Harry Potter: Don't touch

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***

Immediately after Professor Quirrell's words, there was a commotion in the Great Hall. It took a few, loudly exploding purple fireworks from Dumbledore's wand for silence to reign again.

- Headmasters! - he rumbled. - Take your faculties to their dormitories at once!

Samuel Park stood up and raised his hand high, calling for attention.

- We can't all fit in the aisle, so we'll divide into three groups," he commanded. - Freshmen and sophomores with me. Third, fourth and fifth year - with Bertha, for those who don't know, it's that girl with the red curly hair, the rest with Christian, you should know him. The juniors will go first, Bertha's group will follow in about a minute, and the seniors, I think, can walk on their own, but you'd better go as a group so that Dumbledore doesn't get violent. Is everyone clear? Right. First and second year! Follow me!

Samuel's group got up from the table and headed down the route Harry already knew, through the side door of the Great Hall. In Potter's memory, he was the only one who had taken this route during these two months... By the way, he didn't understand the logic of all these strange divisions, why they needed escorts at all, they weren't little... Were there those who couldn't remember the way from the Great Hall to the Faculty Lounge during these two months?

They walked slowly and for quite a long time. Before the last fork, Justin yelped quietly, grabbed Potter's arm suddenly, opened the first door to the study and led him into the room.

- Harry, wait," he waited until the Puffenduys had passed and continued: - 'I just remembered now: Hermione!

- Hermione what? - Harry didn't understand.

- She doesn't know about the troll!

- What makes you think that?

- I heard some Gryffindor freshers saying that she's locked herself in the girls' toilets and crying. And I think it's true, remember the mood she was in when she was running away from spells?

- Okay, I get it. It's all sad, but I don't see what this has to do with us... Now let's go into the living room,' Potter said.

- No, Harry, you misunderstand me," Justin raised his voice with every next word. - She doesn't know about the troll! We have to warn her!

- Why? - Harry didn't understand the logic.

- What do you mean why? What kind of question is that?! The troll could attack her.- Well, the troll is in the dungeon, not the girls' toilet. There's a huge distance between Hermione and that thing.

Harry didn't really have any idea where the girls' toilet was, but he was pretty sure it couldn't be in the dungeons.

- Hmmm," Justin seemed to be looking for inconsistencies in Harry's words. - 'Makes sense... You're right, okay, let's go to the living room.

- Let's wait for the next group then, we're already too far behind Samuel.

Five minutes later, the second group of Puffenduys arrived. The teenagers crowded in front of the fork in the road, next to where the study where Harry and Justin were hiding was located. Through the ajar door, they saw Bertha, who was leading the group, stop and speak uncertainly:

- To be honest, I don't really remember where we're going now. I almost always go to the living room through the dungeon, and sometimes through the main entrance in the Great Hall, but this side door... This is the first time....

- I know, I often go this way," shouted a third year student whose name Harry didn't remember. - 'We're going left now!

- Are you stupid? What left? It's right, actually. Unlike you, I've walked this way a thousand times," said the fourth year with the curly black hair. Harry racked his memory and was able to remember his name: Wistan.

- Paul's right. We do go left," the white-haired girl with short pigtails said conciliatingly. - If anything, Wistan, this information is accurate. And I'm absolutely sure of it. You're just confused: you have to go right if you turned left at the last fork, or if you're going out the other door.

- A lot of things you're sure of, Alberta... I'll stick to my opinion. Well, you and Paul can go wherever you want, I'll go right," Wystan said.

The crowd of Puffenduys began to break into two large equal groups; the first was in favour of going left, the other was sure to go right. Wystan pushed Paul, and immediately afterwards he was hit by some sort of Alberta spell. The situation was escalating.

- Harry, tell me, did your hat also tell you that with a temper like that you should only go to Hufflepuff to learn how to solve conflicts with words instead of fists? - Justin joked.

Harry didn't answer anything, he only watched the confrontation between the two groups. As was customary in the most peaceful and non-conflicted faculty, friendship won. Cedric Diggory, by some clever spell, managed to take the wands away from the combatants and led the group back to Dumbledore to find out where to go.

Neither Potter nor Finch-Fletchley thought to join them.

- Sometimes I think Gryffindor would have been a better fit for me... Don't you ever have any doubts about the allocation? - Justin asked.

- Me? No, I'm sure I'm in the right place. The Hat has been assigning people to faculties since long before I was born, and she knows better anyway... And you can't judge the whole faculty by Wystan alone.

- What's wrong with you? Wistan is right, it was Paul and Alberta who were talking rubbish and trying to get half the faculty confused.

- Wait," Harry realised now why Dumbledore had asked the Heads to take the entire faculty to the dormitories. - You think we're going to the right?

- Of course! They're the ones who are stupid, but we know exactly where we're going. Come on, or the third group will catch up with us soon enough," Finch-Fletchley said confidently.

- Justin," Potter said quietly. - The thing is, we're really going left.

- It's not funny, Harry, let's go.

- I'm not joking, we're going left. I remember the way.

Justin stared at Harry like he was seeing him for the first time.

- You sure you're not kidding?

- I'm not kidding. I really believe...

- Yeah, tell me you've walked this way a thousand times," Justin interrupted him. - That's ridiculous. You can't remember to turn right here, we've walked this way together. All right... All right... Let me put it this way: I am absolutely, totally, completely, one hundred per cent sure that we have to turn right, because the way to the left leads to the dungeon where the troll is. I took a turn there once and got in a fight with the Slytherins who have a living room there. Can't you just trust me? You may not agree with me, but I'm confident in my knowledge. Just trust me!

It was so easy. Trust. To put the responsibility on Justin and follow him blindly. But Harry wasn't going to take the easy way out.

- No, I can't, I'm sorry, Justin, but I can't. I'm not going to wander around the castle for the next half hour. We'll get caught, our points will be taken off, and I don't want to update my record for the lowest score by a faculty. I'll do what I think is right, but I might suggest that you trust me.

- Suit yourself. Have a good walk around the school," Justin said furiously. He turned around and proudly followed to the right.

Potter watched him silently until he was out of sight. This was their first fight. In all these two months, they'd never had any sort of spat. He could have avoided it, but something in the back of his mind told him that he had done the right thing, even if he turned out to be wrong. After all, he really was one hundred per cent sure which of these passageways led to the Hufflepuff common room. Harry turned left.

Five minutes later he was already in his bedroom in the company of Ernie and Zachariah.

- Where's Justin? - Macmillan asked.

- We're a little behind you. I went into the living room, and Justin decided to go for a walk.

- To be honest, walking around the castle when there's no telling where a troll might be," Smith interjected.

- I think I agree.

Harry spent the next hour reading the Quidditch magazines Angelina had given him a month ago. During the time Finch-Fletchley had been away, Potter had read about: England's prospects at the World Cup; how to break the rules effectively without getting caught; ten ways to catch a snitch quickly; the story of Sean Jennings, England's great goalkeeper; and which part of the ball to hit with the bat for the greatest acceleration of a bludger. The last magazine was devoted entirely to the bludger: its history, its flight path and the most effective ways to dodge it.

Ernie and Zachariah had been playing cards the whole time. Potter had joined them at first, but two defeats in his first two games had done much to make him lose interest in all card games. As Harry finished reading an interesting statue entitled "Is Dirty Play Good or Bad?" and was about to start on a magazine dedicated to a trio of top hunters from the Spanish national team, Justin walked into the bedroom.

Harry looked away from his reading and thought. He couldn't decide whether to sympathise or gloat. The evil part of his soul won. He opened his mouth to ask, "Did you have a good walk?" but Justin stopped him from saying anything:

- Stop! Don't say anything about it! Shut up! I don't need to say anything, I know everything without you. I know it's my fault, I'm sorry, but not now, right now just be quiet, okay?

Harry stopped talking and went back to his articles about the Spanish hunters.

- I've been charged thirty points," Justin said quietly.

Harry was sad that his department had lost precious points again, and he felt sorry for Justin, as well - it was obvious that he regretted what he had said and done. But his actions were again able to be influenced by the cunning devil who had defeated the angel in a hard fought battle and was now directing Potter's actions. Harry wanted to say, "Well I told you so," but remembered Justin's request and was able to express his emotions without words. He raised his hands and gave five loud, solemn claps.

- Stop it," Finch-Fletchley grimaced. - I said I was sorry... I'm sick without you right now... Do you know the troll is dead?

- Dead? How? - Potter had forgotten that Justin had told him to keep quiet.

- I only know from rumours. The troll attacked a student and seriously maimed her, but the teachers were quick to help, and Professor Snape... I'm not exactly sure, but I think he used some kind of terrible forbidden spell - some kind of abracadabra. Anyway, there was a big fuss about that spell. Even more than when the troll invaded the school. The Minister of Magic came round and wanted to give the professor a life sentence in some magical prison. But Dumbledore had stood up for Snape, and now everyone was arguing with each other.

- Oh wow," was all Harry could manage to say. - This is all very bad, of course, but it's good to know that the major incidents at Hogwarts are finally happening without my involvement. Who was the student who was attacked, by the way? And what about her? And how do you know so much?

- Our dean, Professor Steuble, caught me, and Tonks was doing time for something. She tried to get into the dungeon to look for the troll, but it wasn't there... Anyway, Tonks told me everything. How she knows, I have no idea... I don't know much about the student either. All I know is that she went to St Mungo's.

- Wow," Harry knew that St Mungo's was only for very serious cases. - It wouldn't be fair, but it would be nice if Snape went to prison. Right, what is it? Are we having dinner?

- How should I know?

- Well, maybe someone told you that too, it's better to ask than not to ask," Harry finished philosophically.

Dinner never came. Ham sandwiches appeared in the living room out of nowhere, two for each person. Harry took a little refreshment and went back to his Quidditch articles. Before he knew it, he was asleep with a stack of unread magazines tucked under his head.

* * *

The next day there were more people than usual at breakfast in the Great Hall. Harry ate quickly and hurried to the exit, but he was not allowed out of the hall and was asked to wait for Dumbledore's announcement. Harry returned to his seat and began to wait.

More and more students were gathering in the Great Hall. Some of the older students were loudly resenting the fact that their next lesson was going to be divination, the office of which was at the other end of the castle. As it began to look like the disgruntled students were going to force their way out of the hall, Dumbledore walked out to the students and shot blue fireworks from his wand to draw attention to himself.

- 'Good morning everyone,' he greeted the students. - I hope you had a good night's sleep. First of all, I want to apologise for the delay in your breakfast, but the fact is that the news is urgent. I've gathered you here to make a few announcements. I'll start with the most important one: as you know, a troll broke into our school yesterday, and I'm glad that students from every faculty were able to get to their living room quickly and without any problems," Dumbledore looked at Harry, and Harry's heart sank, but after a second he realised that the Headmaster's gaze was not on him, but on all the students of Hufflepuff.

- But unfortunately, it was not without casualties. Gryffindor freshman Hermione Granger had unfortunate accidentally collided with a troll and was severely injured. She is now in St Mungo's Hospital, there is no threat to her life or health. I strongly encourage her friends to visit her this coming weekend. Now the second, equally important, announcement. I think many of you have noticed that Professor Snape, the Potions teacher and Dean of Slytherin, is absent from breakfast. He is currently at the Ministry of Magic and is temporarily suspended from teaching. The fact is that it was Professor Snape who saved the health and perhaps even the life of Hermione Granger. But he did it with the help of a forbidden spell, and the current Minister of Magic refused to make an exception and banned Professor Snape from working at Hogwarts. I think everyone is well aware that saving a human life is a great act, regardless of the means by which it was achieved, and to punish him for it is the height of injustice. So I am confident that Professor Snape will return to teach next year. In the meantime... The place of Professor of Potions and Dean of Slytherin Faculty will be temporarily taken by me. Almost all of my main duties as Headmaster of this school have already been fulfilled, so I have enough time to teach, and in case I need help from my deputy, Professor McGonagall... I'm not as great a potions master as Professor Snape, but I'm not bad at it either. That's all the announcements for today. Now, hurry up. Due to my delaying you, the first lesson will start half an hour late, which is thirty-eight minutes from now. And yes, Potions will be held as scheduled in the same room. The assignments Professor Snape told you to do for the next lesson are not to be brought in.

After the students were finally let out of the Great Hall, Harry immediately rushed to History of Magic. On the way, he could hear everyone discussing Snape's resignation and Dumbledore's resignation as teacher and Dean of Slytherin. Potter arrived to class one of the first to arrive and sat in his seat in the last row. Justin soon appeared and sat down next to him.

The lesson began. Most of the class fell into a slumber. Justin took out his notebook and began to do his homework on herbology.

- What do you think of the announcements? - Harry said.

- Oh," Justin distracted himself from sketching a tall aconite. - It's cool, really cool. Snape's gone and Dumbledore's a teacher. That's very interesting.

- No, I mean Hermione. Why is everyone only discussing Snape and Dumbledore? Why does everyone forget about Hermione? You-- You were right. She did meet a troll. You offered to warn her, but I refused. She was seriously injured and now she's in hospital. It's all because of me," Harry said and fell silent. In the back of his mind, he wanted very badly to hear that it was a coincidence and that it wasn't his fault. Justin didn't even need to read his mind.

- You know, Harry, I've realised your biggest problem, and it's not even your... Affairs... In the Muggle world. Your biggest problem is being overly self-critical. I didn't go to warn Hermione either, did I? And now I'm not worried about it. Yeah, I listened to you, but there was nothing stopping me from going to find her anyway, despite what you said. But the thing is, you were right. Granger shouldn't have gone out with a troll. Who knew a troll could come out of a dungeon and go straight to the ladies' room. He might as well have found us in that study. Still not convinced? Even if we decided to go to Hermione's, we wouldn't be able to deal with a troll. What spells do you know?

- Levitation spell, Incendio - only the one used in herbalism, Colloportus I know, Alohomora. I've also learnt Diffindo recently.

- Well, I also know Incendio, and I know Lumos and Spanjifay. Which of these spells will be useful in a battle against a troll? You don't think a plant stun spell will work on a troll, do you?- Okay, I see your point. Maybe you're right and we really shouldn't have gone to the troll. I just don't see how we could have handled it yet. But we need to be prepared in case something like this happens again. We need to learn more spells! Some kind of defence spell. A shield spell. Is there such a thing?

- I have no idea. Go ahead, you can search the library. If you think trolls are going to come to Hogwarts every week, you can learn all the defence spells you want, but I'll stick to the school curriculum. And by the way, we've been going over Lumos in class for a while now.

After History of Magic, Herbalogy, and Dual Transfiguration, Harry headed to the library. There were no classes, he had done his homework for tomorrow yesterday afternoon, so he figured he had some free time to learn something about some shield spell. At the library, failure befell him. He flipped through two extremely boring huge volumes on the history of magic, but never found anything useful. But Potter had another idea where he could try to look for information.

Leaving the library, he hurried up to the eighth floor to the Room-by-Wish, as Harry had recently started calling it. He figured he might get somewhere if he asked the Room to become a library with only books on defence spells.

He walked over to the wall where the door that would lead to the Room-by-Wish would appear. He walked back and forth three times, clearly saying to himself:

"I want to get into a library with only books with protection spells."

A door appeared in the middle of the wall. Harry was used to its sudden appearance, so he wasn't surprised at all and went straight through.

There were many racks of books, but the most interesting thing was that each rack had a marking above it, indicating the course number. Potter walked over to the rack of books for his course and pulled out the first one he saw. As luck would have it, it was exactly the sort of thing Harry was looking for.

"Jennifer Nelson. The Protego spell is a simple magical shield."

Potter smiled and put it in his bag. He pored over many more books whose titles he found interesting. The room had nothing against any items being taken out of it. By the way, Harry had made a small discovery: the room didn't just fulfil his wishes, it also added some things to make its visitor more comfortable. It wasn't like he had asked for books to be separated by courses... Maybe this room had intelligence and a kind of self-awareness.

Potter was very pleased. The wish-room turned out to be a veritable gold mine. It could be used to solve almost any information retrieval problem. Harry mentally thanked fate that he was lucky enough to be here on the first of September.

This very "Protego" he studied until very late at night. The book was very well written, so it was not only useful, but also very interesting. Justin came over a couple of times to talk to him, but Harry suggested that he talk to him tomorrow, as he didn't want to be distracted from the book. Because Harry had stayed up until midnight, he had slept through breakfast and was three minutes late for his first Potions lesson.

- Hello, Harry," Dumbledore said when he saw a panting Potter on the doorstep. - We should go to bed early, being late for a new teacher's first lesson is not good. But I guess there's nothing wrong with being only two or three minutes late. You can sit down.

Harry sat down in his seat next to Justin, adjusted his robes and stared at Dumbledore.

- I'm sorry I didn't wake you, I thought we were having our first History of Magic and you don't have to go to it at all," Finch-Fletchley said in a whisper.

- Mr Potter interrupted me as I was explaining the syllabus to you. I can say it again. As I said, I will emphasise practice. During your first year you will only learn to brew four potions, which is far less than any other course. We'll start with a potion to cure boils, and at the end of the year we'll start with a potion to take away memory. The speciality of my classes is that we will brew each potion as many times as it takes for each of you to make it perfectly. So today you'll be brewing the boil potion again. The ingredients are on the table, the recipe is on the board, you may begin.

Professor Dumbledore - it sounded very strange and unusual - turned out to be the best teacher of all, only Professor Flitwick could compare to him. Throughout the lesson, he would approach the students, briefly watch them brew potions and explain to them what they had done wrong. Fifteen minutes into the lesson Terry Booth burst into the classroom, he immediately apologised and asked permission to sit in his seat. Dumbledore allowed him into the classroom, but it cost Ravenclaw twenty points. After another fifteen minutes, Dumbledore came to his and Justin's table.- Justin, you made a mistake at the very beginning, you should have put six snake teeth in the potion, not... four. No more mistakes. Harry," Dumbledore looked into his cauldron. - 'You should have heated the cauldron for ten seconds, and by the way, at the beginning of the lesson I mentioned this mistake as the most common, and if you had been on time you would have had a perfect potion by now.

- Professor Dumbledore, you used to teach Potions, didn't you? - Finch-Fletchley asked.

- 'No, I was a transfiguration teacher, but I believe that a good headmaster should be equally good at all disciplines.

At the end of the lesson, more than half the class had turned out something resembling the right potion. But only Marcus Belby had a perfect potion.

- Well done, you did a good job of correcting the mistakes, but unfortunately you have to do your work in order, you can't correct the first item at the end of the potion like Mr Finch-Fletchley did," he said and looked at Justin with a smile.

He blushed. When he tried to add the two missing snake teeth during the final stirring, they flew out of the cauldron and one of them hit Dumbledore.

- Homework is to memorise the recipe for this potion by heart. It's short, so I don't think it'll be a problem. We'll be using it again next lesson.

* * *

- Very interesting lesson," said Ernie, who had joined Justin and Ernie as they left the room.

- Yeah," Finch-Fletchley agreed. - When I got my tooth in the headmaster's teeth, I thought he was going to kick me right out of school, but he just smiled and didn't even take the points off. I dread to imagine what Snape would have done. I don't think there's even a piece of me left to bury. I wish he'd never been allowed to teach...

- Yeah, that would be nice," Harry said dreamily. - But I'm afraid Dumbledore won't be teaching anyway. Remember what he said in the Great Hall? He doesn't have anything to do right now, and he won't have much to do this year. So even if Snape doesn't come back, we're not likely to see Dumbledore as a teacher next year anyway. By the way, did you know that Hogwarts Headmasters have never before combined their position with teaching?

- You mean never until now. Okay, what's our next lesson? And where are we even going?

- Wait, we've been following you this whole time! I thought you knew where you were taking us! - Ernie was outraged.

- So did I! Where have we been following you all this time? - Harry exclaimed.

- Forward," Justin answered philosophically, turned one hundred and eighty degrees and walked in the opposite direction.