it, then hands it to him. It's very short and to the point, merely requiring his name, year, House, a description of the incident, and his signature.
"It was. They were like 'why are you talking to Gryffindors' and I was like 'what sort of short-sighted ambition do you have that will work if you restrict your social circle to twenty-five percent of the population of the United Kingdom?' and that was going somewhere but it did not explain Potions class very well."
"Sort of. Parkinson's convinced I have some plan that called for this sudden change of tacks, Crabbe and Goyle... don't really understand any of this, I have no idea what they're doing in Slytherin, Malfoy just won't speak to me and neither will Zabini and Nott. Bulstrode and Greengrass are sort of neutral ground, they won't directly ignore me but won't really do much more than that."
Snape stalks into the classroom, looking like he's eaten something that didn't agree with him. He turns to face the classroom and starts taking attendance. He very studiously does not look at Dayo and Victor when calling their names, and when he reaches the end of the list he takes a deep breath.
"It has been... brought to my attention," he drawls, "that my conduct in this classroom last week was..." Now his eyes rest on Dayo, but betray nothing. "Subpar. I apologise for any upset I may have caused," he says, looking as if uttering the word is physically harming him, and this time he looks at Victor. "I shall endeavour to avoid failing you thusly in the future."
"I asked Professor McGonagall if there was a code of conduct for teachers and she asked why I wanted to know and I explained what our first Potions lesson was like and she said I could file a formal complaint and gave me a form and I wrote everything down and she smiled and thanked me."
Neville is in a panic. Most other purebloods, Ron included, have some experience with broomsticks. Seamus Finnigan, to hear him tell it, spent his childhood on one, and if Malfoy is to be believed he's had near brushes with certain death by helicopter blade several times. Neville, however, has never been allowed on a broomstick, and given his propensity for merely terrestrial accidents that's probably not all bad.
On the morning of, he's sweating bullets and at times asking other kids for as many tips as they can give and quietly contemplating his certain impending death.
He's distracted from his misery by the arrival of mail. As usual, Malfoy gets a package of sweets (Dayo wondered aloud once what he needed all those sweets for, they're in Hogwarts for crying out loud), but even Dayo's occasional letter was more than Victor got.
This morning, a barn owl brings Neville a small package from his grandmother. He opens it excitedly and shows them a glass ball the size of a large marble, which seems to be full of white smoke.
"It's a Remembrall!" he explains. "Gran knows I forget things—this tells you if there's something you've forgotten to do. Look, you hold it tight like this and if it turns red—oh..." His face falls as the white smoke turns a deep red. "But I don't know what I forgot..."
At three-thirty that afternoon, the Gryffindors make their way down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It's a clear, breezy day, and the grass ripples under their feet as they march down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the Forbidden Forest, whose trees sway darkly in the distance.
The Slytherins are already there, and so are some twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Victor's heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left.
Madam Hooch then shows them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walks up and down the rows correcting their grips. Ron is delighted when she tells Malfoy he's been doing it wrong for years.
"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," she says. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly."
Neville's rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle—twelve feet—twenty feet. Victor can see his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, see him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and—
A thud and a nasty crack and Neville lays facedown on the grass in a heap. His broomstick's still rising higher and higher, and starts drifting lazily toward the Forbidden Forest and out of sight.
Madam Hooch bends over Neville, her face as white as his.
"Broken wrist," she mutters. "Come on, boy—it's all right, up you get." She turns to the rest of the class. "None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on, dear."
No sooner are they out of earshot than Malfoy bursts into laughter. "Did you see his face, the great lump?"
The other Slytherins (Parkinson, Bulstrode, and Dayo excepted) join in.
"Shut up, Malfoy," snaps Parvati Patil.
He ignores her. "Look!" he says, darting forward and snatching something out of the grass. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."
The Remembrall glitters in the sun as he holds it up.
He shrugs, turns around, and zips away towards some trees.
...then thinks better of it. "You know, I think a better place for him to look is in the lake." And he turns around again and flies towards it. He aims, throws—
—a bit too strongly, and now it's going to crash against the castle's walls—
- and it would be so, so stupid for Victor to try to do anything but by the time he thinks of that he's already in the air.
Flying is easy. Flying is wonderful. His hand closes around the Remembrall when it's three feet from a window, and he pulls neatly into a hover and looks at it in blank amazement.
"Never—in all my time at Hogwarts—" Professor McGonagall seems almost speechless with shock, and her glasses flash furiously. "—how dare you—might have broken your neck—"
"It wasn't his fault, Professor—"
"Be quiet, Miss Patil."
"But Malfoy—"
"That's enough, Mr. Weasley. Evans, follow me, now."
Professor McGonagall strides toward the castle. She's sweeping along without even looking at him, fast enough he might need to jog to keep up. Up the front steps, up the marble staircase inside, not a word exchanged. She wrenches open doors and marches along corridors, until she eventually stops outside a classroom. She opens the door and pokes her head inside.
"Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?"
Wood turns out to be a confused-looking burly fifth-year boy.
"Follow me, you two," McGonagall says, and leads them up a corridor while Wood peers at Victor curiously. They reach a classroom empty except for Peeves, who's busy writing rude words on the blackboard. "Out, Peeves!" she calls, and the poltergeist throws his bit of chalk into a bin, which clangs loudly, and swoops out cursing. Professor McGonagall slams the door behind him then faces the two boys. "Evans, this is Oliver Wood. Wood—I've found you a Seeker."
His expressions changes from puzzlement to delight. "Are you serious, Professor?"
"Absolutely," she says crisply. "The boy's a natural. I've never seen anything like it. Was that your first time on a broomstick, Evans?"
"He caught that thing in his hand between Malfoy throwing it and it reaching the wall from a standing start," Professor McGonagall tells Wood. "Didn't even scratch himself. Charlie Weasley couldn't have done it."
Wood is now looking as though all his dreams have come true at once. "Ever seen a game of Quidditch, Evans?" he asks excitedly.
"Wood's captain of the Gryffindor team," Professor McGonagall explains.
"He's just the build for a Seeker, too," says Wood, now walking around Victor and staring at him. "Light—speedy—we'll have to get him a decent broom, Professor—a Nimbus Two Thousand or a Cleansweep Seven, I'd say."
"I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can't bend the first-year rule. Heaven knows, we need a better team than last year. Flattened in that last match by Slytherin, I couldn't look Severus Snape in the face for weeks..."
And at this moment Dumbledore clinks a fork against his glasses, and the Great Hall falls silent.
"Good evening! I hope you have all had a splendid first few weeks!
"Now, I have an announcement. It is an old rule that first years cannot join Quidditch teams. This rule dates from when Quidditch games—and being a wizard, in general—were much more dangerous than they are nowadays. So, I say, it is time to get rid of this rule!"
"It is still the case that first years are less experienced and skilled, however, so before you're allowed to try out Madam Hooch will need to clear you. If you're interested, talk to her, and talk to your House's team captain. They will be able to tell you what you'll need to do.
"That was all. Bon appetit!"
Running away would be breaking the rules... but they've already broken the rules through no fault of their own. And Argus Filch is terrifying.
He thinks he can navigate the school well enough, although he's never done it at night...
"This way," he says, picking himself up off the floor.
"Victor," Neville says, his voice trembling, looking up at—
—they aren't in a room. They're in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And they're looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that fills the whole space between ceiling and floor. It has three heads. Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs. And under it—a trapdoor.
It's standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and it seems to be quickly getting over its surprise; there's no mistaking what those thunderous growls mean.
- right, being caught out of bed at night is still better than being eaten by an enormous three-headed dog. He opens the door again and pulls Neville out into the hall, then closes the padlock.
And if this is the forbidden corridor then that is the way back to Gryffindor Tower -
Neville really really doesn't wanna talk about last night.
And then it's mail time, and as the owls flood into the Great Hall as usual, everyone's attention's caught at once by a long, thin package carried by six large screech owls. They soar down and drop it right in front of Victor, and are immediately followed by another owl dropping a letter on top of the parcel.
"I'm going to show you what the Bludgers do," Wood says. "These two are the Bludgers," he continues, showing Victor two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle. They seem to be straining to escape the straps holding them inside the box. "Stand back," the boy warns, before freeing one of the Bludgers.
At once, the black ball rises high in the air and then pelts straight at Victor's face.
The ball passes over his head and curves backwards, this time shooting for Wood, who dives on top of it and manages to pin it to the ground.
"See?" Wood pants, forcing the struggling Bludger back into the crate and strapping it down safely. "The Bludgers rocket around, trying to knock players off their brooms. That's why you have two Beaters on each team—the Weasley twins are ours—it's their job to protect their side from the Bludgers and try and knock them towards the other team. So—think you've got all that?"
"Now, the last member of the team is the Seeker. That's you, if you get in. And you don't have to worry about the Quaffle or the Bludgers—only about the Golden Snitch." He reaches into the crate and takes out the fourth and last ball. Compared with the Quaffle and the Bludgers, it's tiny, about the size of a large walnut. It's bright gold and has little fluttering silver wings. "It's the most important ball of the lot. It's very hard to catch because it's so fast and difficult to see. It's the Seeker's job to catch it. You've got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Quaffle to get it before the other team's Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win. That's why Seekers get fouled so much. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages—I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.
"Well, that's it—any questions?"
They keep at it for half an hour, after which it's proper night and Wood calls a stop to it, utterly delighted. "That Quidditch Cup'll have our name on it this year," he says happily as they trudge back up to the castle. "I wouldn't be surprised if you turn out better than Charlie Weasley, and he could have played for England if he hadn't gone off chasing dragons."
The following Thursday they have flying lessons again.
"So, as you've probably all heard seventeen hundred times over since last Thursday, first-years are now allowed to try out for Quidditch—if I deem them capable of not getting themselves and others killed with a broom. So today's lesson will be a little different, and I'll give you a few instructions and evaluate how well you follow them and take to the air."
Madam Hooch allows Dayo and Ron to try out, although Ron only barely scrapes by. Neville is completely hopeless and satisfied with this. After collecting Hooch's permission slips, the Gryffindor firsties will have tryouts this evening (Slytherin's tomorrow), and Ron is definitely going regardless of how well he did.
And Wood tells them to try a series of flying exercises and tricks of increasing difficulty, hmming and aahing as he watches. After about ten minutes of this, a few other Gryffindor players arrive and Wood starts assembling small subteams that will test each other's strengths in their preferred positions. Victor will play Seeker with glowing enchanted balls.
The following weeks pass by very quickly as classes get more interesting and Quidditch practice keeps them busy. Dayo's Slytherin's new Beater (and they very carefully do not brag at all—wouldn't do to let their rivals know of their strengths too early, see), while Draco's the replacement Seeker in case Terence Higgs is indisposed (a fact which he mysteriously omits when he tells others about it). Ron gets over not having been picked and goes to every practice to watch Victor—who is, predictably, incredible at it.
On Halloween morning they wake to the smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors, and in their first class Flitwick announces they will finally be learning the Levitation Charm. They're supposed to practice in pairs, and Neville tries to catch Victor's eye.
"Now, don't forget that nice wrist movement we've been practicing!" squeaks Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. "Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too—never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest."
That evening, the Halloween Feast greets them in the Great Hall. A thousand live bats flutter from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swoop over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appears suddenly on the golden plates, as it did at the start-of-term banquet.
...he could leave it up to the teachers. But the teachers don't know that Dayo isn't here, and if he's going to do the stupid thing he had better do the stupid thing as soon as possible if he wants to find Dayo and warn her instead of finding Dayo and watching her be eaten by a troll. And Muninn, much as Victor respects him, does not seem equipped to be of much use if he arrives alone mid-troll-encounter.
"...I'm going to go looking for her," he says to Ron.
Not nearby enough.
The troll swings its club—it has a club, and it's huge—removing the upper half of all stalls. Ron screams, and now that they have an unimpeded view they can see the troll in all its... trollness. Twelve feet tall, its skin's a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. The legs are short and knobby, and the horny feet start abruptly.
Victor ducks when the club goes through the stalls, then peers up at the troll from behind his upraised arms.
...yes, that's a troll all right. If he saw that creature out of context and had to put a name to it, 'troll' would probably be the first word he reached for. It's so trollish.
He freezes up for a moment - but then he tries to switch tracks and think. Fine, it's a troll: what can be done about it? He's heard of spells to make fire and water, but he doesn't know either of them. It is not a door he can lock or unlock. It is not a broken object he can repair.
It hits the troll's head with a sickening crack, then clattering (if the noise that tree trunk makes could be called that) to the floor. The troll sways a bit on the spot—thick skull, for all that it's so tiny compared to its body—before falling flat on its face, with a thud that makes the whole room tremble.
"—well that was a close one."
"I noticed Dayo was missing and I couldn't find any teachers to tell about it," he says, looking up at Professor McGonagall. "I didn't know she'd gone after the troll on purpose; it seemed like the most important thing was to warn her quickly, so I went looking for her. I sent Muninn for you as soon as I found her. The troll was already nearby. And - I probably shouldn't have let Ron come along but it might have turned out a lot worse if I hadn't - he's the one who thought of dropping its club on its head."