Orientation Day
Hari rubbed their eyes, sliding out of their bed and into their slippers. They took their glasses and slipped it on, their vision immediately clearing up, the fogginess of their eyesight fading away.
They headed towards the bathroom door and tried to turn the knob, something that was fruitless as the knob won't twist: it was stuck. Hari glanced at the sign on top of the door, their cheeks reddening slightly.
‘OCCUPIED!’ the sign read, to their absolute embarrassment.
Hari turns swiftly and sharply. They unlocks the bolts to their trunk, and fingers the several locks (seven, in fact) on the chest. Each tier of their trunk revealed different things. The first contained their clothes, the second had an undetectable extension charm that had a library built into it and the third was similar to the second with their school supplies, organized into a small office and a desk and everything. The fourth contained their ordinary things, the fifth a series of extra supplies, the sixth their contained their magical objects and the seventh and most secure contained their money, galleons, sickles and knuts, organized into bland brown pouches.
They rifle through their clothes for a bit and take out their uniform, holding it up to them as they look into the mirror. Their hair felt short to them, even though it was the same length as it was yesterday. Hari throws their clothes on their bed, preparing their shoes to go with them.
They turned around and looked at the ‘OCCUPIED!’ sign. No one was in the room with them, if they lengthened their hair a bit, would anyone notice? They could always say it was a potion to increase their hair length or a spell that their guardian taught them, no one would think they were a metamorphmagus. They wondered what would happen if they found out that they were metamorphmagus, would they report them to the teachers? The school board? Maybe even the Ministry? Or maybe they won’t, Hari thinks. Maybe they’d understand, see past the corruption and decide to keep Hari’s secret.
Still, Hari decides as they go to a corner where they were hidden from anyone walking out of the bathroom. It was better to be safe than sorry. Hari watched as their hair grew a few inches. It was mesmerizing. They were rarely ever allowed to change their appearance, so when they did it was always a treat to them. Like a child getting their hand into a jar of sweets.
Hari heard the sound of a door opening and quickly stopped what they were doing. The bathroom door opened and out came what looked like a student who was seventeen or eighteen years old. They had dark black hair, light brown skin and golden-yellow eyes that were startlingly bright. They were tall, especially for a girl and looked to be university-age, and were mostly fully-dressed, save for their robes, socks and shoes, the latter two being rather obvious.
The presumed-university student grinned. “You must be my new roommate! My name’s Evanna Lee! She/her pronouns and I’m in my first year of uni. What about you?”
“Hari… Hari Potter. Um… They/them pronouns… at the moment, at least.” They stuttered out. “I’m a first year student.” Hari winced at how shaky their voice was, mostly from the nerves.
Evanna gave them an indulgent smile, and glances at their head. “So about your hair…”
Hari felt a trickle of sweat rolling down their forehead despite the chilliness of the morning, their palms damp and uncomfortable. Evanna lets the tension in the room rise, unclipping the hair clip that held her hair up, letting thick black hair tumble down just pass her shoulders. “What conditioner do you use?”
“Shaklemoot’s,” Hari blurted out before they could stop themself. Hari found themself blushing as that was a near-complete lie. “W-well, I used to use Shacklemoot’s,” they said, stammering through. “I haven’t used it in a long time.”
Evanna gives them that smile of indulgence, pats their hair as she walks through and slips on the robe that Hari now noticed lying on their roommate’s bed. “First day nerves?” Hari didn’t get the chance to answer. “Well, if that’s the case, it’s pretty understandable. Everyone gets it. Now, scram and get to the bathrooms. You smell disgusting.”
Hari runs off with towel and pants and shirt in hand as if their pants were on fire, too relieved to even argue.
After they were done taking a shower, they came out and noticed Evanna was still outside.
“Come one!” She said, “I'll take you to the Hall.”
Instead of using a secret passage, they went out through the front doors. The doors were large, so large in fact they could easily let a 9 feet tall giant pass through. As soon as they passed the doors, it disappeared, leaving Hari with their mouth wide open.
“Ah yes, the doors do that.” Evanna says. “To get into the dorms, you could either use a secret passage or walk back and forth in front of the place where the doors are supposed to be three times and say the password every time you walk past the door.”
“What’s the password?” Hari asked, amazement flooding them. It was cool and a bit easier than the Slytherin dorms because at least they wouldn’t have to tap a certain sequence of bricks or quarrel with a portrait as to why they should be let into their own common rooms.
“The password for this week is Pigfarts.” Evanna answered with a giggle. “The password is on the common room bulletin board, we have a vote for it in the group every week on saturday.”
“The group?”
“You're not in the whatsapp group?”
Hari shook their heads. “No?”
“Oh right!” She said, slapping her forehead. “The prefects would tell you that during the orientation. But I’ll add you to the chat now if you don’t mind. You're a Slytherin right?”
“Er… yes.”
“Well each house has their own whatsapp groups, each year has their own whatsapp groups and each class has their own whatsapp group. Oh! I almost forgot about the school-wide group, messages every half a second, a truly maddening experience. Here, I’ll add you to our common room one and the school-wide one right now. Though, I can’t help you with the others because I’m a Ravenclaw and not a Slytherin.”
Hari thanks Evanna, handing her their phone. The raven’s fingers flew over the screen and in less than a minute, she had set up an entirely new account for their phone.
“So… what were your dorms like?” Reggie asked them as they sat down to eat their cereal.
“It was great! Our dorms weren’t sorted by year though, rather by hobbies and interests.” Hari said.
“That’s nice.” Reggie said, shoving a spoonful of chocolate cereals and milk into his mouth. “Oh, and after orientation, be sure to head to my dorm to collect your little Devil cat.”
“Why would Crookshanks be with you?” Hari asks in confusion.
“Apparently, the house elves thought that it was mine,” Regulus sniffs in disdain. “She kept meow-ing loudly at night, too, I could barely sleep.”
“Why?” Hari questioned. “Where was she sleeping?”
“In that pet carrier she came in.”
“YOU LET MY POOR BABY SLEEP IN A CAGE!” At this point Hari was getting some odd looks from their fellow house members. But they could care less, how dare Reggie make Crookshanks sleep in an uncomfortable pet carrier at night. “Don’t you have the decency to let her sleep in your bed with you?”
“No, because I didn’t want to wake up with cat fur all over my clothes.”
“Poor baby...” Hari bemoaned.
“You will not believe what a night-” Draco started before he was cut off.
“Shut up Dray, no one cares.” Reggie said.
“We have bigger problems to worry about.” Hari said as they took another bite of the cereal. “Did you know that apparently Regulus left Crookshanks in his cage ?” They said it in a scandalized tone, making it clear that they did not approve of this particular development.
“Le gasp.” Draco said, a bit sarcastically, his eyes darkened and he had a nervous grin on his face. “Wait, really? So the sounds-”
“-The sounds?” Hari asked.
“Oh nothing… just a dream, you see I was dreaming abou-”
“- Did you peasants sleep well last night?” a girl said as she came up to them. “None of us girls did. We’ve been hearing the sound of a dying cat all night long, we’re not sure where it came from, of course, but Millicent -of the Bulstrode Family, that is- has had a cat that died of a terrible illness. She said that the sound we heard last night was exactly like the one her cat made as it died. She has a new cat, of course, but it’s a completely unrelated subject.”
Hari snickers, giving Regulus -who throws his hands up in exasperation- a pointed glance.
“What is it?” the girl said, demand, really, if Hari was to be frank.
“That no good swine over there.” Hari said as they pointed at Reggie. “Forgot to take my dear Crookshanks out of his pet carrier last night, so my poor baby had to sleep in that tiny cramped thing all night long.”
“Poor thing.”
“I know!” Hari bemoaned. They rubbed their hands over their face and turned to face Regulus. “Speaking of which, where is Crookshanks?”
Regulus turns up his nose, “In the boys’ dormitories.”
Hari raises an eyebrow, but says nothing, choosing to finish up their breakfast instead.
When the mail came. Hari sighed into their cereal, fully expecting a big bold title that said something along the lines of: The Boy who Lived has a Twin? What Else have We Been Lied About?
Instead, he was slightly shocked (and relieved) when he saw the news:
UNVEILING: THE SECRETS OF THE LIVING VEIL.
Just below the article was an equally large article that talked about him being the twin of Chandra Potter, but from the looks on everyone's faces at the Slytherin table. Everyone was focused on the article about the veil. It contained a couple of words from a new journalist and the rest was a picture of a letter.
“Whoa.” Was all they could say. “Wonder what’s happening?”
From what they could gather, the letter was top secret and was for an Unspeakable. They wondered whether or not the journalist would be fined, or jailed for airing this top secret government secret for the world to see. Perhaps she was a pureblood. A pureblood with connections or a respectable lineage, that would explain the audacity she and her editor and the reason why publisher could print this, at most she would probably get a slap on the wrist and would be ‘scolded’ so she would never do this again.
But if she was a half-blood without a good lineage or proper connections or (may Pluto let her unfortunate soul into Elysium) a muggleborn and had written the article… Hari would rather not think about what would or is happening to her as most of the times when these sort of things happen, journalists tend to ‘disappear’ for a few days and ‘appear’ a few days later, floating along on the river Thames, with their bodies filled with gashes and bruises.
Most of the time these cases get ruled as a suicide and the cases get shut down forever, and the few times it did not get shut down… well, let’s just say that things did not end up well for the aurors investigating the deaths.
Hari was too immersed in their own thoughts to notice the Professor coming towards the first year Slytherins.
“Good morning children.”
Hari and the other Slytherins looked up and saw a tall, but not too tall professor, she looked about… thirty? Witches and Wizards here in the wizarding world started to age half as fast then normal people when they become 17, so she must have been around her mid forties.
She looked at them with crimson red eyes. “My name is Helias Joan Withburt. I expect that you will call me Professor Withburt, of course. I am here today to conduct your orientation, a recently added thing so students wouldn’t get lost.”
Professor Withburt started to hand out ID cards, complete with the card holder and everything. Hari looked at their own ID card. It had a picture of them, their name on, Hogwarts’ name, logo, an eight digit code on it as well as the word ‘STUDENT’ written in big, bold letters.
“These are your identification cards, be sure to keep them on you at all times. Now if you pay attention to the card, on the back you will see four separate squares, each square represents a different part of your identification: your medical list, your time table, library access and the merits and demerits that you’ve earned. To view one of them, simply double tap a square, and to close a tab, double tap the square again.”
Hari double tapped the second square and his timetable appeared in front of them like a hologram.
“Excuse me, Professor?” one of the girls asked. Hari thought she looked familiar, and she was when they realized the resemblance between her and Perrie Parkinson -a half French half British pureblood pianist caught red-handed for muggle hunting and later released due to ‘evidence of not guilty’ was found- was very much uncanny.
“Yes Miss Parkinson?”
Yep. They called it. Hari mentally sighed. It was going to be a pain for them to share a class with her. They slowly looked at the top of the holographic timetable.
Theirs said ‘1D’ in big, bold letters.
“Why is it,” Pansy Parkinson said slowly, “That the top of my sheet is listed as 1A whilst Daphne’s is listed as 1B?”
So the Parkinson brat was in 1A whilst they were in 1D, Hari thought in absolute relief. Thank the Gods for such small mercies…
“That is because you are assigned to sections,” Professor Withburt explains, looking at Pansy critically. The professor squints her eyes, looking as if she’s about to dissect Pansy before saying, “Sections are chosen by the random Ms Parkinson, so no, You will not be able to change it, no matter how influential your family is.”
The brat gave a small, smug smile and her eyes glinted with malicious intent, as if she was saying ‘We’ll see about that.’
“Does anybody have any other queries about the ID card before I continue?”
The Professor started to walk them towards one of the staircases, next to the staircase was a large portrait of a fruit bowl. “This is the entrance to the kitchen. If you are late for breakfast, lunch or dinner or just want a snack or something, you can come here to ask the House elves for something to eat.” She said, “To enter the kitchen, simply tickle the pear.”
Wow, Hari thought, how creative.
The rest of the tour was quite informative, Withburt took them to the lowest level of the castle, B-7 (basement level 7). They were expected to have all their classes there (barring any outdoor activities) and were expected to come up to the ground floor for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In B-7, there were dozens and dozens of rooms and passageways. At the very end of the hall was a staircase, a teachers staffroom and the entrances for the washrooms (girls, boys and unisex washrooms.) The same was on the other end of the corridor (except for the staff room).
In between, there were classrooms with numbers and letters from 1A-1J and an indoor games room, a library, an auditorium and a music room.
Saying this place was big was an understatement.
There were also dozens of other spare rooms on the floor, perhaps they were there for clubs? There were clubs at Hogwarts right? Hari knew about the most famous club at Hogwarts: Quidditch. They wondered if there were other such clubs.
There were, in fact, quite a number of clubs at Hogwarts, the professor urged them to choose at least one club to be a part of.
Hari decided to go for Theater, he wanted to be a part of the gliding club or the writing club, but they didn’t have a broomstick so he couldn’t try out for the gliding club and they asked Professor Withburt what is usually done in the writing club and she said they normally write poetry and descriptive writing pieces. While both of those were nice ways to express oneself, Hari preferred narrative writing and pieces of writing with more action, better.
Regulus and Draco chose the debate club. From what they could hear from the group of girls, Pansy and Daphne chose to be a part of the choir.
After lunch, most of the students were allowed to explore the castle and interact with their friends and what not.
Except for Hari that is.
Apparently, the genderqueer dorms had their own orientation that they couldn’t give last night because it was too late at night, so now they were going to be given the tour after lunch.
Bidding Draco and Regulus goodbye, Hari set off with Evanna to the Orientation place.
They went up the staircase and all the way to the GQ dorms. But instead of entering the dorms, Evanna took them to another secret room, right next to the dorms. There were a couple of rows of seats and a person on the stage. Evanna ushered them into one of the closest seats, it looked like the orientation had already begun.
“Welcome to your orientation.” The figure said. “I’m Alex Porter. Today I’m going to explain all the fun stuff we do here at the GQD.”
It was kinda informative, but Hari just wanted to go back to their dorms to sleep off all the food they ate. Turns out this room next to their dorms was called the ROR, the Room of requirement (also known as the come and go room) every Sunday, during the morning hours of after breakfast and before lunch, they wish for the ROR to turn into a beach and they get to enjoy the beach for a few hours before lunch time.
Nice, Hari always loved the beach, but things got in the way so they couldn’t always go to the beach for vacation.
And every last Friday of the month, they have a masquerade ball using the gowns and suits they find in the ROR and the Elves provide them with food.
Extra nice.
The day ended when Professor Withburt took Hari and four other students to the sick rooms to get a full health checkup to check if everything was ok with their systems.
The Sick rooms had about fourteen medimages, the head of the department being a mediwitch called Poppy Pomfrey. After getting the all clear, Hari was allowed to leave for dinner.
The day ended and as they packed their school bags for tomorrow's classes and fell asleep, Hari hoped that the teachers that they would meet tomorrow would be nice and kind unlike the teachers from his muggle school, whom he remembered to be awfully strict. Hari dosed off into a peaceful sleep.