Thanks to: The Richmaster, Zekrom1010101010, Parallel Parabox, The Arcticourt Spellwright
Okay so The Richmaster was the first reviewer for this chapter and they had a few points in their review that I think a couple of people may have been hung up on.
I really don't know how to clarify things more for people without fourth wall breaking.
I'm going to tell you now: I have no plans to involve Aang.
Katara's Chi was mingled with Zuko's when he was pulled into the spirit world, and that's the only reason she got dragged along too, no one else in the ATLA human world was affected.
Also yes, Iroh and several humans have visited the Spirit world before but Katara doesn't know (that she knows) any one who has done that who isn't Aang (The Avatar.)
Agni: spirit of sun and fire is fanon, I actually checked the Wiki for ATLA just to double check because I couldn't for the life of me remember anything about him from canon, turns out it's because Agni is actually a purely fanon character. Agni Kai translates as fire duel and there is a god/spirit called Agni in one IRL culture which evidently was enough for the fandom.
It seems to be fanon that Agni is the king of spirits and brother of the original moon spirit, or something, and I imagine it's less of an actual King role, he's just the guy who happens to be the leader of the spirit council.'
Zuko attends a feast
"Are you alright?" Zuko glanced at Hermione for the briefest second, but when he turned back to the lake, Katara was gone.
"Yes, sorry, I thought I saw something in the water."
"What did you see, was it the giant squid? I read about it in 'Hogwarts: a History.'"
Zuko gave a non-committal shrug. Further conversation was waylaid as they sailed through the ivy curtain, and into a hidden tunnel. Despite Hagrid's guiding lantern, the journey was dark until they reached an underground harbour.
The new students clambered onto the pebbled shore, and up the carved stone steps to a huge oak door. Hagrid raised his fist to it and knocked three times, the door swung open with ease to reveal a stern-faced woman.
"The firs' years, Professor MacGonagall."
"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here." Professor MacGonagall led them into the entrance hall, and into another chamber, small and empty to the side of a door that muffled the voices of what must have been the rest of the student body.
"Welcome to Hogwarts, the start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony -"
The woman went on to explain the Sorting Ceremony, the nobility of each of the houses, and the rules of the House Cup.
Zuko listened with one ear, his mind drifting back to Katara's face in the lake. Was it some sort of trick? An enchantment on the lake? He thought Hermione might know, from the book she'd mentioned. Zuko resolved to ask her about it when he had a chance.
"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting. I shall return when we are ready for you, please wait quietly."
She left the chamber, and Zuko turned to ask if anyone knew exactly what the ceremony involved, when a blond boy called across the children.
"So it's true then, what they're saying on the train? Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts." The group began to whisper amongst itself, eyes drew to Zuko.
"Yes, I have. Though to be honest I'm not sure why everyone is making a fuss over it." That seemed to confuse people. The blond boy, whom Zuko suspected was the 'prat' Ron mentioned on the train, opened his mouth to speak, when one of the girls began screaming. Soon joined by several other first years.
Zuko came to attention as several pearl coloured spirits floated through the back of the room. They seemed to be arguing over something, until one of them broke of mid-sentence with a 'I say, what are you all doing here?'
The prince wasn't sure how to deal with these spirits, he barely knew how to deal with the spirits of his own world. No one said anything for a long moment. Then one of the spirits came to a realisation.
"New students! About to be sorted, I suppose?" The rotund spirit inquired, though no one was inclined to answer. It didn't seem to faze him though. "Hope to see you in Hufflepuff! My old house you know."
"Move along now," the sharp voice of MacGonagall interrupted, "The Sorting Ceremony is a bout to begin." She had the students form a line and follow her into the Great Hall.
The Great Hall was large, but not the largest hall Zuko had ever seen. The rest of the student body were divided across four long tables littered with golden crockery. The teaching staff shared another long table at the head of the hall.
The floating candles which lit everything drew Zuko's eyes upwards, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw not a ceiling, but the night sky. He must not have been the only one to falter at the sight, because he heard Hermione whispering that the ceiling was there, it was just enchanted to show the sky above the castle. She'd read about it in Hogwarts: A History.
'Alright, I'll admit it: Magic is a little bit impressive.'
Hagrid watched from his place at the head table, as the first year students trailed in. The half giant managed to pick out Harry from amongst the youngsters with no problem.
He'd meant to catch Harry's eye, and give him a 'good luck/you'll do fine' sort of smile and gesture, but the young boy's eyes were roaming over the hall not settling on anything for too long until MacGonagall brought out the Hat, and it started singing.
Harry's face went from alarm to curiosity to caution.
As the students were called up one by one, Hagrid noticed a growing look of horror – terror? – on Harry's face. When at last his name was called – and the hall broke into whispers over that – he seemed reluctant to sit under the Hat.
Hagrid thought Harry might try to make a run for it from the hall, but he set his shoulders and allowed the Hat to be placed on his head. While they all waited for Harry's placement, the half giant wondered what it was about the Hat, that made him so uneasy.
The minutes seemed to stretch.
The Sorting Hat called out its decision, and the reaction was instantaneous.
The hall erupted into shouting and screams of jubilation along with polite applause, Harry all but ripped the Hat off his head, and set it down on the stool with far more force than necessary. Hagrid thought he was about to enact violence on the ancient artefact for a moment.
Harry looked up at the main table and his eyes met Hagrid's. Hagrid grinned and mouthed congratulations, Harry smiled back – it looked forced, pained – and headed to his new table.
Harry looked a little green as he slid into a seat across from Neville.
"Are you alright Harry?" the boy looked up.
"Uh, yes, I'm just... people I don't know keep touching me. They weren't this touchy with everyone else." Neville thought he saw a dark cloud gathering over Harry's head.
"Well you are famous," the two boys startled as Hermione interrupted.
"So I keep hearing; something about my parents being murdered?"
Neville and Hermione shared an alarmed look as Harry added, under his breath: "Weird obsession about my scar remains unexplained."
Hermione opened her mouth to explain, when Ron Weasley was sorted into Gryffindor, and the table once again cheered loudly.
A moment later the red head was plopping himself down into the empty seat next to Harry, slinging his arm around the boy, who looked suddenly murderous. (Physical contact threshold clearly reached.) Neville looked concerned, Hermione narrowed her eyes. She promised herself she'd never use her power for evil, but Ron was completely ignoring Harry's very apparent distress, so Hermione took a deep breath, leaned around Harry, and started to babble.
"So Ronald, it was Ronald wasn't it, what do you think about the classes, I'm rather excited about transfiguration, the tansmutation of the basic properties of the molecules is sure to be fascinating subject-"
Ron stopped dead in the middle of his sentence, his eyes glazed over and he started moving away from Hermione, which meant he was moving away from Harry, who was leaning subtly closer to her.
Ron looked around for help, but he didn't need it as Hermione cut herself off when the Headmaster stood.
"Welcome! 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!" He sat back down as the majority of students began to clap and cheer.
The first years looked confused, Harry in particular looked rather stupefied as he let out a quiet 'huh.'
It was official, Zuko owed his Uncle an apology, and would never question Iroh's sanity again. Clearly his Uncle was the peak of mental health – especially if compared with Dumbledore – Zuko just hadn't understood, because he hadn't met that many old men. Or the truly senile at least.
The prince was drawn from his shocked mental ramble by Hermione offering him some potatoes. Which caused him to startle, when had the food appeared on the tables?
The brief hubbub of chatter settled down to the sounds of eating as Zuko finished loading food onto his plate. Now at last it was time to face his new foe: British eating utensils. Zuko missed chopsticks, he really did.
Frustrated he picked up the knife and fork, he wasn't even sure if he was holding them properly; apparently wielding the utensils was something the spirits thought was common sense/knowledge, and hadn't given him a mental 'how to.' While he knew how to wield a knife, the fork as an eating tool was something else entirely; having not eaten with the Dursley family, outside that night in the shack on the rock, Zuko had no one to mimic.
He tried to peer around surreptitiously, but everyone was moving their hands, so he couldn't get a good look.
A quiet clearing of the throat came from beside him.
Hermione didn't seem to be watching him, but she was holding her arms still, hands by her plate while she chewed a mouthful; the fingers of her right hand flicked in place, as if she was readjusting her grip on her knife, then her left hand did the same on her fork.
With almost exaggerated care, she cut off another piece of potato and steak, and popped them in her mouth, she lowered her hands and wiggled her fingers again, her eyes sliding to Zuko.
Surreptitiously Zuko mimicked her hold, and tried eating his food.
'Wow, that really is a lot easier. That's two I owe her, I don't think thank you notes are going to be acceptable for this.' It wasn't until the meal was finishing and Hermione was again stealthily teaching him about cutlery, that he realised he should be concerned with how observant of him Hermione had been.
As the food on the table was replaced with desserts, the chatter around the first years turned to families. Zuko listened with one ear as he sampled several after dinner foods.
Then Neville started talking about his family, specifically his uncle Algie.
Zuko thought about telling Neville his uncle Algie had actually been trying to kill him, but the mere mention of his toad possibly hopping off the train had put the boy in tears so Zuko kept his opinion quiet.
"Horrid," Hermione whispered to herself behind a bite of fruit tart. Zuko leaned subtly closer, hid his mouth behind a slice of 'caramel' tart, and pretended to eye it as he whispered.
"So it's not just my bias, it really does sound like the old magical families would rather kill their children than let them live without magic."
"Don't you dare say that to Neville."
"I did learn from the thing with the toad, don't worry."
"Are you going to eat that tart or not?"
"I tried a bite, whatever caramel is made from is disgusting, it's sickly sweet and heavy and tastes weird." Zuko put it down on his plate with a disgusted look.
"Sugar for the most part, that's 'wet' caramel so there's also butter and heavy cream, but primarily it's sugar." Hermione raised and eyebrow at his startled expression. Zuko couldn't fathom it; sugar was a very limited resource in his home world, to make the tart he'd taken a slice from looked like it would take his ship's monthly ration.
And Zuko could see similar dishes all up and down the table. How much sugar did this world produce?
"Oh calm down, you're not likely to go into diabetic shock from one bite... you're not diabetic are you?"
Zuko had no idea what a diabetic was, but if the spirits hadn't given him the information, he figured it wasn't relevant to him, so he shook his head.
Hermione went back to her fruit tart, and started up a conversation with the older student beside her on classes. Zuko forewent dessert in favour of looking around the hall, his gaze ended up on the teachers' table.
One of the teacher's was a man with a hook-nose, he was staring rather intently at Zuko, despite the fact he seemed to be engaged in a conversation with another teacher. Zuko let his eyebrows wrinkle in confusion as he met the man's gaze.
Even from where he sat, Zuko caught the sneer the man sent his way before leaning back in his chair, and returning his full attention to his co-worker. Said co-worker had to twist further in their chair to remain facing the hook-nosed man.
Zuko noted the co-worker was wearing a turban before a sharp pain lanced through his forehead, he flinched away from the pain. He must have made a noise, because Hermione was suddenly facing him, one hand hovering near his arm.
"Harry?" He waved her off.
"I'm fine, just a headache, it's been a long day."
The last of the desserts disappeared and the headmaster stood, the hall falling into silence. Zuko felt pressure in the air that made him think the fall of silence had not been completely natural.
"Ahem – just a few more words now we are all fed and watered. I have a few start of term notices to give you.
"First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few older students would do well to remember that as well. I have also been asked by Mr Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.
"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of term. Any one interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.
"and finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to anyone that does not wish to die a very painful death."
Zuko heard a few people laughing throughout the hall; a sensation of 'Important Information' hit him.
'Oh, the corridor of death is important(?) No shit(!) Never would have guessed, thanks for the heads up Spirits(!)... Uh... sorry, that was really disrespectful... and I forgot you can probably hear me now...'
"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" Zuko suppressed a heavy sigh at Dumbledore's words.
'A school song, really?' Before he had time to wonder how they were supposed to know the words though, the headmaster waved his wand, sparks slithering out and twisted into words in the air.
"Everyone pick their favourite tune and off we go!"
Zuko had just enough warning to plug his ears before the hall broke into a cacophony of noise. Several long, long moments later the noise faded and Zuko was able to put his hands down without the risk of his ears bleeding. As someone who'd been trained in music, he was offended and sickened by the idea that anyone might consider such a display to be actual music.
As the twins from the train – Fred and George – finished their sombre rendition of the school song, the headmaster conducted with his wand. When they too fell silent, he wiped his eyes and clapped enthusiastically.
"Ah, music, a magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"
Zuko froze in horror.
'That's it, the old guy has to go.'
"Harry," Hermione called his attention back to the student body, "come along, Percy's going to show us to our dormitories."
"Right," He slid out of the chair and followed. They were led up a marble staircase by the great hall, Zuko tried not to react when he noticed the paintings on the wall were moving. He put more focus into mapping the route in dimensions rather than land marks, if pictures moved about, what else wasn't as stationary as it should be?
Their trip was disrupted once by a poltergeist, an entity similar to a Worry Spirit from his home world, but the Prefect Percy managed to make it leave.
Their sojourn ended at a painting of a woman in a pink dress.
"Password?" Zuko tried not to choke on his inhale as she spoke.
"Caput Draconis." Percy's answer was clearly the correct one, as the painting swung open to reveal a hole in the wall, beyond which was a well lit room decorated in reds and golds.
Once inside, Percy sent the girls up one set of stairs, and led the boys up another to a room with five beds. The curtains from the bed canopies were deep-red velvet. Zuko located his trunk, and took out his sleep wear. The other boys seemed too tired to try talking, but Zuko took several minutes to write down some notes in his native language.
Alright, so it was the archaic version of the native language of the Fire Nation that Zuko had learned as a child, (and gave him the accent that occasionally made people think he had a slight lisp) but still, no one would be able to read it at first glance.
He nodded off sitting up, with his notebook and pencil still in his hands. He was still in the same position when he woke a few hours later in a cold sweat from a strange dream. He wrote down three words – Turbans are Evil – and put his book away, rolling over to get some proper sleep.
When he woke the next morning he couldn't remember writing it, or the dream that had made him write it, but he took note of it anyway in case the Spirits watching over him had (for once) managed to be subtle.
Out Take - Under the Hat:
"Hmm... oh my, what a curious thing you are."
"Who are you!?"
"I'm the Sorting Hat, weren't you listening?"
"Stay out of my head!"
"What? Oh don't be silly, I'm not in your head, I'm on it. Don't growl at me I'm trying to read your personality."
"What about my mind?"
"What about your mind?"
"Aren't you going to read that?"
"No why would I?"
"To... sort me?"
"That seemed like a question."
"It may have been."
"Well it doesn't matter anyway I don't read thoughts and memories, you humans have very faulty memory, always changing it to suit your outlook. And you can't trust a human's opinion on themselves, they tend to see themselves one way, when often they are another – biased narrator and all that.
"The structure of a soul on the other hand, now that's something that doesn't lie. It's all right here:
Hmm, not cunning and sneaky so much as stealthy, very simple world views, this or that not much in the way of in-betweens. Which means Slytherin is out.
You're certainly smart – you do have a curiosity and the ability to lose yourself in research – but you're not Ravenclaw smart and you don't thirst for knowledge like it's your whole world. So that's out too.
Hufflepuff maybe? You certainly don't lack in dedication, oh but your loyalty... so very hard won... and your determination is admirable... if somewhat frightening in its intensity...
No... Not Hufflepuff either, you'd break the rest of the house.
Well you certainly have plenty of courage to see things through and to stick to your beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence; you do have a strong desire to do what's right...
Yes... I think I'll put you with the rest of the hot headed fools."
"GRYFFINDOR!"
"Well go on boy, leave... why are you angry?"
"You just called me slow witted, not very smart and scary; I wonder what I could possibly have to be mad about(!)"
The Second Stealth Cutlery Lesson:
When you finish you meal put your knife and fork together on the plate. Either right next to each other or place the tip of the knife through two of the forks prongs and the handles side by side.
(If you put your fork and knife on your plate separately or make a triangle shape with them (^) it indicates you aren't finished your meal. My fifth grade teacher gave us etiquette lessons on eating before he let us to on the school camp so we wouldn't embarrass the school. Someone let me participate in a game that involve eating confections, so I don't think the un-embarassment thing worked so well.)
I just have the head cannon this is the kind of random etiquette Hermione would know.
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