They entered the classroom room about 5 minutes late because they got lost. Turns out hogwarts was huge and if you made one wrong turn you could end up on the other side of the school.
Draco looks around the room and kind of smirks. "I know we are a tiny bit late but it looks like we at least beat the professor.
Harry nods. "Just a cat here." He remarks pointing to the cat on the desk.
The cat leaps into the air and transforms into the professor.
"Wicked." harry says in aw.
"How the..." draco starts.
"You're late. Perhaps I should turn you into a pocket watch, that way one of you might be on time."
"Sorry professor, we got lost." Harry mumbles.
"Then a map perhaps?" She says, with little laugh.
(don't give me shit for this. I realized after rewatching Chamber of Secrets that I had gotten the two films transfiguration calsses mixed up. HOWEVER, the first years were not shown to be learning anything in transfiguration first year. I looked up a list of things taught in transfiguration and the animals into water goblets didn't even make the list?! So i'm going to leave it here and i will just make it that they learn something else in the second book.)
"Alright class, now settle down. Today we will be learning the art of transfiguration." she announces. She instructs the children how to do the spell and then has each student try it.
Harry ends up turning a frog into a half goblet half frog and it kind of scares him so he puts his wand down for a moment until he can ask what he had done wrong. The professor told him to pronounce the spell boldly and to try again. That seemed to work and this time he was able to make the goblet though it was frog colored and didn't look like anything you'd want to drink out of.
Draco turns a different frog into a plate and then frowns.
"Thats cool." Harry says.
"I was trying to make a goblet." Draco mumbles.
At the table next to them they hear hermione talking to some of her housemates. "You're saying it wrong."
Apparently the boy, ron, didn't hear her. He starts flicking his wand rapidly. His rat turned into a goblet, but it was covered in fur and had a tail.
Hermione corrected ron and then transformed the rat back into a rat with a counter spell.
Harry nudged draco. "At least we aren't the only screw ups in class."
Draco shrugs. "True."
-later-
Charms class was going about the same way as transfiguration, but at least this spell was easier to learn. The levitation charm would surely be plenty useful.
Again the girl from gryffindor was trying to tell ronald that he was pronouncing the spell incorrectly and this time he responded. "Alright then if you're so smart you do it then?"
Clearly she hadn't picked up on his sarcasm as she performed the spell and shot him a smirk of victory.
He replied with an irritated eyeroll.
"Well done miss granger. 10 points to gryffindor." The professor said.
Not wanting to be out done by a gryffindor, draco, insisted on showing off that he could also perform a simple charm. He did so without issue only to be distracted as the feather of a different student burst into flame.
The professor hadn't seen draco or harry manage to perform the spell because he was too busy watching the other student feel his around to see if his eyebrows had been burned off his face.
"Oh my..." flitwick mumbles.
After the incident the two had no trouble using the spell again and this time they didn't go unnoticed.
"I see the slytherins have perfected the spell as well 10 points to slytherin."
-later-
In the halls after class the students are heading to the great hall for supper. When draco and harry arrive they sort of bump into hermione who had been just standing by the door.
"Pardon us." Harry mumbles.
Hermione slips off to the side. "Sorry I was looking for ronald. I wanted to..."
"Apologize for making a fool of him in class?" Draco interrupts.
She pauses and then she gets a little mad. "I suppose, but really I did everyone a favor. You start mispronouncing spells and waving your wand around like a crazy person then somebody could get hurt." She defends.
"We haven't seen him since class." Harry says. He peers into the hall and looks around. He doesn't appear to be here either."
She nods. "I must find him."
Just then ron and Neville walk past. They see harry and draco but they don't realize hermione is standing there behind them.
"Hermione is rude and a know it all, bloody nightmare. It's no wonder she hasnt got any friends." Ron says to neville.
Instantly her eyes well up and she bolts away.
Ron sees her run and looks at harry and draco with a sort of frown. "What did you guys say to her?"
Draco grumbles a retort. "Us? I'm pretty sure it was your fault."
"My fault?" Ron replies. "How could it have been my fault?"
"I think she heard you." Harry says.
Ron pauses for a moment and then grumbles. "No way. I'm sure you insulated her. When she comes back we'll find out what you said." He looks at neville. "Come on neville, it stinks over here."
The group parts ways and harry and draco go to their table to eat with friends. The halloween decorations were displayed out on the tables and jack o lanterns floated in place of the candles. He saw all kinds of treats that were in shapes of things like bats and spiders.
Two girls came and sat near harry he could hear them talking. "That granger came running in there scared me nearly to death and she locked herself in the stall. I'm pretty sure she was crying too, you could hear her sobbing and sniffling."
The other girl nodded. "Yeah. I bet she was crying. I heard that mudbloods were sensitive."
The girl closest to harry had long blonde hair which she currently had done up in a braid. He looked at her. "I'm sorry, did you just say there was a girl crying in the bathroom?"
"Yes." She replies kind of coldly. "Why are you listening to my private conversation?"
"Firstly, it isn't private if you're speaking loud enough for the whole table to hear." harry says kind of irritated. "Secondly, I know why she would be crying."
"My name is faith. This is pansey." She replies. "You must be harry potter." She motions toward his scar. "Tell you what. You being famous and everything I will let you slide by with a warning this time but next time you interrupt me talking I will..."
She never did finish whatever she had been about to say because just then the defence against the dark arts professor burst into the room and sent everyone into a panic.
A troll had supposedly been unleashed in the dungeons and nobody knew what to do. Even draco, crabbe, and goyal were so scared they dropped their food, and those boys never seemed to stop eating for anything.
Students were directed to go to their dorms and wait there until the staff said it was ok to come out.
As they were being led back to the dorm, Harry remembered what faith had said. "Hermione. She doesn't know about the troll."
Draco looks around. "Not our problem."
"Somebody has to warn her." Harry insisted. "If she isn't told she could get into trouble or die."
"Again, not our problem." Draco replies.
"Well i'm going even if you aren't." Harry mumbles. He waits for a chance to sneak out of line.
As harry disappears down the corridor, draco has a moment of doubt. Should he go? What if harry were to get into some sort of trouble? He slipped away to follow. He felt that if harry was willing to do something so dangerous for a girl he hardly knew then he should be there to witness it.
Draco finally caught up to harry in the hall leading to the bathroom. "Potter." Draco hisses. "You're going to get us in trouble."
"Shhh." Harry mumbles waving draco over.
Draco and harry hide behind a pillar as a growling huge troll walks down the hall and enters the bathroom.
Draco's eyes widen in horror and the color drains from his face. "Wa..."
"I think the troll has left the dungeons." Harry murmurs.
"Don't tell me thats..." he gulps. "That's the bathroom it just went into."
Harry nods and pulls out his wand. "We need to move now." He bolts for the bathroom.
"Stupid!!! You will get yourself killed!" Draco grumbles. Harry disappears into the bathroom down the hall. "Maybe he doesn't need my help..."
Hermione lets out a loud cry and then a loud crash sounds.
Draco instinctively turns to runaway but something stops him. Harry, his friend, was now all alone against a huge troll.
Harry enters the bathroom as hermione was leaving a stall. She walked to the sink not realizing the beast was standing there watching her.
She spots the troll and her heart races she screams and dives back into the stall to hide.
The monster raises its giant club.
"Get down!" Harry yells.
The beast swings knocking several bathroom stalls off the walls and flinging pieces of them everywhere.
"It's coming back." Harry yells as it swings again.
Hermione climbs out from under the stalls and hides under a sink. Of course the beast sees her again and takes a swing at the sink.
"Move." Harry calls.
She manages to get out of the way just in time.
Harry realised the beast hadn't even seemed to notice him, it was completely focused on hermione. He picked up a piece of broken door and threw them at the troll. "Hey ugly!"
The troll spun itself and locked eyes with harry, then it roared and went to attack him. Hermione was able to slide from under the sink and toward the door only to run straight into draco.
Draco was watching the troll from the doorway terrified, and pale as a ghost.
Hermione looks back and sees harry picked up by the troll. "He is going to die." She screams. She digs for her wand but in her panic she can't seem to find it.
Something about her shrill tone jump started draco's mind and he realized he needed to do something. He quickly drew his wand and performed the first spell that popped into his mind. The levitation spell they had just learned in charms class not too long ago.
Hermione screamed as the troll brought down its massive club to kill its victim but as it did so it lost grip on the club that draco had jinxed and ended up swing into thin air. She covers her mouth horrified.
Draco directed the club to drop on the trolls head and that was it, one hit and done. The troll fell with a loud thud on the floor. Harry pulled himself from the grasp of the beast and picked up his wand from the ground, he had dropped it in the struggle.
Harry took a deep breath. "That was close."
"Too close." Malfoy mumbled looking at the beast. "Next time let's skip the heroics."
Hermione hugs Harry quickly and then lets go, but before she can explain the professors arrive on the scene.
"Oh my... explain yourselves?!" Mcgonagall says pointing between the two boys.
Hermione could tell neither of them had an explanation. "I-it was my fault." She says. "I read about trolls and thought I could handle it. If they hadn't shown up when they did, I would probably be dead."
snape raises an eyebrow. "Two slytherin students risking their own interests to save a dimwitted gryffindor from death."
Hermione looks stunned. She bit back a nasty retort about him calling her dimwitted.
Mcgonagall nodded in agreement. "As odd as it is snape, we can't ignore that they saved a life. I will award them five points each. Not many first years can take on a full grown mountain troll and live to tell the tale."
"As for you miss Granger..." mcgonagall begins.
At this time harry looks at snape and notices a cut on snape's leg. Snape immediately tries to hide it by moving his cloak over his leg.
The professors leave the students to find themselves back to their dorms.
The two decide to walk Hermione back to Gryffindor common room while the teachers try to get rid of the troll. "Did you notice the nasty scar on snape's leg." Harry says.
"No." Draco shakes his head. "Was it bad?"
"Yeah, it looked pretty fresh too. It was still bleeding." Harry says.
As they travel the staircase suddenly it jolts and moves. The two boys grab it as they think they are about to die.
Hermione braces herself but remains calm. "It's ok, the staircases move."
"They move?!" Harry and draco both had heard that the stairs moved but they had never gone this way or experienced the moving stairs.
The staircase stops and the boys hurry to dismount. "Bloody hell." Draco mumbles.
"Honestly... look at you two?!" Hermione starts. She looks up at a singular door and mutters. "Third floor corridor..."
Harry looks at the door puzzled. "You mean the certain death floor?"
Hermione nods. "I can't imagine any place in the castle being a place that kills you. It sure wouldn't be very safe."
"Is it locked?" Harry asks, pulling the door open. "Guess I answered my own question."
"We shouldn't be in here." Hermione mumbles as they enter the corridor. Lights automatically come on as they detect motion nearby.
They wander into the hall just enough that they forget which door they had come through.
"What was that noise?" Draco mumbles.
"Look it's filch's cat!" Harry says.
"We'll be punished if he finds us out this late?!" Hermione says bolting deeper into the corridors.
The boys follow. They hit a dead end which has one locked door and they think they are done for.
Hermione pulls out her wand and uses the unlocking spell to open the door. They crowd in to hide from the cat and filch.
"I think he's gone." Hermione says peeking out into the dark corridor. No light means no motion. She breathes a heavy huff and then shuts the door again. "It should be safe now."
The group is getting ready to leave when they hear a low growl and suddenly a huge slimeball plops from the air onto draco's shoulder. "Auuug gross?!?" He complains looking up to see where the goop had come from.
They all turn and see a huge three headed dog snarling at them. Draco musters up enough adrenaline to stop from passing out again as the children run screaming from the room while the left head of the giant dog tries to bite them.
They go straight to gryffindor dorms and Hermione huffs as she enters the painting.
"Who keeps a beast like that in a school?!" draco says trying to catch his breath.
"You don't use your eyes do you?" she says. "It was standing on a trap door. It was put there on purpose."
"Trap door?" draco huffs. "Sorry I wasn't looking at its feet! I was too busy staring at the heads! In case you missed it there were three! That's three sets of murder you teeth!"
"Don't get me wrong i am grateful that you helped me but i am leaving before either of you comes up with another plan to get us killed... or worse, expelled." The painting closes as Hermione walks away.
The fat lady in the painting greets them. "Shame you boys aren't in gryffindor. I could get used to seeing you two handsome gentleman."
Draco blushes a little and begins walking away. He wasn't about to start talking to a flirty painting.
Harry follows draco.
Back at Slytherin commons they enter and find that most students had gone to study in the dorms. The only people in the common room were crabbe and goyle and they were trading wizard cards from chocolate frogs.
Draco walked over and sat between them, knocking some of the cards off the table as he passed.
Crabbe picks them up from the floor looking slightly annoyed. "We missed you. Where had you gone?"
Draco crosses his arms. "None of your business."
Crabbe shrugs at goyle.
Goyle shrugs back. "So you went to hagrid about the vault right? You never did finish explaining what he said."
"I told you idiots before." Draco replies. "He said it was a secret between Dumbledore and Nicklaus flamel. He wouldn't give us any real information."
"Oh." Goyle mumbles picking up a stack of cards. "I have an extra merlin card. I will trade you for that Dumbledore."
Crabbe hands him the Dumbledore card and they swap cards.
Goyle reads it out loud. "Considered the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard grindelwald in 1974, for his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner nicholas flamel." He keeps reading but is drown out by draco screaming at him to shut up.
Crabbe and goyle stares at draco.
Harry can't help but notice draco has been a little bit annoyed for the last couple days and his short fuse temper seemed to be set off by the most minor of an inconvenience. "Malfoy... forgive me if this is out of bounds but... what's the matter?"
Draco shakes his head. "The matter? Nothing is the matter?" Then he stops and looks at goyle. "Wait? did you say Nicolas flamel?"
Goyle shrugs and reads the card again, this time in his head. "Yeah it says he was albus alchemy partner."
Draco holds his hand out. "Let me see."
Goyle hands it over.
Draco takes a look at it, and even more curious now, he looks at harry. "What could that possibly mean?"
"I'm not sure." Harry says. "Somehow Nicklaus flamel and Dumbledore have got something secret that was in a vault at gringotts and is now somewhere in the castle." He thinks for a moment but nothing comes to mind.
The girl, faith, from earlier that night happened to be passing through on her way to toss a color changing pellet into the fireplace. She had heard the mention of flamel and as the flame changed from red to gold she turned to harry. "Nicholas flamel, I was just reading about him."
"Reading?" Draco questioned.
"In the restricted section of course." Faith says kind of chuckling. "I forgot what it said but I do remember that name. It was a history book about alchemy and historical magical achievement."
Draco mumbles to himself. "Restricted section."
"Restricted?" Harry asks.
Faith nods. "Yea." She shrugs. "Too bad you boys don't have permission to go there."
"Who says we don't?" Draco replies.
Faith smirks slightly. "I saw you two sneak off when we were being led to the dorms because of the troll. Did you really think no one would notice? You two are trouble. Either getting into trouble or being caught up in it, but that isn't really something you can help is it potter?"
Harry stares at her confused.
"Famous mister potter. The boy who lived... you're cursed you know." Faith replies. "People around here think you're some sort of god or something but I think you're being punished because you mother was a mudblood."
"Now hold on a minute." Harry starts but draco is up out of his seat.
"Stop now." Draco says firmly. "I will not have you speak that way to harry in my presence."
"Malfoy." Faith replies with a kind of cold stare. "You hang around him. You're going soft. Got a little affection for mudbloods now?"
Draco looks at her stunned.
"I saw you two talking to that granger and I know you left the group to go warn her. Are you forgetting your place?"
"Wait... are you spying on me?" Draco questions.
She chuckles. "Maybe."
Draco pouts a little and slumps back into the couch. "It isn't ... I didn't..."
Faith rolls her eyes. "You need to be more careful draco or daddy might find out about your misadventures." She scoffs and walks away as if she had a big win.
"Daddy?" Harry questions. "Do you know her?"
Draco mumbles. "The Spiritwalkers, that's her last name, have always been kind of close with my family. My dad and her dad both work for the ministry and our families are pure bloods. We had been friends when we were younger but after a disagreement over some toys she got mad at me and our friendship just hasn't been the same."
Crabbe and Goyle both nod. "Oh yeah we used to hang out and play dementors in the graveyard and spider, spider, bat." Crabbe says. "She used to be fun until the games suddenly seemed to upset her."
"She wanted to win." Draco replies. "And she got furious that wouldn't let her win." He shrugs and looks at the fireplace. "She used to be fun."
"Oh I see." Harry nods. "I guess I never really had that problem since I was a weird kid and my cousin made sure I never made a friend." He frowns. "I don't really want to go back to the stairs..."
"She did give us some helpful information though." Draco says. "She mentioned that name was in a book in the restricted section. We could try to get in there and find out about nicholas flamel."
"That's a good idea." Harry nods.
"Except you gotta have permission to go there unless you're older." Crabbe replies. "And she was right about the trouble. I mean just this year so far we have already had detention served in the forest where we almost could have died."
"You two weren't even there for most of the things harry and I did." Draco says. "Today we fought a giant troll." He thinks for a moment. "Not to mention quidditch... that game can be dangerous."
"I forgot about quidditch! I have practice tomorrow and it's already late!?" Harry says making his way to bed.
"Potter is sort of a danger magnet." Draco says once harry has left. "I don't know if it's wise for us to hang around him."
Crabbe and goyle both shrug. "I mean we really shouldn't, but then again if he was to join us, as a powerful wizard, he would make a good addition." Crabbe says.
Draco nods. "Your right." He thinks for a moment. "I think faith was wrong. She's just jealous of Harry being our friend. All the same we should tread carefully."