Half a dozen false starts for this chapter litter my hard drive. None of them worked in my mind. One of them was a timeskip of another year, another was, well you get the idea. This one worked, so here you are.

Neville and Hermione had still not succeeded in the quest for the holy toad by the time the train pulled into Hogsmeade station. The damn thing was at least as good at evading notice as Harry.

Speaking of evading notice, Harry gathered the Force around himself like a cloak in the corridor on the way outside, not eager to have random strangers gawking at his forehead. He found Hermione and Neville near a huge, wild-looking fellow who was calling for the first years. Both looked rather put out about their unsuccessful hunt.

Trevor may have escaped the notice of two eleven year olds, but a tracker with decades of experience would prove too much for him to handle. Rubeus Hagrid was such a tracker. Turns out, their quarry was in the boat that Harry, Hermione and Neville had just ridden across the lake.

"How the hell did he pull THAT off?!" asked an exasperated and relieved Longbottom. Harry's force-sense picked up amusement from the amphibian in question. What amused Trevor would remain a mystery until 2017, when it was discovered that a bipolar fanfiction author had just devoted four paragraphs to a toad, of all the stupid things. It seems Trevor was force sensitive too, but unable to communicate this fact to the world at large.

The incoming class reached what they would later know as the Entrance Hall and Hagrid handed them off to a stern looking woman named Professor McGonagall.

"Welcome to Hogwarts. The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.

"The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

She eyed Neville's crookedly fastened cloak.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly." She re-entered the Great Hall, closing the doors behind her.

"Wish she'd told us who heads each house," quipped Harry.

A red-haired boy just behind our trio piped up, in a partially successful bid for attention, "McGonagall's got Gryffindor, though my brothers say she's stretched too thin to be effective at it. Flitwick heads Ravenclaw, Snape's got Slytherin-"

"Severus Snape?"interrupted Harry, trying to picture the whiny little over-entitled shit (and that was freaking RIDDLE'S opinion of him) as a teacher.

"Yeah. Favors the poor little slytherins because they're too feeble to get by without everything being rigged in their favor."

So, not only had Dumbledore hired that crazed stalker, but given him a senior position on staff. Harry's knowledge of the Jedi code kept him from vowing on the spot to castrate the man with a rusty spoon, but for the sake of his own sanity, Harry would avoid proximity with the Death Eater as much as possible.

The doors reopened and McGonagall, carrying a ragged hat that among his peers only Harry recognized, led the first years into the Great hall and down the central aisle, two tables on each side. She deposited the hat on a small stool in the front of the hall, and the hat sang a song about itself and the four houses. Having heard John Williams, Harry barely considered the off-key warbling to be music. 'The Bee Gees could do a better job.' He was not alone among the muggle-raised in thinking this.

One by one they sat on the stool, and the hat told them where to go. Hermione and Neville both went into Gryffindor. A boy with a strong resemblance to Abraxas Malfoy the Nothingth (legally known as Lucius, but possessing no originality or personal clout. An unthinking parrot, just the way Tom liked it) went into Slytherin, alongside several other far-too-familiar faces. Standards must have fallen. Finally, McGonagall called out "Potter, Harry".

'Oh, if you don't like my singing, kid, wait until you hear the official school song!' said a voice in his ear right after the hat fell over his eyes. 'Now what have we here? Plenty of courage, a well exercised mind, and loads of cunning to boot. Along with the usual antipathy to the Slytherin head teacher. Drat it! All the best ones for that house give me the same reason not to go there. I told Albus that appointment was a mistake, but nooo! He knows everything! He doesn't need to listen to an education-specialized AI with centuries of experience! It's not like he ruined his own family getting carried away with his own legend. The school will fare MUCH better when he approaches it with the same damn arrogance!'

'I'm-er-sorry?' thought Harry, tentatively.

'No, you're not. Where was I? Ah. Not Slytherin. Well, on to House number two.'

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Hermione and Neville scooted apart to offer Harry a space between them. After a whole two minutes of cheering and staring (yup. already getting old) they finally recommenced the sorting.

When "Weasley, Ronald" sat down across from them, a rat poked its head out of its pocket. Its extraordinarily packed head. The Force was alerting him to a human-level intellect in the rat's brain. Having been puzzling over where to find Wormtail for the past few years, Harry's heart leapt. He maintained his composure, lest he tip off the rodent, but in his head, he was already composing the letter to Amelia Bones, about whom Barchoke had briefed him just this past summer.

The food was about the same quality as Riddle remembered it. Dumbledore's after-feast announcement about the third floor corridor on the right hand side being out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death aroused Harry's force senses in a peculiar fashion. It seemed Dumbledore was up to another convoluted game, and the year the boy-who-lived returned, no less.

Stuffed and rather tired (a lot had happened in his reading of Heir to the Empire), Harry followed one of Ronald's siblings up to Gryffindor tower, while subtly weaving a twelve hour sleep compulsion on Scabbers so Harry himself could get some rest without being stabbed in the back. His owl would be busy tomorrow. Justice would finally be done...