1st September, 1965.
Scotland
Hogwarts castle.
It was the first day of my tenure as a professor at Hogwarts. I had arrived here earlier today via the floo terminal setup in the office assigned to me. As the sorting ceremony would not start for another few hours I roamed around the castle visiting few old spots I remembered from my time here. Not too soon in the nostalgic tunnel of memories I saw a small plane flying towards me. I raised my right hand towards it and it unfurled into a neat sheet of parchment in my hand. It said that it was time for the ceremony to begin, I nodded to myself and started walking towards the Great Hall.
I was not late in my arrival at the Hall, the seat left for me was on the right side of the headmaster's chair. Taking my seat I observed my surroundings, The professor's table was situated at the opposite end of the hall from its main entrance, amongst the faces on the head table only two of them were familiar to me, professor Slughorn and Professor Dumbledore, I smiled warmly at them and greeted each of them with a small good evening.
The Great hall was decorated in the Colours of house Ravenclaw, as they were the ones who won the house cup last term. The ceiling showed the sky just like it was outside, beautifully lit by moonlight. Hundreds of lit candles floated above the heads of people in the hall . The four rows of to tables, one for each house, were filled with students of every year, except the 1st years who were to be escorted to the Great Hall to by professor McGonagall is a few moments.
Just as I finished my observations, the hall which was buzzing with constant chatter of the students below abruptly fell silent as the main doors of the hall creaked open with a groan worthy of a terrific beast. Through it came professor McGonagall leading a bunch of first years. They were tiny, like hobbits, and were again and again making sounds like oooo's and aaaaa's every time their gaze fell on any part of the great hall. A small smile blossomed on my face as I saw this.
Professor McGonagall lead them towards our end of the Great Hall where they stood in a line in the area between the head table and the students table. Seeing as everyone was behaving professor McGonagall placed the stool ,with the sorting hat on it, just below the steps leading to the head table. She took out a scroll which unfurled all they way to her foot, from it she called out the names of the first years in an alphabetical order for them to come sit on the stool, place the sorting hat on their head and get sorted. The children's faces were scrunched up with various kinds of emotions, some of them were confident, some anxious, some excited and some just relived that the sorting was just done through sorting hat and not by the increasingly bizarre things they have been hearing all day from various mischievous senior students.
When all the students were sorted and professor McGonagall was seated at the head table, professor Dumbledore stood up and started speaking, "Welcome to all! I hope your summer was as good as you expected it to be, seeing your hungry and tired faces I will not keep you away from your meal, let's start the banquet.", with a wave of his hand the plates on every table were filled to brim with food. One inexperienced wizard or witch may think he just waved the food into existence but the wave of hand just the signal for the house elves to transfer the food into our plates from the kitchen just below the Great Hall.
We all got to eating, but none with more fervour than the first years as it was no doubt, a very tiring day for them today. I was soon finished with all I wanted to have for dinner, so I decided to have some small talk with professor Slughorn who was on my right. "Professor Slughorn, I hope you have been as well as you portrayed yourself to be in the letters we exchanged last time." I said pointedly with a bit of mischief, my eyes pointed towards his bulging stomach. The surrounding professors gave a small suppressed laugh at that.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!, I assure you that this," he said patting his stomach, "is me being healthy." The tone of his voice almost dripping in cheekiness. I gave a chuckle and replied "Sure if you say so professor." He also chuckled and said, "Yes yes, but Marcus I think I have already said to you multiple times to just call me by my name Horace, you are not a student anymore young man, you are one of the most respected wizard alive today."
I sheepishly said, "You were the one who helped me gain my potions mastery I cannot possibly call you by your first name, at most I can call you Slughorn." He sighed, "HAA.." and said, "I'll take that much for now."
After 30 minutes of small talk most of us had eaten our fills and after the house elves secretly confirmed that everyone has eaten, they took the left overs back to the kitchen. Just as leftover food vanished professor Dumbledore stood up once again and said,
"Now that all of you have been fed and watered, I would like to introduce you to the new face you see amongst your professors. May I introduce you to Lord Marcus Starborn, for you professor Starborn. He has a long string of achievements which I will not say for some of you may fall asleep. Though I doubt tomorrow's daily prophet will not do this job for me."
I stood up with a chuckle and bowed to the students as professor Dumbledore introduced to me.
"Now that this is out of the way, you must be informed that the forbidden forest is, forbidden, no student shall enter it." His eyes wandered to some of the bold students as he said this. "Spells are not to be casted in the corridors. No student is allowed to roam around the castle after curfew. This was all from my side, the rest of it will be explained to you by your prefects, you may now depart for your respected dorms. The 5th year Prefects, please lead the first years to there respective dorms."
When the headmaster finished speaking the first years stood up first and were escorted out by the fifth year Prefects from their houses. Then slowly the upper years also started to move out of the hall to get to there dorms and beds for the call of Morpheus was very alluring today.
The professors seeing that everyone was out of the Great Hall also stood up, exchanged greetings and returned to there own rooms and offices to retire for the night or finish some last minute work for tomorrow.
As I myself was at the exit of the Great Hall, professor McGonagall stopped me, "professor Starborn," she called out, promoting me to turn to her, "This is the schedule for the night patrol duty assigned to you, during which you are to ensure no student stays out of there dorms out side the curfew hours, and this is the schedule for the classes which you will take." She handed me two slips, which I took and slipped into my robe's inner pocket to examine at a later time.
I nodded to her as I said, "Thank you professor McGonagall, I will be sure to perform the duties expected of me in the most professional manner." She nodded back at me and turned to walk out towards her office. I also started walking towards my office.
My office was not far from the Great Hall, I just had to cross on set of stairs and a small corridor to reach it. The office was actually attached to the class room in which I would take my classes in and attached to the office was the room in which I would sleep from now on whenever I was in the castle.
The office was of the standard kind, there were some shelves, a desk with a comfortable looking chair few charmed objects for us to adjust the parameters, lighting and all such things according to ourselves, all in all it was a descent enough office. I slipped out the parchment slips that professor McGonagall had given me and placed them on the slots given at the desk to examine tomorrow morning.
I opened the door to my room, Inside at the other end was a huge window, a bed in the middle few charmed objects with same features as the ones in the office, a cupboard with all my belongings already sorted in by the house elves and a book shelf with a study table by the window. The room itself was pretty big with decoration pleasing to my eyes.
I changed out of my robe's and slipped into the bed directly trying to sleep as I wanted to have a few hours to myself tomorrow morning. It was not long before I drifted of the realm of dreams.