Sorting and Slytherin
For the remainder of the journey, Harry was reading his books while Theodore and Blaise talked, busy with their activities to notice the time, until there was another knock from the cart lady around half past twelve there was a great clattering outside at the corridor and a smiling, dimpled woman slid back their door and said, “Anything off the cart, dears?”
Harry, who hadn’t tried any magical candies, leapt to his feet, accompanied by Blaise who turned out to have a bit of a sweet tooth. Not knowing what to choose, Harry ended up taking what looked 'safe' to him, a couple of sugar quills, a few chocolate frogs, and peppermint toads and paid the cart lady with his heir ring.
“What are these?” Harry asked Blaise and Theodore, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs. “They’re not frogs, are they?” He was starting to feel that nothing would surprise him. “No,” said Theo. “But see what the card is and the trick is, immediately take a bite and it can only jump once.”
“What?”
“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know — Chocolate Frogs have cards inside them, you know, to collect — famous witches and wizards. I, personally, threw them away since I didn't collect them.”
Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a man’s face. He wore half-moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, flowing silver hair, beard, and moustache. Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore.
“So this is Dumbledore!” said Harry.
"Huh, aren't you supposedly grown up under his protection? That's what Grandfather said once." Said Theo.
"Well, no and I'd take everything you've heard about me from him with a grain of salt."
Harry turned over his card and read:
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS
Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel.
Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and ten pin bowling.
The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills. There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. He looked quite tearful.
“Sorry,” he said, “but have you seen a toad at all?”
When they shook their heads, he wailed, “I’ve lost him! He keeps getting away from me!”
“He’ll turn up,” said Harry.
“Yes,” said the boy miserably. “Well, if you see him …”
He left.
“Uh, who’s that?” asked Harry.
“That is Neville Longbottom, The Heir of Ancient and Most Noble House of Longbottom. We don’t know much about him, he’s pretty reclusive.” Theodore answered offhandedly.
“I could introduce you to the other heirs later, if you want.” Blaise piped up. “No, I think you might benefit from knowing Heiress Bones. She’s the niece of the Head of DMLE.” he continued.
Befriending the niece of the Head of DMLE did seem extremely beneficial, because no matter how competent you are, who you know matters too, and knowing Harry had a pretty life changing case up his sleeve, it’s not a bad idea.
Just before Harry opened his mouth, the compartment door slammed open. The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes. “Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,” she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.
“Do you not have manners? even toddlers knows it's polite to knock before entering a private, closed place.” said Theodore disdainly.
Harry couldn’t help but agree with Theodore's statement because Aunt Petunia would reprimand him if he did the same.
“And no, once again, we haven't seen it, Heir Longbottom. You’d find a better chance by asking Fifth Year Prefect or students help.”
“Ah, w-well, I apologize and thank you once again, Heir Zabini,” said Neville, his face as red as a tomato.
As Neville took a step out of the compartment, the girl bristled at being told off by Theodore and ignored by almost everyone.
“What is this ‘heir’ thing? stop talking nonsense.” She said, putting her hand on her waist. Taken aback, the rest of the compartment just stared at her.
“Is no one going to explain?” said the girl. “Figured, you’re all just wanted to make yourself seem important, aren’t you? I’d know of course, The Royals are normal people just like my family’s except for me, they don’t have magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard — I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough — I’m Hermione Granger, by the way.”
The train slowed right down and finally stopped. People pushed their way toward the door and out onto a tiny, dark platform. Harry shivered in the cold night air. Then a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and Harry heard a booming voice:
“Firs’ years! Firs’ years over here!" From a giant of a man. "C’mon, follow me — any more firs’ years? Mind yer step, now! Firs’ years follow me!”
Slipping and stumbling, they followed Hagrid down what seemed to be a steep, narrow path. It was so dark on either side of them that Harry thought there must be thick trees there. Nobody spoke much.
Neville, the boy who kept losing his toad, sniffed once or twice. “You'll get yer firs’ sight o’ Hogwarts in a sec,” Hagrid called over his shoulder, “jus’ round this bend here.”
There was a loud “Oooooh!”
The narrow path had 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 sitting in the water by the shore.
Harry, Theodore, and Blaise were followed by the boy who lost his toad earlier.
“Everyone in?” shouted the man, who had a boat to himself. “Right then — FORWARD!”
And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood. “Heads down!” yelled Hagrid 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. They were carried along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle until they reached a kind of underground harbour, where they clambered out onto rocks and pebbles.
Then they clambered up a passageway in the rock after Hagrid’s lamp, coming out at last onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle. They walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, oak front door.
“Everyone here?"
The man raised a gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door. The door swung open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face, and Harry’s first thought was that this was not someone to cross. “The firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,” said Hagrid. “Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here.” She pulled the door wide.
They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right — the rest of the school must already be here — but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have done, peering about nervously.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” said Professor McGonagall.
“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's common room.
“The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its 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 honour. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.
“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”
Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville’s cloak, which was fastened under his left ear, and on the ginger-haired boy's smudged nose, not that did anything but spread the smudges even further.
“I shall return when we are ready for you,” said Professor McGonagall. “Please wait quietly.” She left the chamber.
As they waited, something happened that made several students jump and scream.
“What the — ?” Harry was startled by the screams.
So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years.
“Move along now,” said a sharp voice. “The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start.” Professor McGonagall had returned.
“Now, form a line,” Professor McGonagall told the first years, “and follow me.” Feeling odd as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair, with Neville behind him, and they walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.
Professor McGonagall led the first years up here so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight.
Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool, she put a pointed wizard’s hat. The hat was patched, frayed and extremely dirty, something that normally he wouldn't let touch his person.
Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing — noticing that everyone in the hall was now staring at the hat, he stared at it, too. For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth — and the hat began to sing, and 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.
Professor McGonagall now stepped forward, holding a long roll of parchment. “When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” she said. “Abbott, Hannah!”
A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moment’s pause — “HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat. The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table.
“Bones, Susan!” “HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.
“Boot, Terry!” “RAVENCLAW!” The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.
“Brocklehurst, Mandy” went to Ravenclaw too, but “Brown, Lavender” became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers;
Harry could see two red headed boys catcalling. “Bulstrode, Millicent” then became a Slytherin. Perhaps it was Harry’s imagination, but he thought they looked tad bit too serious.
“Finch-Fletchley, Justin!” “HUFFLEPUFF!”
Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the House at once, but at others, it took a little while to decide.
“Finnigan, Seamus,” the sandy-haired boy next to Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.
“Granger, Hermione!”
A girl with bushy hair almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.
“GRYFFINDOR!” shouted the hat. The boy next to Neville groaned.
When Neville Longbottom was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, “GRYFFINDOR,” Neville ran off, still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to “MacDougal, Morag.”
Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, “SLYTHERIN!”
Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself. There weren’t many people left now. “Moon” …, “Nott” …, “Parkinson” …, then a pair of twin girls, “Patil” and “Patil” …, then “Perks, Sally-Anne” …, and then, at last —
“Potter-Black, Hadrian!” As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.
“Potter-Black, did she say?”
“The Harry Potter is a Black?!”
“Did The Prophet really print nickname?”
The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. The next second, he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.
“Hmm,” said a small voice in his ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. It's not a bad mind either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes — and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting. … So where shall I put you?”
Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, Anywhere away from Dumbledore repeatedly.
“Away from Dumbledore, eh?” said the small voice. “Are you sure? Well, if you’re sure — better be SLYTHERIN!”
Harry heard the hat shout the last word to the whole hall. He took off the hat, walked toward the Slytherin table, and sat next to Theodore. Ignoring the abrupt silence that swept over the Hall before Professor McGonagall continued with a pinched expression on her face.
[ … ]and gave his attention back to the Sorting Ceremony, just in time for the last additional, Blaise, to the house of Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat away.
Harry looked down at his empty plate. He has only just realized how hungry he was. His lunch seemed ages ago.
Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster, had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.
“Welcome!” he said. “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. Everybody clapped and cheered as the empty tables were now piled high with more than enough food to feed the whole Privet Drive Street. Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
“Is he — does he — He's ... sane, right?” he asked no one in particular uncertainty·, shaking his head.
"That's the Headmaster Albus Dumbledore." Daphne answered from across from him.
"Oh? That's him? He looks medieval," Harry stated, receiving muted chuckle from Blaise from beside him.
“But you had to agree. He looks ancient enough, though." Theodore, who was seated on another side of Harry, let out a cough covering his snicker.
"What? I'm sure he's at least a century old. That's old old" Harry huffed.
"Well, he is 145 years old as of this year." a voice from further on the table, who later introduced herself as Tracy Davis.
“No wonder he's out of touch” Harry muttered.
Harry took a portion of baked salmon, a nice goop of mashed potatoes with a tiny bit of gravy, and heaps of steamed vegetables on his plate and started eating his dinner quietly and observing the conversations around him, paying extra attention to any conversation around his immediate vicinity.
They continued eating in relative silence, exchanging a few words since they all were tired from the long journey
When the feast is over and the food disappears as abruptly as it appeared, Dumbledore addresses the students again.
"Another wonderful start to a year at Hogwarts. Now, prefects escort your students to their houses."
"First years over here," a prefect, he assumed, is calling the first years over, and they created a line to follow them into their house.
"Is that all of you? Good. Now I'm Gemma Farley, and I'm a fifth-year prefect. I'm taking you all to our common room, which is quite a walk away. Alright? Follow me," Gemma takes off down the hall at a pace they can barely keep up with as another Slytherin prefect hangs back, presumably to keep them from trailing too far behind.
She leads them down a lot of corridors that Harry has no idea how he'll ever keep track of, and when there are no other students around, she begins to speak again.
"The entrance to the Slytherin common room is in the dungeons, and the common room itself stretches under the Black Lake. To enter, you must offer it the correct password, which changes every week, so make sure you keep track of the noticeboard. The noticeboard also has news about clubs and opportunities. First-years are banned from the Quidditch team in Slytherin, so you can't join that, but Slytherin has many other opportunities that I implore you to seek out. Our founder, Salazar Slytherin, valued cunning and ambition, so I expect great things from every one of you."
She stops in front of a wall with a stone snake's head above a space.
"This week's password is Salazar."
As she speaks the last word, the snake hisses, and the wall opens up to reveal the common room behind.
There are green chairs and dark bookcases currently empty of books. Corridors lead off from the main area to rooms beyond. Gemma leads them to the corridor with a silver '1' on the wall.
"Through here is the first-year common room, you are expected to use this room to hold meetings with your yearmates, to deal with matters privately, the main common room is for house meetings, and/or if you want to socialize with upperclassmen," she says as she leads them to it. "Up there are the boys' dorms, and up here are the girls. Your times tables should be on your desks in your rooms. If you have any questions, you may ask any prefect, and Professor Snape should arrive here shortly to give you all the rules. Tomorrow you are all expected to be in the main common room for further introduction and socialize the politics of Slytherin House. We wish you luck.”
She waves as they leave.
Harry went to check his room, to make sure his belongings were not lost somewhere in the castle. In their dorms, each of them has a small room with a nameplate on their doors. Their timetables are indeed on their bedside table, and there is an empty bookcase by the wall.
He then went back out to the first-year's common room and took a 1-seater and sat on it, waiting for others to come back from their respective rooms. Not long after that, Blaise, Theo, Daphne, and Tracey took the sofa, and the rest of first years cohorts slowly filled up the remaining space, talking among themselves.