The Sorting came to a complete halt, the great hall falling into utter silence.

"What did you just say?!" Professor McGonagall protested, glaring sternly at the Sorting Hat.

"HOGWARTS!" the hat declared a second time.

"Everyone here is already attending Hogwarts," she said, a note of confusion entering her voice. "Would you please choose a house for him?"

The hat fell silent for a long moment. A minute. Two. The quiet turned to uncertain whispers as the students wondered just what was happening.

"This has never happened before."

"The hat must be having us on."

"Professor Dumbledore looks worried."

"No, that's his thinking face."

"GRYFFINDOR HUFFLEPUFF SLYTHERIN RAVENCLAW!" the Hat shouted.

Professor McGonagall groaned, but Professor Dumbledore stood before she could speak.

"Thank you. We shall treat this as a Gryffindor sorting for the time being, as that was the first word said. Go on, m'lad."

The boy, looking a bit shaken, removed the hat and went to join the cheering Gryffindors, while the other houses sent up a general murmur of protest. (Though notably less so from the Slytherins.)

The ceremony concluded smoothly, and there was no repeat of the hat's odd proclamation. That did nothing to slow the whispers and speculation running wild.

Ronald Weasley sat down between Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom, quite unsure how to feel. Perhaps it was the exceptional amount of sweets he'd consumed on the train, but he wasn't feeling entirely well.

"I've never even heard of anyone being Sorted into all four houses," proclaimed the bossy muggleborn girl from nearby. "I wonder how that will work, will you be switching houses each term? Each year? Or will they come up with something else?"

"Better you than me, mate," Harry said, nudging Ron and grinning. "Now we're both famous! I won't get stuck with all the attention."

Ron felt himself blushing.

"That's him, the Four-House Boy!"

"If he was Sorted to Ravenclaw, does that mean he's really clever?"

"And he's pureblood," a girl said, then promptly dissolved into giggles.

Ron turned to stare at her. She must be three years older than him, but she gave him a little wave and winked.

He knew his face was redder still, but he also felt a warm glow in his chest. The last Weasley son he may be, but he'd done something on his first day that none of his brothers had. That no wizard in living memory had.

He sat up straighter, puffed out his chest proudly. He was a Gryffindor, first and foremost, but if the Hat was to be believed, he also had the virtues of all the other houses.

Finally, he'd have the chance to show the world just what he was capable of.

"Win-gaar-di'm levi-oooooo-sa," incanted Ron. The feather drifted lazily from the desk, as though lifted by a gentle breeze, and fluttered across the intervening space to poke his rival on the nose. She glared at him, swatting the floating feather away with her wand, then flipped her hair and promptly levitated her own feather.

"Look here, everyone! Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger have done it!"

Ron twitched his wand and leaned back, his feather flying smoothly in a looping curve suggestive of the word 'slowpoke' if you paid close attention.

Hermione's feather chased after it, but her spell wasn't nearly as precise. The feather looped a little too far from her control zone, wobbled, and then drifted to the floor as her hold over it evaporated.

Ron smirked. His feather swooped down, gently coaxed Hermione's back into the air, then gave it a shove back into reach for her.

She stared at him, mouth open, as though torn between appreciation for the kind gesture and offense that he'd insulted her by being better. He shrugged and winked, not caring what she thought. If she wanted to feel jealous and get angry because he'd helped her, he wasn't going to waste time worrying about it.

At the next desk over, Harry finally got his feather to wobble.

"A troll?!" Ron leapt to his feet. "Where is my rival? She wasn't in class."

"She was upset at something the Malfoy boy said at Potions," supplied another student helpfully. "She's been crying in the bathroom, I think."

"Which bathroom, particularly?" Ron asked, running through a mental map of the castle. As long as it was third floor or higher, it should be well out of the troll's range. Lower down. . . The passages from the dungeons let out in unexpected places sometimes. One in particular was right across from—

"The second-floor one behind the grey sliding panel," replied the student.

Ron grabbed his friends by the shoulder and glanced between them. "Harry, Neville. I've got to go save her. You coming?"

"Of course," Harry said, drawing his own wand. "Let's go!"

Neville looked terrified, but nodded his own agreement.

The trio of Gryffindors ran across the hall, evaded the teachers and prefects trying to impose order, and raced down the secret passage toward the second floor. From there, it was only three hallways until—

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Harry couldn't run any faster, but Ron had grown up with Fred and George.

"Sorry, Harry," he said, then sprinted on at his top speed. Down the last hall, around the corner—

There, giant club in hand, stood the troll. It had just smashed open the door to the girls bathroom, eliciting the scream from within, as Ron rounded the corner.

"Oy, pea-brain!" he yelled, brandishing his wand. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

He lifted the troll and smacked its head into the ceiling repeatedly until it fell unconscious. Neville arrived just then and together they helped Ron's rival climb out over the snoring troll. Harry joined them a moment later, out of breath and disappointed to have missed the fun.

"Don't let Malfoy get to you," Ron told her, offering Hermione his handkerchief. "He's just a jealous git."

She sniffed and wiped her face. "I know. Thanks for saving me." Her face was bright pink. "I'm afraid I completely forgot my wand. All I could think was that I was about to die."

"Not everyone can react well in a crisis," Ron said magnanimously. "You certainly make up for it in other ways. You're the most brilliant witch in Hogwarts."

She smiled a little, handed his handkerchief back. "Thanks, Ron."

Albus Dumbledore struggled against the pull. The Mirror wanted to return to its place below, it wanted to escape his restraints. And it most of all wanted to be rid of the foreign object currently contained within it.

Still, Albus Dumbledore was headmaster of Hogwarts, and that meant the Mirror had to obey him. Though it could resist, though it could fight back, it couldn't truly defy him. It could make his job harder, it could cause him irritation, but in the end, if he wanted it to show itself to two young students, by Merlin, it would show itself to two young students.

"Blimey! Harry, Neville, you have to see this!" Ron exclaimed, tearing his attention away from the mirror long enough to grab Harry's arm and pull his friend over. Neville leaned forward to peer into the reflective surface.

"Where do you think that is?" Ron asked. "It's like a part of Hogwarts, but. . . so different too."

Neville shook his head. "It's St. Mungo's, but the specialty care ward. They. . . they. . ." And then he burst into tears, leaning forward to touch the mirror with such gentleness and intimacy that Ron felt a bit uncomfortable. Like he was intruding on something personal.

Harry leaned over to stare into the mirror himself, and took a shocked step back. "Impossible," he whispered, but stepped closer again and stared as though transfixed.

Ron let them look for a while, then pushed them gently aside. "I need to see it again," he said. "I'm sure it's a puzzle. Meant for me to solve."

He stared intently into the mirror, down the long golden corridor that felt so familiar and so strange at once.

Just as he felt he was near an epiphany, the mirror trembled. The movement disrupted the image, darkness spreading across it like midnight reflected in a pond. Then the whole room shook, and the mirror trembled more violently still. Ron took a step back, Harry and Neville cried out with dismay, and then without warning the mirror simply vanished as though it had never been.

Ron thought he heard a quiet sigh, but when he turned around he saw no one.

Ron spent the entirety of the Christmas holidays trying to reproduce what he'd seen in the mirror, sketching and doodling the hallway he'd seen in every free moment. Harry had taken to following him around and suggesting activities to occupy them, apparently his friend didn't believe he ought to be dwelling on this.

Ron didn't mind being distracted, the image of the hallway seemed incomplete somehow, and it bothered him more and more the longer he thought about it. He didn't know what was missing, but what he'd seen had been wrong.

He had to find that mirror again.

"Ron, come off it."

Neville didn't look well, as though his holiday had done nothing to improve his strain. Ron wasn't entirely sure what - his friend was pretty close-mouthed about his personal life - but something was bothering Neville.

"Doesn't it bother you? Not knowing what it meant?" he asked.

Neville looked at him like he was crazy. "Yeah, it does."

Only then did it dawn on Ron that if the mirror showed no reflection of the self, it may show a different reflection to each person. Give each their own puzzle. St. Mungo's, Neville had said. The hallway was certainly not in St. Mungo's. Ron had been by it enough times to be familiar with its architecture.

"What did you see?" he asked quietly.

Neville looked away.

"It wasn't this hall, was it?" Ron asked, holding up one of his better attempts at drawing the mysterious scene.

Neville glanced at it, shook his head.

Ron stood. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to. Your puzzle is yours."

"It's not a puzzle," Neville said faintly. "It's a lie. One I want to believe so much it hurts."

Ron nodded, patted his friend's shoulder. "Let me know if I can help."

Neville nodded. "Thanks, Ron."

"No, what I saw wasn't anything like that," Harry said.

Ron stared at the page until he started to lose focus, trying to figure out what was missing. It wasn't his drawing skill that was to blame, the memory of the image held the same veneer of incompletion.

"Quidditch match this weekend," Harry pointed out. "Want to make banners?"

"No," Ron said, staring at the page. He absently started doodling crosshatching to shade in the more distant pillars, leaving blank sections to depict the glorious sunbeams shining in.

"This isn't good for you," Harry insisted. "You can't stay cooped up indoors all the time. What are you, a Ravenclaw?"

Ron nodded absently. "Yeah, I am, remember?"

Harry frowned. "Normally you are happy to be a Gryffindor," he said.

"Leave off, Harry. Go make your banner with Neville. I need to solve this."

"You've been staring at it for weeks! You're not going to figure anything out that way. If you could have solved it, you would have already. You're clever enough not to be stumped by something easy, so just leave it for a while."

Ron sat up straight, grabbed the parchment with his drawing, and sprinted for the door.

Harry stared after him, confused.

"HERMIONE! Has anyone seen Hermione?"

"She's in the library, I'm sure," Lavender said, rolling her eyes.

Ron sprinted out of the common room and down the halls. He didn't pay attention to the secret doors and shortcut stairways he slipped through, it was habit by now to subconsciously track which areas would be accessible from where at what times and choose the ideal route through them.

He burst into the library, earning himself a stern glower from Madame Pince.

"Hermione," he whispered, sliding in beside her. "I need your help."

She startled from her book, whipped her head around to stare at him. "Ron? What's wrong?"

"I've been trying to solve this, but I can't figure out what's missing."

He spread out the parchment on the table in front of him. Looking at it now, it was obvious his drawing talent was even less impressive than he'd thought. He felt briefly self-conscious showing it to Hermione, but his insistent need to understand was more pressing still.

"I don't understand," Hermione said, frowning. "It's a drawing of a hallway?"

"Yes, but where is it?"

Hermione shrugged. "It looks similar to Hogwarts architecture style. Like. . . see?" She pointed to the upper corners of the library. "The style of the ornamented scrollwork is very similar. Yours has more round corners, while this room has more lines and points, but overall the styles seem compatible."

Ron nodded slowly. "So it might be part of the school." He'd looked through every hall in the school, but found nothing. Except. . . "The third floor," he whispered. "The forbidden corridor. That's the only place I haven't looked."

Hermione looked worried. "You can't mean to go there!" she exclaimed. "It's off limits, you'll get in trouble."

Ron grinned. "I'm not planning to go in, just to see if it matches this." He picked up the parchment. "I can't leave a mystery like this unsolved."

Hermione frowned at him. "Where did you find that, anyway?"

"I drew it," Ron said. "After I saw it in an enchanted mirror."

Hermione blinked, then gathered up her books and stuffed them into her bag. "I'm coming too."

They didn't go straight to the corridor, stopping by the Gryffindor tower to drop off Hermione's books and collect Harry and Neville. Then they had to duck aside into a hidden storage room to wait while Filch stumped past, grumbling something about fanged frisbees.

The door was locked. Ron and Hermione each tried Alohomora without success, until Harry suggested they both try at once. The combined strength of their spells was just enough, the door latch slipping free.

Beyond, there was a room. The scrollwork around the ceiling was thick and curling, but now he was looking Ron could see the similarities. If the library had been somewhat like the drawing, this was almost identical. Except the pattern was different. Round and intricate instead of thick and curved.

Before he could even begin to examine the walls, Harry and Neville had grabbed his arms and pulled him back out, Hermione slamming the door behind them.

"What?" Ron asked, frowning. "I wasn't done—"

"That monster was going to bite you in half!" Hermione shrieked.

Ron blinked. "Monster?"

"It was like a giant, giant dog with three heads!" Neville said, his voice shaking. "Didn't you see it?"

Ron shook his head. He'd been completely absorbed in examining the ceiling.

"I am not going back in there," Neville said, taking a step away from the door. "Dumbledore was serious."

"And now you've seen," Hermione said. "It's nothing like your mirror picture."

But her voice was less confident.

"What did you notice, Hermione?" Ron asked.

"I noticed a lot," she replied, but her voice rose in pitch. She was hiding something.

"Tell me."

"I. . ." Hermione sighed. "There was a trapdoor, on the floor behind the dog. Your hallway might be underneath."

"Of course," Ron said. "It's guarding the entrance."

"Ron," Harry said, "I really think you should drop this. You're obsessed! It can't be good for you."

"Or your grades," Hermione said smugly. She'd surpassed Ron as the top student for the first time the week previously, and it seemed she had no intention of letting him forget it.

It was true that his contemplation of the hallway had eclipsed his studying, but he didn't think that was important. This mystery was far more essential to understand than the magical alignment of transfigured mice.

"I'm going back in," Ron said firmly. "You don't have to come."

Harry sighed. "Of course we do," he said. "We're your friends."

"But we can't go right now," Hermione said. "First, we need to prepare."

"How do you prepare for something like that?" Neville asked.

Hermione grinned, a singularly unsettling expression. "Research!"

The Hogwarts library contained tens of thousands of books, and the magical organization system was one which did not make intuitive sense to muggle-raised Hermione.

Ron could find his way around it with a decent degree of accuracy, but even he lost his way sometimes. It was the single most comprehensive collection of wizarding information in Europe, and at times like these it was easy to feel the weight of so much knowledge.

Finding information on a particular breed of Cerberus was not simple. Separating facts from myth was not simple.

And none of it was fast.

They spent what time they could on the project over the following months, but Ron and Hermione were the ones who actually focused on the affair. Harry was struggling to keep his Potions grade at an acceptable level and seemed to care more about deepening his rivalry with Draco Malfoy than with helping solve Ron's mystery. Neville just wanted nothing to do with the dog or anything even related to the mirror.

As winter faded and spring began to show, even Hermione found reason to neglect the search. "I have to start revising for the exams, it's really important." She would look guilty when she saw Ron, but her time spent searching for a solution decreased significantly.

Finally, the day of the final quidditch match of the year, Ron decided he'd had enough. He didn't need any old books to tell him how to get past a giant dog. Even if the cerberus was about five times as large, he'd beaten a troll easily enough. He could manage this.

With the rest of the school distracted, he'd have no one trying to find him for hours. It was the perfect opportunity.

Ron wasn't surprised to find Hermione sitting in the common room as he slipped out. He was surprised when she dropped her books and rushed after him.

"You're not planning to go alone, are you?" she hissed.

"We've researched for months, and it hasn't found any solution," Ron said. "I'm going, one way or another."

"Then I'm coming too."

For a moment, Ron felt guilty about sneaking off without Harry or Neville, but it would be better for them to enjoy themselves watching the match than dragged off into danger. Harry certainly had enough danger and tragedy in his life already, and Neville was fragile enough that Ron worried about pushing him too far.

This would be for the best.

In the end, just as they combined their Alohomora spells to get through the door, Ron and Hermione combined their Wingardium leviosa to lift the giant dog and carefully hold him away from the trapdoor. He barked furiously, slavering and straining toward them, but Ron was confident that the school was practically empty and no one would notice the sound.

Hermione flipped the trapdoor open with her foot, keeping her wand trained on the cerberus.

"It's dark," she said. "I can't tell how far down it goes."

Ron edged over to the dark opening and peered down. The faint light from the room above did little to illuminate the darkness.

"Lumos," Ron said, turning his wand down to the trapdoor. Hermione squeaked as the dog landed heavily on the ground, growling and stalking toward them.

Ron hastily spun back around. "Wingardium leviosa!"

Together they pushed it back up and away, but his heart was racing now. He found it harder to concentrate than usual.

"I couldn't see much," he said. "Did you?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Well, let's go then."

He eased his way around the trapdoor until he and Hermione stood on opposite sides.

"Three, two, one, now."

They each stepped forward, whipping their wands around to level on each other as they began to fall.

"Wingardium leviosa!"

Their fall slowed and they descended into darkness, the barking and growling of the dog fading slowly above them, the echoes growing fainter and fainter as they went down, down, down.

"I'm glad you came along, Hermione," Ron admitted. "I wouldn't have been able to do this alone." His voice bounced and echoed against the close walls, alone, alone.

"After this, we are definitely even," Hermione said, and he could hear the traces of fear in her voice. Even, even.

"You don't owe me anything," Ron insisted. "You would have snapped out of it and beaten that troll yourself."

Hermione laughed weakly. "I freeze when I panic. Not very useful reaction, but there it is. I'd be dead now, if not for you."

Ron shrugged, feeling uncomfortable, and glad the darkness hid his face. "You've more than repaid that. If anything, I should be in your debt. You're the only one who's stuck by me this whole time. Harry and Neville think I've lost my mind."

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility," she said. "After all, we are falling a very long way. How ever will we get back up?"

Ron didn't have an answer for that, but he felt strangely confident that it wouldn't be a problem.

"This was meant to be," he said. "I can feel it. This is what I've been meant to do, all year."

Author's Note:

Well, this is why Shadow of the Past is delayed. I may have gotten distracted. Very distracted.

I have no excuse, except that I was listening to Philosopher's Stone and decided I wanted to do a less drastically AU story than usual, but also had some clever-ish ideas for later on. So while it will follow Year One moderately closely, the later years will be increasingly more divergent, when I have the time to write them.

At current projections, this should be about three chapters to a year, and Year One should be done within the week. (I only need to finalize the Potions Riddle yet and write the very final scenes.) I don't plan to start year two right away, since I do have an update schedule to at least pretend to follow.

Since I put rather a lot of effort into the riddle, I think I'll post the last chapter on a substantial delay from the first two, to give people a chance to try and figure it out. It's quite obtuse, I'm terrible at writing clues, and it may well be impossible. I strongly believe it can be deduced from the hints, but things often look simpler from inside than outside. If anyone can think of digital prizes I could give out to anyone managing to solve such an obtuse puzzle, please let me know.

For now, I have a Shadow of the Past update to actually write this time, and a half-completed riddle to finish writing. Remember, I always welcome feedback, positive or negative. If you have the time, please do let me know what you think! :-)