Disclaimer: As before, J. K. Rowling is the rightful custodian of the Harry Potter universe, and the same goes for Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen with respect to The Magic School Bus.

Professor Dumbledore rose from his chair as the eight former classmates stepped into the Great Hall, all eyeing their surroundings with similar expressions of dumbstruck wonder. "Ah, you've arrived," he said with a smile.

Keesha had the presence of mind to nod; everyone else continued to gape at the ceiling. ("At my old school," Phoebe whispered to no-one in particular, "we never let the sky indoors.")

"Excellent," said Dumbledore, and turned to the House tables. "Some time ago," he explained, "– and I will date it no more precisely than that, lest I expose a lady's most jealously guarded secret – Hogwarts had the honour of numbering among its students a memorable young American named Valerie Frizzle."

There was, at this point, an inaudible murmur from Professor Kettleburn.

"Well, yes, Aloysius, perhaps memorable is a rather mild word," said Dumbledore. "But it will suffice for now. In any event, last Friday I received an owl from her, requesting a rather unusual favour. It seems that, after teaching elementary science in her hometown for, lo, these many years (note again my discretion), she is contemplating retirement, and wishes to hand over a certain magical school-bus to one of her eight most fondly remembered students. This bus, however, requires a certain amount of magical training to operate properly, and therefore she asks that the eight of them be permitted to study here for the space of a single year. Their special Sorting will therefore take place immediately. Minerva, if you please?"

Professor McGonagall rose, took the Hat from Dumbledore, and consulted a scrap of parchment in her palm. "Belknap, Keesha!" she called.

Keesha took a deep breath, invited the others to "Wish me luck", and stepped forward. Professor McGonagall indicated the stool; Keesha sat down, and the Deputy Headmistress lowered the Hat onto her head.

"So you're the first, are you?" said a voice inside her mind. "Well, let's see what we have here. Plenty of sober common sense, yes; a notable impatience with grand schemes; a remarkable loyalty to your friends… yes, I think you'll do well in – HUFFLEPUFF!"

The assembly applauded mightily as Keesha removed the hat from her head, thanked Professor McGonagall, and went to take her place at the far-right table.

"Blake, Timothy!" said Professor McGonagall.

"Well, now, what's this?" said the Sorting Hat as it peered into Tim's mind. "A quiet, unobtrusive sort of fellow… well, that eliminates one House right away, but the trick is deciding between the other three. You're quite bright enough for Ravenclaw, and that stolid reliability of yours does certainly suggest Hufflepuff… but the fact remains that, the one time you really blossomed during one of Valerie's field trips, you showed such a knack for seeing the big picture that Slytherin would have claimed you instantly. Yet there's nothing really devious about you. Hmm…"

The Hat mused for a while longer (Tim making no effort to influence its decision), then abruptly said, "Oh, why not be daring? You'll be a good influence, if nothing else. SLYTHERIN!"

Tim nodded, and (once the Hat was off his head) made his way to the middle-right table. He chose the seat directly behind Keesha's, and the two of them surreptitiously exchanged the first inter-House high-five in Hogwarts history.

"Li, Wanda!" said Professor McGonagall.

Wanda was visibly sweating as she sat down on the stool, which amused the Hat immensely. "Now, really, Miss Li, don't tell me you're nervous?" it said. "All that daredevil spirit, and you're afraid of a mere psychic once-over?"

Wanda didn't respond in words, but a faint blush crept over her cheeks.

"Well, there's a lesson in that," said the Hat. "A taste for thrills, external bravado – that's all very well, but it's usually just on the surface. The heroic spirit is something else entirely. So Gryffindor is out; it wouldn't have done, anyway, given what your favourite phrase would be taken by the Weasley contingent to mean. No, the House for you – with your hunger for distinction, your no-nonsense approach to life, and your willingness to be devious when the need arises – would certainly be… SLYTHERIN!"

Another round of applause echoed through the Great Hall, and Wanda rose and took her seat next to Tim – mostly out of loyalty, it seemed, as her first act as a Slytherin was to whisper to him, "Why'd you have to sit here? All the cute pure-bloods are at the other end of the table."

Tim shrugged. "Ask Keesha."

Wanda glanced behind her, and saw Keesha rapt in conversation with a handsome Chaser to her immediate right. She rolled her eyes. "So just because her name starts with B, she gets first pick and I get stuck?"

"Yep," said Tim. "That's life, I guess."

"And where did that Belknap thing come from, anyway?" said Wanda. "I thought her grandmother's name was Franklin."

"That's her maternal grandmother."

"I'll bet."

While all this was going on, two more of their classmates had been Sorted. "Malone, Dorothy Ann!" had become a Ravenclaw almost as soon as the Hat had touched her pigtail, and "Perlstein, Arnold!" had made Hufflepuff almost as quickly. "Ramon, Carlos!" on the other hand, was proving more difficult to place.

"You're a puzzle, Mr Ramon, do you know that?" said the Hat.

"That's okay," said Carlos blithely. "Just so long as I don't go to pieces." And he let loose his trademark guffaw at his own cleverness, oblivious to the bewildered stares of everyone else in the Hall (who, of course, hadn't heard the setup line).

The Hat sighed. "You see, that's why I can't possibly put you in Ravenclaw," it said. "Its reputation for wit would be indelibly stained if I did. Yet nothing else seems to quite fit, either. You're not subtle, you're not gallant, and you're certainly not a sober, solid citizen. So what do I do with you?"

Carlos was rather stung by this picture of his personality as a series of vital deficiencies, and was about to retort that there were far more important qualities than those four when the Hat spoke again. "Well, I suppose there is a certain dauntlessness about you," it said. "Never say die; he who hesitates is lost; just because your last fifty jokes haven't been funny doesn't mean the next one won't be. So make it – GRYFFINDOR!"

The far-left table, which had been waiting rather impatiently for its first new member, led a particularly loud round of applause as Carlos approached. He grinned and took a bow before sitting down – in a chair that was nowhere near the Ravenclaw table, since he hadn't noticed the pattern of solidarity that Tim had established. D. A. was mildly hurt.

"Tennelli, Ralph!" said Professor McGonagall.

"I'll take your cap," Phoebe whispered to Ralphie as he started to move forward.

Ralphie blinked. "Huh?"

"Well, you can't put on the Sorting Hat if you're still wearing some other hat, can you?"

This hadn't occurred to Ralphie, but he acknowledged the logic of it. With some slight reluctance, he removed his cap and handed it to Phoebe, and then stepped forward to be Sorted.

"Now here's a straightforward one," was the Sorting Hat's comment. "Brash and impulsive, with a notable tendency to self-dramatisation: decidedly, we have here another – GRYFFINDOR!"

Another burst of applause, another quick swap of hats, and another Walkerville resident was sitting at the far-left table beside Carlos. (D. A. turned a little pink, and stared fixedly down at her plate.)

"And, finally: Terese, Phoebe!" said Professor McGonagall.

Phoebe, of course, had already stepped forward to hand Ralphie's cap back to him, so she only had about another metre to travel towards the stool. It was, however, quite possibly the longest metre of her life, since the notion of exposing her inmost thoughts to a being that she didn't even know was one from which the whole nature of Phoebe Terese recoiled.

Still, she made it to the stool without fainting – though she couldn't quite keep from shuddering as she felt the brim of the Hat against her hair, and the touch of its mind on hers. "Oh-ho," it said softly. "Oh-ho-ho-ho. Saved the best for last, did we?"

What do you mean? Phoebe thought. (Unlike Carlos, she wasn't about to address the Hat out loud if she could avoid it, and she presumed that it could hear her thoughts as well as read them.)

"Only that it's going to be a particular pleasure telling you what House you belong in," said the Hat. "You're probably thinking of yourself as a 'leftover Hufflepuff', aren't you? One of those occasional people who hardly have personalities at all, and get thrown into the Badger House for lack of anything better."

Phoebe didn't have to reply to this; the abashed confirmation of it was written all over her mind, and the Hat chuckled. "Well, 'tain't so," it said. "I'm not saying that you couldn't manage, and possibly even thrive, in Hufflepuff – for your positive qualities, please note – but it's not where you belong. There's only one House for someone with your almost painful compassion and your desire to better the world at any price, and that is…" It seemed to pause for an instant for effect, and then cried aloud, "GRYFFINDOR!"

The far-left table burst into applause once more, but Phoebe barely heard it. A Gryffindor? Her? It couldn't be. She'd heard about Gryffindor, from the gamekeeper; it was the house of valiant warriors and larger-than-life heroes, not of timid misfits who nearly starved themselves out of pure shyness. The Hat must have made a mistake somehow.

But it seemed to be official. Professor McGonagall had already removed the Hat from her head, and was giving her a small, welcoming smile. Dazed, she rose to her feet and stared at the Gryffindor table, trying to work up the nerve to take her rightful place there.

At length, she took a few hesitant steps toward the end where Carlos and Ralphie were sitting. Before she could reach them, however, a loud clatter arose from the Ravenclaw table; she jumped slightly, and turned (along with the rest of the Hall) to see D. A. picking up an empty goblet from off the stone floor and fixing her with a meaningful look.

It took a second, but Phoebe got the message. (So did Carlos and Ralphie, who had the decency to look distinctly sheepish.) She altered course, and took the chair behind her friend's. D. A. seemed satisfied.

Dumbledore rose once again. "Well," he said, "now that you're all settled in, we can begin the feast. Tuck… oh, excuse me. Yes, Miss Belknap?"

"I was just wondering about something," said Keesha, lowering her hand. "You said that the Friz used to attend this school?"

Dumbledore blinked, courteously mystified. "I'm sorry: the…"
"She means Ms. Frizzle," Arnold said.

"Ah." Dumbledore chuckled. "The Friz, yes. Very good. Yes, Miss Belknap, the Friz did indeed once attend Hogwarts."

"Well, which House was she in?" said Keesha.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, and he reached under his robes and withdrew a small photograph. He touched this with his wand, and it folded itself into an airplane and glided over to Keesha, who unfolded it and smiled.

"What is it?" said Wanda eagerly.

Keesha passed the picture to Arnold, who looked at it for a second, nodded, and passed it to Wanda. It traveled thus from hand to hand until all of them had looked into the eyes of their former teacher, as she had been in her youth: leaning against the wall of greenhouse 3, her frizzy red hair falling loose around her shoulders, and wearing forest-green robes patterned with anacondas and pit vipers.

"Can't say I'm surprised," said Ralphie, looking over Carlos's shoulder at the winking snapshot. "There always was something sneaky about the Friz."

Carlos gave him a look. "Don't tell me you're still brooding about that vampire thing?"

"No, not really," said Ralphie. (In truth, he was feeling rather vindicated.) "It's just that whole mysterious, never-show-your-hand thing she's got going; it just fits with what Hagrid was saying about…"

He was interrupted by the sound of his right-hand neighbour clearing her throat. "Not to rush you, Tennelli," said Katie Bell, "but, when you're ready, could you think about passing me the rolls?"

Ralphie blinked and looked down at the hitherto empty platter in front of him, which was suddenly heaped with piping-hot dinner rolls. His jaw dropped; he looked down the length of the table, and saw that all the other platters, tureens, and glasses on the table were filled with equally succulent-looking fare. "Wh… how did this get here?" he croaked.

"Magic, I suppose," said Phoebe, as she ladled a sizeable helping of Chanterelles onto her plate. "Dumbledore just said, 'Tuck in,' and it all suddenly appeared."

Slowly, a broad grin appeared on Ralphie's face. "I've got to get to know our Headmaster better," he said. "Okay, Katie, trade you for the minestrone."