Morag McDougal was drawing something with her quill on a parchment which looked like the fungi they had studied in the morning. Alexandra was reading her history book, figuring she might as well do something productive when the professor (as lightly as she wanted to use that title for Binns) wanted to bore them to death. Only Hermione Granger, the bushy-haired girl of House Gryffindor, looked like she was seriously trying to take notes from Binns' boring and unintelligible speech. Alexandra's respect for the concentration and the sense of sacrifice of the Gryffindor girl rose, but she hoped the girl would realise it was a valiant but doomed effort. Binns' sentences, which had been boring but loud and clear when he described the Goblin War of 1651, were now only whispers, and Alexandra was only hearing something clear when Binns finished a paragraph. Unless she was missing something, Alexandra was thinking all of her courses in History would have to be done in self-study. When the bell rang, it woke up the other nineteen students, who appeared to have been deeply sleeping.
On Wednesday morning, she experienced a brief moment of hope when they learnt they were having a class with the Junior (and alive) History Professor Julius Tiroflan, but this miracle turned to ashes. The wizard was not boring, oh no. Tiroflan was lazy. The man forced the students to come read the History book themselves in front of their classmates, and the teacher answered any questions with instructions like "Ask your Charms professor why!","This is the job of the Transfiguration professor!" or "Go ask the Potions Master, this question is beyond my sphere of competence!" so many times the Ravens and the Lions knew the Professor was not qualified to teach them anything, whether it was History, Charms, Potions, or Transfiguration. In conclusion, History was a lost cause, and Alexandra almost cried for joy when it was over. What were Binns and Tiroflan doing as teachers in a school like Hogwarts? She could teach better than them, and she had exactly two days of magical education. Alexandra had enjoyed History in primary school, but the two so-called 'Professors' had turned this class into a magical joke.
The class of Defence Against the Dark Arts revealed itself to be in the same levels as History. The Senior Professor was named Quirinus Quirrell, his main activities consisting of spending his time stuttering and impregnating the room with the nauseating odour of garlic. His violet 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 no student fully believed that story. For one thing, when Justin Finch-Fletchley asked in an eager voice to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went red and started talking about the sunny weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley Twins were already launching rumours that insisted the turban was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.
On Friday morning, they saw the Junior Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, who presented himself as Professor John Devkins. Unlike Quirrell, the Professor didn't seem to be a coward or someone afraid of his own shadow. But as Alexandra and the rest of her class were forced to admit, Devkins forgot everything. For example, that he was supposed to have class this morning, a point which became evident as he arrived fifteen minutes late. That he was supposed to teach them something, as he was a Professor and they were his students. His keys and the chalk for the blackboard were other things which had been forgotten on his way to the classroom. The questionnaire he wanted to ask them in order to "know them better." That the class he was the teacher of was Defence Against the Dark Arts, not Astronomy, an issue which forced Megan Jones of Hufflepuff to confirm, taking five minutes to impress upon him the correct name of the class and the timetable.
Flying being not taught the first week, the last new Senior Professor to be introduced was Professor Sinistra of Astronomy, and Alexandra found her a good teacher, although she would have enjoyed not being forced to have a course at midnight at the top of the Astronomy Tower on Wednesday. The telescopes of the magical world (or at least of Magical Britain) were also heavily lagging behind their non-magical counterparts, and observing all the constellations was not easy.
The other classes on Thursday only further developed what had been introduced on the first day: they learnt more about the different uses of Lumos and practised the spell in Charms class, they continued their work on their matches-to-needles in Transfiguration, with Alexandra achieving the transformation of her match into a needle for the first time, earning two points for Ravenclaw.
It was only during Friday's lunch that Alexandra and her year-mates discovered for the first time a new aspect of school at Hogwarts: the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry.
As she was still shunned by all her House, ignored and alone at lunch, Alexandra was one of the first persons to notice there was something strange with the behaviour of the Gryffindor first-years coming out of the dungeons: instead of alternating between a state of depression or hate like the Hufflepuffs and the Ravenclaws, the Gryffindors led by the unavoidable Neville Longbottom were not only happy, but joyous. As it was public knowledge Professor Snape hated Gryffindor House, Alexandra had a sudden urge to sigh and despair. What had the Lions done to be laughing out loud so much? Alexandra and the rest of the Great Hall had not long to wait to have their answer.
With a loud shout of "BLACK! LONGBOTTOM! WEASLEY!", Professor Snape came out of the dungeons in long strides, his black cape billowing like the one of the Nazgul, with an expression of pure murder on his face.