“There!
Look!”
“Where?”
“Next to the tall redheaded boy.”
“The one with glasses?”
“Did you see his face?
What about the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead?”
Harry Potter hadn’t slept very well the night before.
Partly because his scar had been throbbing faintly.
But mostly because he was terrified that everything happening at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was nothing more than a dream dreamed by a miserable boy who used to live in a cupboard.
However, the moment he stepped out of his dormitory that morning, those worries vanished.
Unfortunately, they were quickly replaced by a new problem.
Whispers.
They followed him everywhere.
Students from every House crowded into hallways, stretching onto their tiptoes, asking around for news about him, all desperate to catch a glimpse of the famous Harry Potter.
They walked back and forth along the corridors, staring openly at his face—
Or more accurately, at the scar on his forehead.
Needless to say, the whole thing made Harry deeply uncomfortable.
After all, Hogwarts was a magical castle.
And he was only a first-year who had arrived a day ago.
The castle’s staircases were countless in number, and most of them moved around whenever they pleased.
Some even enjoyed sabotaging students who were about to be late by vanishing the exact step they intended to stand on, leaving them trapped halfway through the staircase in humiliation.
The doors were no better.
If you didn’t ask politely—or provide the correct password—they simply refused to open.
Some walls even pretended to be doors.
Only after you smashed directly into them would they disappear, revealing either a hidden passage or a dead end.
Trying to memorize where anything actually was felt nearly impossible.
Everything moved because of magic.
The portraits wandered off constantly to visit one another, leaving behind only empty frames, meaning there often wasn’t anyone around to ask for directions.
And Harry was completely certain the polished suits of armor around the castle were alive.
Sometimes they burst into loud singing the moment you walked past, startling students half to death before proudly snapping back to attention.
Harry had even seen one suit of armor in the clock tower get dismantled by another because its singing was unbearably terrible.
Though afterward, the same armor had carefully put its companion back together again.
Maybe that was how suits of armor bonded with each other, Harry thought.
Harry and Ron Weasley had Transfiguration first thing that morning, taught personally by Professor Minerva McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor House.
They almost arrived late thanks to one particularly devious staircase.
Luckily, when they rushed into the classroom, Professor McGonagall herself still hadn’t arrived.
The only thing on the desk was a neatly seated tabby cat.
“We made it!” Ron grinned so broadly even a blind man could have noticed.
“If we’d been late, I can’t imagine how terrifying Professor McGonagall’s face would’ve looked.”
The tabby cat seemed to understand him.
It shot them a stern glance, then leapt from the desk.
Before it landed—
It transformed midair into Professor McGonagall herself.
Ron stared with his mouth hanging open.
“Whoa—that’s brilliant!”
“Thank you for your assessment, Mr.
Weasley.”
Ron’s compliment failed to soften her expression in the slightest.
“Perhaps another transformation would be more useful.”
“For example, turning either you or Mr.
Potter into a watch.”
“Then at least one of you would arrive on time.”
“We got lost,” Harry blurted out automatically beneath her piercing stare.
“So your suggestion is that I should transform into a map?” McGonagall replied sharply.
“Surely you don’t require a map merely to sit down.”
McGonagall’s demonstration of Transfiguration had already stunned the class.
Every student immediately wanted to master it.
Unfortunately, they quickly discovered that Transfiguration was an extremely difficult and precise subject.
For first-years, successfully turning a matchstick into a needle was considered impressive.
As a result, Harry’s very first Transfiguration lesson consisted mostly of frantic note-taking followed by completely failing to change his matchstick in any noticeable way.
By the end of class, only two Gryffindor students had achieved anything.
Hermione Granger successfully transformed her match into a sharp silver needle, earning Gryffindor five points from Professor McGonagall.
The second was Seamus Finnigan, who somehow managed to ignite his matchstick without touching it.
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Their second lesson that day—Herbology—wouldn’t begin until afternoon inside the greenhouses behind the castle.
Since they still had free time, Harry and Ron decided to explore the castle and memorize some classroom routes in advance.
Oddly enough, the whispers surrounding Harry all morning had disappeared.
Instead, students everywhere had begun mentioning one word repeatedly:
“Slytherin.”
The shift made Harry feel both relieved and strangely disappointed.
Relieved because people had finally stopped staring at him.
Disappointed because it reminded him of Ivy Doom.
Harry found himself unexpectedly missing his funny, powerful friend.
At first, he hadn’t believed any of Ivy’s outrageous claims about ancient magic, being one hundred and forty-four years old, or previously attending Hogwarts as a Slytherin student.
Harry had assumed those ridiculous stories were simply jokes meant to entertain everyone.
But now Ivy really had joined Slytherin.
So what if the other stories were true too?
Fred and George had claimed Slytherin students constantly experimented with Dark Magic on younger students.
What if something had happened to Ivy?
Harry sincerely hoped he was alright.
After lunch, Harry and Ron returned to the Gryffindor Common Room through the Fat Lady portrait.
They discovered it was already packed with students.
Everyone was talking loudly, gasping dramatically every few seconds.
Standing at the center of the crowd were Ron’s identical twin brothers—
Fred Weasley and George Weasley.
“…Absolutely true!” one of them declared while thumping his chest confidently.
“Last night George and I snuck out wandering around the castle and ran straight into Severus Snape near the dungeon exit!”
“He was floating a whole pile of unconscious Slytherin students behind him!”
“No wonder only two Slytherins showed up to Care of Magical Creatures this morning,” remarked an older Gryffindor student.
“So what happened exactly?
How do that many students miss the very first day of classes?”
Harry watched Fred and George exchange looks.
Then they declared in perfect unison:
“Definitely a Dark Magic accident!”
….
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