Harry Potter and the First of September
The journey to Hogwarts was long. Three older boys had asked if they could use the empty seats in the compartment, which Harry had no problem with, and they had told him that it would take all day. When he asked what ‘all day’ meant, they had eventually decided on about 6 hours. Harry had, with their help, reached into his trunk and extracted at random Hogwarts: a history. It was a heavy-going book: densely written and confusingly phrased. Harry found he had to read every paragraph several times before he understood what the author was saying. Nevertheless, he persevered until a plump witch with a trolley opened the compartment door with a jaunty cry of “anything to eat, dears?”
The older boys bought food from her, and Harry rummaged for the leftovers of his breakfast. Harry observed them while they ate as he surreptitiously fed bits of bacon to Nagara. Unlike his uniform, which was pure black, the boys had a blue stripe decorating their robes at the cuffs and hems. That must mean they were in Ravenclaw house, Harry decided, and once again felt uneasy as he wondered what house he’d be in. What if no-one wanted him? He wasn’t clever or cunning or courageous or any of it. Hagrid had said that Hufflepuff were duffers, but the books said they were loyal and hard working. Harry didn’t feel particularly loyal either.
This line of thought was interrupted when a girl of about his age opened the compartment door and asked bossily, “has anyone in here seen a toad. Neville’s lost his.” Harry only noticed then the nervous-looking chubby boy eclipsed behind the girl’s hair. He smiled at the boy. He had a toad: he could be a useful person to know.
One of the older boys sniggered. “You brought a toad?” he asked.
His friends shushed him quickly. The boy looked even more nervous, but the bushy haired girl looked angry. Harry decided to distract her, “I haven’t seen it, but I could help you look if you like.”
She turned to him, and her look became calculating rather than angry. “No thank you,” she said, primly, “we can manage.” And she flounced off without shutting the compartment door. Harry stood to close it, and smiled again at the nervous boy, who grinned sheepishly back, and hurried after the girl.
“Well, really! If I’d brought a toad, I’d be happy it had got lost,” said the Ravenclaw who had sniggered at the boy called Neville.
“Didn’t you recognise him? That’s the Longbottom boy. I heard he was raised by his grandmother. She’s probably really old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned or not, I wouldn’t put up with a toad.”
“I had a toad,” Harry interrupted. The boys turned to look at him. “I had to get rid of it, or I’d have brought it with me. It was really very easy-going, much easier than Suku. She’s my owl.”
The boy who objected to toads looked uncomfortable. “Well said,” said the boy who hadn’t taken part in the argument, robustly. “See, Connor, there are good things about toads.”
“Why did you have to get rid of it?” asked the other boy that wasn’t Connor.
“It… got too big. I had to take it back to the shop. Then I was given Suku for my birthday.” Harry didn’t like lying, but he also didn’t like bullying, and felt that bending the truth slightly to stop these boys from bullying Neville Longbottom, whoever he was, was worth the effort.
“Good show,” said the robust boy. “Better than just dumping it. A lot of pets can’t make it in the wild.”
“Oh, shut up Adrian,” Connor interrupted, “we don’t need to hear everything about pet care.”
“Magical creatures are extremely special, and we should take good care of them. Especially the ones we take as our pets,” Adrian argued back, sounding rather pompous.
“You know about magical creatures?” Harry asked Adrian.
“Not much yet, but I will soon. I’m starting Care this year.”
“Care?” Harry asked.
“Care of Magical Creatures. You chose extra classes for third year, I’m taking Care. Professor Kettleburn knows loads about creatures. Do you like animals, too?”
“A bit,” Harry hedged. “But I met a magical snake over the summer, and I wondered what makes a sna- an animal a magical one?”
Adrian looked stumped. “D’you know, I don’t know. I’ll ask Professor Kettleburn if you like. Or you can ask him yourself. You’re a first year, aren’t you? No stripes.” He indicated the blue banding on his uniform. “Well, if you’re in Ravenclaw, I’ll introduce you to him and we can ask.”
“He’s interested in snakes,” said the third boy, whose name Harry still didn’t know. “He’ll be a Slytherin.”
“Liking snakes doesn’t make you a Slytherin, Johan,” Connor said, now sounding bored. “What about old Sujatha in Hufflepuff?”
“And look at Jameson, scared stiff of the things, and Slytherin prefect this year,” Adrian added.
“Alright, alright,” Johan huffed in defeat. “You’ve got as much chance of Ravenclaw as anyone else,” he told Harry, then turned on his two friends. “Happy?” he demanded.
“Very,” said Adrian in his robust voice. Harry smiled nervously and quickly opened up Hogwarts: a history again, trying to distract himself from the talk of houses.
***
Harry awoke to a tannoy announcement throughout the train. We will be reaching Hogwarts in ten minutes time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately. He sat up quickly and glanced at the Ravenclaw boys to check whether they were giggling. In fact, they all appeared to be laughing over some magazine or other. At some point during the journey Nagara had travelled to his other shoulder, hardly surprising since he was sleeping on the one it had been using. He stood on the seat to jam his book back into his trunk and whispered to ask if the snake wanted anything to eat. He got back a hiss of “impatient.” He assumed this means that it wanted to move.
“Not yet,” he whispered back under cover of pushing his book back, “when we get settled in.” Nagara hissed back an angry “Now!” and Harry felt the snake begin writhing under his clothes as it tried, Harry assumed, to relieve the boredom of sitting still all day. Understandable though the action was, it was also extremely uncomfortable.
The station that the train pulled into (Hogsmeade, Harry noticed, rather than Hogwarts) seemed too small to contain the number of pupils who disembark. Harry followed the three Ravenclaws from his carriage until he heard Hagrid’s voice shouting “First years, this way.” It took a while to reach Hagrid, against the flow of older students leaving the platform by another exit, and Hagrid was just saying, “hold on, we’re missing someone,” when Harry arrived, out of breath and apologising. “There y’are, Harry. That everyone? Then let’s go.”
Hagrid led them down some steep stone steps and along a path which continued downwards. A light mist was beginning to form and coated the way in dampness which was rather unpleasant. “Cold,” Nagara complained, and draped itself back over Harry’s shoulders, where the hood of his cloak provided an extra layer against the night chill. Harry began to agree when Hagrid’s voice called out, promising their first view of the castle. When it came in sight around a bend in the path it took Harry’s breath away.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered when he had begun to get over the scale of the place, and the beauty of the glimmering windows appearing like stars in the darkening sky. Nagara poked its nose out of the neck of his cloak and made a noise which Harry interpreted as “what is?” combined with a “hunh” of disapproval. Harry supposed snakes didn’t care too much about scenery.
Hagrid led them to the side of a lake and directed them into boats. Harry found Neville-the-toad-boy sitting in a boat with the bushy haired girl from the train, who introduced herself as Hermione. They were joined by a girl with wavy hair who told them, in a cheerful whisper as they set off, that her name was Hannah Abbot. Harry didn’t bother introducing himself, only staring up at the castle until it passed out of sight behind an overhang.
***
As they trudged up the seemingly endless stone steps from the boathouse to the main castle the-bushy-haired-girl-Hermione whispered accusingly, “you didn’t tell us your name.”
“Harry,” he panted back.
“I thought so,” Hermione’s voice would have crowed if it had been above a breathless whisper. Harry thought he knew what was coming, “you’re-”
“No!” He spoke louder than he intended to and grabbed her wrist to physically stop her. “I’m just Harry, you understand? Just Harry.”
She stared at him in the flickering torchlight as their future classmates continued ahead of them up the low stone passage. Whatever she was looking for in his face, Harry saw the moment she found it. She nodded, “just Harry.”
Harry let go of her wrist, nodded once, and hurried to catch up with the others. He heard Hermione panting along behind him.
***
Hagrid had left them in the presence of the Deputy Headmistress, whose name Harry had recognised from the letter, who had led them into an enormous hall. When Hogwarts: a history had talked about ‘The Great Hall’ Harry hadn’t imagined anything so great. He heard Hermione-with-the-hair rattling information about the ceiling from Hogwarts: a history to the others, but it was the sea of people which caught Harry’s attention. The accents of the house colours on black uniforms were more pronounced in the setup of house tables.
He looked towards the teachers’ table and ran his eye over the row of adult faces. Serious faces, curious faces, welcoming faces, and two faces which looked decidedly unfriendly. The one under a purple turban cleared quickly into an expression of bland interest in the first years lined up waiting to be sorted.
Professor McGonagall began to call names and the first years stumbled out of their line to be sorted. Hannah-from-the-boat was first up, and immediately went to Hufflepuff. They cheered her as she walked towards them, and two older students moved up to welcome her. Harry hoped that wherever he ended up they would be as kind.
Neville-the-toad-boy was still holding the toad when McGonagall called his name. Harry touched the boy’s arm and gestured to hold the animal when the boy hurried past. The look of gratitude on his round face made Harry feel strangely warm inside. No-one had ever looked at him like that before. The boy tripped over his own feet, and then ran off still wearing the hat after he’d been sorted, making the hall full of older students laugh. He finally arrived at the Gryffindor table near the first-year line and had sat down before he remembered the toad. As the Patil twins were called up Harry edged out of the line to hand over the animal.
Then it was Harry’s turn. Whispering broke out all over the hall when Professor McGonagall called his name. Harry felt eyes on him as he walked up to the hat, and he tried hard to ignore them all. He’d got the impression from Diagon Alley that Harry Potter was a Someone, but the feeling from the hall full of students made him think that Harry Potter was a Someone. And he didn’t like it. He was glad when the hat dropped over his eyes, and he could ignore everyone else.
A small voice in his ear said “Mr. Potter, I wondered when I’d be seeing you.”
Harry had been half expecting the voice, but even so it was a challenge not to jump. He managed it but was fairly sure that he looked guilty. Perhaps it was for the best that the hat covered most of his face.
“Yes,” the voice continued, “there’s been a lot of speculation about you. Now let’s have a look… Plenty of courage, I see, and not a bad mind. Cunning, yes, but ambition… no, that’s interesting. Very domestic. You could be great in Slytherin, and- Oh! Parseltongue. Very interesting. Slytherin would be indicated, but perhaps… a bit too reckless? Certainly, diving into rearing a Basilisk. Hmm. A word of advice, Mr. Potter, from one who knew Slytherin himself: they get more dangerous as they get older. But to the matter in- ahem- hand, yes, I think it should be GRYFFINDOR!”
At the last, shouted, word, the hall seemed to explode with cheers all coming from Harry’s right. He took off the hat and handed it back to Professor McGonagall, who was smiling at him. He walked hesitantly towards the noisy table, including two identical redheads actually standing on the table shouting in unison “we got Potter!”
Harry saw Neville-the-toad-boy and Hermione-with-the-hair looking a little alarmed by the noise and he hurried to sit by them. The sorting seemed to finish quickly after Harry was seated. He was soon squeezing up to make room for “Weasley, Ronald” as “Zabini, Blaise” was sorted into Slytherin. Professor McGonagall took the hat and the stool away and the man in the centre of the high table stood up.
“Welcome. Welcome one and all to Hogwarts. Before we begin our marvellous feast, I would like to say a few words. Here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you.” He sat down, looking as though all his problems had now been solved. Harry goggled at him until Hermione-with-the-hair nudged him firmly and he saw her holding out a tureen of roast potatoes. He concentrated on filling his plate with some of everything.
Around him, it seemed, people had no trouble serving themselves and talking to each other at the same time. The talk seemed loud after the silence of the hall during the headmaster’s strange speech. Hermione-with-the-hair was talking excitedly to the redheaded boy next to her, a prefect, Harry noticed, about lessons. He listened idly while they chatted about transfiguration and turned his attention back to the staff table. There was Hagrid on one end next to a man with one arm, and the man in the middle was clearly the headmaster. He tried to remember the name on his letter, but it was gone. He seemed to recall it began with a C.
And next to the headmaster was Professor McGonagall, deputy headmistress, whatever that meant. He looked at the others. There was a man in what looked like a highchair sat on the headmaster’s other side. Next to him was a woman with a very round face, the kind of face which looked as though it smiled a lot. Next to Professor McGonagall was a man who looked as though he never smiled. He also looked a bit ill, to Harry’s mind, with lank hair and a yellow cast to his skin. He appeared to be talking, with very bad grace, to the man next to him, who was wearing a purple turban and a look of terror. The two men seemed to catch sight of Harry’s interest, and he turned back to his food, hoping there was nothing personal in the look of rage and hatred on the ill professor’s face.
Hearing a lull in the conversation next to him Harry turned hurriedly to the prefect and asked what each teacher taught. He was annoyed to learn that, far from a C, the headmaster’s name began with a D: D-for-Dumbledore, and alarmed to learn that the ill man next to Professor McGonagall was the potions professor. Percy-the-Prefect seemed unconcerned about his apparent ill health, saying that he ‘always looks like that’, and going on to warn Harry and Hermione-with-the-hair that, as head of Slytherin house, he tended to be stricter with the other houses. To distract Hermione-with-the-hair from her tirade about fairness Harry asked Percy-the-Prefect which one was Professor Kettleburn. He turned out to be the one-armed man next to Hagrid.
“How did you hear about old Kettleburn then, Harry?” Percy-the-Prefect asked, jovially.
Harry told them the story of hearing a magical snake speaking English over the holidays, and the witch in the Magical Menagerie advising him to talk to Professor Kettleburn once he got to school. Hermione-with-the-hair was full of excitement about the breakout of the boa constrictor, saying how her parents had read about it in the news. Percy-the-Prefect was more concerned about a magical snake being in a muggle zoo. He was in the middle of berating Harry for letting the snake go and not reporting it to the proper authorities when he seemed to remember that, being raised by muggles, Harry wouldn’t have known the proper authorities even if he’d wanted to report it.
Eventually, when they were all too full to move, dinner came to an end. Professor D-for-Dumbledore announced some school rules, and then told them, in a light-hearted voice, that the third-floor corridor on the right hand side was out of bounds for anyone who did not wish to suffer a most painful death. Percy-the-Prefect looked annoyed about this. “He might have given us a reason!”
“But he can’t be serious about it!” Hermione-with-the-hair whispered back, aghast. “Not about death, not in a school.”
“He’s serious about it,” Percy told her gravely, “but it’s strange not to tell us more about why. Maybe Peeves has been doing something. He’s a poltergeist; causes nothing but trouble.”
At Professor D-for-Dumbledore’s insistence they sang the school song. Harry quite liked it: the words were funny, and it made him laugh to hear everyone singing at different times. Hermione looked horrified, and some of the other teachers looked pained. Harry noticed that Professor Snape-who-looks-ill didn’t join in. When the red-headed twins who had stood on the table to cheer Harry’s sorting had finished singing Professor D-for-Dumbledore sent them all to bed, and the Gryffindor first years followed Percy-the-Prefect up more stairs than Harry could count, and into a plush red common room with squashy chairs and a roaring fire, then up more stairs to a round room with five four-poster beds. Harry found the bed with his trunk by it and fell onto the sheets. He didn’t even feel Nagara slithering out of his collar to explore their new room.