Chapter 4
The day had started out normally. Except for the fact that Bill had decided that he wanted to practice his balancing skills by standing on Lisa’s forearm. And the fact that Speckles had decided to sit on her shoulder and pick at her freckles. Okay, the day was anything but normal. But that didn’t make it any less strange when a tall woman wearing billowing black robes knocked on the door. Before answering the door, Lisa convinced Bill to sit on the kitchen island, and then gently pried Speckles off her shoulder and put him next to Bill.
“Does one ‘Bill Cipher’ live here?” The woman asked, looking down at a scroll she was holding like she was making sure she got the name right.
“Yes,” Lisa replied. “Who are you?”
“I am Minerva McGonagall,” said the woman. “I am a teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and have come to help Mr. Cipher acquire his school supplies.”
“Oh, like from that letter we got a few days ago?” Lisa asked. “Good luck convincing Bill magic is real. That should be fun to listen to too. Come on in.”
With that, Lisa led McGonagall into the kitchen to meet Bill. When they got there, Bill was still sitting on the island with his legs hanging off the edge and kicking back and forth a little and Speckles was curled up in front of him demanding head rubs.
“Hey, Bill,” Lisa said as she entered the kitchen. “This is Minerva McGonagall, she’s a teacher at that school you got a letter from a few days ago.”
Bill looked up from scratching Speckle’s head to look at McGonagall suspiciously. Lisa turned to see what kind of reaction she would have to seeing a sentient geometric shape. To her surprise, McGonagall didn’t have a visible reaction.
“This is Mr. Cipher?” McGonagall asked and continued speaking after Lisa nodded in response. “Well, Hogwarts has taught many magical creatures before so that should be fine.”
She looked like she was about to say something else, but she got interrupted by a very cartoonish screeching tires sound. That had her blinking in confusion for a few seconds before she looked at Bill and noticed his ‘mind came to a screeching halt’ expression.
“MAGIC IS REAL?!” Bill yelled. He then snapped his fingers and a small journal appeared in his hands. “I need to make a note about this.”
“Of course magic is real, Cipher,” said McGonagall. “How else would you produce a journal from thin air?”
But Bill was busy scribbling notes down in his journal and didn’t seem to notice her question.
“Cipher,” said McGonagall. Bill slammed his journal closed and looked up at her. “It’s time for us to gather your school supplies. Follow me.”
Bill hopped onto one of the stools in front of the island and then climbed down its leg onto the floor and ran off to the front door. Speckles immediately flew after him and landed on top of his hat but was quickly told that he wasn’t allowed to go with them. They then had a very quiet car ride that ended in front of an old, dilapidated bar which McGonagall led him through until they were in front of a brick wall. She looked like she was counting the bricks for a few seconds before she took a long wooden stick out of her robes and tapped one of them with it. The brick she tapped started moving and soon it as well as the bricks around it had parted to form a large archway leading onto a street full of strange-looking shops.
“First we’ll need to get some money,” McGonagall said, guiding him towards a large building made of marble.
Bill was having trouble keeping up with her, weaving through the large crowd, and looking at all the strange shops all at the same time. Eventually, he decided to gently grab on to the hem of her robe so they couldn’t get separated while he examined the shops. Soon, they made it to the front steps of the marble building, which said Gringott’s in large lettering over the door, and went in. Inside, there were two rows of tall counters running the length of the room with small, compared to McGonagall, creatures with long fingers and pointed ears working at them. McGonagall approached one of the creatures with Bill trailing along behind her.
“I would like to withdraw some money for Bill Cipher,” McGonagall said. The goblin she talked to immediately sat up straighter and then leaned over the counter to look down at Bill.
“It has been a long time, sir,” said the goblin. “Do you have the key to your vault?”
Bill thought for a few seconds. He didn’t think he had a key, but then it occurred to him to try to do what he does to summon his journal when he wants to write in it. He thought about a key for a vault and what that might look like, and then he snapped his fingers and a small, intricately carved golden key appeared in his hand.
“Would this work?” He asked the goblin, handing it his key.
“Perfectly, come with me, sir,” the goblin responded, getting up and walking towards a small door near his counter. There was another goblin standing in front of it, and the goblin who led them there handed it the key.
“They are here to open vault 618,” the first goblin said to the second. The second one nodded and opened the door to reveal a mining cart on rails that disappeared into darkness.
“Get in the cart, please, sir,” the second goblin said, opening a small door on the side of the cart and gesturing inside.
Bill climbed in the cart first, followed by McGonagall and the goblin. The cart ride was wild, to say the least. Bill spent most of it holding tightly onto his hat to make sure it didn’t fly off. Eventually, the cart came to a halt in front of a plain, metal door with the number 618 engraved on it. The three of them exited the cart. The goblin looked completely fine, but Bill and McGonagall were both a little dizzy and Bill was rubbing at his eye that had gotten very dry from the strong winds during the ride down.
“Key please, sir,” said the goblin.
Bill handed it the key and the goblin opened the vault door revealing piles of gold. Gold coins, gold pyramids, a gold statue of Bill in the corner. He did a double-take and looked back at the statue.
“Huh,” he said. “Good lookin’ statue.”
“Of course, sir,” said the goblin. “How much would you like to withdraw?”
Bill looked up at McGonagall uncertainly.
“Is it all Galleons or are there Knuts and Sickles as well?” she asked the goblin.
“All Galleons,” the goblin replied. “Sir has a great love of all things gold, ma’am.”
McGonagall looked down at Bill. He tried to look like he was thinking something other than “ooo, it’s so shiny! I want to burrow in it and hide for WEEKS!” She looked back at the goblin.
“Twenty Galleons should be enough,” she said.
The goblin put the requested amount in a small pouch, closed and locked the door, and then handed the key and the pouch to Bill. Then the three of them got back into the cart and rode back up to the bank building.
The light outside almost seemed blinding after the gloom inside Gringott’s. The two of them stood blinking and waiting for their eyes to readjust for a few seconds before McGonagall began leading the way to the next place they had to go.
It took a while, and several times when McGonagall had to prevent Bill from stealing something, but eventually they had got everything except for the last and most important thing, a magic wand. She led him through the crowded street to a small shop called Ollivander’s and they went in. The shop was filled with shelves upon shelves filled with small boxes, presumably of wands, stacked on top of each other. They had to wait several minutes before an old man with large pale eyes came towards them from the back of the shop.
“Ah, Minerva McGonagall,” the man said. “Fir, dragon heartstring, 9 ½ inches. What brings you here today?”
“Getting a wand for a new student,” she replied, gesturing at Bill.
Ollivander looked down at him and his already large eyes widened. He muttered to himself for a few seconds before he seemed to come to a decision, nodded to himself a bit, and grabbed a measuring tape. He started out with rather normal measurements, like height, and length of arms. Then he wandered off into the depths of the shop again while the measuring tape continued to take measurements. But the measuring tape, seemingly left unsupervised, started taking stranger measurements, like the width of Bill’s bowtie, or the length of his eyelashes. After a few minutes, Ollivander returned and handed Bill a wand, but immediately took it away and handed him another. This continued for a while, with all wands being immediately taken back by Ollivander and replaced by another, leaving Bill increasingly bewildered and Ollivander getting more excited.
“Difficult customer, huh?” Ollivander asked after yet another failed wand was added to the now rather large pile. “I wonder, maybe you don’t actually need a wand. Let’s see, wave your hand and focus on this lamp.”
Ollivander gestured at an old looking table lamp on a nearby desk.
Feeling rather silly, Bill focused his attention on the lamp and waved his hand. The lamp immediately grew four spindly legs and started scuttling around the desk making weird clacking noises.
“Fascinating,” Ollivander said, looking rather mesmerized by the lamp-creature.
The last thing they saw before exiting the shop was the lamp-creature grabbing one of the discarded wand boxes in a long, red prehensile tongue and dragging it back beneath the lamp shade.
Shortly after that, McGonagall and Bill went back to Lisa’s house with all the books, potions, ingredients, and the cauldron. She left him at the front door with a piece of parchment with instructions to go to Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross on September 1st to ride the train to school.
The days leading up to September 1st were very uneventful. Bill and Lisa loaded up all his school supplies in a big trunk that they put in the car, and they also got a small travel cage for Speckles, which the starling highly disapproved of. Finally, the day arrived, and Lisa, Speckles, and Bill all got in the car and drove to the train station. There were several minutes of confusion when they noticed that there was not actually a Platform 9 3/4, but eventually someone in the crowd who was also going to Hogwarts took notice of their confusion and guided them through a brick wall and onto a platform next to a scarlet steam engine that was crowded with people wearing robes and pointed hats. Bill climbed into the train while levitating his trunk and Speckles cage behind him, entered the first empty compartment he found, and then levitated his trunk up to a storage area above the seat and sat down next to Speckles cage with the starling making rather annoyed ‘get me out of this dumb cage’ noises at him.
Dipper was very excited for his second year at Hogwarts. He was lugging his trunk through the train looking for a compartment to sit in when he entered one and saw Bill Cipher looking at him and waving happily. Dipper let out an undignified squeak a manly shout of terror and ran off to another part of the train to call the Stans.
“Grunkle Stan, is Great Uncle Ford with you?” Dipper asked when Stan finally answered the phone. “I have something very important to tell both of you.”
“Yeah, he’s right here with me, let me get this thing on speaker,” Stan replied. After a few seconds of grumbling and tapping, Stan accidentally hung up on him. Dipper sighed and called again.
“Why’d ya hang up if you had somethin’ important ta tell us?” Stan asked immediately after answering the phone.
“I didn’t -,” Dipper started to say before it occurred to him that Stan would never admit to accidentally hanging up. “It was an accident.”
“Hey, Sixer,” Stan yelled. “Kid says he’s got somethin’ important to tell us. How do you get this thing on speaker?”
Dipper heard more grumbling, this time from Ford, and more tapping, presumably also from Ford, before they hung up on him again. Once again, Dipper sighed and called again.
“Don’t mess around with speaker phone, just listen to me,” he said quickly before the Stans could start messing around with the phone again. “Bill’s back.”
“That little one-eyed nacho-demon?” Stan asked. “I thought we killed that thing.”
“He’s not a nacho, Stanley,” said Ford’s rather muffled voice. “Wait, he’s back?!”
There were a few seconds of scuffling noises before Ford’s voice started coming through the phone.
“How long ago did you see him?” Ford demanded. “What was he doing? Where was he?”
“Ya coulda just asked for the phone, Ford,” was Stan’s muffled complaint.
“He’s on the Hogwarts Express,” Dipper replied. “I saw him just a couple of minutes before I called you. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but when he saw me, he started waving. Like we were old friends or something.”
“Keep us updated on what he’s doing,” said Ford. “We’ll get there as fast as we can.”
Ford hung up before Dipper could say anything else, leaving him alone with his thoughts, getting increasingly panicked about being trapped in the same general area as the thing that tried to destroy the universe last summer for the foreseeable future. And it would take the Stans a while to get there by boat, since Stan had apparently got himself banned from riding in airplanes.
Alistair Jones was very nervous. This was his first year at Hogwarts after all. It took him a while to find a compartment that wasn’t completely full, and when he did, he was surprised to find that the only other occupant of it was a small yellow triangle wearing a top hat and a bowtie and writing in a small journal. Alistair put his trunk in the storage area above the seat and then sat down across from the triangle and the small bird cage that contained an annoyed looking starling.
“Hello,” he said rather uncertainly. The triangle jumped a little before putting down his journal and staring at Alistair with his large slit-pupiled eye. Alistair waved a bit nervously before continuing. “My name is Alistair Jones, what’s yours?”
“Bill Cipher,” the triangle responded while tipping his hat. “And this is Speckles. He’s a little annoyed I’ve not let him out of his cage yet.”
Bill gestured at the starling when he said its name, and then leaned closer to Alistair while whispering the last part. The two lapsed into silence for a few minutes before getting startled by a knock at the door into their compartment. Alistair looked over to see a short boy with rather wild-looking dark brown hair standing in the doorway.
“Do you mind if I sit in here with you?” The boy asked Alistair.
“Come on in and join us,” Bill responded.
The boy looked at Bill with a confused expression for a few seconds before shrugging and putting his trunk above his seat and sitting down.
“I’m Robert Little,” he said. “First year at Hogwarts, I am so excited!”
“Well, I’m Alistair Jones,” Alistair said, and then he gestured at Bill. “And this is Bill Cipher.”
“And THIS is Speckles!” Bill said happily while pointing at the still very annoyed looking bird.
Speckles glanced at Bill and made a short chirp-whistle noise before glaring pointedly in the opposite direction.
“He’s a bit mad at me,” Bill said in a much less happy tone.
Bill then settled back in his seat with his hands clasped in front of his bowtie, yawned, and closed the right half of his eyelid.
Alistair and Robert looked at each other in slight confusion before Robert once again shrugged, got out a book, and started reading. Alistair looked back at Bill and was too curious not to ask him a question.
“Are you awake or asleep?” He asked.
“Yes,” Bill responded simply. Alistair was even more confused by that answer.
“What does that mean?” He asked. Bill huffed in annoyance and opened his eye completely to stare at Alistair.
“It means that half my brain was asleep and the other half was still awake,” Bill said, sounding very annoyed. “Now, can you please be quiet and let me continue my nap?”
With that, Bill resumed his previous position with one half of his eye closed. Alistair tried to focus on something other than the weird sleeping habits of triangles, but that just brought him back to being very nervous about going to Hogwarts.
It was a pretty uneventful train ride to Hogwarts for Bill. Sure, there was that weird paranoid-looking kid who screamed and ran away earlier, and he had met a couple of new friends, but not much happened after that. Finally, the train came to a halt at a small station by a small village and all the students began exiting. Bill was going to wait until the crowd was smaller and there was less chance of getting trampled, but Robert turned around and looked back at him at the door into the compartment.
“Are you coming?” Robert asked. “If you need help carrying anything, just ask me.”
Bill thought for a few seconds. He could go with his original plan of waiting till it wasn’t crowded before getting off the train and having to levitate his trunk and cage around with him, or he could convince Robert to carry him and his things around for him. It did not take him long to decide on the second option.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he replied. "Just waiting a bit so I don’t get trampled by the crowd or something.”
Robert’s eyes widened like it hadn’t even occurred to him that that might be a potential problem for small triangles to have to deal with.
“Unless, of course,” Bill continued. “I had a friend who was willing to help me. A taxi if you will.”
“I’m willing to help, Bill,” said Robert. “What do you need me to do?”
“Well, I was thinking I would ride on your shoulder and you would bring all our stuff,” Bill replied.
“Um, Bill,” said Robert like he thought this was something everyone knew. “We leave our stuff on the train and someone else comes and takes it to the castle.”
Bill blinked a few times, looking very confused.
“Huh,” he said. “Well, that simplifies things a little bit. I’m still going to ride on your shoulder, though.”
Robert shrugged and put his arm close enough to Bill so that he could climb on and up to his shoulder where he grabbed a handful of Robert’s hair to help him balance. Robert grimaced a little at the feeling of his hair getting pulled and at the rather surprising amount of heat coming from Bill that was now right next to his face, but he didn’t complain.
“Come along, Taxi, to the castle!” Bill shouted right next to Robert’s ear, pointing forward very dramatically.
“My name is Robert, not Taxi,” Robert complained. He didn’t complain about the yelling because the little triangle clearly had no concept of an ‘inside voice’ and was just constantly yelling.
It didn’t take them long to exit the train and find Alistair again. He was still looking very nervous and was running his hand through his very short light brown hair but perked up a little when he saw Robert’s familiar face and the still quite befuddling shape of Bill on Robert’s shoulder.
“Hang a right, Taxi,” Bill yelled, pointing towards Alistair.
“You’re not going to stop calling me Taxi, are you?” Robert asked, but still turned to walk towards Alistair.
“NOPE!” Bill shouted happily.
Alistair was about to ask what they were talking about but was interrupted by the appearance of a large man who stood out in front of the crowd of students and called out in a gruff voice.
“Firs’ years, come with me,” the man said, he had a very loud voice, but it didn’t sound like he was trying to yell at them.
Alistair, Robert, and Bill, along with a small crowd of other students, made their way over to the man, who led them to a fleet of small boats.
“Three to a boat, carefully now, it’s a bit slick,” the man said.
Alistair, Robert, and Bill all got in the same boat. Part of the boat ride over was full of Alistair telling his rather captive audience about all the dangerous things that lurked in the lake. After a couple of minutes of that, Bill got annoyed and decided to freak Alistair out about something else.
“Here, hold this,” Bill said while handing Alistair his hat.
Alistair took Bill’s top hat and looked down at it, thoroughly confused. It felt very warm, much warmer than a hat should, and soft, like velvet, Alistair could also feel what he almost thought were bones in it. And then he dropped it with a small shriek, rubbing his hands furiously on his robes, because he had also very clearly felt a pulse, noticeably faster than a normal human’s, in the hat. Bill had watched Alistair intently after handing him the hat and almost fell off Robert’s shoulder cackling like a lunatic, when Alistair dropped it.
“WHY IS YOUR HAT ALIVE?!” Alistair yelled.
Robert looked intrigued and picked up the hat, held it for a few seconds, and then handed it back to Bill, who was still cackling.
“It’s part of me, Alistair,” Bill said between cackles. “Here, feel my arm.”
Bill held out one of his arms and Alistair very gently held it like he had with the hat. Alistair noticed very quickly that Bill’s arm felt exactly like his hat, except that his arm had a very noticeable lack of bone.
By the time the boats had come to a stop at the castle, Alistair was still looking disturbed by his hat discovery and Bill had mostly stopped laughing, though the bottom lid of his eye was curved upward like he was smiling.
They, along with the rest of the first years, then approached the entrance to the castle which opened to reveal McGonagall, who led them to a large room and told them to wait. After a few minutes, she returned and led them to an even larger room with four long tables under different colored flags, another long table at the other end of the room, a small rickety looking stool with a very old looking hat on it, and the ceiling somehow made to look like the sky outside. McGonagall had them stop in a line in front of the stool while she went up to stand next to it and unrolled a large scroll.
“When your name is called, step forward, put on the Sorting Hat, and wait for it to tell you which House you belong in,” McGonagall explained. “After you have been sorted, go find a seat at your House’s table.”
She was quiet for a few seconds to let them think that through.
“Arnold, Timothy,” she called out.
A tall boy from near the end of the line came forward, put the hat on and was very quickly sorted into Gryffindor by the old hat, which could, apparently, talk. Bill didn’t pay much attention to what was going on, he just half-listened to make sure he didn’t miss his name while he examined the ceiling after getting off Robert’s shoulder and down to the floor.
“Cipher, Bill,” McGonagall called.
Bill weaved through the crowd towards the stool, happy that he was near the front of the line. He then paused to look up at McGonagall before climbing up onto the stool and putting on the hat, which almost completely covered him.
“Hmm, interesting,” said the hat’s voice. “Now, where shall I put you? You are definitely cunning enough for Slytherin and smart enough for Ravenclaw. But which one shall it be? Which one do you wish to be in?”
“You’re the Sorting Hat, aren’t you supposed to decide that?” Bill responded.
“Alright, if you insist, then I guess it will be SLYTHERIN!” The hat yelled the last word.
“GRAPPLING HOOK!” Shouted a familiar sounding voice at the same time as the hat shouted Slytherin.
“Did someone just yell ‘grappling hook?’” Bill asked as he took off the Sorting Hat and then turned around in time to get said object hitting him right in the eye and flinging him backwards a little.
“My eye, why would you do that?!” Bill yelled as he stood back up and glared in the direction the grappling hook had come from, not noticing how he had turned red like at the chess club meeting. After a few seconds of searching, he saw a girl who looked almost exactly like that paranoid-looking kid from earlier trying to discreetly hide a large grappling hook under her robes and failing miserably.
Bill forced himself to calm down and walked over to the Slytherin table, still shooting the occasional glare at the girl he had decided to nickname ‘Grappling Hook.’ He sat down on one of the seats in front of the table, but couldn’t see anything over the other students, so he climbed up onto the table and sat there. He didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the Sorting, but Robert and Alistair did end up in Slytherin as well.
After a while, the Sorting was over and McGonagall carried away the hat and stool before sitting up at the table with the rest of the teachers. Then an old man with a very long white beard stood up and started talking.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” he began. “I know you are all hungry, but I would like to say a few words before the feast. Balderdash, lemondrop, clementine, and nitpick.”
The old man then sat back down and plates laden with all sorts of food appeared on all the tables. Alistair looked up at the teacher’s table in confusion.
“Is that all he’s going to say?” He asked.
Bill put some of the more interesting looking food on his plate and then waved his fork imperiously at Alistair.
“Zodzbh hkvzp rm Izmwln Mlmhvmhv,” he said very seriously.
Alistair looked over at Robert in complete befuddlement and noticed that Robert was ignoring the craziness around him in favor of trying as many different foods as possible. Then Alistair looked back at Bill, about to ask what that meant, when Bill blinked his eye into a mouth and took a bite of his food. Alistair decided at that point that it was probably best to eat dinner now and question reality later.
After a while, the plates disappeared from the tables, and the old man stood up again.
“Now, before bed I have some rules to tell you that must be followed,” he said. Bill grumbled a little about how much he hated rules, but not loud enough for anyone but Robert and Alistair to hear him. “The forest on castle grounds is forbidden to all students, as is the old dormitory in the dungeon. Also, Mr. Filch wishes to remind everyone again that no magic is allowed to be used in the hallways between classes. And finally, no student is allowed to use his magic to, intentionally or otherwise, make something that harms another either physically or mentally. And now, bedtime!”
There was some confused muttering from the other students about why Dumbledore had felt the need to add the last rule, but Bill had noticed that the old man had been staring directly at him while saying it. He figured it probably had something to do with something he had done before losing his memories and decided to think about it more later when he wasn’t as tired.
The Slytherin students all followed their Prefect down to the dungeons where the House’s Common Room was, Bill once again riding on Robert’s shoulder. The Common Room was evidently underneath the lake and was a very damp, gloomy room that had a fireplace at one end with a few comfy looking chairs in front of it. There were also stairways at either end of the room that led to bedrooms. Robert, Alistair, and Bill went up the stairway on the right and went into a room marked ‘first years’ that had three beds in it. The beds each had one of their trunks in front of them. Alistair immediately got into the bed his trunk was in front of while Bill climbed down to the floor from Robert’s shoulder and started exploring the room and Robert crawled into his own bed shortly after. Bill, after exploring the room for a few minutes and deciding he had found everything interesting in it, climbed into his bed and burrowed under the pillow to sleep.