Hogwarts: Through the Veil of Time

"Yo!" a blond boy with a haircut that was a mirror image of Justin's waved his hand at Justin and me. "Hector, right?"

- Yes.

He and another boy stood up from their chairs and came over, holding out their hands.

- Ernie MacMillan, let's get acquainted.

"And I," said the second, almost blond, "am Zachariah Smith."

"Hector Granger," I shook the guys' hands.

- Shall we talk? Or sleep? - Zakhary looked at us with a tired look.

- To sleep, of course. Tomorrow there will be Potions.

- On the first day? A nightmare! - the boys were upset in unison, and Justin pointed his hand at my school trunk, which stood next to the bed in one of the niches.

- Looks like you've been assigned here. We now have four guys on the course.

— And the girls?

- Two.

- So little?

We started getting ready for bed, and at the same time I found out where the proper bathroom was, except for a shower or a bath - the first is shared and is at the end of the corridor, and the second is not there at all. Well, if you don't count the pool for the elders.

"They say," Justin said, when everyone was already getting into bed, and Zachary had already passed out without even closing the curtain to his nook. "That the late seventies and early eighties were very poor in children. There are a few of our peers now than there were in previous years.

- What happened?

- Yes, they say, a whole civil war by local standards. The numbers are not impressive, but considering the extremely small population of magical England, translating this into percentages and coefficients...

"You speak intelligently..." a pillow literally whistled from one niche to another.

- Ow...

- Go to sleep already, and...

***

The morning in the new place did not cause me any trouble at all. The elf had been wandering for hundreds of years, and every day he met in a new place. Part of the dwarf's memories was a little saddened by the excessive similarity of the layout and design of the faculty common room with the hobbits' dwellings. Well... It seems that a dwarf is a dwarf, but how much I want to call him a gnome!

I woke up before everyone else, because a schedule and the habit of following it are ineradicable things. Having quickly warmed up, I went to the shower, where a couple of guys were trying to come to their senses after an obvious drinking binge, putting their heads under streams of cold water. Ignoring myself, I carried out all the hygiene procedures and returned to the room. The guys were still asleep. And time does not wait! According to the schedule that I found among Hermione's books and notebooks, it was almost time for breakfast. Having noticed some kind of metal round tray on the table, I took it and a spoon lying nearby. The simplest magical construct for amplifying sound, a swing, a blow.

The sound of metal clanging echoed throughout the room.

- Get up! - another blow. - So sleep through the Potions!

The last phrase reached the guys' consciousness much better than the clanging of iron, and began its sabotage there, undermining their sweet sleep. The guys jumped up and, like sluggish sleepwalkers, headed to the shower. Of course, they quickly returned, looking at me with obvious displeasure.

"We'll be late, or we'll have to eat breakfast in a hurry," I shrugged, not at all embarrassed.

Justin walked over to his alcove, pulled out his wand, and cast Tempus, revealing an illusory clock face.

- Indeed.

Having quickly put on the school uniform of trousers, a shirt, a tie with the colors of the faculty, a dark jumper with sleeves and the Hogwarts crest, and a robe with a yellow lining, we went out into the common room. The atmosphere here was lively, but the students did not linger for long, leaving it as soon as they waited for their comrades or finished preparing, putting everything they needed in their school bags.

"And I already thought I'd have to wake you up," the headman approached us from the side with his obviously signature smile.

"No need," Zachariah looked at me sullenly, not having considered it necessary to somehow arrange his tousled blond hair. "Hector has already woken us up in the most cruel way."

- And what kind, if it's not a secret?

— He pounded on the iron tray like crazy and shouted, "Get up!"

- Uh-huh, - the elder waved his hand. - That's nothing! I know one tricky spell, I'll show you later, Hector...

"No!" the boys shouted in unison, almost jumping back half a step.

"Okay, jokes aside," Cedric pulled out several thin sheets of parchment from the inside pocket of his robe and handed them to us. "Your schedules. And these are…"

He handed me another piece of paper.

- Indicate the additional subjects you have chosen. Such forms were filled out in the second year, but, you understand.

- Of course. Do you have a pen?

We were standing almost at the exit from the men's wing, the round doors of which continued to irritate me. I hope I'll get used to it. But that's not the point - next to us stood a table on which there were many different office supplies and other small items. There were inkwells and a couple of pens. We approached this table, and placing the application on the table, I deftly took the pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and no less deftly filled it out.

- Wow! - Zakhary couldn't help but exclaim in admiration. - My father would have erected a monument to me in his lifetime if I had such a gorgeous handwriting!

"Indeed," Cedric nodded with a smile. "The invitation letter from Hogwarts looks like cheap waste paper after this."

- It just happened somehow.

It's not surprising - there are many little things that an elf does throughout his life every day, and writing with a quill is one of them.

"Well then," Cedric took my application, allowed himself to admire the handwriting for a second, and continued, "I entrust our new guy to you."

As soon as the headman turned around and headed towards the first-year students who had gathered in one crowd, my classmates immediately dragged me back to our room.

"Did you get the schedule?" Justin asked rhetorically.

"We got it," nodded Ernie, who had been almost completely silent lately.

— Let's pack our bags now so that we don't have to run around like everyone else later.

"It makes sense," I wanted to try this maneuver myself.

As we prepared for the day ahead and returned to the living room, I couldn't help but notice that almost no one was wearing a standard school bag - it seems the dress code here is not as strict as with the uniform. So my personally enchanted triangle backpack will not be something out of the ordinary.

We weren't the last to arrive at the Great Hall for breakfast, but we weren't the first either, so the hubbub of students could be heard from all sides. As soon as we took our seats at the faculty table, plates of porridge, sausages, buns and other breakfast food immediately appeared in front of us. Ernie MacMillan, seeing me looking around the faculty tables and the students at them, launched into a monologue about the current "political" situation at school, about who was who, about a certain Harry Potter, a half-blood who had killed himself as a baby by the local Dark Lord, and all sorts of other things that I had already largely gleaned from Hermione's books. True, in these books I had to look literally between the lines for information, but now I at least figured out who could boast of what blood status, and which faculties de jure didn't pay attention to it, but de facto - just the opposite. At my faculty, to my delight, they don't pay much attention to such things, but in fact purebreds still have greater social significance. Nothing new. From my observations, some conclusions on a different topic naturally suggested themselves.