Even if McGonagall had Ollivander's memory for wands, she wouldn't point it out; thinking a piece of magic is going to be difficult never makes it easier.

And at the moment she finishes looking over everyone's (lack of) progress and sits down behind her desk--

BONG BONG IT'S TIME FOR THE NEXT THING.

The next thing is History! Supposedly it's taught by a ghost.

People point at Bruce and whisper about him the whole way there.

Bruce is totally oblivious to this. If someone isn't speaking directly to him or being obtrusively magical they're not going to be as interesting as the architecture.

"Do you want to try to map the castle some weekend?" he says to Hermione after she reminds him about the trick stair. "Just to see what happens."

"Oooh, yes. It sounds so interesting to see for ourselves exactly how it doesn't work!"

History class, when they locate it - which takes about forty-five minutes, even working together to follow the directions they've been given, but the first-year class schedule has hour breaks between scheduled classes for this reason - is, indeed, taught by a ghost!

This is exciting for about twelve milliseconds, and then it is, somehow, the most stultifying lecture any of them has ever been unprivileged to experience. Professor Binns' droning voice is like a mildly unpleasant lullaby, rhythmically repetitive in its tonelessness, and even the most determinedly attentive among them - which is a high bar, because they have this class with Ravenclaw - will be fighting to stay awake within the half-hour.

The content of the lecture, if they can detect any of it, seems to basically just be a continuous list of dates, names, and single-sentence events. They are only somewhat in order.

Bruce tries for several minutes to absorb some actual knowledge, then gives up and starts surreptitiously reading A History of Magic under his desk. . . . Then starts openly reading it on top of his desk when he realizes nobody else is getting in trouble for falling asleep.

Hermione is taking notes, i.e. writing down the contents of the list, but in a slow and robotic manner suggesting she might be doing it while 80% asleep.

. . . wow, that's kind of creepy but also impressive. Maybe she'll be able to read the notes okay afterwards. He's not nearly fast enough with a quill yet to take dictation without understanding the contents well enough to abbreviate massively, so he'll just keep reading the textbook. And take notes on it as penmanship practice. Maybe if he turns his parchment sideways and writes along the long edge each line will be long enough to dry before he puts his hand in it.

Zzzzzgznrpz.

After what feels like a small eternity, Professor Binns ends his spiel by asking cheerfully, "And that's all for today! Any questions?" and then peering expectantly over his ghostly spectacles at the dozing classroom. This startles awake several Ravenclaws, who glance guiltily at each other but do not manifest any questions at this time.

Hermione twitches and looks down at her notes. "Oh dear," she murmurs.

Bruce has actually accumulated several questions, mostly about the textbook but some of them about ghosts, but he isn't going to ask Binns any of them. (He has also accumulated a large smear of ink on his face where he pushed his glasses up.)

He shoots a concerned look at Hermione. She looks like she's snapped out of whatever it was she was snapped into, which is probably good?

No one else raises their hand before the lunch bell rings.

Hermione is enormously cheered by the sympathetic concern, i.e. implicit invitation to social-complain, which she has never before met in her life and feels very like a hug. "Oh, that was awful, wasn't it," she says, brightly, as she falls into step with Bruce on the way out. "I'm going to have to rewrite all my notes, look at this! Did you get anything?"

The handwriting is well below her usual standard and some of the scribbles are outright gibberish, but she has managed to record some of the things Binns said.

It's reassuring evidence of both of their sanities that Hermione also thinks that was terrible. "No, I was totally lost, I just read chapter 1 of the textbook and took notes on that. Maybe we can compare across and see if it was any of the same stuff. If it's going to be like that every time I hope the library has a really good history section."

"I wasn't expecting history to be exciting but that was complete rubbish."

"History can be exciting sometimes. Like Stonehenge."

"The pile of rocks?"

"Yeah. Some historians think that on the equinoxes the sun shone through it in a particular way, so they could use it to tell when the equinox was without calendars or good clocks."

"And making a giant pile of rocks was easier than keeping track of how long the day was? Wow."

"Well, yeah, clockwork is really complicated - wait, are wizard clocks actually made of tiny gears or are they just made of spells?"

"I'm not sure. I think there are gears but the gears are enchanted to keep turning?"

"Huh. I wonder if they've not got springs then." She makes a note on her mental to-do list and returns her attention to Bruce. "Do you know more things about Stonehenge? I don't really, my school was going to do the prehistory unit this term or next so it was next in my reading list but then, you know, Hogwarts textbooks."

"Not a lot, it was just at the start of a book on the history of astronomy--oh! The rocks weren't quarried where it was built! They dragged them for miles and miles."