Different cultures
Mr. Ogg lead them to a bunch of boats, that were tied down on the lake’s shore. “Four per boat!”, he jelled and the students immediately got moving. Tom, Minerva and Constance hopped into one boat and were finally joined by a tall boy with red hair, who introduced himself as Lance Prewett and was already certain he would be a Gryffindor. Constance, who had some Ravenclaws and mostly Slytherins in her family rolled her eyes at that statement.
Then the boats started to move. They floated across the lake, almost without disturbing the water, and headed towards the towering rock, on which the castle was built. “Look! Something is moving in the water!”, a girl in one of the other boats suddenly called out and immediately all the first years leaned over the edges of the boats and stared into the black depth of the lake. At first Tom thought the girl had played a trick on them, but then he spotted something too: a long, dark tentacle snaked through the water and lazily waved up to him. Tom waved back with wide eyes. “Uh, that must be the giant squid!”, Minerva exclaimed next to him.
“The giant what?”, Tom asked shocked. “The giant squid! It lives in the lake and protects the castle from attacks. My father said it was placed there to fend Muggles on witch hunts off.”, Constance explained with an excited squeal in her voice. Tom crooked his head to the side. “I mean it looks big, but I bet it would not stand a chance against machine guns or tanks.”, Tom said, “But I guess it would have worked in the middle ages.”
Minerva seemed to think about it, then she nodded. Constance and Lance on the other hand did not seem to believe that the muggles could defeat a magical creature like the giant squid. “Nah, whatever a tank is, it can’t kill the squid.”, Prewett confirmed that suspicion. “Yes it can. A tank is really big and it can blow up buildings!”, Tom argued. “Yes and the muggles also have poisonous gas, like mustard gas and other chemical weapons. My grandpa says it burns your face off. He lost an eye to it during the war!”, Minerva chimed in.
The two pure-bloods stared at them with terrified expressions on their faces. “What’s wrong with the muggles?”, Constance whispered with fear in her eyes. “Oh come on, the wizarding world has a lot of messed up curses! Grandma once mentioned one that turns your insides out!”, Minerva said, shrugging. Tom would have loved to keep listening to all the different weapons in the wizarding world and the muggle world, that he could have talked about with his grandparents, but the boats had reached the shore in a tall cave.
“Come on, kids, this way!”, Mr. Ogg called and waved them over to him. Now they had to climb a lot of stairs and did not talk to save breath. When they finally reached the top of the stairs and most of the students were wheezing and huffing, they were greeted by the last person Tom wanted to see: Professor Dumbledore. The man was wearing a dark blue robe with silver, sparkling stars and had braided star and moon pendants into his hair and beard. On his hat there sat a big, matching wizard hat with silver strings of pearls hanging down.
“Hello, my dear children, and welcome to Hogwarts. I am Professor Dumbledore, some of you might know me already. I have been reminded to tell you to follow the rules or we will have to take away your house points and give you detention and that we will give you house points if you do well. Now we will go inside, where you have to wait a short while until you can get sorted into your houses. All the houses have an old and impressive history you can be very proud of. There are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. We teachers all expect you to take good care of your housemates, like they are your family and are sure you will receive the same support from them. And now let’s go inside, so that we don’t let the others wait for too long!”, Dumbledore explained with sparkling blue eyes, while Tom glared daggers at him.
The tall wizard turned around with swishing robes and swaggered into the castle, the gaggle of children following him. “Dumbledore is really powerful! He is the head of Gryffindor house and my parents say he is one of the best transfiguration teachers the school ever had!”, Prewett explained excitedly. “Well I met him and he told me to reconcile with the rapist, scared my dad and threatened my family to take me away from them by force”, Tom growled quietly. Prewett, who walked behind them, did not hear it but Minerva and Constance sure did. Their eyes went wide.
“Well, a lot of people in the wizarding world don’t see love potions as bad, because you like the person while you take them. Maybe Dumbledore is one of them”, Constance said slowly. Minerva nodded. “Yes, maybe. Mom says he is a bit weird, maybe he did not realize how horrible that all sounded to you.”, she said. “I don’t care. I don’t like him”, Tom just hissed. The girls seemed to understand.
By now they had reached a small room, and Dumbledore disappeared through a door. The kids started to become nervous again. “I wonder if the sorting hurts bad.”, Prewett asked. “I bet! Mindreading can seriously mess one up. I once heard a witch in my father’s shop say, that she used an artifact to read her husband’s mind, wanted to find out if he cheated, and he had to be send to Saint Mungos permanently!”, Constance said fearful. “My mom said the whole school watches”, Minerva winced.
But before they could discuss the sorting more, Professor Dumbledore returned, waving them into the great hall.