I don't own any of the characters, locations, or anything else in this fic. Intended only to poke fun at a few plot holes and failings of logic present in the first book of the Harry Potter series.

"Everywhere else is full," the other boy said.

Harry raised an eyebrow slightly, and couldn't help but glance out the window of the compartment towards the one opposite, nearly empty. There were, he was sure, plenty of compartments that if not full at least had room for one small first year.

"Sure," he replied, allowing the other boy to stay. What was he playing at?

The great hall deserved the name, Harry thought as he walked with the other first years towards the end opposite the doors, where the teachers sat at their own table. Harry couldn't help but be confused at the number, though. There were just over a dozen teachers for an entire school; adding in the gamekeeper that had picked him up from the Dursley's and the grumpy custodian sulking in his chair, there still weren't many adults. There were about fourty first years, Harry guessed, and if that was true of every year there would be almost three hundred students. There were definitely not enough adults to keep that many students in line, especially in a giant castle. Unless wizarding guidelines were different than nonmagical?

The hat, after singing its song, was placed on the head of each first year and stayed there until calling the name of a House.

There were fourty first years, and while some were sorted instantly, some took several minutes. It seemed to Harry that it would take at least an hour to sort all the students, while the rest of the school waited impatiently to start eating. And meanwhile the first years whose last names tended towards the end of the alphabet had to stand there the entire time.

And Harry could already tell that there seemed to be a rivalry between the Houses. Whenever a student was sent to the House in green and silver, nobody cheered but the members of that House (Slytherin, Harry reminded himself). Similarly, the silver and green house never cheered for anyone else, but booed whenever someone was sorted into the red and gold house (Gryffindor). Was it really healthy to encourage such rivalry in the students before school had even started? Harry could even remember Hagrid, a staff member, telling him that nobody had ever 'gone bad' who wasn't in Slytherin, something Harry found rather unlikely. The staff here were definitely NOT impartial. Did professionalism even exist in the wizarding world?

Harry felt the stern professor place the hat on his head, immediately plunging his vision into darkness as it precariously rested on his ears.

'Ah, you seem to be a perceptive one,' the hat murmured into his…mind? Harry would have to research that.

'Yes, brave when necessary, and certainly cunning when it suits you, but above all logical and excellent at poking holes in other people's reasoning. You're in for an interesting time here, Mr. Potter.'

'No doubt,' Harry replied drily. 'I'm fairly certain that the ability to use magic has rendered people too lazy to think.'

'That is the opinion of many who enter the wizarding world from the nonmagical,' the hat sighed. 'Unfortunately there isn't much one can do about it. The wizarding world has not change much in centuries, and seems unlikely to do so. Back to the topic at hand, though, since I'm supposed to be sorting you.'

'Indeed,' Harry replied. 'The green and red houses – Slytherin and Gryffindor – seem to have a rivalry which I would prefer not to participate in. Plus the examples I've seen of their students' – the blond was sorted into Slytherin, and the redhead was likely to go to Gryffindor – 'haven't impressed me.'

'Yes, while you could fit into either, neither truly suit you,' the hat mused. 'Judging by how much you rely on logic, however, there seems to be one clear choice, if you approve?'

Harry had a pretty good idea of which House the hat spoke of, and certainly wasn't opposed to the idea.

'Very well,' the hat concluded, 'then it'll be RAVENCLAW!'

The last word was shouted to the entire hall. Harry removed the hat, placed it carefully on the stool, and made his way to the Ravenclaw table, ignoring the murmurs of surprise that filled the hall. Really, just because his parents were there, or he had supposedly defeated some dark wizard (he had been a BABY, honestly), why did everyone seem to expect him to be sorted into Gryffindor? The wizarding world had way too many expectations considering all he had done was survive.

Honestly. If some toddler could really defeat him, Voldemort wasn't particularly impressive. It was more likely he survived either because the dark idiot messed up somehow or because his parents had done something before they died. The more Harry learned of the wizarding world, the greater his desire to find a solid object to bang his head against. He just hoped that idiocy wasn't contagious, if he was to spend a full seven years among these people.

Really, just go ahead and tell a castle full of adolescents that the third floor corridor was forbidden, and leave it at that? If something deadly was indeed hidden in it, Harry gave it a week at most before some curious student managed to get themselves killed. Dumbledore was either completely out of touch with how children thought, or was deliberately trying to lure someone into the corridor. Either way, Harry made a mental note to avoid dealings with the Headmaster as much as possible, and perhaps look into why he has in charge of a school to begin with.

Harry eagerly prepared for the day's classes, looking forward to his first class, Potions. He had read all his textbooks before coming to Hogwarts, and of everything Potions seemed the most interesting. It reminded him of chemistry, a science that he thoroughly enjoyed studying, where mixing a series of ingredients in a specific way produced a specific effect. It fascinated Harry, and he couldn't wait to begin, though he was deliberately ignoring rumours regarding the professor. After all, Potions had to be dangerous, so it made sense for the teacher to be strict, right?

That evening, Harry took half an hour before bed to carefully sort and clarify his impressions of his Potions class. It wouldn't do, after all, for his dislike of his teacher who seemed to take joy in insulting him at every turn to bleed over into dislike of the subject that seemed one of the more enjoyable at Hogwarts.

By the end of the week, Harry was thoroughly irritated with several members of the Hogwarts staff, and by extension Dumbledore since he was in charge. The history teacher was a ghost who, apart from being incredibly boring, seemed not to be aware that any history existed past sometime in the 1800s. The Defence teacher was a stuttering idiot who seemed terrified of his own subject, the students, and even his bright purple turban. Harry found himself with a massive headache at the end of each Defence class. The Potions teacher was incredibly biased, punishing Harry for supposed infractions that were completely unavoidable. 'Breathing loudly', really?

At least some of his classes were good. The transfiguration professor, while strict, dealt fairly with all the students, and Harry could certainly deal with strictness when it meant keeping everyone safe. The Charms professor, the head of Ravenclaw, was quite kind and cheerful to everyone, and had invited his Ravenclaws to his office whenever they had a question or concern. He at least seemed to appreciate how dangerous magic could be, as he had informed them that they would learn theory and practice safe technique before beginning actual magic. Harry also enjoyed Herbology, which took place in one of the greenhouses. The professor was wonderfully kind to everyone, and the work was quite relaxing. The only downside was that it took place with the first years in Slytherin. The blond, Malfoy, seemed to have made it his mission in life to insult and belittle Harry at every opportunity. He only seemed to grow frustrated, though, when Harry's only reaction was a raised eyebrow. It was difficult to remain impassive, especially when Malfoy insulted his parents, but Harry knew that giving a bully a reaction was only inviting more of the same.

Overall, the first week wasn't bad, but Harry thought that the quality of teaching left much to be desired. He had heard rumours that there was a new Defence professor every year because of a curse placed by Voldemort on the position. He supposed that doing so was a good plan for Voldemort if it was true, because inconsistent education in Defence would guarantee that few would have the ability to fight him. If the curse rumours were true, did that mean that Voldemort wasn't dead yet, since Harry had read that some curses are broken upon the caster's death?

Harry had also heard rumour that Professor Snape was a death eater, who had only escaped prison because of Dumbledore's word that he had been a spy for the good side. The man's personality certainly supported that theory, but Harry wasn't sure. While the man constantly insulted Harry's pureblood father, he had not once mentioned his muggleborn mother. Unless Snape had a specific grudge against Harry's father and hadn't minded his mother, that seemed a reversal of Voldemort's and his follower's beliefs.

Harry stared at the Headmaster, bewildered, as the man ordered the prefects to escort the students back to their houses. Yes, he thought, let's send hundreds of students through the halls unprotected while a troll wandered through the castle. Wouldn't it be safer for them to remain in the Great Hall and seal the doors?

For that matter, hadn't he heard that the Slytherin dormitories were in the dungeons, where the troll supposedly was?

The Headmaster apparently had no more reasoning capabilities than the rest of the wizarding world. As well as a possible dislike of Slytherin, especially if the rumours of him being a former Gryffindor were to be believed.

Harry later heard that a first-year Gryffindor, Hermione Granger, had been attacked in a girl's bathroom by the troll, not having been in the Great Hall to hear the announcement. He didn't know her well, since the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors didn't share many classes, but he knew from rumour that she was highly intelligent and a bit of a know-it-all. Nobody could understand why she was in Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw.

Harry decided to visit her in the hospital wing. Perhaps, since she was a muggleborn, they could gripe together about the stupidity of the wizarding world.

They had a wonderful time at it, though Granger seemed to have a high level of trust for anyone in a position of authority. Harry couldn't understand it. After all, everyone in authority ultimately was still a person perfectly capable of bias or mistakes, just like anyone else. He personally suspected the Headmaster of plenty of both, if his handling of the troll was any indication.

After their conversation in the hospital wing, Harry and Hermione had formed a tentative friendship. It seemed a lot more significant to her than him, however, though he knew that she had made next to no friends in her House. Harry could sympathize thanks to his experience with the Dursleys, though at Hogwarts he got on quite well with his housemates and considered several of them his friends. He supposed that in Gryffindor, which he was beginning to consider the House of let's-do-anything-other-than-schoolwork-and-whatever-will-get-us-in-trouble, she wouldn't fit in very well. She certainly didn't get along with most of her housemates, particularly the redhead Harry had met on the train, Ronald Weasley. Harry was irritated to find that Weasley was the one who had insulted her to the point that she spent hours crying in the bathroom before being attacked by the troll.

Housemates were supposed to support one another, after all.

Most of his classmates returned home for Christmas, while Harry quite happily avoided the Dursleys by signing up to remain at the school over the holidays. Harry was somewhat irritated to discover that Ronald Weasley was the only other person in his year staying. It meant that he had to constantly avoid the other's requests to play chess or go for a snowball fight, which Harry wasn't interested in. He took to hiding in the library reading, which he enjoyed and which had the bonus of being one of the last places Weasley would willingly venture into.

Christmas morning Harry quite happily opened his presents. He had received gifts from Hagrid and several of his yearmates, including Hermione. He was glad he had remembered to send her a book he had owl-ordered from Diagon Alley.

The last present mystified him, though. The note had no name, and the gift was an invisibility cloak, supposedly a possession of his father's. Harry felt a wave of irritation that whoever it was hadn't returned it to him beforehand, and sat down to consider possible senders.

It had to either be someone his parents were friends with or someone they trusted, he reasoned. He knew next to nothing about their friendships, but since they were killed shortly out of school he was sure those they trusted would mostly include family members or teachers. He didn't know of any family members besides the Dursleys, who would definitely not send him an invisibility cloak, which left staff. Professor McGonagall had been their head of house, but Harry had seen her writing on the board and on his essays and the writing on the note wasn't hers. In fact, it wasn't the writing of any of his teachers. That left Dumbledore, who most Gryffindors seemed to believe was the most powerful and amazing wizard to ever walk the earth, so the cloak was either from some unknown friend of theirs or Dumbledore. If it was Dumbledore, though, why did he keep the cloak for so long? Maybe it could have saved their lives that night, if they could hide or sneak past Voldemort.

Then again, maybe not. Harry had heard enough about Voldemort to doubt he would be fooled by an invisibility cloak. But it would have been nice for them to have the option. Assuming that the sender was telling the truth that his father had willingly lent it.

Harry shoved the cloak in his trunk and resolved to think about it later.

Hermione, it seemed, had found a new obsession in learning what was in the third floor corridor. Apparently Weasley had decided to go exploring after curfew a few weeks after the break, and she had accompanied him to try and talk him out of it. He had been easily discouraged, though, after meeting the massive three-headed dog that lived in a room down the corridor.

Hermione had been the only one to notice the trapdoor. She had seen no reason to mention it to Weasley.

But now she was gathering clues, trying to figure out what was going on. Harry was helping her, if only out of Ravenclaw curiousity. He had mentioned the package Hagrid had removed from Gringotts and Hermione had immediately latched onto it, declaring that the contents must be what Fluffy was guarding. The pair had visited Hagrid to subtly inquire about the package, and he had let slip the name Nicolas Flamel. After weeks of frenzied searching in the library, Hermione had identified him as the creator of the Philosopher's Stone.

A stone that could create gold and offered eternal life. Harry still wasn't sure what to think about that. The economic ramifications would certainly be staggering.

At any rate, he was quite irritated with Dumbledore for either hiding the stone at Hogwarts or pretending it was hidden there so that the rumour could spread. Safest place in magical Britain or not, Hogwarts was a school. For children. Not a place to set a trap.

And Harry was sure that was what it was. After all, the stone had originally been at Gringotts, supposedly one of the safest places in Britain for valuable objects. And it had been broken into, someone attempting to steal from the same vault the Stone had come from.

That proved the thief to be highly skilled, if s/he could break though the protections at Gringotts. And the Headmaster was trying to lure this person to Hogwarts, which was full of schoolchildren, for some kind of faceoff. Did the Headmaster even consider the sort of hostage situations that could occur?

And why would Flamel allow his stone to be hidden at Hogwarts, or Gringotts for that matter? Both he and his wife relied on the rock for life, and Flamel had had hundreds of years to work out a system to protect it. There was no reason for him to allow it to be placed at Hogwarts. The whole situation was ridiculous.

Regardless, Harry felt his trust for the Headmaster that would use a school as a place to set a trap for a powerful wizard that was quite possible Voldemort, now that he thought about it, drop several more levels. Harry made a mental note never to trust the man with any of his possessions, and be wary of any of his ideas. The Headmaster seemed to exemplify the lack of reasoning prevalent in the wizarding world. Either that, or he was growing senile, or he was deliberately trying to endanger the school, especially Harry, who was likely to be of particular interest to any dark wizards.

Harry wasn't sure which option worried him more.

Hermione was convinced that Snape was trying to steal the Stone, and was going to do it that night.

Apparently this was because Snape was the most evil person in the school, so clearly he had to be the culprit, and because Dumbledore was not at the school, thus making it the perfect time to strike.

Harry agreed with the second point, though he wasn't sure about the first; it seemed suspiciously like the bias that the Gryffindors were so fond of spouting. Eventually he followed Hermione into the third floor corridor, because now that she was convinced she was determined to stop Snape, or at least get to the Stone first.

Harry finally understood why she was in Gryffindor.

After getting past Devil's Snare (intimidating, but not really that dangerous if you paid attention in Herbology), a room full of flying keys (Harry was quite talented on a broom, as he had discovered in flying lessons, and had no problem catching the correct key), a chess set (Hermione had been all set to play, but Harry had just used the broom from the previous room to fly over the board – the pieces weren't even activated, they couldn't do anything to stop them), an unconscious troll (wait – if Quirrell's specialty was with trolls, why had he acted so terrified at Halloween? Suddenly Harry was sure it wouldn't be Snape trying to get the Stone), and a Potions riddle (Not much harder than the ones Harry had to answer every day to get into Ravenclaw tower) Harry found himself in a room with a mirror and Quirrell, while Hermione was heading back to once again try to convince a teacher of the danger.

Quirrell, it turned out, had Voldemort on the back of his head, which was why he wore the turban. After demanding to know what Harry saw in the mirror (his parents, and possibly a few faint images of what wizards could do with magic if they actually thought about it), Quirrell had shoved him aside to stare again into the mirror and exchange mutterings with the face on the back of his head. Harry, meanwhile, was thinking. It didn't take him long to interpret the inscription in the mirror (I show not your face but your heart's desire, and wizards apparently could not fathom any code more complicated that writing a sentence backwards) and he couldn't help but wonder; if he wanted to find the stone, and looked in the mirror, would he see where the stone was hidden?

He quickly decided against it. After all, if he got the stone, he wouldn't be able to defend it, being a first year against the most powerful dark lord in decades.

So he stood quietly in the background, not drawing attention to himself except to run to the side of the room and attempt to minimize his profile to avoid spells when Dumbledore finally arrived and proceeded to duel Quirrell/Voldemort (Quirrelmort?). Finally Dumbledore won, and a black mist rose from Quirrell's dead body. It rushed towards him, and despite Harry's best efforts to dodge, passed through his chest. Harry felt a blinding pain in his scar, followed by a rush of darkness, and collapsed.

He woke in the hospital wing, to find Dumbledore sitting in a chair beaming at him. After explaining the bare minimum of how he had come to be in the mirror room and what he had done, the Headmaster offered a few cryptic statements before leaving Harry to his rest.

Harry accompanied the rest of his House to the leaving feast, where the Headmaster announced that Slytherin had won the House cup. Harry clapped politely along with the rest of his House and the Hufflepuffs, though he noticed that the Gryffindors were stonily silent.

And really, he thought to himself as he ate, the only purpose of the House cup was to try to get the students to behave through peer pressure. The winners would get their House banners displayed at the feast, and bragging rights on the train home, and that was it. Useless. Perhaps that was why none of the older students in his House seemed to care at all about the Cup.

Harry decided he didn't either.

When Malfoy tried to taunt him about it on the train, Harry simply shrugged, congratulated him on the win, and returned to his book. As usual, Malfoy had no clue how to respond to this, and eventually left. Harry had found this the best method of dealing with the immature Slytherin, and by now Malfoy was insulting him with much less frequency. It was quite satisfying.

Pulling his trunk across the barrier, Harry sighed when he saw his uncle waiting for him. While being back in the world of (relative) rationality was a relief, he was not anticipating staying with his family for the summer.

Harry found himself already missing Hogwarts.

There it is, a quick oneshot I wrote a little while back and finally decided to post. I wrote it just for fun to poke holes at the odd events that occur through the first book. It wasn't intended to portray any characters in a bad light, but somehow Dumbledore and Ron eventually got a less-than-satisfactory portrayal thanks to some of their actions. Ah well, Dumbledore at least seems to deserve it, especially with his handling of the Halloween troll situation.