The Right Sort

Fandom: Harry Potter

Rating: PG-13

Summary: /AU/ Harry can determine the right sort for himself, thanks. /Slytherin!Harry, Slytherin!Trio/

Word Count: 24,027 words so far.

Author's Note: The claim that a few hours are still left in the train ride after Draco comes in is based on A sky far, far away. As the author notes: "And just what the bloody hell were the former headmasters thinking when they decided to have the magical journey to Hogwarts last six hours?" Details of why this actually makes sense (canon to the contrary) are in the after-chapter Author's Note.

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series and all related characters, plotlines, et cetera belong to J.K. Rowling. I own nothing except for this fanfiction.

Some of the text, particularly once Harry's arrived at Hogwarts, is taken directly from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone; if you don't have a copy on hand, just assume the text is from the original book wherever there's a noticeable improvement in the quality of the writing.

The idea of putting the entire trio into Slytherin is taken from A sky, far, far away.

"You'll soon find out that some wizarding families are better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

"Your friend, Potter?" another boy shouted long ago and far away, smacking away a younger Harry's outstretched hand. "I'd rather have nobody than be friends with you!"

"You shouldn't be friends with that Potter boy. I know he seems nice, but Mrs. Dursley says there's something – wrong with him. She didn't say what, of course – these things just aren't talked about, you understand – but you should stay away from him. For your own sake." As her mother patted her on the shoulder, the girl looked back at Harry, who had stopped in his tracks and turned to look at them; before he could find the courage to speak up, Dudley seized him by the shirt collar and dragged him off through the school gate.

"Well, Petunia's sister was a bright girl, whole future ahead of her, but then she fell in with a bad lot – and you know how that goes, don't you? She ended up taking up with some awful degenerate from a long line of degenerates – and the boy, Petunia says, takes after the father." The Dursleys' guests continued to trade eagerly-scandalized whispers as they wandered past the cupboard under the stairs on their way to the bathroom, unaware that the boy in question was locked inside.

Harry had more than heard enough about the wrong sort for a lifetime. He knew he should have been expecting it – for as long as he remembered, he'd heard little else – but it still got to him, especially when he'd thought that the Wizarding world would be better than what he was leaving behind. Of course, anywhere would be better than the Dursleys, but he was beginning to get a bad feeling that he'd find the magical world a lot more familiar than he'd hoped.

He gave Draco Malfoy's hand a long, perturbed look, and Draco Malfoy was beginning to look a bit unsure as to what was going on by the time he finally looked back up at the other boy's face. "I'm one of the right sort, then?"

Draco Malfoy frowned. "Of course you are, Potter."

"Why?"

Now Draco Malfoy actually looked worried for him. "Are you feeling all right, Potter? You're the Boy-Who-Lived. How could you not be the right sort?"

"But I don't even remember what happened," Harry said. "I don't even know if I did anything, even… For all I know," he added gloomily, "You-Know-Who tripped over his robe on his way in and blew himself up."

From the way Draco Malfoy's face suddenly went white, Harry gathered he ought not to have said that. After a few seconds of regaining his composure, the other boy said, "If you know what's good for you, never repeat anything like that in front of any member of Slytherin House. I'll permit you this time, since you seem rather ignorant of certain aspects of the Wizarding world, but keep that in mind."

This conversation wasn't taking a pleasant direction. "All I mean is that I don't have any idea why I survived, or even if it was any of my doing," said Harry. "So I don't see why I should be one of the right sort, if Ron isn't – For all I know, he's got more right to be. At least he seems to know everything there is to know about Quidditch."

Behind Draco Malfoy, Ron looked flattered.

"There's no such thing as a Quidditch-Referee-Who-Lived, Potter, and there never will be," said Draco Malfoy. "Regardless of how you survived, you did, and the entire Wizarding world worships you for it. Minus Snape, of course, but sometimes I wonder if Snape even worshipped the Dark Lord… he's certainly never paid anyone all that much reverence during the time I've known him."

Whoever this Snape was, Harry almost felt relieved to know somebody wasn't in awe of him. Though he'd never say it to any other wizard or witch, it sounded almost as if Snape was the only sane one in the whole business. "So it's just – luck that I'm the right sort, then?" Harry asked. "That's all? That seems…" He stopped there, not really sure what to say that neither Ron nor Draco Malfoy would take as an insult – Back in the Muggle world, he was a freak and thus the wrong sort, and here, he was a freak and thus the right sort. It all seemed a bit like whoever decreed these things made it up as they went along and hoped no one would notice.

Draco Malfoy snickered. "It doesn't take a Legilimens to tell what you're thinking, Potter," he said when Harry frowned at him. "Snape's never failed to give us all an earful whenever your name's come up… I'd like to see the look on his face at hearing it coming from your mouth."

"Being the right – or wrong – sort is just a matter of luck, then?"

Draco Malfoy wrinkled his face for a moment as he considered the question, then dismissed it with a shrug. "You could say that," he said. "After all, the family into which you're born is a matter of luck, and that does make quite a lot of difference. Some would say all the difference."

Harry was silent for a while, looking at his shoes, then looked up and, in response to Malfoy's quizzical look, began hesitantly, "There's something I've wanted to know for a while–" Years, in fact, but he wasn't going to tell Draco Malfoy that – "This 'right sort' thing – do you have to be born into it? I guess if you become the Boy-Who-Lived, or something like that happens to you, that changes everything, but it's not like you've got any say in the matter – aside like something like that, though, is it just something you can't change?"

Yes, probably, and it was pointless asking, he thought, feeling depressed – but he'd never had a chance to ask an apparent expert on the matter, and at least ought to seize the opportunity before it ran off on him. While the Dursleys had certainly mastered the subject, asking them would have been worse than useless: Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would have shouted at him to go back to his chores and stop asking stupid questions, while Dudley would have answered with a laugh and a swift punch to the face – which, Harry supposed, actually did answer the question, though not in the way he would have liked.

Draco Malfoy, fortunately, was more articulate than Dudley. "Certainly, you can lose that status," he drawled. "Too much time spent around those beneath you is one of the surest ways to end up badly." He aimed a smirk over his shoulder at Ron, who turned bright red, then turned back to Harry. "Going the other way is much, much harder. You'd have to work like a dog to even stand a chance, and then be ready to do anything, absolutely anything, to pull yourself over the heads of your fellows – and if you wanted to keep a scrap of dignity in the bargain, it would take both being exceptional from the very start and using your talents for all they were worth, until no one could deny that you'd earned your place amongst the very best of wizards… and if a few poor imbeciles deluded themselves into thinking that they still had any say about it, well, then, you'd have to inform them otherwise, wouldn't you?" He gave Harry a knowing smirk; Harry, thinking of the Dursleys, had to admit it sounded very appealing indeed, and a smile crept across his face that left Ron looking rather creeped out. Encouraged, Draco Malfoy continued, "'No doors that are closed to you should remain on their hinges' – why, practically the Slytherin motto. Fortunately, your way is already assured–"

"Thanks, I don't need to hear any more," Harry said, standing up.

Though thrown by the sudden interruption, Draco Malfoy recovered quickly. "Then, you're accepting –"

"No, actually – Declining, thanks."

Draco Malfoy gawped at Harry for several seconds, then shook his head in confusion. "Potter, what are you think- Do you mean to deliberately cripple yourself so you can say you did it all yourself? You must be ma-" He clamped his mouth shut and shook his head again furiously, looking as though he was trying to coax a retarded child to perform the simplest of tasks. "Your scar will not get you everywhere – If you want to enjoy all that the Wizarding world has to offer you, you'll need powerful friends. If, however, you insist on sabotaging yourself, you might find that things don't come half so easily…" His voice held a threatening note.

"That's not it."

"Then why –"

"Don't get me wrong, I really am grateful to you for answering all my questions, it'll be a big help, but – I don't like you very much."

Ron burst out laughing. Draco Malfoy turned a vivid shade of pink, then snarled, his extended hand tightening into a fist; after sparing a hatred-filled glare for Ron, he turned back to Harry, a strange spark glinting in his grey eyes. "Oh, so you don't like me very much, Potter?" he said in a slow, quiet voice. "Well, I don't think you'll like this very much, either –"

"What is going on in here?"

All the occupants of the compartment turned towards the source of the interruption, who surveyed the five of them in return from where she stood in the doorway, looking most disapproving. "You had better not be fighting – you'd be in trouble before we even got to Hogwarts, and that would be a very bad foot on which to start off–"

"And it would be none of your business, at that!" Malfoy snapped at Hermione Granger, furiously making shooing gestures at her with his left hand.

"It certainly is," Hermione retorted, crossing her arms, "you'll give our entire year a bad name. Besides, I'm sure your parents wouldn't be happy to hear that you had gotten into a fight on your very first day of school, now would they?"

Malfoy looked at her in disgust, then glanced at Ron and Harry – and seemed to decide they weren't worth the bother. He turned and walked away, beckoning to Crabbe and Goyle. "Let's go, boys – we've wasted enough time here."

And they did.

After they had left, Ron glanced at Hermione and raised an eyebrow. "You were listening the entire time, weren't you?"

"Well, er – not for all of it," Hermione said, looking a bit flustered. "I was just passing by – and you would stop to listen to a conversation, too, if you heard something about 'the Quidditch-Referee-Who-Lived'. Of course, that wasn't the only interesting part of the conversation – there was what that boy who just left was saying – about making your way up, I mean, and working so hard and doing so well that everyone else has to acknowledge that you're worthy of being one of 'the right sort', as you –" She looked at Harry– "-were putting it. It is a good point, you know. I decided to do the same nearly the moment I found out that the Hogwarts letter wasn't just an odd joke, but it certainly was good to hear one of the other students confirming that's the way it works in the Wizarding world – and you didn't mind either, I noticed. Oh, people can say what they like about doors being closed to the Muggle-born –" Harry gave a start, blinking at Hermione; what was this? "-but I don't think it can be half as serious as they say, it's likely just that nobody's tried hard enough. Don't you agree?"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Ron said. "Malfoy's lot –"

She didn't even bother to look in his direction as she waved him off. "Oh, I've read all the arguments, of course, but really, it's obvious that they're just self-fulfilling prophecies. If everyone fusses so terribly about how it's hopeless for Muggle-borns to go up against the old wizarding families, of course nobody's actually going to try to do it, so, when somebody asks how they can be so sure, everyone can just say 'Well, if it's possible, then where are the Muggle-borns who have managed to do it?' And of course, there aren't any, so they say 'See, we told you so,' and act as if that's the end of it."

"Um – what's this about the 'old wizarding families'?" Harry asked warily. He remembered Malfoy telling him at Madame Malkin's that Hogwarts ought to be kept open only to the old wizarding families, and knew Ron's family was probably one of them, but he didn't know anything about them having problems with people from Muggle families – well, Malfoy obviously did, but he didn't speak for all the old families, did he? (Harry hoped not.) With a lurch, he wondered if Ron had anything against people from Muggle families. He hadn't seemed to, but…

Hermione misunderstood him. "Oh, I didn't mean all of them, of course!" she exclaimed. "It's only the ones that are believers in 'blood-purity' and that sort of awful nonsense that are the problem."

"In other words, the Slytherins," Ron added darkly.

"Oh, I almost wish it was just the Slytherins, that would make it so much simpler – and a few of the old Slytherin families are much more sensible about the whole matter, though they're supposedly not very popular with their peers, I admit – but yes, most of them do favor Slytherin, and almost all of the Slytherin families have bought into that horrible rubbish."

What in the world was 'blood-purity'? Something to do with blood banks? Harry wondered about it for a moment, then dismissed it; at this point, if it was a bad thing, he wasn't surprised that Slytherin was somehow involved. It seemed like a very bad place indeed –

No doors that are closed to you should remain on their hinges.

Well, except for that. Harry thought over it for a moment, then wondered why the Slytherins thought it was a good idea to have a motto that was such good advice to their enemies.

"Why does anyone put up with them, then? They seem like a rotten bunch – Why doesn't anyone knock them off their hinges?"

"What?" Ron blurted out. "I mean, look, don't you think that sounds a bit unhinged?"

Hermione made a pained noise at the back of her throat.

"All right," Ron added quickly, "I admit that was bad. But forget about that – I bet you that loads of people would if they could, but they don't have a chance. According to what my mum and dad say, Slytherin's got all the greediest, sneakiest, and most ruthless witches and wizards in England. If you tried to 'knock them off their hinges', I reckon you'd find you no longer had any hinges to swing on yourself, and your entire family would be next." He looked very serious indeed, and Harry wondered if, when Hagrid had been talking about the witches and wizards who had stood up to You-Know-Who and gotten killed for it, any of Ron's relatives had been amongst them. "So you can't do much unless you're Dumbledore or somebody like that, because he can beat them even if they're throwing everything they've got at him… and they have been, believe me."

Hermione began to say, "That's an exag-", but Harry interrupted, "I guess you don't have much choice than to be sneaky and ruthless right back, if that's the case."

"Y- No!" Ron shook his head frantically and stared at Harry, looking slightly green. "Are you mental? That would be Slytherin!"

"Well… I guess you have to be sneaky enough to do it," Harry said, frowning in thought. "But if you can do that, what else do they have?"

Ron made noises like an electrical appliance on the verge of catastrophic failure. "Well, many of the families possess a great deal of wealth and influence–" Hermione began, then stopped and looked at his forehead. "I suppose that wouldn't be a problem for you, of course."

"It wouldn't just be me –" Harry said hastily, "You heard what Malfoy said about becoming one of the right sort, too. And once you're rich and influential and… whatever else you're supposed to be, you could –"

"But that might be decades from now!" Hermione exclaimed.

A heavy gray curtain dropped over Harry's glimpse of the possible future, and he felt gloomy indeed. Of course, she was right: it would take years before he could earn any power in his own right, and so much could go wrong before he got there… Really, it was hopeless, something told him; he ought to just enjoy being the Boy-Who-Lived while he could, and leave the ambitious stuff to other, sillier people… He didn't quite agree, but it sounded tempting.

"Probably," he admitted. "Somebody ought to have already done this, though – Decades before now."

"Well, Dumbledore has," said Hermione, "and he's done an incredible job without being sneaky or ruthless or any of those things, but wizards like him only come about once every century, if that, and it's a terribly hard job to do alone – not that he doesn't have supporters, of course – he has quite a lot of them – but without anyone as his equal, I mean. You must understand, the problem with Slytherin is that it's been that way so long that no one can imagine it changing – all the way back to Salazar Slytherin himself, but you knew that, of course –" He did? "- and so it's always put up a huge fight whenever anyone tries to change it, spouting the most amazing amount of nonsense about its ancient traditions and how Slytherin House will always endure despite the best efforts of outsiders and – really, you could go on all day about it. The only way anyone's going to make any progress with Slytherin is if someone changes it from the inside, but that's hardly going to happen, since everyone in it's absolutely convinced there's nothing whatsoever wrong with Slytherin and everything should stay just the way it is." She let out an exasperated sigh. Harry, meanwhile, frowned again, caught by a sudden – or not-so-sudden, really – idea.

"What if somebody deliberately got himself put into Slytherin so he could change it from the inside out?"

Hermione gave him a puzzled look. "I suppose, but that's silly, since no one would ever do that, I mean, who would–" Her eyes widened. "You mean –"

"Are you out of your MIND?"

With a terrible screech, the electrical appliance blew out. "Er – could you please close the door?" Harry said hastily to Hermione, who did just that – and just in time, too.

"This is Slytherin we're talking about! Before You-Know-Who disappeared, everyone there was one of his followers, and now their kids are the ones at Hogwarts! They're not going to welcome Harry Potter with open arms! They'd be more likely to kill you and blame it on – I – I don't know – the giant squid!"

Ron's face had drained of almost all color, and he looked genuinely afraid for Harry's life; Harry tried to say something intelligent in response, but what came out was:

"Giant squid?"

"Don't you remember? The one in the lake," said Hermione.

There was a giant squid in the Hogwarts lake? "Um, well, as it turns out," he said, chuckling weakly, "I'm harder to get rid of than you'd think…"

His mind had been on the Dursleys, but Ron, who didn't know them, must have thought he was talking about You-Know-Who. "You said you don't remember anything about what happened, though," Ron said, talking very fast. "For all you know, it was some sort of one-time thing, and next time some Dark wizard comes up to you in an alley – or a Hogwarts hallway – you'll be as bad off as anyone el–"

"Is that true?" Hermione interrupted, looking at Harry. "You don't remember anything?" She sounded disappointed.

"No, sorry."

Hermione frowned, then turned to Ron, who wasn't looking happy about being cut off. "And don't be absurd, anyway, Dumbledore would never allow a student to be harmed, and especially not Harry Potter – it's his responsibility as Headmaster to make sure each and every one of his students is protected, and it would reflect very badly on him if Harry Potter got hurt the moment he stepped into his school, besides."

"You're assuming they would give him a choice," Ron said darkly. "Like you said, there's only one of Dumbledore, and he can't be watching everywhere all the time. Slytherins have been into Dark Magic for as long as there's been a Slytherin House, so they've got lots of ways to get at people, and I'll just bet they want to get at the wizard who might've defeated their Lord…"

Harry pricked up his ears at this new term – their "Lord"? – but he didn't get a chance to ask, because Hermione was speaking. "Dumbledore's an absolutely brilliant wizard – you should read about everything The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Modern Magical History and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century has to say about him, and I'm sure that's only half of what he's really done – and I'm sure he's thought of everything you're worrying about. In fact, I'm sure he has some sort of spell that will let him track Harry and make sure that he's doing all right – there are spells like that, you know, or so I've read. It's supposedly incredibly complicated magic, so I'm afraid we won't be learning anything like that until after Hogwarts, if then, but Dumbledore could probably pull it off with ease."

Harry at least knew for certain that Dumbledore hadn't had any such spell on him before a month ago, or he would have known about the Dursleys. It would have been nice if Dumbledore had, he thought glumly. But maybe he had to be in the magical world for something like that to work – Harry didn't know anything about magic, so it was possible.

Trying to get the conversation back on track, he interjected, "Yes, I don't know what happened – but neither do they, and they don't know I don't. I don't think I'm any sort of great wizard, but if they do, they'll probably not want to risk it, in case whatever happened to You-Know-Who happens to them – Besides, wouldn't they be glad if it looked like I was one of them? I wouldn't really be, but they wouldn't know that at first."

"'At first'," Ron echoed. "You'll be at Hogwarts for seven years, though – and you're going to try to fool the Slytherins for all that time? I mean, maybe you really are some sort of incredible wizard and you just don't know it – stop looking at me like that, I said you don't know it – so everything will be great – but what if you aren't? What if somebody gets really mad at you for trying to change Slytherin House and calls your bluff?"

Harry's stomach sank. Somehow, he suspected that, even if it didn't get to murder, these Slytherins would be capable of things beyond Dudley's wildest imagination – well, not that Dudley had much of an imagination, but that wasn't the point. "Well, he won't be trying to do it alone," Hermione said.

Both Harry and Ron looked at her in puzzlement. "I won't?" Harry asked.

Ron took a second longer.

"Are – you – completely – MAD?"

"No, but I may be completely deaf by the time I leave this compartment, if this keeps up!" she shot back.

"Right, maybe he has a point about being the Boy-Who-Lived – but you're a Muggle-born!" he shouted. "They hate Muggle-borns in Slytherin – you know that! There's never been a Muggle-born Slytherin, at least that I've heard of!"

"But that's exactly it!" Hermione cried. "Don't you see? The very first thing that a Muggle-born isn't supposed to do upon going into the Wizarding world is become a Slytherin – any other House, but not Slytherin! So the Slytherins get to remain isolated from anyone who could disrupt their ridiculous notions of 'blood purity', and Muggle-born witches and wizards start getting used to being told they can't do things because of who they are – it's the one thing nobody questions, not even Dumbledore, probably, because it's supposed to be for the Muggle-borns' own good!"

"And in this case, I reckon it is!"

"In the short-term, I suppose, but I just told you why I don't think it's a good idea at all in the long term. Of course it will be dangerous for a Muggle-born to go into Slytherin – I'm sure there will be bullying, even if I don't think it will be quite as severe as you think – but somebody has to be the one to do it. Who will bell the cat?"

"Well, I – huh? Cat? What cat?"

Hermione sighed. "It's a Muggle expression that refers to a task that everyone knows needs to be done, but nobody is willing to do because it's so dangerous. Similarly–"

"Oh!" said Ron triumphantly. "Who will muzzle the dragon, you mean!" He shook his head, mumbling under his breath, "Muggles are weird, honestly… A cat? Who's scared of a cat?"

Harry thought he saw Scabbers, currently nosing around the candy pile, twitch. "Well, then, I'm glad to hear you understand why I'm doing this," Hermione said, looking peeved.

"What? No, I – "

"And if he goes into Slytherin, too," Hermione continued as if there had been no interruption, "then we'll be able to watch each other's backs – if that's all right with you, that is?" She turned to Harry and looked at him expectantly.

"Um – er – sure?" Harry said, feeling dazed.

Hermione nodded in acknowledgement and turned back to Ron. "You see? I'm sure that, with two people working together, we'll be twice as likely to succeed." Harry thought he heard Ron mumble something about going up from a one-in-a-million chance to a two-in-a-million chance, but couldn't really make it out. "Just think about it, really – the Boy-Who-Lived and a Muggle-born both going into Slytherin, they won't know what to make of us."

"Corpses?" said Ron brightly.

That very nearly ended the conversation right there, but after a while, Hermione said in a cold voice, "If you're quite done playing Devil's Advocate, I need to talk to him about how we're going to plan this out. There's not very much time left before we get there, you know, and we need to make every minute count." Harry glanced up at the clock mounted on the compartment wall in alarm: it was about half past four.

Ron turned and stared out the window, scrunching up his face and biting down on his lips; evidently, he had thought of something that he didn't much like… or he had eaten something that his stomach didn't much like. Either way, he looked about to be very, very sick.

After a long pause, he sighed and looked away from the window again. "There's nothing I can say to make you change your mind, is there?"

Her frosty expression spoke volumes. When several seconds had passed with no response, Ron squared his shoulders, swallowed hard, and looked Hermione full in the face. "Guess I don't have much choice, then… Count me in."

There was a brief pause.

"Er… What?" asked Harry, certain that he had completely lost track of the conversation.

"I beg your pardon?" Hermione demanded.

"Well, what do you think? I just got through telling you that everybody in Slytherin's going to have it in for you the moment you get in the door, that it's full of Dark wizards and the kids of You-Know-Who's followers, and that they're the shiftiest bunch of rotters there are besides, and you think I'm going to let you go in there alone?" Ron gave them both a disbelieving look. "What do you take me for, anyway?"

Hermione looked as if she was going to say something very snide indeed, then gave up and shook her head. "Er… but wouldn't it be just as bad for you?" Harry asked blankly.

Ron shook his head. "No, my family goes back a ways, even if we don't buy into all that 'blood purity' bunk. 'Blood traitors', they call us – but anyway, they wouldn't have it in for me the way they'd have it in for the two of you – not right away, at least. Not until I stuck my neck out for someone they didn't approve of – but until then, I'd be pretty safe. They might give me a funny look or two because everyone in my family's been in Gryffindor for generations, but I could claim to be the black sheep, I suppose. It'll be true enough once they hear I've been Sorted into Slytherin." He looked depressed. "Never mind that, though – Point is, I can pretend to be one of them for a while, and they'd really believe it. I could get them to trust me, hear what they're planning, tip you off if they're thinking about tipping you out a window…"

"It sounds like you'd do rather well in Slytherin, actually," Hermione said, looking curiously at Ron.

Ron jerked back like she'd hit him in the face. "It's not like that!" he insisted, shaking his head. "I'd be doing it so they wouldn't get the chance to sneak up behind you, not so I'd get the chance to sneak up behind them! If I was one of the Slytherins – I mean, one of the Slytherins who belonged there, instead of just going in there for some completely nutters reason or other – I'd be trying to get something for myself, not trying to help somebody else. Big difference."

"That's not necessarily true," Hermione muttered so quietly that Harry barely heard it, but she didn't seem to want to bother with having a fight about it. Ron looked at her incredulously, then looked away, shaking his head.

"Er – that makes sense to me," Harry said to Ron, though he wondered what Hermione knew about Slytherin that Ron didn't. Ron looked relieved. Clearing his throat, Harry took a few steps back and faced both Hermione and Ron. "So, then… we're agreed?" he asked. Ron and Hermione gave each other dubious glances out of the corners of their eyes, so he hastily continued before more arguing could break out, "All of us will be trying to get put into Slytherin, however you do that –"

"What do you mean, however you do that? Didn't you read at all about the Sorting?"

"Um, no," Harry said, and hurried on as Hermione was opening her mouth again, "but anyway, as soon as we are, we're going to be doing our best to change it from the inside out… however we do that." He looked beseechingly at Hermione, who took a few seconds to realize he was waiting for her to suggest something, but perked up as soon as she did.

"Well, the very first thing we would have to do is challenge their beliefs that the very best witches and wizards come from – and only come from – the 'purest' bloodlines, which seems to be the cornerstone of their philosophy. Which is patently ridiculous, of course. I've already told you why I think there's a dearth of successful Muggle-born witches and wizards in the magical world, and absolutely everyone can name spectacular failures from the oldest of the old families. There's no excuse for the people who are outside Slytherin and still believe in that nonsense, but those who aren't probably only still believe in it because, in Slytherin, no one is willing to challenge such ideas – which is almost exactly the reason for the other half of Slytherin's poor reputation.

"I'm talking about the Dark Arts, of course, and all the witches and wizards in Slytherin who practice them."

Harry realized that this must have been what Hagrid was talking about when he said every wizard and witch to ever go bad had been in Slytherin. "Everybody in Slytherin tolerates the use of Dark magic?" he asked.

"Well, it wasn't always that way. Slytherin used to be only marginally more inclined to the Dark Arts than any of the other Houses, and that was because the sort of witches and wizards that went into Slytherin were often extraordinarily ambitious – of course, it's one of the House virtues – and a few resorted to terrible things to get what they wanted, I'm afraid. But it wasn't half as bad as it is today, or even a quarter, really."

"What happened?"

"Oh… let me see, how do I say this quickly? A lot of things that used to be deemed neutral, or at least acceptable, in England became classified as Dark Arts, Azkaban, which used to be reserved for only the very worst of the worst criminals, became England's only magical prison, the power of the old families increased due to Muggle persecutions that mainly cut down Muggle-born and half-blood witches and wizards while leaving the old families, who had enough places to hide and enough resources to bribe off inquisitors, untouched…" Harry's stomach flip-flopped, and he suddenly felt cold. "There are quite a lot of reasons, really. But suffice to say, Dark wizards and witches soon found themselves unwelcome in Hufflepuff, deemed dangerous by Ravenclaw – because they brought suspicion upon the entire House, which was already trying to fend off accusations from hateful idiots who regarded all knowledge and learning as dubious at best and evil at worst, and would have been quite happy for any evidence that Ravenclaw was an innately Dark House, no matter how ridiculous or flimsy, so Ravenclaw had no choice but to – I'm sorry, I'm going completely off-topic, where was I? Oh, yes." Hermione took several deep breaths, then continued, "Meanwhile, the Dark Gryffindors kept getting themselves killed or sent to Azkaban, so the supporters of Dark Arts in Gryffindor got depleted. That left only Slytherin as a safe haven, especially because, in addition to their starting inclination towards the Dark Arts, Slytherins almost all continued to support the 'old ways', even though a great deal of them had been judged to be Dark and abandoned by greater wizarding society – and so Slytherin found itself stuffed with four Houses' worth of Dark witches and wizards. As you might imagine, that soon turned into a vicious circle, because the more potentially Dark witches and wizards that went into Slytherin, the more that came out and the more that thought their children might be welcome there, and the more that turned Dark because of the influences of their Housemates, and so Slytherin ended up becoming almost synonymous with Dark witches and wizards – which resulted, of course, in You-Know-Who's rise to power. And – well, we know the rest, don't we?" She nodded at Harry, and then took some time off to catch her breath.

Ron was regarding her with a slack-jawed expression, while Harry felt only marginally less dumbfounded. "Um… wow," he managed after a minute or two of speechlessness. "That's a lot to take in."

"Of course it was, I just summarized several chapters of The Rise And Fall of the Dark Arts in a few minutes," Hermione said, sounding as though she was teetering on the edge of hysteria. "I don't really plan to repeat that any time soon, if that's quite all right with you."

Ron let out a hysterical giggle.

"I think that means 'yes'," Harry supplied helpfully as Hermione gave Ron a worried look.

"I do hope so…"

"So… sorry, what was I just saying? On second thought, I remember," he said quickly as Hermione began to open her mouth. "Um – so our goals are to get rid of Slytherin's belief in 'blood purity' and inclination towards Dark magic?" Hermione shut her mouth and gave a firm nod; Ron stared at him as if he had just proposed pulling the sun down from the sky and launching Mount Everest into space. "We're also going to be working on becoming one – or three, I guess – of the right sort, so that – so nobody's ever going to look at us and say we're the wrong sort, and nobody's going to keep us from doing what we want or keep things from us just because we want them or keep people away from us just because they might want to be our friends, and we'll never have to fear anyone ever again."

He shut his eyes and swallowed hard, worried that he'd said too much, but when he opened them again, Ron and Hermione looked impressed. Standing up at last, Ron hesitated, looking on the verge of saying something, then shook his head and extended a hand. "Shake on it?"

As it turned out, a three-way handshake was a little awkward, but nothing they couldn't manage. The three of them exchanged nervous but optimistic smiles over their joined hands (Hermione's being the cheeriest, and Ron's the queasiest), then let go of each other's hands.

Hermione broke the silence first. "Thank you," she said, then quickly rushed on, "If you don't mind, I'm going to get my trunk and talk a bit to Neville before heading back here – you see, I expected that I would be in Gryffindor, so I need to tell him that I'll keep in touch with him even if I happen to be Sorted into a different house – I'm afraid he wouldn't be very interested in going into Slytherin, or, at least, I don't think he would. He said his grandmother was very certain he would be in Gryffindor, even if he wasn't quite sure of it himself, and that he didn't think he'd ever be able to talk to her again if he didn't…" She looked uncomfortable.

"Fair enough," Ron said. "What do you need your books for, though? We won't be at Hogwarts for –" He glanced up at the clock – "An hour and a bit, I'd say. My sister Ginny was badgering Percy all about Hogwarts the other day, and he says the train gets there around sundown… so about six?"

"Well that's hardly any time at all, now is it?" said Hermione. "You have to put on your robes, and review your books one last time, and maybe practice an elementary spell or two if we have the time, since I expect that when we get there, we'll quite forget to read over our books again before classes begin in all the excitement – Do you have any idea which professor currently heads Slytherin House? What subject does he teach? It will be especially important to impress him, since he'll be the one in charge of resolving disputes inside Slytherin House, and according to you, it seems we might have quite a lot of those."

"Snape; he teaches Potions. Fred and George say he's a humorless git, and that he gives them a detention every chance he gets. Between you and me," Ron added, lowering his voice, "they probably deserve most of them, but don't ever let them know I said that. Even so, though, he's supposedly determined never to give Gryffindors a fair break, and gives Slytherin points every chance he gets." He snorted. "Must work, because Slytherin's won the House Cup six years running."

Harry supposed this was the "Snape" Malfoy had mentioned; he reflected that it was just his luck that the one person – that he knew of, at least – who wasn't impressed with him being the Boy-Who-Lived happened to be in charge of Slytherin House, but he actually wasn't too fussed about it. He was almost relieved, if anything: if Snape hadn't already decided what to think about him, maybe he'd think well of Harry based upon his own merits, rather than because of something that had happened when Harry had been too young to remember any of it.

Of course, Harry would have to have merits first…

"Really? How interesting," said Hermione. "Potions, you say? Well, that shouldn't be too bad – the textbook lays it out all very methodically, so I expect it will all be a matter of following instructions and remembering various facts and figures – couldn't be simpler, really. The only part that might be a bother is keeping track of all the minor details… it wouldn't be very good if he called on me to explain something and I mixed up mandrake roots and mandragora petals, now would it? Not that I would, of course, they're completely different, but it was just a silly example… Anyway, I'll be off, then – I shouldn't be gone very long, and then we can go over the material until we arrive at Hogwarts."

The door slid open, Hermione stepped through, and the door slid shut; as her footsteps departed down the hallway, Ron looked over at Harry and shook his head slowly. "She terrifies me."

"We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train; it will be taken to the school separately."

Hermione sat bolt upright, nearly dropping her Hogwarts: A History textbook in shock (having finished her review of the Potions textbook over half an hour ago). "My goodness! Is it time already?" she asked in a panic, jumping to her feet and beginning to pace erratically around the compartment. "Oh, I knew it wasn't much time at all! Where did it go? I can't even fathom how the time flew so fast!"

"Maybe for you, it wasn't," Ron muttered, happily tossing his Potions textbook back into his trunk; he had been scowling at it for almost the entire time he had been reading it, muttering something about wishing not being able to make heads or tails of the instructions and wishing there were more pictures. He got up and shut the lid of his trunk, then straightened his robe (Hermione having insisted they put their robes on with half an hour left to spare) and looked out the window at the deep purple sky. "Guess we're really here, then," he said. He swallowed hard and shook his head, going pale under his freckles. "Oh Merlin."

As the train continued to slow to a stop, Harry reluctantly tucked his Potions textbook under his arm and got to his feet, his stomach doing flip-flops. They'd talked a bit about what they'd see when they got to Hogwarts – Hermione had been covering the important facts about Slytherin in detail, including the House virtues (cunning, resourcefulness, and ambition), the House mascot (a snake), and more about the controversial aspects of the House's history (including a monster that Salazar Slytherin himself might or might not have left at Hogwarts as a going-away present), ever since she'd gotten to the Hogwarts: A History part of her review – but actually getting there… He wondered if he really ought to have had those last two Pumpkin Pasties. He knew that you could get sick from not eating for too long, but it might have been better to face Hogwarts on an empty stomach.

While Ron gathered up the sweets and Hermione gathered up her nerves, Harry opened the sliding door, only to be confronted by a packed corridor, which buzzed with chatter as its occupants waited for the train to come to a complete halt; he stepped away in dismay and turned back to Ron and Hermione. "If we don't want to get stampeded, we'll have to get out before they start moving," he said, jerking his thumb at the occupants of the corridor.

"Oi, you'll get trampled anyway, ickle firstie!" someone called out from the mass of people, and there were a few snickers.

"Oh, all right, all right, if you insist," Hermione said in a harried voice, fitting her copy of Hogwarts: A History neatly back into her trunk and shutting the lid, then rushing out to the corridor. Ron shoved a large quantity of candy into Harry's arms, mumbling that it didn't all fit in his pockets – sorry, he hoped Harry had room in his.

A snout poked its way out of the candy, and two beady little eyes stared up at Harry, who looked away immediately. "Um, this doesn't look like candy –"

"Oh, you can keep that, too. Does it fit in your pocket?" Scabbers looked around and squeaked. "Just joking, I'll take him back… Wouldn't foist Scabbers upon anyone I claimed to like." The rat let out another piercing squeak, though it had to have been because Ron was reaching for it– much as Harry could have sworn, for one uneasy moment, that it had understood exactly what Ron had said, and been insulted by it. He shrugged it off as he endeavored to fit all the candy, now Scabbers-free, in his pockets; he supposed he'd just had the same kind of fleeting delusion that Mrs. Figg had when she attributed warm, soft feelings to the meanest, nastiest cat she had, or that Aunt Petunia had when she attributed intelligence to Dudley.

"Come on!" Hermione called from the corridor, and Harry ran to shut his trunk, then, along with Ron, joined Hermione in the corridor just as the crowd began to move. It wasn't as bad as Harry had feared – well, aside from that person nearby who seemed to have forgotten to bathe for a few days – and they soon arrived, non-trampled, at the exit, which opened onto a tiny, dark platform.

Harry shivered in the cold night air, squinting into the darkness and trying to see if he could spot Hogwarts; before he could really see much of anything, a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and a familiar voice called out, "Firs' years! Firs' years over here! All right there, Harry?"

With a rush of relief, Harry jerked his head up to see Hagrid's big, hairy face beaming over the sea of heads. Ron let out a whistle, and Hermione exclaimed under her breath, "My goodness, he's tall!"

Harry, already accustomed to Hagrid's height, shrugged, while Hagrid called out, "C'mon, follow me – any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"

Obediently, the first-years marched behind Hagrid – or tried to, at least, though with limited success, because the path was slippery, uneven, and steep. Nobody fell over, but it was rough going. When Harry stumbled once, he reached out blindly to catch himself, and his hand met rough bark; he tried to glance up to see how high the tree might go, but the person behind him shoved him forward, grumbling about idiots stopping in the middle of the road, so he ducked his head and kept walking. Nothing much else happened for a bit, save for a few of the other first-years whispering to each other in awed and nervous voices, and Neville mumbling to his toad that, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, he'd really prefer it if he didn't hop off again.

"Ye' all get yet firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," Hagrid called over his shoulder, "jus' round this bend here."

As the group rounded the corner, a loud "Oooooooh!" started with the foremost first-years and propagated backwards; Harry heard Malfoy, apparently a few people in front of their place at the back of the group, comment loudly, "Will you listen to that? So terribly ill-bred – it sounds like nothing so much as a horde of overgrown tod– Oh wooooow!"

The narrow path opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats floating in the water by the shore; Harry, Ron, and Hermione clambered into one, with Neville plunking himself down as the final member.

"Um – thanks for finding Trevor, by the way," Neville whispered in Harry's ear.

"It wasn't anything, really," Harry mumbled, feeling embarrassed; he hadn't 'found' Neville's toad so much as been ambushed by it when he'd taken a trip to the restroom, where he'd found it perched atop the back of a toilet. Making direct eye contact with a toad wasn't exactly what one expected when one turned around after shutting and latching the stall door, that was for sure.

"No, really, thank you –"

Fortunately, Hagrid saved Harry from further awkwardness by shouting to the group, "Everyone in? Right then – FORWARD!"

With Hagrid's boat (which floated alarmingly low in the water) leading the way, the fleet of little boats glided across the lake, moving in perfect synchrony. As they drew closer and closer, Harry stared in awe up at the great castle; he pulled off his glasses and polished them on his shirt in the hopes of making out more detail, but, to his disappointment, it turned out to not make much of a well, he told himself as they drew nearer to the cliff on which the castle stood, he'd be seeing it up close soon enough, wouldn't he?

"Heads down!" Hagrid yelled as the first boats reached the cliff; they all bent their heads, and the little boats carried them through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. Harry glanced briefly back at the curtain of ivy as the boats floated on, frowning; he could have sworn, up until they were almost upon it, that the cliff face had been solid under the ivy. Maybe it was the same sort of magic that hid Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters? It would make sense, he guessed – if a Muggle stumbled upon this lake by accident, it would at least keep them from chancing upon Hogwarts. But they would still be able to see the castle itself, wouldn't they? Then again, there had been the way nobody had seemed to be able to see The Three Broomsticks aside from himself and Hagrid… But could it really be possible to have that same magic cover an entire castle? It was rather large… Harry shook his head and looked away again, squinting in the direction of Hagrid's lamp.

At last, they reached some kind of cave shore, where the boats landed and the passengers climbed out onto the rocks and pebbles. ("Is Trevor still with you?" Harry heard Hermione ask.

"Oh no! He's – No, he's right here, sorry.")

"All out?" Hagrid called, then turned and led the group through a passageway in the rock; soon, they were once again outside, treading smooth, damp grass under their feet as they emerged into the shadow of the castle. From there, it was only a little ways to a flight of stone steps leading up to the front door and, then, the enormous oak front door itself. "Everyone here?"

He grinned at them, then raised a gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door. It cracked open at once, and a tall, black-haired witch peered through, her face wearing a severe expression. Harry's first thought was that she was not someone to cross.

Hagrid didn't seem perturbed at all, though. "The firs' years, Professor McGonagall."

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here." She pulled the door wide, revealing an entrance hall so big that the Dursleys' entire house could have fit inside with lots of room to spare; its stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, its ceiling was too far overhead for Harry to really see it well, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.

Her emerald-green robes brushing against the flagged stone floor, Professor McGonagall led the first-years to a small, empty chamber off the hall and motioned them all in; they crowded in, enduring various bumps and jostles and jabs from each other's elbows, and peered about nervously. Harry could hear the droning and chattering of hundreds of voices from somewhere nearby; he supposed that the rest of the school must already be present elsewhere, and wondered if each year was crammed into a similar room.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall when they were all inside. "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."

Harry wondered whether the Slytherins were very good at triumphing – with the help, of course, of Snape – or very good at not getting caught breaking rules. Well, they were supposed to be both ambitious and cunning, according to Hermione, so probably both.

"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."

Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville's cloak, which was fastened under his left ear, and on Ron's smudged nose. Harry nervously tried to flatten his hair.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."

She left the chamber. Harry swallowed, his heart thumping in his chest, and a buzz of noise started around him as the first-years began to chatter. Harry caught a few snatches:

" –can't wait to join my older brother in Ravenclaw –"

" – Ravenclaw? Hmph. Hufflepuff is clearly – "

"–anyone seen Harry Potter? I've heard he's in our year!" Harry hastily smoothed his hair down over his scar and tried to look as uninteresting as possible.

"How exactly do they sort us into houses?" one poor soul asked, and was promptly deluged with Hermione's explanation of the Sorting Hat, the various viewpoints of the Founders on the purpose of Hogwarts, and the history of the Houses. ("I thought we didn't have our first class until after we got Sorted?" another terrified first-year asked the girl next to him, who shrugged and said, "I told you those Ravenclaw families were all mental.")

Ron, not paying attention to Hermione's lecture, looked as if he was about to attend his own funeral; Harry couldn't say he felt much better, himself. It's not worth the bother, a small voice in his head kept saying, this is just stupid; Ron had the right idea. He bit his lower lip and tried to fight it down, but he couldn't quite silence it. Somebody else could try to change Slytherin from the inside out – why was he bothering? He ought to enjoy himself, the voice continued – Hadn't it been enough that he had lived with the Dursleys for ten years? Why was he diving into a House full of the people who were just like them, only magic? It wouldn't be much better than hopping back onboard the Hogwarts Express and going back to the Dursleys themselves; he ought to go into any other House, a better House, where he had a chance of being happy –

Well, going into any other House but Slytherin wouldn't make the Slytherins go away, Harry reminded the voice – at least, this way, he had a chance of making them a bit less Dursley-ish… even if it wasn't much. Besides, he added more firmly, if the Slytherins really wanted to make his life miserable, he was sure they'd find some way no matter what House he was in – perhaps, if they really got carried away, they'd even send that monster Hermione had mentioned after him.

The voice went completely silent at that – and it was good it did, because right then, a bunch of people behind him started screaming.

"What in the –"

A wave of gasps went through the room. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall, gliding over the first-years' heads without even giving them a backwards glance; they seemed to be having an argument. "Forgive and forget, I say," the translucent, pearly-white figure of a fat little monk was saying, "we ought to give him a second chance –"

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves?" asked a ghost in a ruff and tights.

"We've given him a second chance every year for decades," said the tall, greyish-white figure of a lady in a sharp voice. "Do you care to observe that the only one who refused to give him a chance from the beginning is the only one whom he respects?"

She gestured to a gaunt, unpleasant-faced ghost who seemed wholly uninterested in the conversation; instead, he chose to fix the first-years with a baleful glare. "You brats have already arrived?" he said under his breath – or whatever ghosts had – and jangled his chains in the direction of Harry, who took a step back (onto Neville's foot, as it turned out).

"Er – sorry?" Harry responded in an equally hushed (and, he hoped, not too timid) voice, his eyes involuntarily going to the silver bloodstains covering the ghost's robes; if he had to have any ghost take an instant dislike to him, he really didn't want it to be this one. Something about the way he said it seemed to mollify the ghost, though, because he raised his eyebrows and gave Harry a look of vague interest, then turned away.

"Hmm?" said the ghost in the ruff and tights, turning to look in their direction. "I say, what are you all doing here?"

No one answered.

"New students!" said the pudgy Friar, smiling around at them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"

A few people nodded mutely.

"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" said the Friar. "My old House, you know."

"Move along now," said a sharp voice, drowning out one boy's pompous-sounding reply of, "Oh, you will." The boy, a thickset wizard with a shock of bright yellow hair, looked disgruntled; Harry thought he recognized his voice as the one that had been commenting dismissively about Ravenclaw. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start."

Professor McGonagall had returned. One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall.

"Now, form a line," Professor McGonagall told the first years, "and follow me."

His heart thumping heavily in his chest, Harry got in line behind a boy with sandy hair, and Ron got in line behind him; from a bit of protesting and sniffy apologizing behind him, he guessed Hermione had just squeezed into line behind Ron. The first-years trooped out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.

Harry had never imagined such a strange and splendid place. Thousands and thousands of candles floated in midair over four long tables set with glittering golden plates and goblets, which threw reflections of the candlelight onto the faces of the Hogwarts students seated there; at the top of the hall was another long table, which seemed to be where the teachers were seated. Professor McGonagall led the first-years up to there, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. Hundreds of faces turned to look at them, gleaming like lanterns in the flickering candlelight; several first-years cringed, Ron's face turned a whitish-green, and Harry stared up at the ceiling just to avoid meeting all the staring eyes.

As soon as he did, he blinked, not quite sure what he was seeing: he seemed to be staring straight up into the night sky, with not even a glass pane between the Great Hall at the heavens above; had there been one, he was certain he would have seen the light of the thousands of candle-flames bouncing faintly off the glass.

"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," Hermione whispered. "I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."

It must have been a very good enchantment, because Harry could even pick out the constellations: there was Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor, and Orion – He tore his gaze away and quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first-years, and then placed a patched, frayed, and extremely dirty wizard's hat atop the stool. No one had bothered to smarten it up while they were waiting, it seemed – Aunt Petunia would never have let it in the house, unless it was so that Dudley could turn it inside out and ram it onto Harry's head so hard that the brim bumped up against Harry's shoulders.

For one wild moment, Harry wondered if she wanted them to try to get a rabbit out of it – then it hit him what it had to be. That was the Sorting Hat? he thought incredulously as he stared at it. He supposed it made sense that it was a bit worn, after sitting on the head of every single student to go through Hogwarts for a thousand years, but – didn't they ever wash it? Then again, in the state it was in, maybe it would fall apart if they washed it. But couldn't they just put it back together with magic? Maybe you couldn't do that with magic, though, or – maybe that was it looked like even after being put back together with magic?

That was a scary thought.

He couldn't think about it anymore, though, because the Hat had just twitched, then opened a rip near its brim wide, like a mouth, and begun to sing:

"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,

But don't judge on what you see,

I'll eat myself if you can find

A smarter hat than me.

You can keep your bowlers black,

Your top hats sleek and tall,

For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat

And I can cap them all.

There's nothing hidden in your head

The Sorting Hat can't see-"

Harry gave an involuntary shiver at that, as did Ron and several other people up and down the line.

"So try me on and I will tell you

Where you ought to be.

You might belong in Gryffindor,

Where dwell the brave at heart,

Their daring, nerve, and chivalry

Set Gryffindors apart;

You might belong in Hufflepuff,

Where they are just and loyal,

Those patient Hufflepuffs are true

And unafraid of toil;

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,

If you've a ready mind,

Where those of wit and learning,

Will always find their kind;

Or perhaps in Slytherin

You'll make your real friends,

Those cunning folk use any means

To achieve their ends."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione gave each other significant glances, but only for the briefest moment; the Hat was still singing.

"So put me on!

Don't be afraid!

And don't get in a flap!

You're in safe hands

(though I have none)

For I'm a Thinking Cap!"

The whole hall burst into applause as the Hat finished its song; it bowed to each of the four tables, and then became quite still again.

"I've got to say," Ron said under his breath to Harry and Hermione, on either side of him, "no matter how you look at it, it's loads better than wrestling a troll."

"You keep talking about that," Hermione whispered back, wrinkling her forehead. "Back when I first told Harry about the Hat, too – What is it about you and trolls?"

"Never mind," Ron said in a hushed voice, "tell you later. Just take it for granted that I need to kill my brother Fr-" His face abruptly drained of all color. "Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, I'm going into – Fred's going to kill me!"

Hermione gave Ron a disbelieving look, but caught sight of Professor McGonagall's severe glare out of the corner of her eye and faced forward, her face paling slightly as well.

Harry, meanwhile, tried his best to look polite and attentive, but the voice had started nagging at him again. Or perhaps it's in Slytherin you'll make your real friends, those cunning folk will use any means to achieve their ends. Hermione had said that some Slytherins turned Dark because of the influence of their Housemates – How could he think that he could change the Slytherins, how could he think that they would not change him first?

The Dursleys hadn't done a great job of that, and he'd been with them ten years; he'd be with the Slytherins only seven. Honestly, he told himself, he ought to have a bit more faith in his ability to keep his head together.

Oh, they hadn't, had they?

With that unsettling thought, the voice vanished, and an icy chill shot up Harry's spine. Biting his lip and gathering his robe around him, he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. But – they hadn't, had they? He wasn't like Uncle Vernon, or Aunt Petunia, or Dudley. What had made him think that? And – since it was so absurd – why did the thought scare him so?

"You all right?" Ron asked in concern as Professor McGonagall stepped forward, holding a long roll of parchment, and told them that, when she called out their names, they would put on the Hat and be Sorted.

Harry, still feeling cold all over, forced a smile. "Just a cold draft," he whispered back as McGonagall began calling out names, and faced forward before Ron could ask any more questions.

"Abbott, Hannah", a pigtailed, pink-faced girl, dashed to the stool and plopped herself down, pulling the Sorting Hat over her head –

"HUFFLEPUFF!" The Hufflepuff table erupted into whooping and clapping, and the fat little monk gave Hannah his cheerful congratulations as she sat down.

Hufflepuff wouldn't be a bad House; there, they were "just and loyal", which would keep out anyone even a bit like the Dursleys. He could be happy there, he could; it would be a calm and happy and quiet life –

What was he thinking? Harry frowned and shook his head harder this time, clearing away those thoughts. Cold feet, he guessed – he was definitely nervous enough. He could have sworn he was getting a headache from nerves alone.

"Bones, Susan" joined Hannah in Hufflepuff to the sounds of more applause. "A good omen," the thickset, yellow-haired boy smugly commented under his breath. "That's the first two to us, then, and –" His smirk promptly disappeared as "Boot, Terry" became the first Ravenclaw.

Ravenclaw would be a decent House, too… He ought to be fine, so long as he stuck to books and didn't muck about too much with putting the things in them into practice. A calm and sedate –

Harry wondered what was wrong with him. Was this really just nerves? Well, he supposed he had reason enough to have them, after all he'd heard about Slytherin, but this was getting silly. At least, he thought wryly, he wouldn't have to have any doubts as to whether he'd be more suited to Gryffindor.

"Brocklehurst, Mandy" joined Terry; after her came, "Brown, Lavender", who went to –

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Gryffindor, Gryffindor! Dumbledore himself had been in there, according to Hermione, and she'd also said it was Slytherin's rival from the start – It was everything Slytherin wasn't, and –

And he certainly wasn't one of the "brave at heart", if he kept thinking this way, Harry thought as he tried to get hold of himself. What had gotten into him? Why hadn't he thought any of this back on the train?

Well, he hadn't really known anything about the houses, then, and it hadn't quite been so real, his mind reminded him. Now, the moment of decision was fast approach–

"SLYTHERIN!" the Sorting Hat shouted, and "Bulstrode, Millicent", a girl who looked like she could have wrestled Dudley to a standstill, took off the Hat and headed off to her new House. For a fleeting moment, Harry thought that the Slytherins did look like an unpleasant lot, but he shrugged it off. Now he was just getting silly.

"Corner, Michael" was sent to Ravenclaw; "Cornfoot, Stephen", after about half a minute, joined Michael there. Malfoy's friend Crabbe, unsurprisingly, ended up lumbering towards the Slytherin table, followed by "Davis, Tracey". As several more students passed under the Hat, Harry noticed that not everybody took the same amount of time to get Sorted – "Entwistle, Kevin" took only a second to be assigned to Ravenclaw, while "Finnigan, Seamus", right after him, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the Hat declared him a Gryffindor – and wondered if the students who took a while had also chosen their Houses ahead of time, and had to argue with the Hat about it before they could go on. If so, it made him feel a little better; Hermione had said it was rare, but maybe nobody had wanted to admit to it – After all, who'd want to say that they were only in their House because they'd had a fight with the Sorting Hat, the supposed absolute authority on who ought to go into what House? They'd sound rather stupid, and a bit muddled as to why anyone bothered with Sorting in the first place…

But his attention quickly focused elsewhere, because the Hat had just finished shouting "RAVENCLAW!" for one "Goldstein, Anthony", and "Goyle, Gregory" was heading for the stool. "It's me next, I think," Hermione was whispering frantically to Harry and Ron, "oh, I do hope I can pull this off, I do hope so, it would be rather embarrassing if I didn't after all that fuss on the train –"

"You'll be fine," Harry whispered back, though he wasn't sure if she had heard him, because the shout of "SLYTHERIN!" for Goyle drowned out his words midway through. Hermione straightened her spine and set her face in a determined expression, looking straight ahead, and then Professor McGonagall called –

"Granger, Hermione!"

"Good luck!" she heard Ron whisper behind her – very nearly belatedly, since she'd already started running for the stool and wouldn't have been able to hear him after another moment, but she supposed she should have been glad he said anything at all. She seized the hat and jammed it onto her head, shutting her eyes and concentrating all her thoughts on Slytherin. Oh, she did hope this worked…

"Well, well!" a small voice said in her ear – or was it really her ear, or rather straight into her mind with the illusion that it was saying it into her ear? Since she already knew it could look into her mind, it wasn't such a stretch to think that it might be speaking directly into it as well. "A very nice young mind, yes indeed. And quite thirsty for knowledge, too. Potential for great courage, as well, but that might take a little while to develop… I suppose you could make it if you insisted, but you'd be much better-suited to another House."

Yes, Hermione thought brightly, I think I'd prefer Slytherin.

"Hmm… hard-working, too, and obedient to rules… for now? That might change later – the rule-following part, I mean, not the hard-working one. Loyal – ah, yes, great potential for loyalty. Tolerance… mm, you might need to work on tolerance of others' opinions. Still –"

If you wouldn't mind too terribly, I'd like to be Sorted into Slytherin, thank you, Hermione thought in a more vigorous mental voice.

"- a very strong sense of justice, yes. You might do well in Hufflepuff, though the degree to which it fit you could change in either direction over the years… Seven years is a very long time, after all. Yes, all in all, I think you'd do best in –"

SLYTHERIN, PERHAPS?

"Don't shout!" said the voice with a slight cringe. "There's no need to shout, really –"

Well, you don't seem to be listening!

The Hat was silent for a time, then gave a great sigh; she could have sworn she felt it crumple slightly on her head. "Dear girl, I don't think you know what you're asking," it said finally.

Of course I know! Hermione thought impatiently. If you need my permission to see my memories – then here, take this one! She called up her memory of the conversation on the train and waved it around in her mind – concentrating only on the gist of it, of course, since she didn't want to keep everyone else waiting forever.

"Mr. Potter? Really? Quite interesting…" the voice said, sounding distracted, then went back to normal. "I regret to inform you that your red-haired friend is correct, Miss Granger –"

He's not my friend! Hermione paused for a moment. Well, not yet, at any rate. I just met him, and you can't really call people whom you just met friends, can you? You have to talk to them for a while first, and get to know them, and all those things –

"You say, having learned all those rules of friendship from books," the voice said wearily. "It would do you good to learn the difference between theory and practice, Miss Granger – you can make a friend in an instant, or remain only an acquaintance to someone you've known for years – but now is not the time for that. I'll gladly concede Mr.… Weasley, was it… is not your friend – yet. But he understands the rules of the Wizarding world much better than do you, I'm afraid – Muggle-borns simply do not go into Slytherin."

And why not? she demanded. Because you say so?

"That would be cause enough," said the voice, and Hermione's heart skipped a beat. Oh, wasn't that just wonderful – What was she going to do if the Hat went against her? She could try to push it, of course, since Hogwarts: A History had declared that the will of the student was absolute in the end – but what if it turned out they'd been wrong? Oh, of course, not that she believed Hogwarts: A History was wrong, but what if she'd stumbled into the one exception? What if the will of the student was absolute except if she was a Muggle-born witch who wanted to go into Slytherin?

That was out-and-out discrimination, of course, and she had every right to sue! Except… how was she supposed to sue a hat? Well, she supposed she wouldn't be suing it, of course, but rather Hogwarts, since it was a crucial part of the staff – which begged the question, of course, of how did one go about filing a lawsuit in the Wizarding world? She didn't even know how to file one in the ordinary world, much less this one! None of her books had covered that! Then again, how was she supposed to have known she might have had grounds to file a discrimination lawsuit on her very first day at Hogwarts – before classes began, even? It was absurd!

Could she even file a discrimination lawsuit? Was discrimination actually illegal in the Wizarding world? A spike of cold went through her – She had assumed it was, of course, since every civilized country did, it was practically a requirement to be even marginally enlightened and progressive – but the old families that believed in 'blood-purity' were certainly neither of those, to be blunt about it, and they held so much power that it might actually not be illegal! Oh, that was a terrifying thought – Good heavens, what had she gotten into? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear – Surely Dumbledore would be understanding about it? Was this really worth suing over? Of course it was! It was wrong! But Dumbledore, as she'd said to Harry and Ron, might think this particular bit of discrimination was for the Muggle-borns' own good, and so not agree to contest it – and if Dumbledore wouldn't be for her, who would be?

"Calm down, Miss Granger, please," the voice said with a sigh. "If you hyperventilate too much and pass out on the stool, you'll likely tip over and cause a scene, and I think we can both agree that would be regrettable. I tend to get squashed rather badly under the student in question, for one thing. No," it said in answer to the question she hadn't even fully articulated, "it doesn't happen very often at all, but I find it quite memorable when it does.

"And, while your thirst to scatter your enemies, drive them before you, and reduce their loved ones (or, in this case, accountants) to tears is certainly good evidence for your case that you'd do well in Slytherin, I'm afraid that discrimination against the Muggle-born is, in fact, legal in the magical world. And I do, in fact, do this for your own good. You may think of this only in terms of what you have to fear from your year-mates, and perhaps the students a few years above you, but what you forget is that Slytherin House's students range up to those of age, who are quite competent witches and wizards in their own right – or at least, they had better be – and quite a few of whom are likely to take an interest in purging 'impurity' from their precious House, should the opportunity become available to them. Some half-bloods have made it by fighting for their lives and clinging to their Wizarding blood as their sole lifeline amongst the 'pure of blood' – but you, Miss Granger, would not even have that as protection."

So why didn't you place 'quite a few' students somewhere else, if you're so concerned with steering Sortings according to what you think is best for the students? Hermione thought vehemently. Place the ones who will be trouble later on into other Houses, where their bigoted beliefs won't be nearly as tolerated, rather them letting them all gather in Slytherin!

"Divide and conquer, Miss Granger? Yes, you're making a good case for Slytherin… Unfortunately, I am afraid that they are quite insistent about going into Slytherin, and I am obligated to respect a student's wishes –"

You're not doing a very good job of showing that!

"-except when it endangers the welfare of the student," the voice finished. "This, as I am sure you are tired of hearing by now, does."

And what about the welfare of other students? she asked sharply.

"Unless they are actively plotting murder from the moment they walk in the door, you are asking me to be a Seer, Miss Granger," the voice said with a sigh. "If any power on this earth could detect which eleven-year-olds will grow up to be monsters, which to be heroes, and which to be all the myriad shades in-between, I believe – in my own severely biased opinion, of course, as a Sorter of eleven-year-olds – it would be the most desired power in the world. And – though you might be too young to understand why I say this – the percentage of eleven-year-olds who would survive to see their twelfth birthdays would dramatically decrease."

After hearing her shocked, garbled protests, it sighed again. "Well, I did say you might be too young."

Hermione shook her head, trying to force that horrible thought out of her mind, then said, But surely – you must have some guesses?

"Guesses are not sufficient grounds to condemn a child," the voice said wearily – but this was just the response she had wanted.

So you admit that what might happen isn't sufficient grounds to restrict a Sorting? The Hat said nothing, but she could feel, very faintly and far off, an abrupt spike of panic; she rushed on, before it could interrupt her, So you can't really say I can't go into Slytherin because something bad might happen to me, can you?

"When I am virtually certain –"

Can you really be, though? Hermione asked triumphantly. Suppose I don't tell anyone I'm Muggle-born until much later – Suppose that I manage to get through maybe a bit worse for wear, but not seriously injured or dead – I mean, I'm prepared for it to be rough going, I do realize this won't be easy –

"You think you realize it, Miss Granger," the voice said with a sigh, "and again, you do so because you have read accounts of civil rights activists, tyrannicides, and miscellaneous other heroes in books. Perhaps you would do well to read a few books, for a change, which point out how great and terrible the difference is between learning all there is to know about a particular experience, reviewing it from all angles, and comprehending it fully in the abstract – and living it."

Don't you only know about the world from reading people's minds like books? Hermione said suspiciously.

"Touché." It made a throat-clearing noise, though it had no throat to clear. "Before you add the second part of that comment, however, I have read the minds of more than eleven-year-olds. The occasional professor – and even the occasional Headmaster – has put me on, seeking guidance, a different point of view on a confidential matter, or just a nice chat over his or her morning cup of tea – And no, Miss Granger, I will not tell you which ones. You know very well that the confidentiality of the Sorting Hat is sacrosanct."

Yes, she'd read it in Hogwarts: A History – which she was beginning to think ought to be mandatory reading, since, otherwise, students new to the Wizarding world might not even know what the Sorting Hat was.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Miss Granger," the voice said, sounding amused.

Well – she'd only meant it as one of many highly important facts about Hogwarts! She flushed a bit before getting back on topic. Suppose it makes a difference that Harry Potter's also in Slytherin with me – and that Ron's right, and his presence will make a difference, too? Suppose – well, anything! You really can't say that I'm doomed from the moment that I walk in, can you?

"Ah, yes… Mr. Potter." The voice paused for a moment. "He may well make a difference. I'll grant you one thing that I've gleaned – Mr. Potter's belief that the Slytherins have no idea what happened is wholly correct. That may – may – grant him a buffer, but I cannot say to what extent or for how long it will last. Whether this buffer will extend to his friends, I also cannot say, so tread carefully, Miss Granger. I may not be a Seer, but it doesn't take one to see the road you so innocently desire to walk is long, dark, and full of perils – and you may well wish to double back well before the journey is over, and find that the way back is closed to you."

"Tread carefully – you mean, you are letting me go into Slytherin?" Hermione asked, thrown by the suddenness of the Hat's capitulation – or the Hat's apparent capitulation? She'd been expecting much more of a fight, at the rate it was going –

"Miss Granger, as it did not violate my bonds of confidentiality to tell you that about the Slytherins, for it told you nothing about what they did believe, what any one Slytherin knew at the time of his or her Sorting, or even anything beyond the obvious – If anyone knows what happened that night to Mr. Potter, they certainly haven't told me about it – so it will not for me to tell you this: you will not be the first Muggle-born Slytherin."

What?

"However, there has only been one other within the last two centuries," the voice said. "And before you ask, she did survive, as evidenced by a boy of hers appearing at Hogwarts." It paused. "Ah – you wonder how this doesn't violate the confidentiality of her Sorting? Oh, it might, Miss Granger – if you care to search through the records of every single witch who was Sorted into Slytherin for the last two hundred years, determine which ones were unmistakably from old lines – and can you be certain none of those records were falsified, Miss Granger? I'm certainly not – and thus can be eliminated, ascertain which ones had at least one male child that attended Hogwarts (Did you notice my wording? That boy might have been an only child – or he might not have been) and thus are candidates, then stare at the remaining several hundred or so possible witches and divine which of them was the Muggle-born. By all means, you are quite welcome to try – and if you find out the correct answer without any more outside hints than would have been quite sufficient for you to figure it out without my having said a word about it, I'll eat myself!

"Oh, yes – you would have the hint that she had a child who reached the age of eleven, wouldn't you? So you could narrow those two hundred years down to a little over a hundred and seventy – very helpful."

It had said all this very quickly, even by Hermione's standards; her prior guess that it actually put the words directly into her mind seemed more likely by the moment, because that monologue had left her feeling rather dizzy and confused, as if she'd stayed up all night studying and her brain just wouldn't absorb any more information no matter how hard she tried. Fortunately, in this case, her mind defogged within a second or two, and she was able to ask suspiciously, So why did you let her through, and not any others?

"My dear girl, that is requesting far too much of a hint. However, I'm feeling generous – and a bit sentimental, you remind me of her – so I'll tell you two things. First, not that many Muggle-borns are interested in going into a House so hostile to their kind – admit it, you would have laughed at anyone who had told you at King's Cross that you were going to be insisting on being Sorted into Slytherin by this evening, wouldn't you?"

Hermione felt her cheeks flush. "Those who are, I can usually talk out of it," the voice added. "Rest assured that, if you hadn't reasoned your way through the matter remarkably well – and perhaps not even then, if you hadn't pulled Mr. Potter as a trump – you would have sat here until you gave in, no matter how long it took. And I have done that, when necessary – ah, I see the case of Caradoc Elphinstone made it to public knowledge? Not Muggle-born, and the House he was trying to get into wasn't Slytherin, but it illustrates the point."

Caradoc Elphinstone, four centuries ago, had been a Pureblood whose father, a Dark wizard, had entered a blood feud with another Dark wizard, making their children mortal enemies as well – and when the son of the other Dark wizard had entered Gryffindor three years before Caradoc was due to go to Hogwarts (that time being one of the less pleasant periods in Gryffindor House's history), he had made it quite well-known that he would do his part for the feud if the heir of his father's mortal foe ever happened to get too close. Unfortunately, the Elphinstones had been strictly Gryffindors for generations (again, that not being Gryffindor House's finest century), and so Caradoc had attempted to go into Gryffindor.

Several hours later, the rest of the Sorting had been delayed until the next day, an especially rich dinner had been served to the un-Sorted first-years by way of apologies, and a crying, mentally-exhausted Caradoc had finally agreed to go into Ravenclaw instead. The Ravenclaws, knowing the situation, had managed to make certain the boy didn't get killed during his time at Hogwarts, and all had been well (relatively speaking); a footnote to the tale had added that the Elphinstones had died off in the male line a century or two later anyway, due to never quite catching on that centuries of accumulated blood feuds carried with them the possibility that all your mortal enemies might someday realize that they had a common enemy, and join forces to solve their Mutual Problem swiftly, brutally, and permanently… but Hogwarts could only act to increase knowledge, not cure stupidity.

Hermione had read this all a while back in Hogwarts: A History, though, and so it only took her a second after the Hat mentioned Caradoc Elphinstone to swallow and nod. "Good – Second, as you may have guessed, the other Muggle-born Slytherin also had a trump… a special ability that came as close to guaranteeing her safety in Slytherin as anything for which a Muggle-born might hope," the voice said. "More than that, I absolutely refuse to say – save that almost all who possess that ability are to the power born, no rituals anywhere near the level of even the brightest seventh-year at Hogwarts can provide it, and you don't have it, Miss Granger, so don't go getting any ideas. Now, on that note, I'm afraid Minnie –"

Minnie?

"When you get to my age, dear girl, you can call the professors anything you want," said the voice. "As I was saying, Minnie's looking at me like she's afraid I've died on you, so before somebody starts poking me with a wand or something equally embarrassing, I think I'll be bidding you farewell–"

Wait! One more thing! She hesitated for only a moment before asking, Were you paraphrasing Genghis Khan earlier?

"Oh, by the Founders, thank you for restoring some of my faith in humanity – Every time I've said anything like that for the last decade or so, people have thought I was misquoting some fellow named Conan – but never mind that, dear girl – just be assured that I do wish you well, and I hope you have the best of luck in SLYTHERIN!"

The last word was shouted to the entire Hall, and Hermione lifted the Sorting Hat off her head at last and stood up on wobbly legs. She had the most terrible pins and needles, and it made her worry about how long she'd taken under the Hat – She hadn't thought too much about it while she was actually talking to it, but now, she hoped she hadn't held up the Sorting!

A glance up at Professor McGonagall didn't help, since the woman was looking down at her with a great deal of concern and seemed about ready to send her off to the school nurse – Mediwitch, rather, she had to remember she was in the magical world now. Since talking would just take up more time and she wasn't really sure what to say that wouldn't make the situation seem odder, Hermione just gave her and the remaining first-years an embarrassed, apologetic smile, then hurried off to the Slytherin table, who were giving her the most uncertain, bewildered cheers she had heard all Sorting, before she held them up any further.

"I can't believe it – she did it!" Ron whispered in Harry's ear as Hermione headed off to the Slytherin table. "She actually did it!"

"What took so long?" Harry asked in confusion, still staring at the Hat, even as "Greengrass, Daphne", who had been wearing a very long-suffering look on her face as the minutes stretched on, put it on and looked almost maniacally happy when the Hat took only a few seconds before shouting out "SLYTHERIN!" Professor McGonagall, despite her severity, seemed relieved at the confirmation that the Hat retained normal function.

"Guess she had to argue with it a bit first. Wonder if the poor thing got a word in edgewise," Ron whispered back, glancing over at the Slytherin table, where Daphne seemed to be having some sort of argument with Hermione; after a moment, Daphne tossed her head disdainfully and sat two seats away from Hermione, who seemed not to mind at all.

Of the three of them, Harry would be next; he wiped his palms on his robes nervously as the names rang out, wondering how long it would be until his was called. He had to keep his nerve, he had to keep his nerve… At least Hermione was already there, so he would have somebody to talk to while he waited for 'Weasley, Ron' to join them – or somebody to talk at him, which was probably the more accurate phrase.

To try to take his mind off of things, he took his Potions textbook out from under his arm and tried to start reading where he'd left off, though his thoughts, and the constant shouting of names and houses, kept him from really concentrating on it. What if he took even longer than Hermione to get Sorted? What if, in fact, the Hat didn't Sort him at all, but just left him sitting there for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train?

After an indeterminable period of nervous waiting and rereading ghastly warnings of what awaited the poor fool who threw in the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire, or mixed up eye of newt and toe of frog, he at least had a mild distraction when "Longbottom, Neville" tripped on the way to the stool, then ran off to the Gryffindor table with the Hat still on and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag" (who went into Ravenclaw, along with her fraternal twin sister "MacDougal, Isobel"). Professor McGonagall glanced down at the sheet with a frown, then said, "Clerical error," and went on with the list.

"Malfoy, Draco" swaggered forward when his name was called, and the Hat indeed called out "SLYTHERIN!" a second after it touched his head; he sauntered off to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, who had already reserved a space between them, as "Malone, Roger" came forward. Harry got ready to shut his Potions text as they went down the list, knowing that with the "M"s being called, he would soon be next…

"Moon, Lily", "Nott, Theodore", "Parkinson, Pansy", "Patil, Padma" and "Patil, Parvati" (identical twins, this time), then "Perks, Sally-Anne"… and finally –

"Potter, Harry!"

"Good luck!" Ron said to Harry, who mumbled, "Thanks, you too," over his shoulder as he stepped forward, then ran to the stool before he could hear too many of the whispers:

"Potter, did she say?"

"The Harry Potter?"

"That scrawny little runt?" (That one came from the Slytherin table, which didn't help his morale at all.)

The last thing Harry saw before the Sorting Hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him; the total blackness inside of the Hat came as a relief. He waited.

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There's talent, ah my goodness, yes – and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting… So where shall I put you?"

Not Slytherin, not Slytherin! the response came instantly, his hands gripping the edges of the stool in a white-knuckled grip. A moment later, Harry blinked and shook himself.

Sorry – I mean Slytherin, I mean Slytherin, he thought, wondering what in the world had come over him. Of all the times to get hit by a wave of indecision, this wasn't it!

"Stage fright, perhaps?" the small voice said sympathetically. "Happens to the best wizards and witches, don't worry. Well, I'll tell you now, I already know about your plans from Miss Granger – certainly ambitious if you can pull them off – and even if you chose it for your own reasons, Slytherin does fit you best. So then – you're sure?"

Yes, Slytherin, Harry thought. In a strange way, hearing that the Sorting Hat thought Slytherin was his best match anyway made him relieved that everything that had happened on the train had happened; imagine getting all the way up here to the Sorting Hat, knowing nothing more about Slytherin than that You-Know-Who and every other witch or wizard who'd ever gone bad had been in Slytherin, and hearing that he ought to join them…

"Excellent, then," said the voice. "And I agree, that would have been awkward. You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that – so good luck to you, because off you go to SLYTHERIN!"

The last word was shouted to the whole Hall; a roar went up from the Slytherin table the moment the first syllable was pronounced, and somebody started shouting "POTTER! POTTER! POTTER!" at the top of her lungs, with more people taking up her chant by the moment. Harry took off the Hat, feeling very nervous, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at them, wondering what was going on – That certainly wasn't how they had cheered for the rest of their new members. Fortunately, from quite a bit of unfortunate experience with Dudley's gang, he knew how a bunch of people baying for his blood did sound, and this wasn't it… Though it was awfully weird.

Steadying his nerves, he got to his feet, and then turned and walked towards the Slytherin table, trying not to get too creeped out by another shout of his name echoing his every step. Hermione was already flagging him down.

Only Ron left now…

"Smith, Zacharias!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Yeah, he'd been bragging about Hufflepuff earlier, hadn't he? Well, good to know he was going into the House he wanted to be in.

"Thomas, Dean!"

This was mental, absolutely mental. But it was happening. He glanced over to the Slytherin table, where both Harry and Hermione were seated; Harry appeared to be desperately hiding behind his Potions textbook from the other Slytherin first-years' barrage of questions, while Hermione, waving a hand frantically, seemed to be trying to tell them either that he didn't know, it wasn't any of their business, or it'd been a long day and Harry wasn't up to answering questions. It'd probably be more effective if there were two of them doing it, of course…

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Turpin, Lisa!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Vane, Emma!"

Only him and some snobbish-looking Black boy, now; as Ron glanced over at him, the boy did an amazing job of looking up his nose at him, since Ron was too tall for the usual direction. Impressive, Ron had to admit.

With that kind of look to him, he bet the boy was going into Slytherin. Oh, Merlin, he was going into Slytherin… Crossing his fingers, he hoped that the other boy's name started with another V, so he could try to get his thoughts a bit more in order. Slytherin, Slytherin! He was going into Slytherin! His mum and dad were going to kill him – if the twins didn't get him first, that was.

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Weasley, Ronald!"

No such luck. Oh, blast it all –

He took one shaky step towards the stool, then remembered he was supposed to be putting on some sort of act for the Slytherins, like he was naturally one of them or something, so he straightened his back, held his head high, and took slow, measured steps towards the stool, as if he was utterly certain of his House and didn't see what everyone else had been making such a big deal about.

Inside, though, his heart was hammering like mad. What if he botched it? What if he was one of those one-second Sorts, but his was for Gryffindor? Sure, Hermione'd said anyone could argue with the Hat, but how were you supposed to do that if it Sorted you before you could even get a thought out? He swallowed hard and tried to think about something more comforting.

At least the Slytherins didn't seem to have it in for Harry yet – creepy, really, the way they'd greeted him, as though they were welcoming in their new… Good Merlin! Did they think Harry was the next Dark Lord? He was eleven, for goodness' sakes!

Then again, Harry had survived an attack from You-Know-Who before he was two, and if anyone ought to know about Dark Lords, it was the Slytherins – Maybe Dark Lords were supposed to start young? Still crazy – Harry didn't have a bit of Dark Lord in him. Bit shy, if anything. Sure, he'd acted weird about the Slytherins, but Ron guessed that made sense – he'd entered their world just a month ago, only to get told he was one of the most important people in it (and not exactly poor, either, if the way he'd been buying all those candies without a second thought was any indication), and anything must've seemed possible to him. Especially since, like Ron, he'd grown up… not that well-off, and as the least-favored child of the family, at that – sure, Harry had only got one cousin to compete with, and he had five brothers and a sister, but Harry's relatives had been "horrible" , and that probably made up for it. He remembered the way Harry had looked when he asked why anyone put up with the Slytherins – Maybe they'd reminded him of his relatives? Merlin, now that was a scary thought!

Whatever they'd been like, anyway, they'd obviously been even worse off than Ron's parents – at least he'd always gotten birthday presents, even if they were hand-me-downs like Scabbers. His parents had to make ends meet for seven children, too, while Harry's relatives had only had two to worry about. Made sense if Harry went a little strange every now and then, now that he had some things in his own right – but that wasn't the important part, at least not right now.

The important part was that, if the Slytherins thought Harry might be the next Dark Lord, it changed everything. If they'd thought he was powerful but Light, they would've been scared of him, sure, but they might've closed ranks against him so they could go after him all at once when he let down his guard – which was where Ron would have come in, pretending to he wanted to side with them, come to their meetings, all that sort of stuff, so that he could find out what they were planning and tell Harry. Of course, if they ever found out he was the snitch, he'd be Thestral food… Same if they thought Harry was powerful but didn't really care either way, except a few of them might've tried to sway him to the Dark before plotting to get rid of him. But if they thought he was the next You-Know-Who–

He managed to keep his face straight and his steps steady as he reached the stool, but inside, his thoughts were buzzing so wildly that he barely cared about the Sorting Hat anymore. This was great! Good Merlin, Harry might actually stand a chance of influencing Slytherin House now! He couldn't believe it!

And Harry'd have the perfect excuse to take down all that 'blood-purity' rot, actually, come to think of it: his mother had been Muggle-born, right? He could claim he didn't want anyone saying anything nasty about Muggle-born witches and wizards because they were saying nasty things about his mum, and even the most rotten, hate-filled Dark wizard would pause before insulting the next Dark Lord's mother. ("Claim"? He'd gone mental – It'd be the perfect excuse because it'd be perfectly true! If anyone said his mum had mud for blood, why…) And if nobody dared to say anything nasty about the Muggle-born, it'd be silly to say anything nasty about half-bloods – and besides that, Harry was one himself – and so Harry would've accomplished what even Dumbledore couldn't manage for the life of him: keeping the Slytherins from insulting anyone who didn't have "pure blood" – and anyone who did, if they didn't fall in line with everything the Slytherins thought – even amongst themselves…

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat, briefly breaking through Ron's whirling thoughts: oh, yeah, the Sorting Hat. Right. He picked up the Sorting Hat and shook it out absent-mindedly, lapsing back into thought: what if somebody tried to challenge Harry on the future-Dark-Lord thing, though? That'd be a problem – but since Harry would be putting on a Dark Lord act, why, he could just give them the same creepy smile he'd given Malfoy – that had looked Dark enough – and say something like "Funny about that – you know who was the last person who crossed me?" and the whole lot would suddenly find they had urgent business elsewhere. For a while, at least – after it went on for a year or two, they'd probably catch on that Harry wasn't just faking being a normal, decent kid for everyone outside Slytherin's benefit, but was one, and then everything would go right to blazes –

Unless the three of them dropped loads of little hints that Harry really would grow up to be the next Dark Lord, or spent that year or two doing all they could to get connections, information, and any advantage possible over the people around them – trading off Harry's status as the Boy-Who-Lived and possible next Dark Lord, of course – so that just maybe they had a chance of not getting flattened when it all came falling down around their ears. Best to do both, really, Ron decided (the first would buy time for the second), and, between getting off that train of thought and getting onto the next one, placed the Hat onto his head –

"SLYTHERIN!"

– and immediately yanked it off again, but before he could do so much as stare at it in disbelief, twin appalled shrieks of "TRAITOR!" went up from the Gryffindor table – and only then did the cheers from the Slytherin table start, as if they hadn't quite believed their ears until that point. Quickly, before he could give into the horrible urge to glance over his shoulder and see the sickened looks on Fred and George's faces – and Percy's, too – he set the Sorting Hat back down on the stool and hurried over to the Slytherins, heading straight for the seat to Harry's right.

All the way there, he could have sworn he could still hear a little voice in his head saying wryly:

Honestly, I wonder what they even need me for, sometimes…

"Do you think it's a mistake?"

"No," Daphne Greengrass said, turning her head to follow Ron as he rounded the end of the table, "did you look at him? He didn't even bother to sit down – he knew where he was going –"

Theodore Nott looked unconvinced, but their conversation ended there, because the boy in question had just stiffly sat down beside Harry (and looked, to Harry, as if he would rather have collapsed into the seat), and Malfoy, whose mouth had been dumbly hanging open from the moment Ron's House was announced, finally found his voice. "What are you doing here?" he shrieked, staring at Ron as if he were some sort of three-headed monster.

Ron's constipated expression disappeared, and he gave Malfoy a perplexed look, then tapped his left ear. "Your hearing all right?" he asked. "Didn't you hear the Sorting Hat?"

Malfoy turned pink as Theodore Nott snickered. "But –"

Whatever he was about to say was drowned out by "Zabini, Blaise," the last first-year remaining, being made a Slytherin. As Harry watched, Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat away; a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he looked around to see a very tall, thin old wizard, who had been seated at the center of the High Table, getting to his feet. From the Chocolate Frog card Harry had gotten on the train, he recognized the old wizard at once as Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore beamed at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there; many of the Slytherin students did not seem to return the sentiment, as Harry saw and heard a good deal of scowling and surly muttering even from his fellow first-years. Well, both Ron and Hermione had said Dumbledore was the only one who could beat the Slytherins while fighting fairly, and the Slytherins seemed to both know it and not like it one bit.

"Welcome," said Dumbledore. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are:

"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!"

He sat back down; everyone clapped and cheered, even the Slytherins, though they seemed to be doing it more for appearances' sake than anything else. "Is he – a bit mad?" he asked Theodore Nott, seated across from him, uncertainly.

"Rumor has it that he's completely senile," Theodore Nott replied with a smirk, taking Harry aback.

"Well, then, he does awfully well for a senile wizard, doesn't he?" Hermione said in a pointed tone; Theodore Nott's smirk inverted itself.

"Brain died a while back, forgot to tell the mouth to stop moving," Millicent Bulstrode grunted from Hermione's left. "Pass the pork chops."

As Harry glanced down at the table, his mouth fell open: the dishes in front of him were now piled with every sort of food: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs. Theodore Nott ladled off some of that last one onto his plate, closing his eyes in bliss as he spooned a heap of them into his mouth.

Had Harry not been so hungry, he would have lost his appetite then and there; as it was, it was only a momentary distraction before he began to fill his own plate with a bit of everything (except for the humbugs). The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry, but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if it made him sick. Now, though….

All of it was delicious, and Harry found himself enjoying it more than he had enjoyed any other meal he could remember (not that it was saying much); Ron seemed to agree, judging from the gusto with which he devoured his plate and went back for seconds. When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them as sparkling clean as before. A moment later, the desserts appeared: blocks of ice cream in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding –

"It's terrible for your teeth," Hermione whispered in his ear, but Harry shrugged her off and helped himself to a treacle tart. He brushed his teeth regularly (stealing Dudley's toothbrush, since he didn't even want to think about what might have been done to 'his'), and he was sure wizards had some way of taking care of teeth if that failed. Miffed, she turned away and started interrogating various students as to which classes they were looking forward to the most.

"So you're his other friend?" Daphne Greengrass was asking Ron. "Did you know Granger before the train ride?"

Ron swallowed his bite of chocolate éclair before answering. "Never saw her before the Hogwarts Express."

"You ran across Harry Potter independently, then?" Daphne asked, sounding disappointed; while the Sorting had still been going on, she'd told Harry that she would have spent the entire time looking for him if she'd known he was just wandering about the train, but she'd thought he'd been in some special compartment by himself. He supposed it must have made her feel even worse to know that not one, but two people had gotten the chance she'd missed.

"So did I," Malfoy sneered, "but you weren't missing much. Potter here thinks he's too good for help, doesn't he, Potter?"

That focused the attention of everyone nearby on him, and Harry really wished Malfoy hadn't said anything. He couldn't let that pass, though, and so sighed and responded, "I said I didn't want your help – and that isn't the same thing at all.

"Yes, I want to do things for myself – but that's so I can say that I'm more than just this –" He brushed back his hair from his forehead and tapped on his scar, then let his bangs fall back over it again, much to the apparent disappointment of some of the people nearby him. "If I thought I was too good for everybody else, I'd be going completely the other way, wouldn't I? Thinking I never had to prove anything because I was the Boy-Who-Lived… Actually," he said, narrowing his eyes at Malfoy, "I bet I'd be thinking I could offer people 'help' would be telling them that the friends they've already got are the wrong sort, and that they ought to make much better ones, wouldn't I?"

Malfoy went pink again. "You ungrateful –"

"I am grateful for the advice you gave me, I told you that already," Harry said, "but it doesn't mean I have to like you." With that, he turned back to finishing off his treacle tart.

"Would anyone else at this table care to disagree that some wizarding families are much better than others, and that no one in their right mind would place the Weasleys amongst the former?" he heard Malfoy snarl. "Aside from you, Weasley!" After a brief pause, he added, "And I already suspected you weren't in your right mind, Granger."

"The Hat sent this one to us without a moment's pause – he can't be too horrible," said Tracey Davis from a few seats down. "I suppose Potter saw potential you missed."

"Why, Granger, you'll have company in the Sealed Ward," Malfoy said in a pleasant voice. "I do hope you get along well."

"Draco," spoke up Pansy Parkinson in a hesitant voice from beside Daphne Greengrass, "we're going to be spending the next seven years in this House with these people… Perhaps a bit more… diplomacy… might be a good idea?"

"Pansy? How could you?"

Genuine hurt and betrayal filled Malfoy's voice; Harry uncomfortably glanced over at the High Table, wishing he was somewhere else, and tried to get a good look at the witches and wizards who would be his teachers at Hogwarts. There was Hagrid, of course, who seemed to be downing goblets of something at a remarkable rate; a few chairs away, as if to make Hagrid seem even more enormous in comparison, sat a professor so tiny that you could only see his head and shoulders over the top of the table. Professor McGonagall, meanwhile, seemed to be enjoying some dish consisting almost entirely of whipped cream – if, indeed, there was anything under the whipped cream. Of course, Harry couldn't miss seeing Professor Quirrel, the nervous young man from the Leaky Cauldron – not with that peculiar purple turban.

At the moment, Professor Quirrel was talking to a teacher with a hooked nose, greasy black hair, and sallow skin. The teacher turned his head and looked over at the Slytherin table – and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.

"Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his forehead, his eyes watering for a moment so badly that he couldn't see; when they cleared, he saw the hook-nosed teacher giving him a lingering, narrow-eyed look, then turning back to Quirrel, who didn't seem any happier to have the teacher's attention back on him than Harry had been to have it for just a moment.

The Slytherin first-years had all gotten looks on their faces that, on anyone else, he might have said was concern and curiosity, but seemed more appropriate right now to a group of sharks all smelling blood at the same time. "Somethin' bite you?" Goyle, of all people, asked, leaning past Malfoy to get a better look at him.

"It would hardly be a surprise, with Weasley next to him – probably covered in fleas –" Malfoy muttered, but Ron ignored him, so Harry did too.

"It – it's nothing," Harry said, but that wasn't good enough for the Slytherins.

"Has it ever hurt before?" Pansy Parkinson inquired, having just finished shooting an annoyed look at Malfoy.

"Er – no," said Harry, wondering if he should tell them anything; they might know something about it he didn't, and he could be somehow telling them much more than he could even guess. "Just now – and it passed in a moment, anyway." If he hadn't been absolutely stuffed, he would have started eating another piece of dessert to try to end the conversation. As it was, though, he didn't think he could even manage a bite of Jell-O.

"Perhaps it's because you've never been around this much magic before?" Theodore Nott suggested. "The ambient magical field of Hogwarts wrecks most any Muggle artifact brought into it – I've heard Ravenclaw makes an unused classroom into a museum of exploded, melted, and fried ex-artifacts every year, we should go see it – so maybe it could set off a curse scar every now and then." It took Harry by surprise: he hadn't been expecting the other boy to be the scholarly type.

"That's probably it, thanks," Harry said, pretending to be relieved; he was almost certain that it had something to do with that teacher looking at him, but he wasn't going to say that in front of everybody else. It sounded rather stupid, anyway. "Who is that teacher talking to Professor Quirrel?" he asked quickly, hoping to change the subject.

"That's Professor Snape!" Daphne Greengrass piped up, looking excited to know something he didn't. "He's our Head of House!"

That was Professor Snape? Alarmed, Harry picked his Potions textbook up from where he had put it down on the table and flipped it open, immediately burying his nose in the text. It seemed he'd have to focus on making a good impression as soon as possible – Hopefully, he wouldn't get searing pains in his scar every time Professor Snape looked at him.

"Again?" Theodore Nott asked in disbelief. "Did you take a wrong turn on the way to Ravenclaw?"

"No, it's just – we've got to prepare for class, don't we?" Harry said, not looking up. "Be a bit embarrassing if we didn't do well in Potions…"

"Our first class with him won't be until Friday, though," Theodore Nott said. "Plenty of time to prepare. Not that I mind if you don't care to eat right now, though – More for me." With that, he took a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Harry had another reason for prominently reading his Potions textbook at the table, though; even if it didn't impress Nott (or a few of the other students, to tell from the strange looks they were giving him), he hoped that, between this and his hiding behind the book earlier, Professor Snape would hear that Harry just couldn't tear himself away from Snape's favored subject, and perhaps be a bit better disposed towards him for it. He glanced up at the High Table, hoping that the professor might glance over at him again and catch him reading, but Professor Snape was talking to Professor Quirrel again, who looked increasingly antsy and kept making slight movements with his arm that looked an awful lot like he was surreptitiously checking his wristwatch.

"Don't envy Quirrel," Millicent Bulstrode commented, pushing her plate away at last. "Professor Snape's been after his job for years."

"Really?" Harry asked.

"I don't believe it," Blaise Zabini said from where he sat at the end of the table. "Oh, he may say he is, but he knows better than that."

"Why?" Harry asked at the same time that Hermione asked, "Are you talking about the curse on the Defense Against The Dark Arts professorship?"

Harry turned to Hermione with round eyes. "Curse?"

"For several decades, no Defense Against The Dark Arts professor has lasted for more than a year," Hermione explained. "Almost all of their terms of employment at Hogwarts have ended disastrously, and those who made it through with their reputation, health, and sanity intact absolutely refused to stay for another term – they said they didn't want to push their luck, you see, and that they thought they'd already used up all of theirs on that single year – at least one did perish the summer after he taught at Hogwarts, actually. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't be so silly as to believe it was an actual curse – a string of horrible coincidences, maybe, but not a curse – but after a few decades of it happening every single year, I would think anyone would have to admit there was something more to it, don't you?"

"I take it back, Granger, did you take a wrong turn on the way to Ravenclaw?" Theodore Nott said, staring at her in disbelief; his spoonful of ice cream had frozen halfway between the plate and his mouth.

"How do they even find people willing to take on the job, at this point?" asked Ron; from the shock in his voice, he obviously hadn't heard about this, either.

"Isn't it obvious, Weasley?" Malfoy sneered. "'Willing and able' has two parts to it, and Dumbledore's long since realized he can only have one. Rather like some of his followers that I could name…" He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms, and drawled to Millicent Bulstrode, "Oh, they've had a few competent professors, or so I hear, who thought they might be able to break the curse – but not one's managed to make any headway on it. Meanwhile, the rest of the bizarre and brainless crew to traipse through the post have made Defense Against The Dark Arts into an absolute laughingstock –"

"- The Chudley Cannons of Hogwarts subjects, if you will," Theodore Nott finished smoothly, and Malfoy nodded in agreement. Ron sat bolt upright and seemed about to object – from their conversation before Malfoy had come into their compartment, Harry knew the Chudley Cannons were his favorite Quidditch team – but at that point, the dessert dishes disappeared and Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again, so he didn't have the chance.

"Ahem – just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.

"First-years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well."

Dumbledore's twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of the Gryffindor table; "Fred and George, I bet," Ron whispered in Harry's ear.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

"There went half of Gryffindor!" somebody far down the table said in a stage whisper, and quite a few of the Slytherins struggled unsuccessfully to hide their snickering. Harry wondered if there was any particular reason for it, or if the Slytherins just didn't have a very high opinion of Gryffindors' "daring, nerve, and chivalry".

"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had become rather fixed, and heard whispers going down the Slytherin table that anyone with halfway decent taste in music ("So there'll be no problem for the Celestina Warbeck enthusiasts–" "Hey!") should cover their ears.

Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.

"Everyone pick their favorite tune," said Dumbledore, "and off we go!" And the school bellowed:

"Hogwarts, Hogwarts,

Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,

Teach us something please,

Whether we be old

Or young with scabby knees,

Our heads could do with filling

With some –"

"Horrible singing!" Tracey Davis said through gritted teeth as most of the school reached "interesting stuff". Harry – and, from the looks of it, a good deal of his fellow first-years – agreed.

"For now they're bare and full of air,

Dead flies and bits of fluff,

So teach us things worth knowing,

Bring back what we've forgot,

Just do your best,

We'll do the rest,

And learn until our brains all rot."

Everybody finished the song at different times. At last, only two harmonizing voices from the Gryffindor table were left singing along to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand and, when they had finished, he was one of those who clapped loudest.

"Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. Malfoy was wiping his eyes, too, but for different reasons. ("My singing tutor's rolling in his grave! And he isn't even dead yet!") "A magic beyond all we do here!"

"I think you're right –" Ron said in horror to Theodore Nott, "he has gone completely senile!" The other boy only smirked in response.

"And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"

The Slytherin first years followed a prefect through the chattering crowds, out of the Great Hall, and up the marble staircase. Harry's year-mates had picked now to try to ask him more questions, which he was feeling far too stuffed and sleepy to answer coherently, but Ron and Hermione fortunately flanked him and kept some of his would-be interrogators away – so, thwarted, they took to asking Ron and Hermione questions instead.

"Didn't all you Grangers move to Australia over a decade ago?" Emma Vane asked as they passed a long row of portraits that were all running back and forth between their various frames and chattering about how excited they were by the start of the school year

"What?" Hermione asked in bewilderment, and Harry looked over curiously. Was there a wizarding family by the name of Granger, too? That would be a funny coincidence…

"Obviously, some of them came back after the Dark Lord's disappearance – they wouldn't be the only ones to do so by far – or she comes from a minor branch which never left," Theodore Nott said in a bored voice from the front of the group. "Otherwise, she'd be going to that school they have in the Outback – what is it called, again?"

Nobody seemed to know, so that conversation ended there. They descended down a narrow, spiraling marble staircase, Ron making a point of crowding in behind Harry as they stepped onto it ("Bet more than a few people have 'tripped'," he muttered darkly when Harry glanced over his shoulder), and from there entered a long maze of twisty little passages, all alike. "Right through there is where you'll be having Potions," the prefect said, pointing through an open doorway into a room that looked more like a dungeon than any classroom Harry had ever seen – though it did have desks and a blackboard, he saw after a moment. "And over here is Professor Snape's office. It's not too much further to– Oh, drat."

A bundle of walking sticks had just come zooming down the corridor, apparently on their own, and were now arrayed in midair before the Slytherins like a bunch of javelins; the prefect shook her head and made a noise of disgust. "Peeves," she said in a tone normally reserved for obscenities. "You know better than to interfere with us."

A loud, rude sound, like the air being let out of a balloon, answered, and one of the walking sticks went sharply back in the air, as if it was about to be hurled. The prefect, however, stood her ground.

"I'd advise that you relocate to the Hufflepuff region of the school, unless you want a fight with the Bloody Baron."

The walking stick shot straight for her head. She ducked, and, before it could hit any of the first-years, swung her wand and shouted a few words Harry didn't understand; the stick changed course abruptly and slammed into the wall instead, dropping down onto the stone floor with a clattering sound. As she straightened back up, there was a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide, smirking mouth appeared, floating cross-legged in the air behind the walking sticks.

"Baron? What Baron? I don't see a Baron anywhere," he sneered, letting out nasty snickers. "All I see is one widdle fifth-year and a bunch of ickle firsties." He snapped his fingers, and this time, all of the walking sticks drew back ominously.

"Really?" Harry said, looking upwards. "Who's that coming through the ceiling, then?"

"Ha! You must think I'm stupid, to fall for – Aiiiiiyiieeeeeeeeeeeegh!"

The walking sticks crashed to the floor as the Bloody Baron's arms closed around Peeves from behind; Peeves, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head, struggled desperately as the Baron tightened his grip, moving one large, brutish hand up to clamp halfway around Peeves's neck, its thumb pressing into Peeves's windpipe. Harry, knowing how that felt from experience, involuntarily winced.

"Just – ghhhhk! – playing a bit with the firsties, Mister Baron," Peeves whimpered in a small, choked voice, "just – ghhk! – playing, honest, that's all – it was – urk! – nothing, really – please don't hurt me, please don't – ghhhk! – hurt meeeee…"

They slowly floated downwards, Peeves pleading and thrashing all the while; he was still crying for mercy as they sank together through the floor, but the Bloody Baron seemed not at all moved by his pleas. After they vanished completely from sight, there was silence for several seconds, and nobody moved. Then, the prefect turned back to face them, and jerked her thumb down at the floor through which the two ghosts had disappeared.

"That was Peeves, a poltergeist," she said. "Normally, he's not stupid enough to go after us, but I suppose he was feeling unusually adventurous this year. He won't be making any trouble for a few days after this, though – I can assure you of that." Harry shivered at the note of finality in her voice. "On that note, let us continue onwards – you can take walking sticks as souvenirs, if you want."

There weren't enough for everyone, but Harry, Ron, and Hermione managed to get one each. Malfoy, too, obtained one – the one Peeves had hurled, actually – and looked quite pleased.

It wasn't too much farther until they came to a stop, but there didn't seem to be anything there – just a bare, damp stone wall. Harry was confused for a moment, but wasn't yet so sleepy that he'd forgotten everything he'd seen about magic – He just wondered whether it was an illusion, like the one hiding Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, or a real wall that you had to tap in a certain place to make it open, like the entrance to Diagon Alley. This one was smooth, though, instead of being made out of bricks, so he didn't know how people could memorize where they had to tap it – Maybe the prefect would show them once, and they'd all have to remember the exact place to prove they were smart enough to stay in Slytherin? Harry swallowed as he stared at the wall, and clutched his walking stick. He knew he could manage it if they tested him right after the prefect did it herself, but he wasn't sure he'd still remember the next morning…

Fortunately, it turned out it was neither of the two options. "Parseltongue," the prefect said shortly, and part of the wall slid away with a loud, grating noise; without a moment's pause, she strode through the newly-appeared doorway, and the first-years followed suit.

The first things Harry noticed were the round, greenish lamps hanging on chains from the low ceiling, casting an eerie light over the whole room; the second were the long windows embedded in the rough stone walls, which seemed to open only into utter darkness –

Daphne Greengrass gave a sudden shriek, and as the rest of the first-years turned to see what had scared her, a chorus of yells and screams followed: a gigantic, off-green tentacle was trailing past one of the windows, each of its hundreds of suckers at least two inches across. Harry stood petrified, his eyes the size of saucers; his terrified brain gabbled that this must be "Slytherin's monster", that –

The prefect burst out laughing. "That's just the giant squid! Completely harmless. Your pets are more dangerous than it is."

Harry didn't quite believe this, though he noticed, when he glanced off to the side for a moment, that Ron was giving Scabbers a very disturbed look indeed. The rat, for his part, was fast asleep.

"It couldn't get in even if it wanted to, besides – and if it ever had half a chance, we'd have far more than that to worry about… such as drowning."

On that cheery note, they were directed to their rooms, with Hermione going through one door to the girls' dormitory and Harry and Ron going through another to the boys'. They quickly said goodnight to each other and wished each other luck with their parts of the plan (which earned them alarmed looks from those of their Housemates that overheard them – Harry had to admit, it probably sounded bad if you hadn't been in the compartment) before splitting up, then headed through their respective doors. Harry, Ron, and the other Slytherin boys quickly arrived at a place where the corridor they were in split off into seven different branches, and took the leftmost fork, as the prefect had instructed (in the girls' dormitory, it would be the rightmost fork instead). At its end, they found their beds at last: seven four-posters hung with vivid green silk curtains. By the faint light of a silver lantern, Harry could see their trunks had already been brought up.

"Now, children, don't smother your roommates in their sleep," Blaise Zabini said, heading for his trunk. "It'd reflect badly on our House if word got around that there'd been a murder before our first night was out."

"So it needs to look like an accident, is that what you're saying, Zabini?" asked Malfoy at the same time that Ron asked, "So the second night's fair game?"

They gave each other wary glances, neither looking as if he thought the other boy was really joking, and claimed beds on opposite ends of the room as soon as they'd gotten their pajamas out of their trunks. Harry took the bed next to Ron's, Theodore Nott the bed on Harry's other side, Blaise Zabini the one to the left of Theodore Nott, and Crabbe and Goyle the remaining two. There wasn't any more talking, because it was all they could do to get their pajamas on before climbing into bed and passing out.

"Well, here we are in Slytherin," Ron muttered through the hangings, his voice sounding slightly muffled; Harry guessed he was lying face-down on his pillow.

"Not so bad, is it?" Harry mumbled back.

"Guess… Only met the other first-years… an' a prefect, though…" He yawned. "Not taking any bets… until we've met the older years…"

Harry didn't have the energy even to get gloomy about what might happen then, so he didn't respond.

"Well, at least… great food, wasn't it?"

Harry mumbled some sort of agreement, his eyes drifting shut as he listened to the lake-water sloshing back and forth outside. He thought of asking Ron if he'd had any of the treacle tart, but before he could, he'd fallen sound asleep.

He was back in the compartment again, looking back and forth between Ron and Hermione as they argued; Ron shook his head and turned to Harry, his expression beseeching.

"Harry, this isn't like you… You don't want to stand out, do you? All you've ever desired is to remain unnoticed, to have a life like anyone else – to be normal – and all you've ever dreaded is to be singled out –"

"But it's different now!" Harry blurted out. "The cuttlefish are dancing in the gardens, and the sky is bright cheese six!"

The fog of dream-logic abruptly vanished, as if seared away by a hot light, and he scrambled to replace what he'd just said with something coherent. "But that's not true," said Harry. "When I was living with the Dursleys, nobody noticed me much at all, and that was what made it so bad –"

"That's not true," Ron said, his voice growing agitated. "You know it isn't true, Harry – It was because they singled you out –"

"Nobody cared!" Harry shouted, the cry welling up from somewhere deep within him; he ordinarily would've died rather than sound so embarrassing, but all his inhibitions seemed to have taken a trip to Timbuktu. "Everybody ignored me, everybody told me I wasn't worth caring about, everybody passed me up for much better friends, and students, and children – and all because I was the wrong sort!"

"In your heart of hearts, Harry, do you really believe they set Dudley on you, and locked you in that cupboard, and did everything they could to make sure you never had any friends, never had somebody who might have given you a kind word, never had anything to make life slightly more bearable – because they didn't care enough?"

A creeping chill went up Harry's spine and spread out over his shoulder-blades; he shook his head, taking several steps back, and tried to reorient himself. For a moment, he could have sworn the compartment blurred and looked like somewhere else, but it came back again before he could fix his mind on the image. "Dudley just did that because he could – he's a bully, they do that," he said. "And they put me in the cupboard because they didn't want to bother with giving me a room, and they didn't give me all the chores as a punishment, really, it was just because they wanted me to make myself useful. And they sincerely hated my mum and dad and thought they were degenerates… I guess… look, I wasn't happy about it, either," he added fiercely, "but they were just telling people what they thought about my parents, without caring about how I might feel about any of it, and what they thought about me – it wasn't as if they were deliberately turning everybody against me or any of that stuff. They just… were."

"They did it deliberately, and they'll do it again – they already think you're a freak, don't you getit, Harry? They all want to be your friends now, because you did something that impressed them, but once you do something that scares them, or you can't show them how you did the trick, they'll turn on you, all of them will – Teach the little freak a lesson, make him stop doing it –"

Harry felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he shouted, overcome by a wave of mingled fear and revulsion. "I don't know –"

"The only reason you don't is that the knowledge would have destroyed you," Ron shouted back, "and the only reason you're in one piece now is that you did give up that knowledge, willingly, and gave up taking matters into your own hands, gave up changing your lot! That's what saved you back then, Harry, and that's what will save you now!"

The wind howled around Harry, biting him to the bone, and he squeezed his eyes shut and hugged himself, shivering violently –

Wind? What wind? Perplexed, he opened his eyes and looked around, and found he wasn't in a compartment anymore: he and Ron were standing outside, the sky above them black and filled with clouds that hid the stars, the night around them cold and bleak, and the rest of their surroundings impossible to make out clearly in the darkness. Even so, he had the oddest, most disconcerting feeling that he'd been in this place before.

Ron, breathing hard, sat down on a long, rectangular chunk of wood that looked like half of a former roof beam; a flicker of worry went through Harry as it occurred to him that it was a great way to get loads of splinters. As though he'd been able to hear the thought, Ron looked up at Harry and gave him a tired and wan smile.

"Come on, mate," he said, extending his hand up to Harry. "Just take my hand, and we'll forget about all this rot. Tell Dumbledore that you went into Slytherin for a laugh, just to see how everybody would react, and now you'd like to get Sorted for real – someplace like Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, but even Ravenclaw would be good, if you didn't try too hard. Then, you can settle down to showing them all that you're perfectly normal: not a bad student, but not a great one; not a weak wizard, but not a powerful one; not a rotten person, but not a saintly one; always ordinary, never extraordinary–"

"And what if that's not what I want?" Harry asked. "What if I want to be extraordinary – what if I wouldn't mind being a great student and a powerful wizard?" Even as he said it, it sounded silly, but he continued, "I mean – I don't know if I'm good enough to be either– and I'm not really a saint, even if it'd be nice to be one – but why can't I at least try?"

Ron stared up at him, his face ashen with despair, and took a few short, labored breaths; he tried to speak, but couldn't form a response – only a horrible, distorted sound of agony came out, like the cry of a dying animal – then shook his head, continuing to make that terrible sound, and buried his face in his hands, breaking into a long, helpless, and exhausted wail–

And the dream collapsed.

Harry's eyes popped wide open, and he sat up straight in bed, his heart thumping so hard that he was uncontrollably shaking; it had been terrifying, the dream he'd just had, and disturbed him beyond words, what with –

What with what?

He blinked into the darkness, trying to remember just what the dream had been about, but it slipped away from his grasp. There'd been… Ron? He thought there'd been Ron. And then, there'd been that eerie place, the dark and chilly – His train of thought derailed at the end of the sentence as he found himself missing the noun. What was it? All he could remember of the rapidly fading dream was that the end had been remarkably dark and chilly…

Shaking his head, he lay back down again, closing his eyes. It had been a very full and exciting day, and it'd probably stirred up a wilder dream than the ones he was used to at the Dursleys' because he actually had things to dream about, for once. Or perhaps it was because he'd eaten so much before bed, or perhaps because – he grimaced – he had the worst headache, and he'd had an uneasy dream because of his uneasy sleep. It didn't matter, anyway; it was just a dream.

And when he awoke the next morning to Ron's shouts of "Scabbers, you treacherous little – When I told you not to eat the sheets, I didn't mean for you to eat the candy!", he didn't remember the dream at all.

Author's Note:

Timeline explanation – Harry and Ron purchase snacks on the Hogwarts Express at half past twelve. They then discuss the snacks and eat them, Hermione comes in and leaves, and the rest of the time until Draco arrives is filled with Ron talking about Quidditch. After Draco leaves, it's getting dark. Wait, what? I know Ron's devoted to Quidditch, but, assuming it gets dark at five (just to give things the benefit of the doubt – though isn't it a bit strange for the sun to be setting that early on September 1st?), they ate snacks for half an hour before Hermione came in, and that the conversations we saw between Ron, Harry, and Hermione took an hour in all, Ron talked to Harry about Quidditch alone for a little under three hours straight.

"What!" Ron looked dumbfounded. "Oh, you wait, it's the best game in the world -" And he was off, explaining all about the four balls and the positions of the seven players, describing famous games he'd been to with his brothers and the broomstick he'd like to get if he had the money. He was just taking Harry through the finer points of the game when the compartment door slid open yet again, but it wasn't Neville the toadless boy, or Hermione Granger this time.

Look, I know it worked out best if Draco came in right before they arrived, but – that paragraph is a three hour timeskip?

As such, I figured I had plenty of leeway for Draco's altered arrival time – and it barely counts as an alteration of canon, since the change would have caused no differences in canon whatsoever. Consider it a Flint. –shrug- (Frankly, when I began writing this fic, it had been several years since I last read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, so I had no idea when Draco arrived and assumed he arrived some time before the Hogwarts Express reached its destination. By the time I found out otherwise, I obviously couldn't fit over six thousand words into five minutes or however long Harry, Ron, and Hermione would have canonically had to chat after his departure – fortunately, I had Ron's filibuster freeing up that massive time slot…)

Reviews appreciated.