Dorea rubs at her eyes. The past night was less restful than she might have wished, but she's capable of operating on less sleep than she wants.

Alice is the first to sit up, but she's followed by Lavender, who blinks around then looks at Dorea. "So, hi. We haven't met yet. I'm Lavender."

"Hi! I'm Dorea."

"It's nice to meet you!" Point. "These are Fay, Parvati, Kellah, and Alice." Alice is already up and getting ready. "Wanna sit with us at the Gryffindor Table?"

"Sure!"

So they get dressed and try to find their way back down.

...and get lost and need to ask the portraits for directions.

Dorea doesn't bother to hide her delight at this.

"Do you like getting lost?" wonders Alice.

"No, but I was raised by muggles, and muggle art isn't alive."

"Oh. What was that like?"

"It was okay. I like this better."

Eventually they find their way to the Great Hall, where a few other students have congregated.

Anyone she recognizes?

Well, some people, she saw everyone there yesterday and there was the Sorting, too.

Malfoy walks into the Great Hall soon after, though, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.

Meh.

Next come Ron and Neville, followed by Dean and Seamus.

"Hi!"

"Hi!"

They find their seats and dive into the food.

Dorea checks her class schedule.

They have History of Magic with the Hufflepuffs in first period.

Ooh. She wonders what kind of magic history there is. Well, she won't have to wait long to find out! What's after that?

After that they have a break and then lunch and then Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Ooh! That sounds very useful.

And oh look who's here! Making her way to the Slytherin table.

She really is so much prettier as a girl. Dorea waves.

Dayo waves back, and takes a seat at a table where some people are ignoring her.

Hopefully Dayo knows what she's doing.

She probably does. She starts talking to a couple of girls.

Dorea will likewise resume intrahouse socialization.

Soon enough they're done eating and the Gryffindors go to class.

"I heard the teacher is a ghost," Neville whispers.

"Is that normal?"

"I think he's the only ghost Professor...They say he just one day walked out of his office and never noticed he'd left his body behind."

"That seems an odd thing to miss."

They need to ask the paintings for directions twice but eventually arrive at the auditorium-like classroom whose walls are covered by books.

Oooh!

After they've settled in the whole class gasps as a short, hunchbacked, old ghost walks through the wall and takes a seat.

Spoooooky.

So spooky.

Professor Binns starts his lesson. ...he seems to be an experiment designed to make even the coolest magical revolutions sound mind-numbingly dull.

...Wow.

Well, okay, if she ignores him and just reads about it in the textbook, will he notice?

Nope. He seems oblivious to the classroom, actually.

Magic school isn't perfect, it seems.

Thus proceeds their first class, and most other kids are drooping or asleep by the time it ends. Homework is five inches on whatever boring topic they covered today, which elicits a collective groan.

Five inches? Weird way to measure, but okay. Well, if no one else was ignoring him and reading the textbook she supposes she has an advantage.

Probably.

Then break!

Hmm.

How discreetly can she investigate the forbidden corridor?

Depends on who she tells about it. If it's "no one" then pretty discreetly.

Yeah she just wanted to be sure no one was following her or anything.

No one's following her!

But when she gets there she runs into someone who looks like he hasn't had a happy day in his life. "And what are you doing here?"

Well.

"I'm sorry, sir," she says meekly. "I got lost, I was looking for the way back to the common room..."

"Lost, I'm sure!" he says, limping towards her. "You're gonna be coming with me."

"I--I'm a first year, sir, I've only been here since yesterday--"

"And you're coming with me to talk to your Head of House. Gryffindor, aren't you?"

"Yessir."

He starts leading the way.

She follows him.

On the way there she spots a cat, sitting on the floor, staring at her.

She gives the cat a friendly smile.

The cat is judging her.

Hmph. Fine.

He leads her through various corridors and stairs to a specific room and knocks.

"Come in," comes McGonagall's voice from inside.

Dorea pushes the door open with barely-feigned nervousness.

The Deputy Headmistress' eyebrows raise in surprise. "Ms. Potter? What seems to be the problem, Mr. Filch?"

"I found her wandering in the forbidden corridor!"

"I got lost!"

She peers at Dorea, then looks at Mr. Filch. "It's the first day of school and she's just arrived, getting lost happens all the time." Then at Dorea again: "Next time you get lost, though, do ask the paintings for directions, they've been here long enough."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now, Mr. Filch, do be so kind as to show Miss Potter to wherever it was she wished to go."

"Gryffindor common room."

Filch grumbles but leads the way.

And she thanks him politely when they get there and clambers through the portrait-hole and flops in one of the squashy chairs.

An older student peers at her quizzically.

She raises an eyebrow.

"You alright?"

"I got lost and ran into a creepy guy with a cat."

"Oh, that's Filch. He's terrible."

"He seemed terrible!"

"Gotta watch out for his cat, too. She doesn't talk but he somehow knows what she's saying."

"...Are there any cats that do talk?"

"Well, there's people who can become cats."

"Oh, I heard about that! I don't remember what it was called, though."

"Animagic. Professor McGonagall is an animagus and she becomes a cat. You can notice her glasses around her eyes when she's a cat."

"What if she's not wearing her glasses when she turns into a cat?"

Blink. "I never thought about that."

"Maybe I'll ask her!"

"Yeah, good idea."

"What does Filch do? He's not a teacher, is he?"

"Oh no, not at all, good Merlin, he's the caretaker."

"Oh good. Trying to learn from him would probably be--unpleasant."

"Yeah, but he's a Squib, so no worries there."

"A what?"

"Squib, means he doesn't have any magic."

"Oh, right, I heard someone use that word before. Why's he here, then?"

"No idea. Maybe Dumbledore's doing charity or something."

"Hm."

Shrug.

She shrugs and, for lack of anything better to do, gets started on her homework.

It's soon lunchtime.

Ooh. The food here is amazing.

...that wall didn't use to be there.

...She asks a portrait for directions.

They have directions! That way.

Okay!

The Great Hall!

And lunch. Excellent.

Ron arrives soon after. "Hey. Where did you go after class?"

(Neville tags along.)

"Went looking for the forbidden corridor, got caught, claimed I was lost."

"Oh did you find it?"

"No. I got caught by Filch before I could."

"Oh. Him. Fred and George hate him."

(And here's Percy! Smiling at the first years!)

She decides not to mention her aborted adventure to Percy.

At some point Dayo shows up, too, and sits at the Slytherin table. Not next to Malfoy but close enough to actually be able to chat.

...Why? Whatever, she'll ask her later.

And soon they're done eating and the Gryffindors should go to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

This seems relevant to her life, all things considered.

Probably.

Except 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.

...Joy.

After the lesson she asks if anyone knows why they don't have a better Defense teacher.

"Oh we get a new one every year."

"Why?"

    "They never seem to last? It's all different stuff, one of them got a mysterious inheritance and another decided she didn't want to teach and wanted to be an opera singer—"

"Oh, Fred told me about that one, Mum loves to listen to her on the radio," says Ron.

"That's...odd."

"Not everyone wants to be a teacher..."

"Most people who don't want to be teachers don't do it for a year!"

"Maybe she didn't know it before," shrugs Seamus.

"But why do all the people who don't know they don't want to be teachers try out this one subject?"

"It's the only subject that's always open since no one lasts more than a year," he reasons.

"I guess. How long has this been going on?"

Shrugs all around.

...Okay. She makes a mental note to look it up later.

Next they have Transfiguration with the Ravenclaws.

Ooh. Are there any open seats next to Ravenclaw girls, she does not want to limit her socialization to her own House.

There are! There's a girl without a partner there.

She sits beside her. "Hi!"

"Hi!—you're Dorea Potter! I'm Mandy, nice to meet you."

(There's a tabby cat sitting on the Professor's table with strangely intelligent eyes, watching the students arrive.)

"Nice to meet you too!"

"How're you finding Hogwarts?"

"It's glorious."

She giggles.

The cat watches them intently.

Wait.

Didn't someone say the Transfiguration Professor turns into a cat?

And 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.

Ooooooooooh.

She starts explaining a lot of complicated stuff on which they're supposed to take notes, and then she gives each of them a match and tasks them with trying to turn it into a needle.

She takes notes and then diligently attempts to needlefy a match.

It does not go.

She tries harder.

"Harder" may possibly not be the thing she should be trying, here.

She tries a different tack.

It is really difficult! McGonagall said something about having to twist your mind just right; it's not something that can be brute-forced, it needs to be finessed, you need to understand very well what you're changing to what and how.

She reviews her notes again.

She doesn't get it by the end of class.

Neither, though, does anyone else.

Well, better not to be behind the curve. But she expects better of herself. Are they supposed to do anything in particular with the match sticks after the lesson?

They're to take the matchsticks and keep practising. Professor McGonagall expects silvery-looking pointy matches by next class.

Excellent. She pockets her matchstick. Next?

Next they have a break until dinner! And also DADA homework is reading a chapter of the book.

She goes up to the common room to practice imposing her will on the matchstick. And read some DADA chapter.

And after that: dinner!

Dinner! It is still kind of a novelty to be able to eat as much as she wants.

When Dorea reaches the Great Hall Dayo is engrossed in conversation with Pansy Parkinson. She waves at Dorea when she sees her arrive and Pansy makes a face and says something, to which Dayo replies something else that makes her pause and consider before saying something back.

Dorea waves back.

They talk a bit more and Pansy regards the Gryffindors again, looking thoughtful.

Huh. Interesting.

Dayo says something and Parkinson looks at her again, and apparently they change subjects from Gryffindors.

(At some point the boys arrive, too.)

Dorea waves at the ones she is friendly with.

After Dayo's done eating she makes a beeline for them.

"So! How's Defence?"

"The teacher is terrible."

"—he is? Why?"

"He looks like he's scared of his own shadow and he smells funny."

"Apparently they never have the same Defense teacher two years in a row."

"Why?"

"Apparently some people don't know they don't like teaching until they try it."

"That's not all. One of them d-died."

"George said his first year teacher is still in St. Mungo's after an accident with a manticore."

"...how charming."

"That is bizarre and worrying."

"So they... literally never stay more than a year?"

Shrug.

"We should definitely look into this."

"Could someone have cursed it? Is that a thing a curse can do?"

    "Some people say You-Know-Who cursed the position," Lavender Brown says in a conspiratorial tone.

"...why does You-Know-Who care?"

    She shrugs.

"People who have less consistent education in Defense are less able to defend against him?"

"But are also less able to join him, I'd expect."

"And Defence is more about dark creatures anyway."

"Then why is it called Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"There is the occasional jinx and counter-jinx, but that's more for older years and students who want to follow a career in Defence, like Aurors, have to study much more anyway," says Percy, leaning in their direction after hearing some of their conversation. "A Hogwarts education is not enough to stand up to You-Know-Who, and If you see a Dark Wizard like that you should just apparate away, not fight."

"Apparate?"

"A magical technique to instantaneously relocate elsewhere."

"Teleport," she translates.

"We can teleport?"

"Yeah!"

"You need to be seventeen to get a licence, though."

"What happens if you do it without a license?"

"Well, if you haven't trained it yet under supervision you might splinch—leave parts of yourself behind."

"...Oh."

"It's hard to do even for seventeen-year-olds, people younger than that don't have enough magic control for it."

"Is magic control a skill or does it develop as you grow up?"

"A little bit of both."

"So it's like--muscles, where exercise helps but puberty also helps? Is that why we start at eleven?"

"Yeah, that's about right."

"Huh. Neat."

"Does mean it'll take forever for us to learn to teleport though."

"There is," she points out, "a lot of cool stuff to learn in the meantime."

"Well, yes, but—okay imagine someone gives you a table full of sweets and cake, and then they point at one specific cake and say you're allowed to eat anything but that. How would you feel?"

"...Like I was happy to have cakes and sweets? Perhaps I would feel differently if I had had a childhood with the normal amount of those, instead of 'whatever I could sneak off with out of the largesse my aunt and uncle provided my cousin with'."

"...yikes."

"Why did you have to do that?"

"Because my aunt and uncle never wanted me. I was dumped on their doorstep as a baby and they took me in out of obligation and spent my entire childhood rearranging my life to minimize the inconvenience my existence caused them."

"...wow."

"...that sounds awful. Is there no way to—find someone else to live with? Maybe you could ask Professor McGonagall..."

"I should probably do that."

"Do you want company?"

"Not especially."

"Okay."

Shrug. "It's not a sensitive subject, things've always been this way."

She nods. "My father was also an asshole but mum was okay and we moved away from him."

"That's good."

"You know, if you wanted to move away we could probably find somewhere in our place..."

"Really?"

"Yeah, we have rooms, and now that Charlie's moved you could probably fit."

"Gosh."

She seems deeply moved by this offer.

Ron beams.

"I'd have to check with Mum... But I'm sure she'd be fine with it."

"Wow!"

Well now he's feeling all happy and warm and stuff.

She beams at them all. "You guys are awesome."

"You should still probably talk to Professor McGonagall or Professor Dumbledore about it, though."

"Absolutely."

He smiles at her, then resumes eating.

She takes out her schedule to check when she next has class with McGonagall.

It's not until Thursday's second period.

And suddenly the twins emerge from apparently nowhere. "So, Potter! How're you liking Hogwarts?"

"Our brothers annoyed you to death yet?"

"Nah, the boys back home were way worse. Your brothers're okay."

"They must be dreadful," George says, shuddering with excess delicacy.

"To be worse than our brothers? Unthinkable," agrees Fred.

"We're right here."

"We know,"

they say in unison.

"Your brothers aren't gross." 

"That's because you haven't seen them in the morning."

"I wouldn't wish that sight on my worst enemy."

"If their gross is all in private it's fine, the boys I knew before were gross all over the place."