Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone...and Lillie (ver2)

Yea your right this version is away better:D
I like it:D

Heya, cottonrulz, judging time is finally here!! I don't know if you're familiar with my reviewing techniques, but I'll tell you about them anyway . First off, I will go through the whole piece, making [comments/suggestion] and edits or extra addings-in, then I will go through the review with you at the end. Anyway, here we go (: ...

cottonrulz wrote:I watched tiny Professor Flitwick totter on top of his pile of books with a mixture of amusement and immense trepidation. He was waving his wand around enthusiastically, and he seemed in real danger of falling all the way down to the ground.
“Now, don’t forget that nice wrist movement we’ve been practising!” he squeaked. “Swish and flick. Remember, swish and flick.”
I nudged the girl next to me, and quietly, with my wand pointed towards the teacher under my desk, I murmured an incantation. The books supporting Flitwick’s tiny frame shuddered violently and he tumbled backwards over the chair. The girl giggled hysterically, stuffing her hand over her mouth to try to deaden the sound. Her wildly curly and frizzy hair bounced around her face, and her slightly too large front teeth poked out from between her lips.
“Shh!” I urged her, but laughing softly myself.
“You’re so bad!” whispered Hermione Granger, hitting me playfully on the arm. The clouds outside moved then, and we were suddenly in the path of the autumn sunlight, which streamed in through the tall mullioned windows in the far wall at the end of the classroom.
By now, Flitwick had righted himself. “Right, class, remember now, swish and flick. Make sure you get the pronunciation right, too. Never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said ‘s’ instead of ‘f’, and ended up on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.”
Today’s lesson was devoted to lifting a feather off the desk using magic. Of course, Hermione and I – in periods of boredom – had challenged each other to do this days ago, so instead we attempted to raise rolls of parchment. Five minutes later we moved onto our thick textbooks.
Harry Potter and his Weasley friend, Ron, were trying as hard as they could to lift their feather, but their efforts were pitiful. Hermione giggled, and I did too at their intonation. She pointed her wand at their feather as Harry took his turn and muttered the counter-curse. Naturally the feather did not so much as ruffle one of its barbules.
“Wingardium Leviosa, WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!” To our right, Seamus was becoming annoyed. He prodded his feather and it burst into flames. His partner, Neville, panicked and started looking around frantically for a glass of water. Rolling my eyes, I hit it with my copy of The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1). The fire went out instantly.
“Thanks,” mumbled Seamus.
“Wingardium Leviosa!” shouted Ron suddenly, waving his arms around manically.
“You’re saying it wrong,” chastised Hermione, and I turned to watch. “It’s Win-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the ‘gar’ nice and long.”
“You do it then, if you’re so clever.”
Smiling, and winking at me, Hermione turned her wand on our previously untouched feather and said clearly, “Wingardium Leviosa!” The feather rose easily and hovered four feet above our heads.
Professor Flitwick cheered and clapped, and highly congratulated Hermione.
After the lesson, Ron and Harry followed us out of the classroom.
“You’re such a know-it-all, Hermione,” grumbled Ron, still annoyed that Hermione had been able to raise her feather off the desk. “I’m amazed you managed to find somebody that can stay in your presence for more than a second.”
“Why, thank you, Ronald Duck,” I snapped. “At least I’m not fawning over famous Mr Potter – ‘oh, Harry, I luurve you!’” I added, mimicking Ron in a high, girlish voice.
Ron’s ears reddened. “Shut up.”
“Come on,” said Harry.
“Yes, do hurry, Potter!” called Hermione and I together, before we headed off, laughing, into the Entrance Hall and down towards the dungeons.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of endless enjoyment. We were having fun – not exactly showing off, but quietly and humorously testing the things we had learnt in elongated sessions in the library. Professor Snape – who, we had found out, liked nobody but the morons in his own house, Slytherin – was literally speechless when he gazed down into our potion. Instead of following the instructions for a concoction to get rid of athlete’s foot, like we were supposed to, we had added and switched and chopped rather than sliced ingredients until we ended up with...
“And what is this?” asked Snape, in a voice so quiet and level I was almost nervous for a second. But only a second – then a strange sense of excitement, the kind I only felt when I was doing something rebellious, overpowered the fear.
“It’s... it’s an Anti Pedi-Itch Draught, sir,” I replied calmly, smiling serenely.
“No, Miss Harris, this is not the Anti Pedi-Itch Draught I requested at the beginning of the class,” said Snape in an even deadlier voice. “Again, what is this?”
“Sir, we added crushed catnip and boiled the bat toenails for an extra thirty-three seconds,” explained Hermione, in a slightly pleading voice. I knew how much she hated being told off by a teacher.
“And why would you do that?”
“It makes the skin soft, sir, after removing the athlete’s foot.”
For a minute, Snape said nothing. Then he called upon Neville and made him try some of our potion. Sure enough, five minutes later Neville’s feet were as soft as a baby’s bottom. After giving us a small noise of approval, Snape moved on. Hermione and I were both a little peeved that Draco Malfoy got ten points for his reasonable attempt at the potion, even when we had gone above and beyond what anybody else had done and ended up with a better potion. However, Snape’s blatant preferential treatment for his slimy Slytherins was legendary.
We were still grumbling pleasantly about the seventeen-inch essay Snape had set us after Potions – our last lesson of the day –when we bumped into Professor Quirrell. He was hurrying down the marble staircase whilst we were going up, heading for the Gryffindor common room before dinner.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir,” I said politely, although it was my rolls of parchment that had been sent flying.
Quirrell straightened his turban, stammered a barely audible reply and continued down the stairs. We watched him curiously as he reached the front doors, peered anxiously around himself and slipped outside.
“I wonder what’s up with him,” pondered Hermione. I had taken a few steps further up the stairs, but she had not moved, still staring after Quirrell.
“Probably a lot of things,” I sighed. “Let’s go to dinner.”
“I don’t know. Isn’t it a bit odd for him to be leaving the castle, when all the other teachers are either in or going to dinner?”
Mmm, dinner. And today was the Hallowe’en Feast. “Well, he’s an oddball all right. And speaking of dinner...?”
“Yeah, that’s right, toddle on. And keep your nose out of other people’s business,” called out an annoyed voice. I turned my head just in time to see Ron Weasley and Harry Potter pass me. They had clearly heard what we had been saying; Ron was scowling at Hermione, who spotted him and scowled back.
“You’ve got more than three times as many freckles as brain cells,” I sneered. “And you’re a jumped-up little twat, as well, Potter.”
“Hey! I’ve never even spoken to you!” retorted Harry.
“Maybe, but I’ve seen the way you act.”
“Especially since you got that stupid broom,” quipped in Hermione.
“Do you spy on us or something?” growled Ron, his ears steadily reddening.
“Just go to dinner,” I groaned.
They left, muttering furiously in hushed tones. I caught Hermione’s eye, and I knew that we would not be following them. For some reason, I was now determined to be reckless, and pursuing the strange Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Quirrell, seemed perfect.
The lawns outside were lined with the long shadows of the castle. A falcon cried out as it swooped in and out of the trees of the Forbidden Forest. Other than that, and the soft rustle of the great branches of huge trees, there was relative silence. Yes, there was the soft clamour of voices and cutlery from the Great Hall, and the whistle of the wind in my ears, and Hermione’s and my footsteps; but apart from that, nothing.
Being used to a (small) [no need for brackets here] city, where cars rolled down streets day and night, and there was always the sound of someone shouting or canned laughter issuing from a television, this calmness was immensely pleasant.
Quirrell was about two hundred yards ahead of us. His demeanour surprised me greatly, as usually he seemed incredibly nervous – to the extent that he looked on the verge of wetting himself on a regular basis. Now, however, he strode with a straight back and even stride. Not once did he look back – another aspect of him that was different to how he was usually. I had not once seen him walk the length of his tiny classroom, filled with odd models and instruments he told far-fetched stories about, without looking over his shoulder at least twice.
I met Hermione’s equally thoughtful gaze, and knew she was thinking the same as I was.
All of a sudden things were moving slower – or was I thinking faster? All I knew was that in the same moment we heard a low tremble, quickly followed by a flock of birds rising noisily into the air from the trees ahead, my nose began to tickle.
I had to sneeze. The desire to release the tension in my nasal area was overpowering. I tried to fight it, as we had remained unnoticed for this long, but my eyes began to water and I had to, I just had to.
My sneeze seemed to echo off every particle in the air, reverberating for an endless, eternal second.
Quirrell spun around, and when he saw us his eyes widened and his nostrils flared dangerously. I recognised the expression. It was just like the one my sister [maybe give her name? And is she older or younger?] always wore just before flying at me during one of our fights. Fear filled my heart and adrenaline pumped through every artery, vein and capillary.
“What are you two doing out in the grounds?” he barked, having turned back and reached us in under twenty seconds. His voice was, again, different; his stammer was non-existent, and there was a cruel edge to his words.
“U-uh...” I stammered.
“S-sorry, sir, we were j-just... going...” answered Hermione lamely.
Quirrell paused, and then his expression changed, slackened. “W-well, g-g-get b-back up t-to the c-castle, th-then,” he stuttered,[replace with full stop] [s]and then[/s] He made a point of walking with us back up to the castle. We watched him enter the Great Hall ahead of us, and kept an eye on him as he settled into his seat at the top table.
Something peculiar was going on, I just knew it. As if agreeing with my thoughts, Hermione caught my eye and nodded once, seriousness etched into every worry crease on her forehead. Again, I marvelled at how in sync, how close we were already. We were both muggle-borns – my mother being an architect and my father a French and Spanish teacher – and incredibly focussed. I had always known that I was different, but I eventually just assumed that was just me. Now I knew what it was – that I had had magic all those years – my early, childish attempts at ‘witchcraft’ did not seem as silly.
The feast was magnificent of course. Spooky pumpkin lanterns adorned all four house tables, and thousands of bats covered the ceiling and swooped low over the flickering candles. A minute after we arrived the feast appeared by magic in front of us, and we spent the next forty minutes enjoying the food and laughing with our classmates. Neither of us forgot what we had witnessed beforehand, and we kept a reasonably close eye on Quirrell throughout the feast. He seemed edgy, and kept glancing around. This in itself was not particularly out of character for him, but we thought, [by the sounds of it they've not been talking about Quirrell's behaviour during the feast, so I would change this to 'I'] and were pretty sure, that something was not right.
When people began getting up and leaving, Professor McGonagall passed us and we instantly got to our feet, hurrying after her.
“Professor!” we called out together and she turned, her long black cloak swirling about her, her sharp eyes narrowing.
“What is it, girls?” she asked quietly, coming up close to us. McGonagall knew us, and knew that the panic in our eyes must be there for a real reason.
“It’s Professor Quirrell,” said Hermione softly, but she seemed unable to continue.
“I think there’s something – odd, going on with him,” I finished. “He went out towards the Forest before the feast and he seemed unlike himself – really confident and composed – and then, when he saw us behind him, he spoke evenly but angrily, like we’d caught him doing something wrong.”
Professor McGonagall surveyed us for a moment. Then she pursed her lips, said, “All right, girls. You’re sure about this?”
We nodded emphatically.
“OK, I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore, when he next has a minute.” She walked away, leaving us in the Entrance Hall full of bustling, well-fed students. We turned to stare at each other, wondering whether we had done the right thing.
Suddenly, Quirrell was there, right next to us. And the look on his face gave us our answer. We had done something very, very wrong – but it was the very, very right thing to do.
Oh, crap. [Great place to end it (: ]