High Hogwarts

~*~

Harry survived History class admirably... or, that is to say, he fell asleep just like almost everyone else, and was duly awakened by the clanging of the school bell.

No one, not even Dr. Binns, seemed to find any of this very wrong. But then again, Binns was rather too preoccupied with how to maximize the phlegmatic tonality of his voice to notice much else.

As soon as he'd walked out of Dr. Binns' classroom, Hermione appeared once again next to him, like magic. "You're going to Biology next," she informed him decidedly. "With Mr. Hagrid."

The pretty Indian girl he'd sat next to gave him a look of pity. Harry bit his lip.

"So, er... tell me about Mr. Hagrid."

"Oh, he's a big guy with a beard, and he knows a lot about animals of all sorts," Hermione started, at the same time that the Indian girl sighed.

"He's anal-retentive about practical work. NEVER make a mistake in one of his labs, or he will grind your bones to make his bread."

"PARVATI!" Hermione's voice was oozing disapproval like a didactic pimple of propriety. "Hagrid means well. Don't scare poor Harry here into thinking that our school is weird!"

If Harry had the courage to say so, he would have informed the bossy student council girl that the former had already been duly accomplished. But Harry kept silent and wide-eyed, and allowed Hermione (and the Parvati girl) to lead him to the fascinating world that was Mr. Hagrid's classroom.

~*~

Mr. Hagrid turned out to be, indeed, quite the 'anal-retentive' teacher. Harry's first lecture happened to be on animal classification, and it was quite evident almost immediately, in the eloquence with which Mr. Hagrid extolled the perfection of the Porifera and the arete of the Annelids that he expected his class to share his reverence for living creatures.

Harry found himself seated next to a boy who, strangely, resembled the purple-haired girl he'd seen earlier in the morning. This boy was rather tall and skinny, with what had to be red hair, streaked with black. He also wore stark black, with a heavy Gothic cross around his neck and a Celtic-looking tattoo on one freckled bicep. A ratty black leather trench coat (despite the warm weather outside) hung on the back of the guy's chair.

"So," Mr. Hagrid sternly surveyed the class, his voice muffled slightly by his luxuriant beard, "Who c'n tell me the phylum in which Drosophila melanogaster belongs?"

Goth boy raised a hand. "Arthropoda," he grunted when Hagrid nodded in his direction.

Under the tangled mess of whiskers, the teacher grinned, even as a blond boy, all American Eagle and Ralph Lauren and boy band prep, sniffed and rolled his eyes in a 'I could SO be cutting class and hitting on the poms squad rather than suffering this ignoble inaneness!' manner.

Mr. Hagrid seemed to expand with irritation. Beady eyes narrowed over the ponderous beard, focusing on the blond boy. "Malfoy," he rumbled like an ominous volcano, "Ya don't want to be assigned lab-cleaning duties, do ya?"

The blond shrank back, a clear look of horror and revulsion on his face. Goth boy gave a slight snort.

Mr. Hagrid, now with an apparently terrifying threat out in the open, blithely continued lecturing until the end of the class.

"Now read your books, you lot," he admonished, as the students started to leave, blond boy Malfoy practically high-tailing it out of the class as fast as his shiny Bruno Magli loafers could carry him.

Before Harry could glance at what was next on his schedule, Hermione, nice, forward-thinking young woman that she was, had plucked it out of his hands. "You've got lunch next. Let's go."

Well then... if this was the way it would be, he should probably consider investing in a good leash and collar.