The huge doors swung open so abruptly that I was vaguely surprised that Hagrid didn't accidentally punch the person opening it in the face. A tall, spare woman with a stern expression and startlingly green robes stood outlined by the torchlight of the entrance hall.
Huh. She actually does look a lot like Dame Maggie Smith... was my first, mostly irrelevant thought. Then again, the movies seem to have gotten a lot of the visuals right... or something. If this is some kind of bizarre oxygen-deprived hallucination, I wonder exactly how brain-damaged I'd have to be for this to be what pops out?
"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," Hagrid announced.
"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."
The emerald robes swished briefly as she whirled and led the gaggle of kids- many of whom were gawking openly- across the huge entry hall. Glad magic works differently here than it does back home. I thought. Real magic would have a bitch of a time heating a room this size in winter...
I frowned slightly in confusion as we were led to a smallish side room on the opposite side of the hall from where the noise of the rest of the school was coming from. The Sorting Hat was nowhere to be seen. I cursed silently. It was going to take some work to keep the movies and the books separate in my head, and it seemed that when there was divergence, we were going by the... books? Probably?
I jerked out of my thoughts when the Professor started speaking, then relaxed when I realized she was going into a long spiel about the houses and the house cup and things. I paid just enough attention to make sure that Hufflepuff wasn't secretly evil or something, but didn't worry about it too much otherwise. This stuff, I was pretty sure I remembered.
"I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly." she finished, and left with the same Queen Victoria sweep that she had led us in with.
I swallowed, and glanced at Ron, hoping that he might be able to divert me from my gloomy thoughts about the Sorting Hat exploding my head or something, but if anything, he looked even more nervous than I did.
I hesitated for a moment, then said "So... Ron... do you know anything about this sorting business?"
Ron actually jumped slightly, poor kid. I think my nervousness might have been rubbing off on him. "Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."
I just nodded. "I don't think they'd be allowed to do things to hurt us..." I said.
Ron shrugged, but stayed silent. Nobody much was talking, except Hermione, who seemed to be reciting lists of spells under her breath and trying to figure out which ones she would need for the supposed 'test'. I noticed a few of the other kids giving her dirty looks, but didn't worry about it too much. I didn't think it would come to anything, and if worst came to worst, Hermione could pretty much take care of herself. At least long enough for help to arrive, anyhow.
Then the screams started.
I was out of my seat and halfway turned around, instinctively going into my usual casting stance, before I even realized what I was doing. Some small part of my brain was noting with approval that the robes made a decent substitute for my duster, swirling in a suitably dramatic fashion, while the rest of it was registering the parade of ghosts streaming in through the back wall.
Ah, wizardry. Even when you're not putting on a show... you're putting on a show.
The ghosts weren't paying much attention to us, since they were busy arguing about someone called 'Peeves'. I frowned. Peeves... Peeves... oh, right, the poltergeist. He got left out of the movies, didn't he?
... really wishing now I was the sort of obsessive nerd who argued for hours over minute plot details and differences between the books and the movies. It would make this so much easier. But no, I had to be the sort of obsessive nerd who argues for hours with Bob the Skull on how the magic in the series works and how it differs from real magic, instead. I chuckled silently, amused by the memory. Bob- the spirit of knowledge that doubled as my reference library and lab assistant- had gotten so worked up by the end of it that he actually forgot to mock me for how pathetically nerdy it all was.
The Fat Friar said something I wasn't really listening to, although I nodded to him and Nearly Headless Nick courteously- at least, I was pretty sure that the ghost in Elizabethan ruffles was Nick, anyhow- and then Professor McGonagall shooed them out.
"Now, form a line and follow me." the Professor announced.
I got into line, trying to alternately swallow or ignore the lump in my throat. I was... pretty sure... that the Sorting Hat was harmless, but I'd seen too much brain-tinkering magic go wrong in too many horrible ways to be very comfortable with the idea. I ended up behind some darkish-blond-haired kid I didn't recognize from either the books or the movies, and Ron got behind me.
The string of first-years marched across the enormous entry hallway once more, this time to the double doors that the rest of the kid-noises were coming from. Professor McGonagall swung the doors open, and we straggled in. I gave the scenery an admiring glance. The flying candles, the golden dishes and cutlery and things, the star-speckled ceiling... "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History." I heard Hermione whisper to someone... all spoke to a practicioner with a firm grasp of the dramatic.
In my experience, that was a good thing. Seriously.
Admittedly, mostly because it made it really, really easy to tell when said practicioner had gone off the deep end, since they were unable to resist, on some fundamental level, the need to wear all black and festoon things with skulls and blood and pentagrams. And occasionally pumpkins.
We came to a stop in front of everyone, and I tried to ignore the hundreds of eyes boring into me. Well, us. I don't think they knew who I was yet... or at least whose body I was wearing... so the stares were probably more generalized than my paranoia was telling me. Then again, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon waiting to eat your face.
I was dragged out of my increasingly-depressing thoughts by the hat starting to sing. I raised an eyebrow. Apparently my paranoia was malfunctioning. It was supposed to make me more aware of things, not less, and I'd totally missed it when the hat was set out.
The hat gave a little ditty about its function, and everyone applauded when it was done. I did too; it was one thing to make a mindripping artifact that could rummage through your brain like last week's laundry. It was an entirely different thing to give said mindripper a sense of rhythym and meter, and the ability to formulate a rhyme scheme. The hat bowed to each of the four tables in turn, then went quiescent again.
"So we've just got to try on a hat!" Ron whispered. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."
I managed a brief smile at him. Inwardly, though, I was cursing myself for having decided to watch Scanners again last week. Stupid cheap rerun theatre.
Kids were starting to be called up now, and I tried to concentrate. But they were mostly just being called up in alphabetical order, and I didn't recognize most of them. At least, I didn't think so. I'm pretty sure I would've remembered the name 'Finch-Fletchley'. Granted, none of their heads exploded, but then again, it wasn't them I was worried about.
Kids sat under the hat for varying lengths of time, and Hermione ended up in Gryffindor, much to my lack of surprise. Ron groaned beside me, and I suppressed a smirk, wondering if I should tell him about a certain wedding a decade and a bit from now. The urge to smirk vanished when Malfoy got sent to Slytherin, looking smug.
The crowd of kids was thinning, and I actually jumped when "Potter, Harry." was called.
I'd expected the whispers. I hadn't expected it to be quite that dark in the hat. I swallowed hard and waited.
When you've seen the things I have, it's one of the most unnerving things in the world to have a quiet voice speak so close to your ear that you should feel the warmth and moisture of the speaker's breath... and you don't. The list of things that can do that is actually pretty long, but there isn't much on it that you'd want that close to your head.
"Uh." the hat said, and then we were in a circular patch of light in the middle of an ocean of shadow.
The hat was still a hat, although it wasn't on my head anymore, and I was still a kid, but there was another me there. One that looked like I normally did, tall and rawboned with slightly too-sharp features, but this me was dressed in black and had a neatly-trimmed goatee.
"Welcome back to the Mirror Universe." I muttered under my breath.
My subconscious ignored my muttering and told me "Sorry, Harry. But I figured you could use a hand with this one."
"... this is new." the Hat observed. "I'd thought I'd seen just about everything over the years, but..."
"You're telling me." my subconscious responded.
I cut him off before he could get going. "I'm a bit of a special case." I said, then paused, wincing, as my subconscious choked off a bark of laughter. I tried to regain momentum. "I'm not in here voluntarily, trust me on this one. There was some kind of accident, but that's about all I know." I paused again as a thought hit me. "Hey, can you tell if that kid's still in here? I'd hate to think I was pulling a Harlan Ellison on him."
The hat gave off the general impression that it would have liked to blink. "A what?"
"Never mind, sci fi author. Wrote a story called I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, if you're wondering what I was thinking of."
"Uh... right. Anyway, I'm... not sure." the hat said slowly. "There's definitely more than just you in there, but how much of that is your friend here," it bobbed its tip at my subconscious, "And how much is anything else, I can't be sure. Sorry. It's hard for me to get much out of adult's heads- they're more complex, and I don't get put on a lot of them. I make them nervous for some reason."
I managed a tight smile.
"Well, from what I can see in this mess you call a brain, I'm going to put you in Gryffindor. And I'm going to have a word with the Headmaster about this." the hat said. It twitched slightly, then rotated in place to 'look' at my subconscious.
"Sorry." he said, and gestured at me.
"Right, thanks. Could you please let Headmaster Dumbledore know that I'd really like to talk to him about this mess?"
The hat rocked slightly, approximating a nod. "I'm not sure I can say you're not just crazy, though." it added as an afterthought.
"That makes two of us." I grumbled as I felt myself snap back to what was currently passing for reality.
The hat shouted "Gryffindor!" to a chorus of cheers, and I almost fell off the stool. I staggered over to the cheering Gryffindor table, limply shaking Percy's hand when he grabbed mine and ignoring the Weasley twins as they chanted something about 'getting' Potter. Er, me. I flopped into a place opposite the ruffled ghost and just kind of sagged.
The ghost patted my arm, and the whole thing went slightly numb. I twitched slightly and gave him a tired look, but he was already watching the sorting again. I shrugged, trying to work the tingling out, and got my first clear look at the head table. Hagrid was on the end closest to me, and when he caught my eye, flashed me a quick thumbs-up. I grinned at him in response, surprising myself a bit. Hagrid had never really been my favourite character, but the half-giant's good cheer was just infectuous. I could see why original Harry had liked him.
Dumbledore, of course, was front and center. I frowned at him, thinking. He was good at playing the long game, I had to give him that, but his manipulations of pretty much everything and everybody throughout the series had always kind of bothered me.
... yeah, yeah, I know. Pot, kettle, etcetera. I'm working on that, okay?
My gaze wandered a bit further, and there was Quirrell. The purple turban looked as stupid as always, but I was vaguely surprised by how young he looked. Couldn't have been much more than twenty something... stars and stones, he was probably younger than Billy and the Werewolves! And given that somewhere in my brain, Billy and crew were filed under 'kid sidekicks'... reality notwithstanding... I abruptly felt very old.
Which was seriously surreal, given that I was currently less than five feet tall and had a voice that hadn't even cracked yet.
I nodded to the black kid who joined the Gryffindor table... Dean something, I think?.. and waved to Ron as encouragingly as I could manage as he went under the hat. Greenly.
British schools are weird.
I gave him an 'I-told-you-so' type grin when he came out as a Gryffindor a second later and joined in on the applause.
"Well done, Ron, excellent." Percy told his brother in a pompous voice.
I gave him a strange look. I didn't know a lot of teenagers who were quite that eager to become... whatever it was that he was trying to be. Sounded like he was trying to make sure that the stick up his ass was firmly in place and that everyone knew it. I shook my head and forgot about it. Couldn't do much about it now.
At that point, Dumbledore beamed around the hall and started speaking. He reminded me enough of the Merlin of the White Council that it was really unnerving to see him looking that happy. Arthur Langtry, my putative boss, fell under much the same 'wise, ancient wizard' category as the headmaster of Hogwarts, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him smile. Of course, that might partially be because of the fact that if I can see him, he can see me. But that's another story.
"Welcome!" he boomed. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"
And then he sat back down, looking fairly pleased with himself. I smiled and shook my head as most of the rest of the students clapped and cheered.
"Potatoes?" came Percy's voice from beside me. I jumped, and glanced at the table. Not a bad trick- all the plates that had been empty a moment ago were now piled high with food. I nodded to Percy and started helping myself. I'd forgotten how hungry kids always seemed to be, and my stomach was now forcibly reminding me.
"That does look good." the ruffed ghost commented a bit wistfully.
I looked at him sideways, still chewing. I swallowed hard, but before I could say anything, he carried on.
"I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years. I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it." He paused, then changed the subject. "I don't think I've introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of the Gryffindor tower."
"I know who you are!" Ron blurted. "My brothers told me about you- you're Nearly Headless Nick!"
The ghost looked offended and started "I would prefer you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy...", but he was interrupted by the blondish kid who had been in line in front of me when we came into the hall.
"Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly Headless?"
"Like this." the ghost responded, flipping his head off to hang on one shoulder by a bit of skin. I winced, then realized that the conversation was rapidly becoming small talk. I tuned it out, worrying again as to how things were going to go, exactly. In the books, Hogwarts remained largely inviolate... aside from all the near-deaths, of course... until much later in the series. If I pulled off even half the stuff I was planning on trying, things were going to get very weird. I had no idea what Voldemort was going to do in response to me
Then I did something stupid. I glanced at the high table again, meeting the eyes of a hook-nosed man with lank, greasy black hair who was haranguing Quirrell. Once the feeling of a hot poker being jammed through my skull went away, I shook my head to clear it and growled irritably to myself. I should've known better than to look at the back of Quirrell's head. And I definitely should have known better than to let myself catch Snape's attention.
Not long after that, the food started vanishing, and I had a brief, irrational urge to slip a tip onto my plate for the house elves.
Dumbledore stood up to speak again, making some announcements. I smirked slightly to myself at the thought that at least assemblies at magical schools were slightly more entertaining than the mundane variety. After some announcements regarding sports, out-of-bounds areas and painful deaths, he announced the school song. As a 'pick your own tune' thing.
I blinked as he summoned the words and thought fast, wishing I had my guitar with me. Then the music started up, different tunes for everyone. Of course, that changed a bit when I started. A familiar, driving beat and grinding bassline slashed across the other tunes, nearly drowning them all out wholesale as I started singing the Hogwarts school song to the tune of Enter Sandman, by Metallica.
Murphy would probably mock me for picking something so cliche, and Molly would laugh at me for going so old-school, but come on. I was under pressure, and it was the first thing I could think of.
After a couple of minutes, students started trailing off. I finished singing, the thunderous bassline fading out, and settled back, grinning, as many of the students stared around the hall, wondering where on Earth THAT had come from. The Weasley twins were the last to finish up, singing along to what had to be some kind of dirge, and one of the slowest I had ever heard. Even they were a bit wide-eyed, although I suspected in their case it was more envy.
Dumbledore actually conducted the last bits of their tune with his wand, then wiped his eyes. "Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!" he said, apparently perfectly sincere.
I must have had a strange look on my face as I tried to figure out what working with him was going to be like. Assuming I managed to convince him, of course.
Percy harangued all the first years into a group and led them off through the castle. At least twice we passed through hidden doorways, and I wondered exactly how many students graduated a few years late because they spent however many months lost in the depths of this overgrown rat maze. My brain was happily conjuring up images of wandering tribes of feral students lost in the bowels of Hogwarts... apparently it had been a while since this body had slept, and I had been running on pretty short sleep before the transfer, too... when I ran into Ron because the line had abruptly stopped.
I muttered "Sorry." and craned around to see why everyone had slammed to a halt. There was a bundle of walking sticks floating in the middle of the hallway, which started launching themselves at Percy. I blinked.
"Peeves. A poltergeist." Percy whispered as he ducked, then, louder, "Peeves- show yourself!"
An apparently sourceless raspberry was his only reply.
"Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?"
Peeves appeared with a popping noise. He was floating in midair, crosslegged, with the bundle of walking sticks clutched in his lap. He looked oddly like someone had managed to crossbreed a ferret and a frog, with the latter's broad mouth, and the former's dark, wicked eyes.
"Oooooooh!" he chortled, "Ickle Firsties! What fun!"
He swooped at the group, who ducked as one.
"Go away, Peeves, or the Baron'll hear about this, I mean it!" Percy barked.
Peeves blew another raspberry at Percy, then popped out of sight again, dropping the bundle of sticks on Neville's head as he went. Suits of armour rattled down the hallway as he hurtled away.
"You want to watch out for Peeves, the Bloody Baron's the only one who can control him, he won't even listen to us prefects. Here we are." Percy said, gesturing to a large portrait of a woman in pink. A lot of woman in pink. If she sang, you knew it was over.
Instead of singing, though, she just said "Password?"
"Caput draconis." Percy replied, and the portrait swung aside. There was a round hole in the wall, too high for anyone as short as I was now to get into comfortably. Most of us managed to scramble through- Neville actually needed a boost- and then we were in some sort of sitting room deal with big, comfy-looking armchairs and a roaring fireplace.
Percy shooed the girls through one doorway and the boys through another, and I was a bit surprised to realize that there were only four first-year boys. Well, five if you counted me. Which was still weird. We all tromped up the spiral stairs, dragged our PJs out of our trunks, and got changed to flop into bed. I was too tired to even boggle at the fact that dorm rooms for eleven-year-olds had huge, ornate four-poster beds with velvet hangings.
"Great food, isn't it?" I heard Ron mutter from his bed. I mumbled something incomprehensible, and Ron snapped "Get off, Scabbers! He's chewing my sheets."
I frowned. Scabbers was something else on my list. But I was... too tired... at this... stage... to... my eyelids crawled shut, and I don't remember anything else from that night.
At least until a voice out of thin air said "Harry.", very firmly from right next to my ear.
