Chapter 7
Eventually, Alex was the only unSorted student left. Dumbledore stood up, introduced him rather vaguely as a new student, and sat back down, completely ignoring the rash of rumors his words sparked. Professor McGonagall called him up to the stool, and Alex sat down carefully on the uncomfortably low stool. She lowered the hat gently onto his head, and Alex registered the flaring of the hat’s magic for a moment before the thing actually started to talk to him. Alex jumped, surprised, and almost looked around before remembering that the hat on his head was an incredibly powerful magical object that probably could talk to him as well as read his mind.
“Aren’t you an interesting one?” the hat hummed. “Well, let’s see. You have the drive of a Slytherin, the passion for learning of a Ravenclaw, and the work ethic of a Hufflepuff. Though you have great need to hide much of what you know and have done and could do well in any House, the bravery and dedication to hold to your cause no matter the cost, not to mention the mission you’ve set yourself to help Harry Potter that requires his complete trust to succeed at, means that there is only one House for you: GRYFFINDOR!”
Alex’s reception from his fellow students was mixed. A few new Slytherin students clapped for him before being shushed by the rest of their peers at the table, leaving the entire green table just staring at him in stony silence. A few scattered Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws clapped for him, and most of the Gryffindors clapped for a few moments before staring at the head table impatiently. Alex could see Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchange relieved looks, but most of his attention was pulled to the wildly clapping and cheering Ginny, Fred, and George. He smiled and walked over to sit at the place cleared for him, ignoring the looks of deep interest about half of the hall were still throwing him and the disappointment or disgust the others were throwing him. A plate appeared in front of Alex as he sat, and Alex knew instantly that more of the enslaved High Brownies were working at this school. Did the teachers have no shame?
Dumbledore only got about two sentences past introducing the new professors before he was unceremoniously interrupted by the squat woman with no sense of fashion. Looking around at his fellow students, Alex could tell that no one had dared interrupt Headmaster Dumbledore in his welcoming speech before. Intrigued and not a little concerned, Alex listened carefully to the pink woman’s speech and got progressively paler as many of his peers, Hermione excluded, more or less dozed off during her speech. No matter if most of the students didn’t realize what was happening, Alex knew how to read between the lines to see that Professor Umbridge had been sent by the Ministry, which Alex knew to be corrupt, to interfere and possibly take over Hogwarts from Dumbledore. He may not like or trust the man, but this woman rubbed all of his instincts the wrong way. He was unnerved enough to not join in with the hilarity that ensued for the rest of the feast, mostly relating to the woman’s choice in clothing. He kept reminding himself that these were just children, unused to the reality and danger of the world.
Alex left the Great Hall with his new Housemates and followed the stream of crimson up many staircases and down twisting corridors. He made sure to memorize the way to wherever they were heading and noted the moving paintings that appeared capable of speech and could likely be asked for directions. They could also probably see, hear, and report on any goings-on. Alex was more than a little interested in that particular bit of spellwork because they were not only animated but seemed like sentient beings. Hogwarts herself had yet to stop periodically asking for small amounts of his magic, so Alex had come to the unfortunate conclusion that Dumbledore and possibly the headmasters before him had somehow badly mistreated Hogwarts or the webs of magic supporting her for however long he’d been the headmaster. He listened carefully to the password - Mimbulus Mimbletonia, whatever that was supposed to mean - and stepped into the Gryffindor Common Room for the very first time.
The place was decorated almost to the point of offense in red and gold of various shades. There were several armchairs surrounding an oddly large fireplace that looked quite comfy; though Alex had seen bigger fireplaces than the one in front of him, those had all been meant to warm much larger rooms than this relatively small one. There also looked to be several scattered tables that could be used for studying, should the room be quiet enough, which Alex doubted would ever really happen based solely off of his experience of living with Gryffindors for the past few weeks, and more seating placed haphazardly around in open spaces gave the room its charm and appeal. Overall, the common room looked quite homey and cozy, especially with that low fire flickering in that fireplace. He still didn’t get the point if the castle was magically heated, but Alex wasn’t going to complain about having a fire nearby to soothe his adventurer’s spirit and his dragon self’s instincts.
Alex said goodbye to Ginny in the common room as she separated from their little group to head up the other staircase to the girls’ dorms. Fred, George, and Lee - who Alex had met and instantly befriended upon sitting down - left him at the fifth year boys’ dorm room to head up to their own room up at the top of the tower. Reluctantly, Alex opened the door and headed for the only bed lacking a trunk placed at the bottom, rightly assuming that that one was his. Every eye in the room followed him, and Alex sighed internally. There was no way he was going to be getting sleep without being interrogated first. It seemed that he’d have absolutely no peace, space, or privacy this year. Alex investigated the bedside table and provided wardrobe while he waited for his watchers to speak. With an internal shrug, he started pulling his school clothes out of the bag, folding them, and carefully placing them in neat piles inside the bottom drawer. They’d find out about his magic bag eventually, and Alex would rather have them ask about the bag than something else. Sure enough, someone lost patience at the careful and continued folding.
Apparently, Ron hadn’t had enough of playing hostile questioner. “Aren’t you going to ask for anyones’ names?”
Alex paused in his folding for a moment to grab out an alarm clock before continuing to put away his clothes, starting on the second drawer. “I already know you and Harry and all the rest of your names are on your trunks. It isn’t exactly rocket science.”
“What’s rocket science?” the shy-looking boy with Neville Longbottom’s - and really, what an unfortunate last name - trunk at the end of his bed asked.
Alex’s pause was a little longer this time. He knew the wizards kept themselves separate and secret from the rest of the world, but he hadn’t expected them to be quite that isolated. “It’s a lot of complicated math and science that lets people and objects be sent up into space in rockets and brought back down without being killed or injured.”
“Math and science are kind of like Arithmancy, Herbology, and Potions,” Harry said. Apparently, Alex’s definition hadn’t been adequate. Again, Alex had underestimated how isolated wizards were from the rest of the world. They probably didn’t know anything about the medical, scientific, or warfare advances then, which seemed like a significant risk and tactical disadvantage to Alex for both these people and their nation. He pulled out the third drawer and started sorting his socks and underwear into it, waiting for the next question to come. He waited for a long time, had in fact finished putting all of his clothes away and hung his robes and ties while all of the others stared at him in silence, before the next question came. If they were waiting for him to break and start spilling all of his secrets, they could and would keep waiting.
“Where did you get that bag? It looks like it could be really useful,” Dean Thomas, probably, asked.
“My father left me his bag when he died,” Alex answered. It was the truth, just not the whole truth. His father had left him his bag, but it was safely inside Alex’s own bag. “I’m not entirely certain where he got it from, though I know it has some sort of magic in it that lets me store lots of different things in it.” Again, not the whole truth but not an outright lie.
“Shame,” Dean said before falling silent again.
Alex pulled out the stick he was going to be using as a wand that he’d picked up off of the ground in the park across the street and polished a little. He’d decided against messing with his staff in any way; if he wasn’t going to be performing any sort of serious magic, he wouldn’t need his staff anyway. If he needed it, he could always call his staff to him. Alex carefully performed the charm, or at least said the right words and did the little twirl thing apparently necessary, that would stick little tabs on the drawers that would allow them to be locked shut after purposefully failing a few times. Ginny had taught him at his insistence in the park the day before they left with other sticks off of the ground and swore that this method would work and stay in place whether or not he had his wand with him, which was why she hadn’t learned a magical way of locking her drawers for the summer months beyond learning how to attach these tabs onto her drawers. Alex managed to thread locks he’d enchanted to be unpickable through all three of the newly created protruding loops on his drawers before being asked another question.
“How did you know how to do that? Could you teach me?” Ron asked.
“Your sister taught me,” Alex replied evenly, briefly debating setting his shoes out on the floor before deciding against it. He could leave them in his bag and then get them out if he felt like switching it up, though Alex doubted he would. His heavy all-purpose boots, slightly resized to fit his younger feet since he had not been taken to get shoes by these people and didn’t really want shoes not made to endure adventuring, should suffice for the time being. “You should probably ask her though, because I don’t really understand how to cast it. I’m lucky it worked at all, really.” Alex had thought that he shouldn’t successfully cast the spell on his first try, and the more relaxed air of the room seemed to indicate that he’d made the right choice. “I think I’m going to go to bed now. Good night.”
Alex grabbed the set of pajamas he’d set aside on his bed for later and his toiletries, set his bag on top of the bedside with his stick - ahem, wand - next to it and walked over to the other door in the room. He was honestly bummed he couldn’t use a wand like these people did, but Alex figured that at least he could try to learn as much from the non-wand courses as possible. After peeking his head inside to see a bathroom with multiple showers and stalls, Alex closed the door behind him, changed, brushed his teeth, and headed back out to the main room once he’d used the facilities. The argument happening in the room about whether or not Harry had really seen Voldemort come back from the dead paused as he walked across the open space, climbed in his bed, and shut the curtains carefully around him. Alex sent silencing and locking spells at the curtain and rolled onto his back, wondering why you wouldn’t prepare for the madman’s return even if you didn’t think he was back. Surely being over prepared was better than being caught unawares.
After a moment of contemplating the sanity of these people, not that Alex really thought most of them had a lick of common sense, he set the alarm clock he’d gotten out to wake him up in eight and a half hours, around seven in the morning, and attempted to sleep after sticking the thing back on the headboard. He’d had his eyes closed for hardly more than a few seconds before Hogwarts asked timidly for more magic. Alex couldn’t sense any hostility in the being, so he gently grabbed onto the consciousness and opened a link between their two magics to allow her drink deeply from his well of magic. He fell asleep shortly after, too tired after multiple weeks of not really sleeping and the near-constant pull on his magic to see any of the changes occurring around him.
Silence suddenly fell between the other five occupants of the room again as Alex’s bed frame seemed to glow with an inner light before suddenly looking brand new. The same bright change rippled over his curtains before flowing out from his bed in a circle. Ron tried to jump out of the way of the circle of almost imperceptible light before realizing that nothing had happened to the other four and settling down with a sheepish look. All five of them went to their newly lush beds shortly after that with a silent agreement that something was definitely up with the new guy, argument well and truly broken up by the odd event. Harry made a mental note to ask about whatever that was in the morning.
Alex was up and in the common room before any of the other boys in an attempt to escape any further questions or attention, unknowingly foiling Harry’s plan to do just that. Alex wasn’t used to constantly being around people and not having any time alone to himself, and his temper was already slightly shorter than normal after the past few weeks. He’d have to find some time to himself during the school year or he might lose his temper majorly and deal damage to the school. Maybe Hogwarts could help him with that. Fred and Ginny appeared shortly after Alex chose an armchair to sit on, nodded at him tiredly, and sat on the couch next to him to wait for George, who was a bit of a night owl and had a hard time getting up in the morning, and Lee, who apparently was just the same. They wandered down to the Great Hall once the other two had arrived, and Alex immediately spotted Luna sitting by herself at the Ravenclaw table. He broke off from their little huddle immediately and sat down next to her casually. The sparsely occupied Great Hall fell suddenly silent, which Alex noted with some curiosity.
“Morning Luna,” Alex said into the silence. “How’d you sleep?”
“Pretty well. The heliopaths were watching over me,” Luna said in her unhurried way. “I don’t think the teachers will take you sitting here well. They’re especially infested with wrackspurts this morning, so I’d wait to clear out some of the blibbering humdingers until then. See you tomorrow morning!”
She turned back to her food then and ignored his presence. Alex, feeling like he’d just been dismissed from a royal audience, slowly got up and walked over to his little group of Gryffindors, sitting down next to Ginny. The Hall slowly meandered back to the previous level of noise now that he was sitting at his own table, but Alex could hear the whispers about him starting as more students wandered into the Hall. Alex served himself a piece of toast before abruptly shifting his attention to the group as a whole.
“Is it really so unusual to sit with your friends from other Houses?” he asked.
“We don’t think we’ve ever seen someone sit at a table other than their own,” Fred said.
“Though that’s probably because people don’t make friends with people other than their own Housemates,” George added. “Pass the butter, will you?”
Alex passed the butter while thinking that over. “People really don’t have friends in any other Houses?”
“I don’t know what everyone’s so afraid will happen if we intermix,” Ginny shrugged, “but it’s been like this for as long as we and our parents have been here.”
Alex took a deep breath against the rant that wanted to slip past his teeth. Luna had warned him that today wasn’t the day for that in her own way, so he’d wait until at least tomorrow to really take a stand. Still, getting his opinion out to his friends couldn’t hurt. “But doesn’t the Sorting Hat warn everyone to get along every year?”
“No one really listens to the Hat,” a still mostly asleep Lee managed to get out. “Again, I’m not sure why we don’t, but none of us really talk to anyone outside our Houses.”
“So you’re telling me that you lot, supposedly known for your bravery, are too scared to break the status quo and talk to people outside your House because you’re scared?” Alex asked skeptically. He was actively trying to push their buttons now to get them to think more about his point.
“You have a point there mate -” Fred started.
“- But the Golden Trio of Glory heading our way likely won’t want to hear it,” George finished.
“The biggest rivalry in the school is between Harry and this one Slytherin brat named Draco Malfoy,” Lee said sagely.
“Honestly, at this point they should just call it love,” someone sitting near them sniggered.
Alex wanted to ask more questions about that, but the topic suddenly turned forcefully light as Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat down next to them. Their sideways glances at Alex weren’t subtle at all even though they probably thought he had no clue they were keeping an eye on him or wanted to talk to him. The sudden switch to Alex’s full first name confused Lee, by the looks of it, but George whispered what was going on in his ear. Alex watched Lee’s suppressed flush at the close proximity with some interest. He couldn’t get together with Ginny, but he could help at least one Weasley find love, or at least a relationship with someone who honestly cared about them. He put it on his mental to-do list while still engaging in light conversation.
“Where’d you run off to this morning, Alexander?” Hermione asked, completely butting into the conversation and cutting Lee off.
“Yeah, we wanted to walk with you,” Ron said, destroying Lee’s attempt to wait a moment before beginning again.
All five of them turned to stare at the trio incredulously.
“Sorry?” Alex asked politely. He knew he’d heard them right, but he at least wanted to offer them the chance to fix their rude behavior.
“Why did you run out of the common room so fast? We wanted to walk together and talk to you,” Hermione said slowly, as if she was talking to a particularly slow two year old.
“I walked with Ginny, Lee, Fred, and George,” Alex answered just as slowly. He wasn’t above using their own tones back at them if it would make them realize how it looked and felt. He turned away from the three of them. “Lee, you were saying?”
Lee didn’t get a single syllable out before he was interrupted again.
“That was really rude, mate,” Ron said.
“Yeah, we just wanted to talk to you,” Harry said.
Alex sighed and gave them a look. “You do realize that is the third time you three have interrupted Lee, right? If that’s not rude, I don’t know what is.” He ignored their sputtering and turned back to Lee. “Sorry Lee. What were you saying?”
Lee waited a beat before cautiously beginning to speak again, obviously just waiting for the next interruption. Ginny and Fred obviously weren’t pleased with the behavior, but George looked particularly incensed. Alex wouldn’t be surprised if Ron and Harry found themselves victim of the twins’ latest ‘tests,’ Hermione excluded only by the fact that she would probably see through whatever the twins attempted. Maybe Alex and/or Luna could help them. Breakfast was fairly tense until Professor McGonagall came up and down the tables handing out schedules. Indeed, Alex noted with interest that all of the teachers looked a little stressed or nervous, so perhaps wrackspurts might be used in some situations to indicate stress? Alex had absolutely no clue, but he was enjoying the almost riddle feel Luna’s creatures presented. He doubted anyone but her family knew exactly what each creature was and could do.
The owls almost gave Alex a heart attack. No one had bothered to warn him or any of the first years, by the panicked looks and aborted screams, about the owls who would fly in low without any warning and drop a letter or package straight at your head. Most of the older students caught their mail without really needing to look up, but a few, Neville Longbottom and two particularly unfortunate boys at the Slytherin table included, got hit straight in the head with whatever forgotten items their guardians had mailed to them. Alex had to consciously suppress his instinct to duck, erect a shield, and take a swipe with sword, axe, dagger, staff, or magic at what his instincts were telling him were attackers. Perhaps the birds sensed his wariness, because not a single bird after the first two came too close to him.
Alex did manage to sneak a peek at a copy of the paper the majority of the birds were carrying: The Daily Prophet. He skimmed the first paragraph before handing it back to Ginny, dismissing it as sensationalist propaganda and actually saying so, to the shock of those close enough to hear him. He’d get his news and knowledge of the political situation from other, more reliable and relevant sources: the people around him and possibly the magic of Hogwarts, or the High Brownies. From the whispers and angry glances directed at Harry and Dumbledore at the Head Table, Alex guessed that most of his peers weren’t so discerning. Of course, they were only children and teenagers, so Alex supposed he couldn’t expect that much from them. Still, a little common sense wasn’t too much to ask, was it? But then, thinking about his experiences in this society as a whole, Alex had to conclude that maybe common sense was too much to ask from children when they had no good examples of it to follow.
A reluctant Alex bid goodbye to Ginny, Fred, Lee, and George at the base of several sets of stairs. He was interested in the system of magic he was learning, but he was not looking forward to having to walk to classes with the Golden Trio of Glory, as George had called them earlier. He just knew Hermione was going to attempt to wheedle more information out of him. Unfortunately, Alex had to live through the fulfillment of that particular unpleasant prophecy. He tried to be as honest as possible while still keeping all of the necessary secrets, i.e. everything that Hermione was asking about, secret, so, needless to say, he didn’t really succeed. Alex was beyond ready for a break when he finally made it to the classroom, so he immediately made his way to a half-filled desk and sat down next to a Ravenclaw that scanned him as if he’d grown a third arm.
After subtly checking to make sure that he hadn’t accidentally shapeshifted in any way, Alex introduced himself to a bewildered boy named Anthony Goldstein. The boy actually looked somewhat offended by his presence, and Alex contemplated the timing of his House rant carefully while maintaining light conversation. He also threw in a couple of theory questions, and Anthony actually looked like he was warming up to sitting next to Alex by the time class started. Alex only learned that a ghost taught the class when he saw the rather shocked face of an old man who’d just entered through the blackboard. He grumbled internally, made a subtle ‘go on’ motion, and sat through a rather poor and stuttered lecture about goblin history - which Alex was actually interested in because it might give him clues to how the goblins had established themselves so thoroughly to be trusted with the economy of an entire nation - and stayed behind as the rest of the students drained out of the classroom.