5 September 1992, Hogwarts
Did Lockhart end up with the Diary back in July and that was the consequences of it? If it was any other artefact, Harry would have noticed it, but the diary was a tricky little bugger.
Speaking of the diary, he needed to start developing a way to survive the Basilisk's glare. It was mostly done out of precaution, but he would rather not risk it. After all, he loses nothing by being prepared.
School had started for a few days and the entire student population wasn't sure what to think about the new Defense Professor. Lockhart was adored by the younger years because of his stories, and he was a good enough orator to make things stick slightly, but NEWT students just thought that he was somewhat average. They were used to figuring things out by themselves after years of mediocre Defense Professors, but they honestly had no comments. The man just mainly stuck to the ministry curriculum, and the books were mildly helpful.
Honestly, after the first read, the books weren't all that interesting. Don't get him wrong, they were far more interesting than the original books, and the magic used was very well explained, but even then, it was primarily stories, even if they were real ones. It was like someone had used Auror reports while explaining the magic of each spell to teach defence. Yeah, it was interesting, but an actual textbook would have been more educational as it will include far more magic.
Still, with the number of horrible Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors, Lockhart was still one of the few that wasn't horrible and that was suspicious. Harry was sure the man was a fraud and this sudden rise in competence could theoretically be because of the Diary's influence. According to the stories, Tom Riddle always wanted to be the Defense Professor and aiding a fraudulent professor was something a petty teenage pre-dark lord would do just to prove a point. Although Riddle's desire for the position could have been because of the influence over the next generation it would have given him. In a way, he wanted to be the next Dumbledore, something that the headmaster wouldn't allow as long as he was in power.
All in all, Harry had enjoyed his first week at Hogwarts this year. Much of that enjoyment had actually come from the relative normality that had made up pretty much the entirety of the week. Binns was as boring as ever, Snape was as much of an ass, and the junior professors were just as useless as ever. Honestly, Harry barely even remembered their names.
The most eventful things that had happened had been Ron Weasley's and Neville Longbottom's howlers, his early morning flying session with Cassius, his first lesson under the not-so-fake after all Gilderoy Lockhart, and of course, Harry's attempts at figuring out where the damned Diary was.
The Potter scion had successfully put a small counting rune connected to a piece of parchment, which increments whenever someone enters each common room, on decrements whenever someone leaves. He did the same to the Great Hall, which he tied to each student's house, and one for each of the classrooms also with the same property.
What most people don't know is that being sorted isn't just about wearing a different coloured tie and just participating in the competition. The castle itself marks each sorted student to allow them to enter certain parts of the castle. They can be circumvented, of course, and the castle itself has this mischievous nature that would allow a few students to get past the wards, but the truth was that there was a reason no one could sneak into the Ravenclaw common room, even if it's only protected by a riddle. The riddle will only be spoken when a Ravenclaw asks it, and even then, there are other protections. It's the same reason why the Hufflepuff common room was still protected, even if it didn't even have a password just a special knock.
If you knew what you were doing, you could technically be able to tell the house of a student with the magic, however, for some reason the castle only allowed the wards to activate in public places. So, yeah, putting it in the bathroom with the entrance was a bust, so Harry stuck with his method. It was frustrating because he wouldn't have needed to do all of this if the castle just let him do it at the location of the entrance. It wouldn't have even let him put it outside the entrance to the male and female dormitory.
Harry had snuck into each common room with his cloak and tried to do it, allowing him to pinpoint the gender of the possessed student as well. His enchantments just wouldn't hold. It was why he was stuck labelling the entrances to the common rooms, technically outside of it. If he had to guess, Harry would say that the castle allows students to add their own touch, and their own little mark during their education as long as it's in a public location. The common rooms, the bathrooms, and whatnot were just off limits, but the corridors and empty classrooms were alright. It was limiting, and frustrating, but he could make do. The small marker he put in the bathroom just wasn't permanent, it wasn't even a spell, just a trigger of movement that was almost unseen, that wasn't even connected to the bathroom, but to a small artefact that Harry enchanted, not the other way around, which the castle seemed to accept for some reason. It was very confusing, to be honest, but at least he had a basic system that he could refine at any time.
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