The school was scared. It was obvious. The shaking, the murmuring, the …
Oh, it wasn't the students. They were sitting in their common rooms, asleep in their beds, participating in highly illegal/amorous activities or otherwise occupied.1
(1 Well, they would be, in a few hours. All the students were currently sitting on the Hogwarts Express.)
It was the school.
No! Not the students! Or the staff! Or any human, animal or other being!
It was the school! 2
(2 And the house-elves. And the animals in the Forest, and mice, and rats and all those, but we'll get to that.
Yes, The Author made a slight mistake/s before. The Author apologises for breaking the International Statue of Wizarding Journalism and wishes to point out that the mistake/s was amended and thus The Author does not need to be charged, tried and thrown in prison.)
The school. The actual school. The walls, the towers, the flagstones, dungeons, the materials out of which the Four Founders built the damn thing. Even the mortar.
That was what was afraid.
Now, you may not believe that the school was capable of being scared, or, heck, any emotion. But it could.
It was sentient.
It could feel.
And now the school wanted no more than to pick up its skirts (i.e. The Foundations) and run away.
Flee. For its life. 3, 4
(3 Of course, the Gryffindor part of it would happily stay and fight, but Slytherin was voicing its very strong objections to that. Ravenclaw wanted to (happily) dissect the scary item but only from a distance. Hufflepuff was somewhat concerned that the retreat would involve leaving the students and staff to fend for themselves.)
(4 Some might argue that the school was not actually alive; that is, that it had a life. While the school wished to, it could not participate in a social life of any kind, given that it was somewhat stuck in the ground. Social lives aside, the school would like to protest that it was alive, thank you very much, and if someone was going to write another goddamned report/thesis on whether the school was alive or not, could they please interview the school!?)
At any rate, the school wanted to run far, far away.
Why?
Well, Dumbledore was coming.
Albus (insert long list of middle names) Dumbledore was coming to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to begin seven long, tedious years of education. The young boy was eleven years of age, but those twinkling blue eyes, that aura of magic obvious even at his young age, that cheerfulness … Well, was it any wonder the school didn't want to be around?
Of course, one would expect that the school wouldn't be so scared. After all, the school should have seen its fair share of cheerful, eye-twinkling and powerful young boys and girls in the six hundred or so years it'd been around. 6
6 The actual age of the school was much debated. However, it is safe to say that it has been around for at least six hundred years, eight hundred if you take into account that the point from which I'm talking about is when Dumbledore went to Hogwarts, and that was two hundred years ago from now. Six (Eight) hundred years ago, after all, was when the Muggle King of Britain decided to invade France, and it is well-known that Lion, Snake, Raven and Badger, famous Muggle soldiers who assisted in the destruction of France due to their infamous dislike of all things French 7, were actually wizards.
7 Their dislike of all things French is expected to have stemmed from the fact that Lion lost to a French Beauxbuton's representative in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Why the others joined with him is unknown, especially given the current Gryffindor-Slytherin hatred.
Anyway. It hadn''t seen that many eye-twinkling, cheerful, powerful maniacs (wizards/witches). (ETCPM)
Most powerful witches/wizards weren't eye-twinkling and cheerful. If they were eye-twinkling, they were usually about to murder you in order to achieve world-domination. If they were cheerful, it was usually a ploy in order to achieve a relationship with you that they would later manipulate in order to achieve world-domination. Never together, though. Never at the same time.
But, as far as the reports went, this eye-twinkling, cheerful, powerful young man was eye-twinkling, cheerful and powerful because that was his natural state of living. Not because it was a ploy to achieve world-domination, but because he was genuinely a cheerful, eye-twinkling, powerful wizard. And he did both at the same time. That was even scarier.
The school was very much afraid. It had never had to deal with this state of affairs before. It wanted to run away, as was its tendency whenever something happened that it had never seen before. 5
5 As one might expect, when the school first opened, it was very much afraid. For the first seven years, it found itself dealing with all sorts of unseen occurrences: explosions and amorous activities being the most common. Now, though, it was used to those. The dungeons were incredibly capable of dealing with potion explosions of all sorts, and the Astronomy Tower
The school told itself to calm down. It started the same technique taught to it by its creators. Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths. Shake those fingers, shake the toes. Calm down.
It felt better.
Warily, the school turned to watch the Express arrive at the station. Out stepped the students. The first-years, and there was the eye-twinkling, cheerful, powerful maniac already surrounded by a legion of loyal friends, lowered themselves into the boats, staring wide-eyed at Hogwarts.
The school gulped as the eye-twinkling, cheerful, powerful maniac drew closer.
Then, the Sorting began. The school watched, fear and wary increasing exponentially as the ETCPM sat down.
"Hufflepuff!"
The school relaxed. This was much, much more common. This it had been trained for.
As Salazar Slytherin had told it, "The Slytherin is sorted into Slytherin, and there it may develop plans for world-domination. That child has never encountered true friendship and loyalty, and thus, those searching for world-domination and who are in Slytherin, will never gain the desired level of power.
Those who truly, truly want world-domination will be in Hufflepuff, and those are the ones you need to look out for."
The school drew out the plans. It needed to capture the ETCPM and keep it at Hogwarts.
The school shuddered.
A/N: Inspired by Sourcery, in the Discworldseries by Terry Pratchet (sp?). Yeah. Am slowly ploughing through those. I love the series, but my friend's reading them to me (for no other reason than she loves to read out loud and I'm happy to listen) so it's taking forever. We've got to find the time, for one thing.
PS: I know Dumby's supposed to be Gryffindor. But I put him in Hufflepuff. According to my friends and I, "The True Slytherin is in Hufflepuff, and the Hufflepuffs shall achieve world domination one day". Plus, he might've said that he was in Gryffindor, and spread that rumour, in order to increase Slytherin-Phobia.
Yeah, random idea wondering around in my head.
PSS: Review?
PSSS: Why won't the numbers stick to superscript!!!!!?!
PSSSS: Do tell me if there are any errors.