"Alderton, Alexander!"
As the name echoed in the Great Hall, Alex grinned at Louis and Celeste, his new friends he'd met on the train to school, and giddily stepped up to the stool in the front of the Hall where the Sorting Hat sat. He was about to join one of the Hogwarts Houses, essentially what would become his school family for the next seven years, and he could hardly wait.
The hat, once Alex had put it on over his head and felt it sink down past his eyes, announced him as a Gryffindor; from the queue of first-years remaining to be sorted, Louis Weasley yelled gleefully and gave a thumbs-up. Alex took a seat at the Gryffindor table next to a bunch of loudly cheering people who were much taller than he, and all four tables slowly began to fill with incoming first-years as the queue diminished. When the Hat reached the C's, Alex watched with bated breath for Celeste Cassidy to don the Hat and be sorted. Despite Alex's crossed fingers and a wish that Celeste would join him in Gryffindor too, he was slightly disappointed to hear the Hat deem her a Ravenclaw instead. But Louis became a Gryffindor, just as he'd predicted, and he sat beside Alex and held up his hand for a high-five.
Two tables away, an arm waved enthusiastically, and Alex and Louis craned their necks to see Celeste grinning at them, the bottom of her chin barely even with the surface of the table, but appearing much taller than she was, due to her numerous short beaded braids sticking up. Alex waved back at her, convinced that the three could still be friends despite their different Houses. Because he was finally at Hogwarts, an ancient castle where his mum had learnt all her magic and made lifelong friends, and where Alex would learn to be a wizard too. And in the meantime, there was an absolutely scrumptious feast laid out on the long table before him, and even in all his excitement to eat as much food as possible, his table manners were no worse than Louis's.
"Mhuwulpfurush," said Louis appreciatively.
"What?" asked Alex.
Louis swallowed. "My mum would be furious," he explained. "She's always tried to get me and my sisters to have better table manners. I think Vic is the only one who does. Look, Dom's a mess too." He pointed to the Slytherin table on the other side of the room, where a strawberry-blonde girl who resembled Louis sat behind a sculpted tower of mashed potatoes.
"How many siblings do you have?"
"Just the two sisters. You?"
"None," said Alex. "I'm an only child. It's just me and my mum."
"Can you reach the gravy?" asked Louis, his arm extended but not quite long enough.
"Yeah, here."
"Cheers."
"This is going to be amazing," said Alex. "I can't wait to find out what our classes are. I hope we have class with Celeste."
"I've already learnt some spells!" exclaimed the boy sitting opposite Alex. "My sister taught me. She's a third year."
"I have two sisters, so I've learnt twice as many spells," said Louis.
"That's not fair," said the boy.
"I made a potion once," Alex offered.
"Wow, what did it do?" The boy across from Alex had lost interest in Louis and listened to Alex eagerly.
"Er, well, it cleaned? It was a cleaning potion."
"Oh," said Louis. "I thought you were going to say it did something really exciting, like it made you breathe fire or gave you super-strength."
Alex laughed. "I wouldn't really have wanted either of those things," he said honestly.
"Why not?" asked the boy across from him, laughing. "Everyone would want that. I'm Rahul, by the way, what are your names?"
"I'm Louis Weasley," said Louis, and he and Alex both watched Rahul's eyes widen slightly as he recognised the rather famous surname.
"That's going to go to your head, I know it," Alex muttered to Louis with a grin, and then turned back to face Rahul. "I'm Alex."
"Oh, right, you were the first person sorted," said Rahul. "Alexander Alderton."
"Not Alexander," said Alex, frowning slightly. "Just Alex."
"These potatoes are amazing," said Louis. "Maman always gripes about English food, but it's so good."
After a splendid feast, there was some talking, and Headmistress Sprout said some fairly important things, but Alex was exhausted and stopped paying attention after he heard the word 'rules'. He had just gotten comfortable with his head nestled into his crossed arms on the table when Louis shook his shoulder, and it was time to go up to the dormitory. His new home. Alex's sleepiness evaporated immediately, and he inexplicably had loads of energy again for climbing the many stairs up to the tower where the Gryffindors lived.
Once they'd been ushered up to the Gryffindor common room by two prefects (one of whom was Louis' other sister, sixth-year Victoire), Alex, Louis, and Rahul were directed towards the boys' staircase, and climbed up to find a spacious, crimson and gold coloured room with nine beds in it, with each boy's trunk already stowed at the foot of a bed. It only took a short span of time for the clean dormitory to undergo a complete transformation due to the incoming pack of eleven-year-old boys; duvets slid off of beds, shoes made their way across the room and into corners, posters of musical groups and Quidditch teams were tacked onto the walls, and it felt like home.
The first class the Gryffindor first-years had the following day was Potions, and as Alex had hoped, it was with the Ravenclaws. Alex sat with Louis and Celeste, and after they'd been told off for whispering in class and not paying attention, they took notes, collected and prepared some dried nettle and porcupine quills, and worked to create a cure for boils.
"Mr Alderton, well done," said Professor Choudhury in her sing-song voice, upon seeing Alex's finished potion. "This is a superb first potion."
Alex beamed. "Thank you, Professor."
"She called me Mr Alderton," Alex laughed as they left the classroom. "I don't feel like a Mr Alderton; that sounds so stuffy and old. I'm not a Mr, I'm just me."
"Mr Alderton, top of the morning," said Louis in his attempt at a sophisticated voice. "I'm Mr Weasley, which makes me really stand out from the loads of other Weasleys here."
"You two are ridiculous," said Celeste. "But Alex, you have a natural Potions talent. Does it run in your family?"
"Well, my uncle is a great cook," said Alex with a shrug. "And I like cooking, so maybe that runs in the family. Reckon potions are similar to cooking?"
"Probably," said Celeste thoughtfully. "Hang on, are we lost? What corridor is this?"
"I know where we are," said Louis, and turned left to lead them down the adjoining corridor; Alex and Celeste followed.
All three of them were late to Charms.
It was so easy then; Alex could still remember how quickly they had made friends and felt a sense of belonging, and the hardest struggle was simply levitating feathers and getting lost while lugging around heavy books. Back when Alex seemed just as normal as everyone else – was naively less self-aware, didn't feel like such a misfit, and didn't have to constantly think about an institutionalised gender binary in which they did not belong. Back before Alex began their quest to change a Hogwarts tradition that had existed for a millennium. That wasn't easy.
A/N: This story was inspired by the experiences of several genderqueer people I know and they helped me notice a lot of things about how gendered everything in society is and to what extent it alienates people who don't fit into the constructed binary. I wanted to give some representation to folks who do not identify as either gender, because they are so underrepresented in the media and really everywhere, but I don't claim to be an expert, so if you see something in this story that is wrong or insensitive or misrepresenting, please let me know! This is definitely the most ambitious and daring project I've written so I'll just sit here biting my nails until I know what to think of it hahah. Thank you so much for reading (both the story and this long author's note).
Many thanks to lunarlumos as well for hosting the non-cisgender challenge on hpff, which prompted me to write this by the deadline aka a lot faster than I normally would have done :p
And last but not least, the chapter title belongs to the Beatles and not me.
