Disclaimer I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters, I just play around with the story and the personalities a bit.

A/N Another one-shot at Harry's live sorted into Slytherin. I have left the other story up so anyone can see, but that one is pretty bad though.

Summary Harry leaves the rainy train station and heads out towards the Hogwarts castle gates.


The Sorting ceremony - Hogsmeade Station

It was a dreary day, the rainy clouds rushed over Hogsmeade station and Harry Potter's clothes were slowly getting soaked by thick droplets of heavily pattering rain. This rain had started around half-way the train ride to Hogwarts and he knew, by experience or just by instinct, that the rain wouldn't stop anytime soon and waiting for the clouds to break would be a mere waste of time. The colossal, perhaps a bit oblong looking clock, attached to a way too small looking pole, was shimmering indecisively, probably because of the wearing effects of an age-old charm or maybe just the inexplicable nature of rain, now heavily struck seventeen, its sound magically magnified seemed to originate from all around. Harry, looking for a dry place to stand, for the howling, cold wind was blowing away any warmth and comfort he had on the train, mixed with his mounting insecurity whether he would be accepted at the promised wizarding school made him feel just increasingly miserable and incidentally quite near vomiting, though sheer luck and a bit of fresh air saved him from that fate. Now looking at the train he saw nothing but a seemingly unending stream of students, who were almost unwillingly leaving the cozy warmth of the express, pushed into the rain by the few people desperately wanting to get out, then hurried over to their groups of friends and Harry noticed, with a pang of pain, that he was one of the only ones standing all alone, surrounded by tight, small groups of friends whispering in hushed voices.

Ron was nowhere to be seen, for was waiting in one of the long lines leading to the many train toilets, most likely to wash his face he had and to give him some necessary breathing room to calm down his insecurities and nerves, which Harry knew weren't insignificant. Looking over into the smudged windows of the train he watched him stand in a long row of all different people, mostly first- and second-years and one or two annoyed looking sixth-year students. Ron was looking dead-pale and tightly clutching the brass railing, which was magically over-reflective, a bit weathered by its many years of over-extensive use and coloured a shade of dark gold with some brighter patches mixed in, which, the railing that is, Harry knew from his little experience he'd had on the train, contained not-insignificant amounts of sticky, old magical candy not unlike the muggle, as the wizards call non-magical folk, chewing gum or toffee. He saw him leaning against the dark red velvet one could always find on the walls of movie theatres or circuses, slowly crinkling up with tiny air-filled wrinkles, that Harry would always try to even out when he was dead-bored in a waiting room, without exception worsening the whole situation.

This reminded him of this one time he was seven and the Dursleys brought him to a movie theatre, when Harry was so frustrated with the velvet, it, in a pool of shimmering light that only he seemed to notice, first unwrinkled, then this horrible smell of overdue stake came up, the velvet turned green and ripped open. Vernon, his uncle, had to pay for Harry's damage and in one of his usual bad moods, got so angry that he, red in the face, his temple beating three times its usual size, had locked up Harry afterwards for two days. The train Ron was waiting in was scarlet red, a bit weathered looking and sparkled furiously in the little light, he had spent seven or so happy hours in there on his way to Hogwarts and now in the rain was slowly missing the comfortable bright red en yellow striped couches with those little plucks of hairs sticking out of the firmly packed seats and occasional button holding it all together and it was the place where he had found his first, real friend. Harry had never had someone, he sadly pondered, even when he was very young, every time found a potential friend, his slightly abusive brother had hurt them and added to the fact that he was probably weird in every meaning of the word. Harry Potter was a thin boy with glasses, unmanageable hair and an atypical lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, more recently though, much to his surpise as to his foster parents' shock he was a wizard or at least had some form of raw magical talent.

The clock struck another three times, striking exactly once every seven of Harry's heartbeats, while his nose, scar and eyes, as if he weren't wearing any glasses, were struck by an unnecessarily annoying shower of rain, originating from somewhere near the magical clock. The rain evidently was manipulated by the wind or some unexpected, little, easily missed side effect of a near-perfect magic spell seemed to move near-horizontally, flicker, explode in thousand tiny drops and all and, without exception, seemed to find it's way into Harry's now soaked wet face. The droning of the clock stopped without Harry noticing, till he, almost expectantly, looked over at the still slightly shimmering clock and somehow, for the clock was not alike any muggle clock, noticed a mere three minutes had passed since he had the train. Slowly Harry looked over at the sky, roughly to where he thought the by thick, dark rainclouds obscured sun, a bit surprised not to see the Hogwarts castle anywhere and silently happy no special, slightly magically altered lightning was coming down and looked over to the huge tree-filled - probably mostly with spruce and fir - mountains clouded by mist and other low hanging clouds, which seemed just a bit more concealing than these clouds should. Harry thought back at all those times he wanted to go visit the woods as child, because once his aunt and uncle knew how much he enjoyed the peace and quiet they gave him, they switched over to other alternatives to help Dudley counter his small, but quickly growing, obesity issues.

The rain had added a film of moist over the ground that was attracted to - probably not by gravity, for some water was streaming slightly upwards - but by some intrinsic magic spell, slowly gurgling away in some patches of darker earth with tiny hills on top of them as though they were recently brought there by the many droplets of water. Harry now also noticed, not totally to his surprise his feet were slightly stuck in a layer of age-old mud, some tiny quartz crystals, which Harry would collect fervently in his youth and a whole bunch of plastic, or maybe some strange candy wrappers, that probably were made of some strange magical material, which Harry, not totally unreasonably, believed. He felt one last wisp of cold rain on his face, felt the wind change direction and noticed, much to his delight that the rain was slowing and that the annoying spray of water was all gone now, the droplets got much thicker and slightly, as if by magic, took up the shape of a hamburger. Reminding him vividly of the street-food stand near his house, that his aunt, Petunia, was always talking about sabotaging or making the shopkeeper's life miserable in any other way.

Harry now noticed the buzz of whispered conversations, the humming unknown magic spells and, again, the soft, occasional dripping of the increasingly slimming amount of water droplets from all around him and noticed, briefly looking around, the silent whispers of light emanating from the till presently unnoticed, dim, nearly three-quarter foot high - so one could easily trip over it - magical lights spaced around the station every few feet, that haphazardly decided to turn on, shimmer a bit more brightly, turn its back on you - if that was even possible for a lamp - shine a little bit dimmer for quite some time and ultimately decide it was time to turn off for a little while. His focus was captured by these small, little devices for quite some time till a big, fat drop of water decided to land right on its nose and splatter water in his eyes and wetted his glasses once again. He busied himself drying his lenses with his slightly damp inside of his sweater he wore under his school robe, which, when he was done, seemed quite a feat, and looked up to see if Ron was still waiting at the toilet, he was nowhere to be seen, but luckily the line of waiting students was quickly slimming, he was, Harry mused, probably in the bathroom or, what he thought was more likely, looking around to find him, which in a mess of tall and small, thick or slim, blond of brown haired students, boys and girls, damp with rain, their robes hanging down by fivefold increased weight, nearly visible in the waning light from the sky, was logically speaking nearly impossible, but didn't keep him from feeling a pang of anxiety whether he had forgotten about him.

Quickly glancing over at the clock he saw the slightly bent, crooked dials uncertainly move a bit, then decide it was seventeen twenty-three. Time is a strange thing Harry softly said to himself when he heard the deep, familiar voice of Hagrid, the keeper of grains and keys at Hogwarts, turned round towards the sound and looked into the blue, with maybe a stroke or two of brown mixed in, smiling eyes of a slightly hook-faced girl with slim features and a bemused, maybe slightly self adorning look on her face with long, that is reaching to partly down her arms, perhaps a bit thicker than usual strands of light brownish hair pushed down by the rain and her tad too bony nose was pressed slightly together at the top, as if she'd once worn glasses, while the bottom part of her nose looked similar to an obtuse-angled bilateral triangle and her teeth, which Harry saw only for a split second were slightly yellow and fit remarkably well in her small mouth. Harry looked into her eyes for a mere half second - an awkward eternity - and proceeded looking for the low growl, which was Hagrid's voice. 'Firs'-years. Firs'-years over here! All righ' there Harry?' He found himself looking straight into the beaming, dark, brown eyes of the gamekeeper of Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid, who wore his usual brown, moleskin coat with more pockets than a observantly watching person could count, because they seemed to scurry all over his coat, as if they were some living creatures, which Harry thought might as well be the case. When they travelled to Diagon Ally that summer the gamekeeper had told him that he had always wanted a pet dragon. Hagrid's mouth, bearded with long curly strands of dark, awfully wet hair, opened up in a tiny little crack, which could very well be a smile. A second look showed Harry he had carefully stowed away his pink umbrella in his moleskin jacket, which Harry found a bit strange, because it was still raining pretty heavily, and was sure either Hagrid hadn't noticed its practical, muggle use or just was too embarrassed of its unusual colour to open it up in from of everyone. Harry now looked at Hagrid's boots that, while distorting the light a bit, not only looked perfectly dry, but also seemed to un-mud the ground around him. Harry saw many students, mostly small - one, however, quite tall - first-years looking nervously over at the gamekeeper, he saw that girl with the light brownish hair and a hooked face, the bushy haired girl by the name of Hermione, who was an unashamed know-it-all and someone, who always feels the need to organize everything, never lets anyone help and after whatever was needed was done answers back, annoyed, saying that always the same people have to do everything. With a sigh Harry acknowledged with a sigh the fact that you'd probably always, when you stick a group of more than fifty people, get one of those in there. He also saw Malfoy, a quite pompous, arrogant blonde-haired boy with a stick-like nose, that seems, in his impression, quite like the bully, Harry finally also spotted a red-haired freckled stout boy, probably Ron, with whom he sat on the train, who comes from a somewhat poorer wizard family and seemed like nice boy.

The rain had now started up again and for a change sprayed small little droplets, smaller than the head of a needle, pushed forward by the wind infinitely accelerated, landed all around the right side of his puffy, red - though maybe also a bit blue - face and made the inside of his earlobe itch. He saw most of the people streaming away from the platform to a stand with seemingly self-carrying carriages and saw the insecure looking face of Neville heading there, too. Hagrid seemed to have noticed too, he yelled, perhaps a bit too loud or a wee bit too aggressive 'Come her', firs'-year, boats are that way' pointing over at a hill quite a bit farther away. 'C'mon, follow me - any more firs'-years? Mind yer step, now! Firs'-years follow me!' Harry heard Hagrid's droning voice again, looking at the clock he saw the dials of the enchanted clock now point seventeen thirty-seven, and for some unexpected, strange, little reason it decided to strike once, it sounded as if someone had decided to smash a pair of cymbals and for a moment all lights seemed to burn a bit brighter, no one else had noticed this - or cared - though. Hagrid with his magical boots and moleskin jacket took a step, looked over his shoulder if anyone was following, then smiled, nodded and beamed at Harry (he couldn't tell which one, but probably all three). He took out some magical lamp sending away some haphazard flickers of light - for there was only one exit for the light and Hagrid was quite vigorously shaking it - which strangely enough seemed to bend in awkward ways so it cast the whole platform in some kind of dim state of illumination, which was quite necessary, because most of the little lamps were off at that specific moment - what certainly didn't decrease the risk of tripping over one.

Harry noticed his muddy underground covered with candy wrappers again and silently wished he had Hagrid's water-repellent boots, he noticed his wet socks - Harry probably didn't hate anything more than wet, slightly muddy socks, because they feel uncomfortable when on, you can hardly get them off and when off they crumple up into some crusty stubs with a bit of mud baked hard on it. The Hogwarts gamekeeper grumbled in his deep, rumbling voice 'There's still a long road ahead, keep up y'all, I won't be waiting for stragglers' Harry risked two steps, jumping as though to avoid - quite unsuccessfully - the deeper puddles of water, realized with a shrug he wouldn't be able to keep his feet dry so just walked forward. After another five steps his whole legs up to his knees were soaked with water, he had stepped into a particularly nasty piece of earth, which pretended to be dry, but was actually a half a foot deep and awfully muddy little pool. He saw the blond-haired boy by the name of Malfoy ten maybe fifteen feet ahead of him laughing a bit with his two cronies he had met on the express, they'd tried to bully them, which Scabbers, Ron's fat and sleepy rat, had - thank goodness - prevented. Harry envied Malfoy, because Malfoy had some kind of rain-repelling robe, that though being a bit more reflective seemed to keep him dry and warm, whereas Harry, was feeling cold and miserable. He was sort of waiting for Ron, but still he decided against running up towards him, he was sort of hoping to talk with hook-faced girl. While thinking he hadn't noticed he was staring full at her till she looked back, softly smiled - he, thank god, had the sense to smile back - and walked on.

After twenty-something more steps after Harry and his classmates stopped to see the vast expanse some kind of marble wall and a brick gate up ahead. The bricks were about one-fourth foot long and two-thirds foot wide and one-third foot long stacked so that at the corners the sides started with with bricks length- and widthwise alternately, about five widthwise bricks deep (or if you count starting and ending with a lengthwise block, four more blocks deep). The marble was cracked, weathered and a slight humming noise emanated from it and seemed to be a slightly paler shade of white to the observant watcher, the cracks were filled with shade of dark olive green moss, the outer edges with lichen and with who knows what kind of magical plants mixed in. There was slight shimmering on the other side of the gate and Harry felt his discomfort slowly burn away, a small smile cracked on his a bloodied, dry lips and with this new, devil-may-care attitude he closed his eyes and stepped right through the gate.

A/N So, what do you think? Please leave reviews and follow this story if you want more of this!