Sorted into Something
It is everything she hoped it would be. The castle. The lake. The night sky, so bright- brighter than any she can remember at Malfoy Manor.
And she isn’t doing it alone.
Harry Potter has been hidden away from people like Hermione, like Lucius.
Hidden in a house with people who hurt him.
And Theo- his mum, had died just like Harry’s. Just like Hermione’s. And the only other person in the world who is supposed to love him? Hurts him.
The three of them step off the train together, climb into one of the boars, and sail towards their futures.
It doesn’t matter where they are sorted.
Hermione has made up her mind.
“Is this real?” Harry asks as they sail under the castle and gather at the bottom of a set of stone steps.
“I hope so,” Hermione answers.
Theo grins at the pair of them and she can imagine that he is thinking of how strange this must be for them both, having grown up in the muggle world.
As they ascend the steps, Hermione finds Draco’s pale hair in the crowd and inches along the wall, not wanting him to see her with Harry.
The longer she can go before he reports to his father about her behaviour the better.
“So it’s true. Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts,” Draco’s condescending tone comes from too close.
A ripple moves through the gathered students as people crane for a look of the boy who lived.
Hermione doesn’t turn to watch Draco’s attempt at speaking to Harry.
Draco doesn’t know that Harry is shy. That the last thing he wants is attention for something that he doesn’t even remember.
Probably can’t even imagine the possibility. For Draco, being famous for any reason sounds incredible.
“I’m Draco Malfoy.” He’s such a prat.
Harry doesn’t answer.
Hermione should distract Draco.
Stop the impending crash.
“You’re meant to shake it,” Draco says, this time his voice twisting with the sneer he stole from his father.
“Leave him alone,” a new voice says.
Hermione does turn, surprised to see a pudgy cheeked redhead stepping between Harry and Draco.
Harry had mentioned that it had been a Weasley who had chased him from his first train car.
From the red hair and the noticeably worn robes, Hermione can only assume this is who he’d been talking about.
Lucius had spoken about him and his family.
Which is why the next words out of Draco’s mouth ruin any chance of him befriending Harry.
Hermione just stands there and watches as the idiot insults both the Weasley boy and Harry in one breath.
Luckily, Professor Minerva McGonagall takes that moment to make her appearance, silencing all of the students and allowing Hermione to carry on hiding.
She leads them into an antechamber and gives the same speech Hermione had seen in Narcissa and Lucius’s minds. The moments before they were sorted.
Hermione glances at the faces of the rest of the children in her year. All of the people she’ll have to contend with. Whose lives will be affected by decisions she makes.
They are all so young.
If they are lucky, they’ll get to grow old.
Professor McGonagall, a pleasingly severe woman Hermione can see herself enjoying as a teacher, leads them from the anteroom into the great hall of Hogwarts.
Students fill the room but Hermione focuses on the bearded man at the head of the table.
Albus Dumbledore. Headmaster.
Tom Riddle’s most hated villain.
He doesn’t look at her. She thought maybe he would. That he’d take one glance and pierce directly into her soul with those old wise eyes.
That he’d see right through her.
Know her wicked intentions.
Maybe even stop her name from being called.
But he is watching Harry.
And Hermione’s name comes.
“Hermione Granger.”
Minerva McGonagall doesn’t know what it means, to hear her name. The name her parents gave her.
She makes her way to the stool with slow measured steps.
The hat hums when it is placed on her head.
Hermione lets the world inside and outside of her mind go silent.
The hat speaks to her in assumptions.
“You hate to do what you are told.”
“I won’t ask,” she answers. Severus had warned her not to choose her house.
“You believe that asking for anything is a weakness. You have many strengths. Which may very well be your downfall.”
Hermione’s jaw tightens.
Downfall. Her downfall will come or it won’t.
She refuses to swallow a fate that was foretold before she was even really a person.
“I won’t ask,” she repeats.
“A mind like yours would fail in a house without challenges,” the hat says, condemning her. “SLYTHERIN!”
Applause fills the silent air and Hermione steps down, heading for a table full of people who will question her name until they find out it isn’t pure. And then they will question and doubt every other part of her.
She is a Slytherin now.
Lucius will be livid. Narcissa will be concerned. Severus will likely be disappointed.
Hermione is pleased.
They can never take this away from her. Already she has two things for herself.
Her house and her friends. And she intends to hold onto both.
The Great Hall is loud. Overwhelming. It isn’t just the chatter, it is the thoughts of every student bombarding her at once.
She can't touch all of them. Can’t see all of their intentions. It is chaotic. Everyone with their own desires, their own plans. This is what Severus had meant when he’d taken her to London.
People would always be beyond her reach. There was no way to plan for every attack.
Still, Hermione knows legilimency. She can get in if she needs to. She is just limited. And she hates it.
She turns her focus back to the sorting.
“Draco Malfoy,” McGonagall calls.
She watches him walk up, sit on the stool.
Almost before the hat falls on his head, “SLYTHERIN!”
He smirks, a dimple carving into his cheek as he jumps down and struts over to the table.
Draco looks at her before he walks further down the table, sitting between two older students.
After that, he doesn’t turn to meet her eyes.
He probably isn’t sure how to react to her actually being placed in Slytherin.
Whenever they’d talked about it, it was in the abstract.
She glances around the hall and realises why else he is probably upset
His two little friends had gone to other houses.
Crabbe to Hufflepuff and Goyle to Ravenclaw. Bit of a shock given the few moments Hermione had spent observing them from afar during her childhood.
Perhaps away from Draco they’d blossom into something different than just their father’s sons.
“Theodore Nott.”
He’s a quick sort. His father would pull him from the school if he were sorted anywhere else.
“SLYTHERIN!”
He gets more applause than Hermione would have thought. Applause from other children of Sacred 28 families. People who know of his father’s blood and wealth. Who respect him even having never met him before.
He comes over to the Slytherin table and sits beside her.
“Bit of a surprise, you,” he says, offering a half smile.
Imagine his surprise if he knew the truth. The whole truth.
“I lied to you in my first breath,” she reminds him.
“That you did, Granger,” he says.
She likes it. She’s never been allowed to use her surname. Never been allowed to claim it.
She grins like a fool. Only for a moment though, before schooling her face and focusing on the sorting once more.
When Harry’s name is called, the hall goes more than silent. It is as if everyone is holding their breath.
As he steps up to the stool Hermione can see what everyone's thinking.
How different the Boy Who Lived looks from their imaginings of him.
Even Hermione could admit he wasn’t what she’d pictured. She’d assumed he grew up lauded. Loved and worshipped for surviving that night.
She’d grown up assuming that his life was nothing like hers. She even blamed him for the life she had.
But in less than a day she has learned that Harry is just like her. A victim of fate.
Taken into a place where he wasn’t allowed to belong. Treated as other. Forced into a role by prophecy and the meddling of old men.
He appears nervous, as he sits on the stool.
And then they have to wait.
Hermione can tell that Harry is talking to the hat.
When the hat announces his house, shock rolls through the crowd until hundreds of children go silent in the hall.
“Better be SLYTHERIN!”
He grins when the hat is taken off and he makes a beeline for Hermione, sitting opposite her with a bright smile, back turned to the rest of the hall.
“Hi,” he smiles, shy once more. “I couldn’t let the two of you have all the fun.”
Theo glances down the length of the table at the many staring faces.
“You’ve no idea what you’ve just done, Potter.”
Harry finally seems to notice the stares.
“Don’t worry, Harry. Green is definitely your colour,” Hermione says, offering comfort for the first time in her life for no reason other than wanting someone to relax.
He grins and then the three of them watch the rest of the sorting.
A Weasley goes to Gryffindor. The rest Hermione doesn’t recognize their names. And then Blaise Zabini is placed in Slytherin, the last to be sorted.
Hermione takes stock of the people who she now has as housemates. Most of them she knows, at least through Draco.
Daphne Greengrass and Milicent Bulstrode had been to all of Draco’s birthday parties. Pansy and Blaise were over a lot more often. Tracey Davis had been talked about as a poor choice in acquaintance. Her father had accused Lucius of being a Death Eater during the trials of the war to save himself from the Kiss.
Not that it had helped. Tracey had grown up without her father.
Perhaps she’d be looking for a friend.
Albus Dumbledore gives a short welcome speech and dinner proceeds without any major catastrophes.
Hermione tries to talk with Theo and Harry, but she finds herself overwhelmed by the number of people.
And she can’t help but overhear Draco brag about his family and the long and honourable history of Malfoy Slytherins.
“There has been a Malfoy in Slytherin every generation for a thousand years. I knew I would be no different,” he boasts.
Hermione resists rolling her eyes.
Draco has Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson paying rapt attention. As always.
“Do you think rain or snow would fall from the ceiling?” Harry asks, voice low.
It is the best thing she has heard in her entire life.
He’s asking her.
“It’s charmed to mirror the sky, so I suppose it could. Though I’m sure they’ve used some sort of spell to keep it from falling onto student’s heads.” Hermione glances up, wondering how hard it would be to pull back the layer she knows is there.
“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Harry whispers, as if confessing.
It won’t be the last amazing thing he sees. She’ll guarantee it.
The rest of the feast passes in a blur.
By the time a fifth year Prefect, Gemma Farley, leads them to the Slytherin common room, Hermione is dead on her feet.
The emotions of the day have taken their toll more than she would have thought.
When she parts ways with Harry and Theo, she remembers that she’ll have roommates here.
And so will they.
“Granger. You must be a halfblood,” Pansy Parkinson sneers from the end of her bed.
Hermione had spent hours watching Draco and Pansy play together as children.
“A Mudblood actually,” Hermione corrects her, refusing to lie about the parentage she is proud of.
The other two girls, Daphne and Tracy, gasp.
Pansy is stunned into silence.
Hermione glances around the room and decides that it just won’t do.
So she pulls her wand from her pocket to make it seem like she needs it and in a moment the walls are reconfiguring themselves.
One of the beds transfigures into a near identical copy of the one she has at the manor and her walls section it off, giving her more privacy and a view of the lake out one long window.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Pansy shrieks, her own belongings upended.
“Just making it easier for you to talk about me behind my back,” Hermione bites out.
The three girls all stand there in the centre of their slice of the space and stare, fear edging into their features.
Good.
She opens her trunk and disperses the items inside, making quick work of decorating.
And then she can hear the other three girls moving about their own space, not speaking.