"Please form an orderly line, and follow me to the great hall." as the students shuffled into place, she cast her gaze over them all, before turning on her heel to lead them from the room.
The Professor lead them through the large double doors leading to the great hall, which had been opened by the caretaker, and walked them down the middle of the room, between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables, to the very opposite end of the hall, just in front of the staff table. There was a slightly raised platform on which the staff table was placed, and on the platform was a stool, on which stood a particularly shabby looking hat. McGonagall stepped up onto the platform, standing next to the hat, and tapped the tip of it with her wand. Immediately, the hat began to half sing, half talk, out of a rip in the base. It recited a long song, which detailed the virtues acknowledged by each house, but it also mentioned something else. It spoke of a forthcoming danger, and a growing secret organisation. It soon finished, and McGonagall unravelled a scroll of parchment, from which she began reading names.
"Archimago, Michael" was the first name. A tiny boy with sandy coloured hair walked nervously to the stool where he sat, and McGonagall placed the hat on his head. After a few moments had past, the boy was the first student sorted into Ravenclaw that year.
There were very few A's, and before he knew it, it was Sirius' turn. He walked up to the stool, oozing confidence, and sat as the hat was placed on his head. He could hear a small voice talking to him.
"Hmm, another Black. But not so similar to his cousins…Gryffindor!" the last word was shouted to the room, and Sirius made his way to the Gryffindor table, looking slightly disappointed but, James noticed, slightly pleased.
Remus and Peter were both sorted into Gryffindor, and James followed shortly after.
James and Remus joined Sirius, but Peter did too - he didn't seem to have spoken to anyone else, for the greasy haired boy he had been talking to - his name, they discovered, was Severus Snape - had been sorted into Slytherin house.
During the feast, two girls came over to speak to Sirius. One was tall, and had long, white-blonde hair and the other had shoulder-length mousy brown hair, and was a fair bit shorter than her companion.
"Sirius, I hope you understand that you have just let the side down considerably" the blonde-haired girl said.
"Oh, Narcissa, just because I'm braver than you." He grinned up at her, before looking at the other girl. "Andromeda" he smiled "I see you've changed your nose a fair bit since I last saw you."
Narcissa had scrunched up her nose at Sirius' comment, replying with "We'll see who's laughing next year.". She had spoke in a knowing, if slightly icy, tone, before walking back to the Slytherin table.
Andromeda and Sirius continued speaking for a while, before she disappeared back to her table, but James barely noticed. He didn't even notice Peter taking some chicken scraps from his plate, because he was busy staring down the table.
"It's rude to stare." Remus said, with a slightly amused note in his voice, as he followed James' eyes. Soon, all four boys were looking down the table.
"Why didn't I see her earlier?" James wondered aloud, sounding as if he was in the middle of a particularly good daydream.
"You were probably dazzled by McGonagall's beauty" Sirius said, sarcastically, with a grin still on his face. James looked at him, and flicked potato at him with his fork. "Hey, do you have any idea how long it took to get my hair looking like his?" more potato. "You little-"
"Shh!" Peter had butted in, pointing towards the staff table, where the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, had stood up to speak.
"To our new students, welcome, and the older, welcome back, to a new year at Hogwarts. Now that we have all been fed and watered, I see only fit to allow you to retire to your dorm rooms. Prefects will lead the way to each common room. Goodnight, to all of you. Rest well, a new year always brings new challenges." His beard twitched from a smile, and at once the room was filled with the sound of talking and benches scraping the floor as students moved to go up to bed.
"I'm going to go and send my parents an owl." James said. "Let them know I got in."
"I'd say I'll come with, but I don't think mother" Sirius said the last word bitterly "would be very pleased".
"Well, I'm coming." Remus said. "I need to ask my dad something anyway."
The three of them looked around, and Peter had already scurried off to the dorm rooms.
"We'll be about twenty minutes, I suppose." James said, and Sirius nodded, before leaving in the direction of the Gryffindor common room with the rest of the crowd.
"What is his family, royalty?" Remus asked, although it wasn't directed at anyone.
"Pure-blood pride." James said, as the pair of them began to walk to the owlery. "All of his ancestors were in Slytherin, so they're dead against half-bloods and muggle-borns…dunno about Sirius though."
"Sirius," a cold, female voice said from behind them, "never did fit in with…us."
The two boys turned around to see Narcissa, the blonde girl who had spoken to Sirius at the dinner table. She was stood with another boy, who appeared slightly older than her, but had the same blonde hair, but he had cold, grey eyes.
"Well I'm glad he doesn't, I know the people you associate yourselves with, having-" Remus stopped himself mid sentence, and the boy with Narcissa had a strange, knowing expression on his face.
"Ah…you must be the half-blood Lupin" a sly, unpleasant smile appeared on his face "you're quite a…name, in our house, I must say…"
"C'mon, James" Remus said, grabbing James' arm and walking through a doorway concealed behind a tapestry. They found themselves in a deserted corridor, that was dimly lit by a few candles. It seemed as if it hadn't been in use for a very long time.
"What was that all about?" James asked, rubbing his arm slightly where Remus had grabbed it.
"Doesn't matter…do you get the feeling that we shouldn't really…be here?"
"Yeah…but it's got to go somewhere, right?" He began to walk down the corridor, footsteps echoing where it was so empty.
"I'm going to the Owlery." Remus stated, turning to walk back through the entrance, where he met the blonde boy's sneering face.
"Thought you of all people would be accustomed to darkness by now, Lupin…"
This comment made Lupin retreat back into the passageway, quickening his steps to catch up with James.
"Nevermind." he said, and the two of them followed the corridor with each turn it made, and walked up the steep staircase they found at the end. They pushed open the door and found them in a large, hexagonal room, the walls of which were lined with owls. "Owlery?" Remus asked, looking around at all of the animals.
"I guess so…" James said, walking towards one of the walls, and picking out an owl to send a message to his parents, before releasing it through the large window opposite the door.
Remus walked over to the window, also releasing his chosen owl, before turning to look back at the door.
"it's…gone…"
"What?" James also turned around, and found himself looking across the room at a blank wall. He looked around the rest of the room, wondering if they were simply disorientated. "Well look…there's another door over there."
The pair of them walked to the door, and went through it, finding themselves in the same corridor that they entered the passageway from - only they were face to face with the tapestry they had walked through.
"Weird." Remus said, before the two boys headed in the direction of the Gryffindor common room, where they found Sirius, waiting for them outside, arms crossed, and looking thoroughly bored.
"You took your time." he said as they approached, before turning to say the password (Flitterbloom), and the three of them walked into the common room.
"Yeah, we bumped into your cousin, and there was this boy with her who-"
"I'm going to bed." Remus said, cutting across James' sentence. He left, the two boys watching after him, before James finished.
"Anyway, he was saying something to Remus about how he's some sort of household name or something."
"He's a half-blood, a Slytherin would say that." Sirius said, with a slight bitter undertone in his voice.
"It wasn't that, there was something else…Remus removed us from the pair of them, I think, maybe before the boy said something else…" James frowned slightly. "You're…well, you would know?"
Sirius shook his head quickly - too quickly, almost. "Let's go to bed." he said, starting up the stairs, and James, not wanting to be left in the common room on his own, followed.
The next morning, at breakfast, James and Remus had received to answer to their letters to their parents, but still found an owl swooping down on the table in front of them. It walked along the table and dropped a red, sealed envelope in front of Sirius, who stared at it in horror.