Chapter 9:
Sorting
The door swung open, and a tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face and Harry's first thought was that this was not someone to cross.
"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid. "Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here." She pulled the door open wide enough for everyone to fit at once. The entrance hall was ten times bigger that Harry imagined, you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys' house in it three times. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches, the ceiling was too high and too dark to see, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.
They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right -the rest of the school must already be here - but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together like in the stone steps, Ron nervously stood back and pull Harry with him.
"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "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 because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room." Harry already didn't like the idea of been separated from his new friends. Why couldn't there be only one house? Was this some sort of competition? And he noticed that Ron's hand was shaking.
McGonagall continued. "The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.
"I thought so." Harry murmured. A difficult year awaited ahead with all that talk going around of "the vanquisher of the dark lord, the chosen one, the boy who lived", it was all bull-crap that he couldn't even remember. He clenched his fist. Going back to the Dursleys was not an option, better to face the whispers straight-ahead instead.
"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." Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville's cloak, which was fastened under his left ear, and on Ron's smudged nose. Harry nervously tried to flatten his hair.
"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly." She left the chamber. Harry swallowed, "How exactly do they sort us into houses?" he asked Ron. "Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."
Harry's heart gave a horrible jolt. A test? In front of the whole school? But he didn't know any magic yet - what on earth would he do? He hadn't expected something like this the moment they arrived. He looked around anxiously and saw that everyone else looked terrified, too. No one was talking much except Hermione Granger, who was whispering very fast about all the spells she'd learned and wondering which one she'd need. Harry tried hard to get to her maybe she would know what to do, but he kept his eyes fixed on the door. Any second now, Professor McGonagall would come back and lead him to his doom and the students wouldn't let him pass either.
Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air -several people behind him screamed. "What the -?" He gasped. So did the surrounding people. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. What looked like a fat little monk was saying:
"Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance -" Harry quickly made his way to Hermione, he heard the ghost talk about a Peeves fellow but he ignored it. Harry's attention was on the conversation when one of the ghost mention "New students!" one of them was smiling and floating around them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"
A few people nodded mutely. "Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" said the ghost. "My old house, you know." "Move along now," said a sharp voice. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start." Professor McGonagall had returned. One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall. "Now, form a line," Professor McGonagall told the first years, "...and follow me." Feeling oddly as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair, with Ron behind him, and they walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.
"Harry." Draco said catching up to him. "Nervous?" she asked. Harry couldn't help himself and just nodded and she grabbed his hand. "Can you stop doing that?" Ron said from behind them, "I'll stop if he tells me to stop." She answered, but Harry froze with fear. He didn't want to cause a commotion, so he distracted himself with the scenery, he had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place existed.
It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sat. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting.
Professor McGonagall led the first years up there, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight.
Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.
"Harry, remember when I told you that I wanted to tell you something back on the train?" she said, Ron came a bit closer to listen on the conversation. Harry quickly looked down again facing her only, "Y- Yes?" he said nervously watching Professor McGonagall who silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat. Maybe they had to try to get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing - Draco snapped her fingers in front of his face and she had his full attention.
"I wanted to tell you something I heard my parents talk about yesterday-" For a few seconds, there was complete silence in the hall and she stops talking before everyone heard her and Harry noticed that everyone was looking at the hat. Who twitched, and a rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth - and the hat began to sing.
Harry found it funny, it had to be magic. Maybe the text was a riddle? Draco pull his hand to talk to him, but he didn't look at her. "Can we talk later?" he told her trying to focus on the song.
The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again.
"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Ron whispered to Harry. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll." Draco had to admit she laughed, the idea of the Weasley killing each other would please her father. Harry smiled weakly. Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather a lot; Harry didn't feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment. If only the hat had mentioned a house for people who felt a bit queasy, that would have been the one for him.
Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment. "When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!" A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moments' pause - "Hufflepuff!" shouted the hat. The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the same ghost from before waving merrily at her.
"Bones, Susan!"
"Hufflepuff!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.
"Boot, Terry!"
"Ravenclaw!"
"That's easy." said Harry. This text was not gonna hurt, after all. He found himself smiling with the other students who had finally lost their tension. The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.
"Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see Ron's twin brothers catcalling.
"Bulstrode, Millicent" the other boy who had been with them on the boat became a Slytherin. After all the bad things Harry had heard about Slytherin in the last two days he expected all of them to be different from the rest of the hall, but they looked like normal students that blend in like the rest. Even if he had the misfortune of been sorted there all alone without any friends, he didn't have to be like them or with them. He remembered the promised he made to Ron. Wherever the hat decided to put them they were gonna still be friends, he thought.
"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"
"Hufflepuff"
Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but with others it took a little while to decide. "Finnigan, Seamus," the sandy-haired boy in front of Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor. Maybe there really was a text, he swallowed.
"Granger, Hermione!" Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head. "Ravenclaw!" shouted the hat. Ron sighed. "And that will be the last will see of miss perfect." Ron commented, but Harry was to busy having this horrible thoughts. What if he wasn't chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train? Back to the Dursley's home.
When Neville Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, "Gryffindor," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag." Draco grabbed Harry's robes, "I wanted to tell you that I heard my parents talking about us and how we are related." Ron's face fell at the news. "What?" Harry scratched his head. "We are distant cousins, supposedly, at least that's what I heard father tell mother-"
"Draco Malfoy!" Professor McGonagall called. Malfoy swaggered forward when her name was called leaving Harry with so many questions, and got her wish at once: the hat had barely touched her head when it screamed, "Slytherin!" Malfoy went to join her house table, looking pleased with herself. There weren't many people left now. "Moon" "Nott" "Parkinson" then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil" then "Perks, Sally-Anne" and then, at last - "Potter,
Harry!"
As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.
"Potter, did she say?"
"The Harry Potter?"
The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.
"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, My goodness, yes - and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting... So where shall I put you?" Harry gripped the edges of the stool. 'You're asking me? Is this a text? Isn't sorting your job?'
"Well," said the small voice. "You could be great in Slytherin, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that -"
'Please, get it over with.' Harry's hand were sweating by now. "Well, if you're sure - better be Slytherin!" Harry heard the hat shout the last word to the whole hall. He took off the hat and walked shakily toward the Slytherin table. He was so relieved that at least he has been chosen and put in a house where he knew someone, he hardly noticed that he was getting cheers yet.
When he got closer he noticed that Draco was among them, but only the Slytherin table was cheering which made him feel rejected by the rest. The Slytherin prefect got up and shook his hand vigorously, and whispered to his ear, "Anything you need Mr. Potter, just come to me."
The Weasley twins on the other side of the room had a serious look on their face, they were very worry about what Ron was gonna do. Harry sat down when a ghost patted his arm, giving Harry the sudden, horrible feeling he'd just plunged it into a bucket of ice-cold water.
He could see the High Table properly now. At the end nearest him sat Hagrid, who caught his eye and was looking at him oddly. Harry smiled, and Hagrid grinned back with a nervous look. And there, in the center of the High Table, in a large gold chair, sat Albus Dumbledore.
Harry recognized him at once from the card he'd gotten out of the Chocolate Frog on the train. Dumbledore's silver hair was the only thing in the whole hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts. Harry spotted Professor Quirtell, too, the nervous young man that he briefly met on the Leaky Cauldron. He was looking very peculiar in a large purple turban, that is until he smiled. Harry payed no attention.
And now there were only three people left to be sorted. "Thomas, Dean," a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Neville at the Gryffindor table. "Turpin, Lisa," became a Ravenclaw joining Hermione and then it was Ron's turn. He was pale green by now. Harry crossed his fingers under the table and a second later the hat had shouted, "Gryffindor!" Harry looked disappointed, but Ron was eyeing him with a blank stare.
The twins clapped loudly with the rest as Ron collapsed into the chair next to Neville. "Well done, Ron, excellent," said Percy Weasley Pompously across Neville as "Zabini, Blaise," was made a Slytherin. He walked to the table and sat next to Harry.
Zabini looked passed Potter's shoulders, and saw that Malfoy who sat six sits above Harry who was staring back at him. Zabini looked back at Harry, and smiled, "Nice to meet you, Potter." He extended his hand, and Harry shake it firmly to his surprise. If everything told about the boy-who-lived was to be taken as the holy truth, this outcome was not one that Blaise expected.
"Better watch out. Malfoy already has her eyes on you."
"She is my friend." Harry answered quickly, and Zabini cross his eyebrows. "Did you know that he father was a follower of You-Know-Who before you destroyed him?" Zabini crossed his arms around his chest and continued with his serious face. "Yes." Harry murmured. "And?" Zabini said out loud. "And, what?" Harry told him with an annoying pitch.
"Seriously? Her parents were loyal to the one who killed your parents, Potter. You don't need friends like her, I'll be your friend. I can help you." Zabini whispered sitting closely.
"I can pick my own friends, and right now you are clearly not near the bottom of my list." Harry said.
"Move!" Draco made the first year sitting next to Harry to pissed off from his spot and sat down. Harry was surprised of how he left without talking back at her. "Is Zabini bothering you, Potter?" Draco finally said as two tall fat students stood behind Zabini.
