"Are you saving that seat?"
Neville looked at the open compartment door, seeing Cecily in the doorway. She was looking at his feet sprawled out across the bench. He shook his head with a grin. "Nah. I've been waiting for you."
"No, you haven't." She shoved his legs aside and sat beside him. "Who owns that?" She pointed to the pile of robes and the rucksack on the bench opposite them.
Neville shrugged. "It was here when I arrived. How were your parents on the Platform?"
"Would you believe that Seamus barely let me leave the Loch? He wouldn't stop hugging me, and once we arrived, he sent an owl with a reminder about what to expect from the Sorting hat. It was a loud screeching owl. Didn't you hear it? Mum said we were lucky he didn't come with us."
Neville laughed. "That's funny. My Dad was the same way. Have you seen Asa? I thought she was going to sit with us?"
"I didn't even see her on the Platform."
The noise in the corridor was dying down when the compartment door opened again. The two girls could not have looked any more different from the other as they both tried to enter. Victoire, with her pale skin and silver blonde hair, long and flowing and Asabi, with the darkest skin any of them had ever seen and her shorter hair pulled back and braided. They stepped in together. Cecily made room for Asabi next to her and Neville, but that left Victoire standing as the door closed once more.
"Who belongs to these?"
Cecily and Neville both shrugged, and Victoire slid the whole lot of it across the bench, sitting in the new empty space.
"Where do you think you'll be sorted?"
Victoire threw her hair back with a laugh. "Gryffindor, of course. Where else? You three?"
Asabi shrugged, but Cecily and Neville both laughed. "Where do you think? Have you ever known anyone with parents who were more Hufflepuff than the two of us?" She turned to Neville. "Isn't your family descended from the Hufflepuffs?"
Neville nodded with a tired grin and a roll of his eyes. Where else would he go, but Hufflepuff?
"Asabi? Have you any idea?"
She shook her head, looking a bit out of place even after so many years here, but without the shared history of her friends' families.
"Hello, ladies. Mind if I join you?" The blue hair on the boy in the doorway was like an announcement of Teddy Lupin's arrival, and he entered without waiting for an answer, but stopped short and laughed. "Oh, sorry, Smith, I didn't see you there."
Neville glowered and Cecily elbowed him in the ribs. The boys barely saw each other, not like the other DA kids his age, and when they did, he and Teddy really didn't get on very well. It probably had something to do with both of them being the oldest boys. They tolerated each other, and Neville was happy that they weren't in the same year and even happier when they weren't in the same room. He was pleased to be going to Hogwarts with his closest friends, but couldn't help but feel a stab of unease as Teddy easily infringed on his train compartment, and his friends, wondering how they would get on living in the same House for the next six years.
*****
Neville watched Cecily as she sat next to Teddy at the Hufflepuff table. Well, no matter. He'd be there soon enough. Asabi had already gone to the Gryffindors, and now it was Neville's turn to sit on the stool and wear the hat. He knew that it wouldn't take more than a moment for the hat to know where to put him. In fact, he was quite sure that he needn't have even sat down; it was that obvious.
Neville couldn't quite believe his ears. Was the Sorting Hat mad? What was going on? He glanced at Uncle Neville who seemed just as surprised as he was. Professor Neville, as the kids started calling him gave the young boy a weak smile, the kind that was supposed to reassure, but only made Neville feel worse. How could he fail at the Sorting? Was he the first Smith that this happened to? What would his parents say? He walked, like a man going to the Hangman, to the far end of the room; to the last table in the Great Hall. He was surprised by the reaction there. Most of his new Housemates were touching him, trying to shake his hand and once he sat down next to Matthew Flint, a second year, he was patted on the back so many times that he flinched on the last two. He looked around at the sea of faces and handshakes and wondered how he would write the letter to his parents explaining that he'd been Sorted into Slytherin. He really hoped that he was the one to tell them and that the Professor wouldn't Floo call before Neville could sneak into the Owlery and get his owl out tonight.
