''There, look.''
''Where?''
''Next to the kid with the red hair.''
''Wearing the glasses?''
''Did you see her face?''
''Did you see her scar?''
Whispers followed Rose from the moment she left her dormitory the next day.
People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at her or doubled back to pass her in the corridors again, staring. Rose wished they wouldn't because she was trying to concentrate on finding her way to classes.
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump.
Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending.
It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot.
The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other and Rose was sure the coats of armor could walk.
The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open.
Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class.
He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, ''GOT YOUR CONK!''
Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch.
Rose and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. Filch found them trying to force their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor.
He wouldn't believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.
Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamplike eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later.
Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.
And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more magic, as Rose quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.
They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets.
Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.
Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost.
Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up the next morning teach, leaving his body behind him.
Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.
Professor Filtwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Rose's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.
Professor McGonagall was again different. Rose had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to the moment they sat down in his first class.
''Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,'' she said. ''Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.''
Then she changed his desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing furniture into animals for a long time.
After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.
The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrel's lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke.
His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days.
His turban, he told them had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story.
For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrel had fought off the zombie, Quirrel went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrel was protected wherever he went.
Rose was very relieved to find out that she wasn't miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like her, hadn't any idea that they were witches and wizards.
There was so much to learn that even people like Ron didn't have a head start.
Friday was an important day for Rose and Ron. They finally managed to find their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without getting lost once.
''What have we got today?'' Rose asked Ron as she poured sugar on her porridge.
''Double Potions with the Slytherins,'' said Ron. ''Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them - we'll be able to see if it's true.''
''Wish McGonagall favored us,'' said Rose. Professor McGonagall was head of Gryffindor House, but it hadn't stopped her from giving them a huge pile of homework the day before.
Just then, the mail arrived. Rose had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning, when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps.
Hedwig hadn't brought Rose anything so far. She sometimes flew in to nibble his ear and have a bit of toast before going off to sleep in the owlery with the other school owls. This morning, however, she fluttered down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl and dropped a note onto Rose's plate. Rose tore it open at once. It said, in a very untidy scrawl:
𝒹ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝓇ℴ𝓈ℯ,
𝒾 𝓀𝓃ℴ𝓌 𝓎ℴ𝓊 ℊℯ𝓉 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝒹𝒶𝓎 𝒶𝒻𝓉ℯ𝓇𝓃ℴℴ𝓃𝓈 ℴ𝒻𝒻, 𝓈ℴ 𝓌ℴ𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓁𝒾𝓀ℯ 𝓉ℴ 𝒸ℴ𝓂ℯ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝓋ℯ 𝒶 𝒸𝓊𝓅 ℴ𝒻 𝓉ℯ𝒶 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓂ℯ 𝒶𝓇ℴ𝓊𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝓇ℯℯ? 𝒾 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉ℴ 𝒽ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝒶 𝓁ℴ𝓉 𝒶𝒷ℴ𝓊𝓉 𝓎ℴ𝓊𝓇 𝒻𝒾𝓇𝓈𝓉 𝓌ℯℯ𝓀. 𝓈ℯ𝓃𝒹 𝓊𝓈 𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝓈𝓌ℯ𝓇 𝒷𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒽ℯ𝒹𝓌𝒾ℊ.
𝒽𝒶ℊ𝓇𝒾𝒹
Rose borrowed Ron's quill, scribbled 𝒴𝑒𝓈, 𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒, 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓁𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇 on the back of the note, and sent Hedwig off again.
It was lucky that Rose had tea with Hagrid to look forwards to, because the Potions lesson turned out to be the worst thing that had happened to her so far.