"Come on, come on!"

Spectacularly behind schedule, but miraculously not yet late enough to miss the train, the Weasleys sped through King's Cross, a gaggle of red hair and stress. "Hurry up," their mother was saying, chivvying them along with their trolleys and trunks and pets. Ron had Scabbers safely in his pocket, but Hermes was not entirely pleased about the hurry, and was fluttering about unhappily as his cage was jostled about. The twins were telling Ginny outrageous lies about the Sorting Hat, which Percy and Ron had stopped trying to bother discrediting; her nervousness seemed to still be less prominent than her excitement, and she'd find out the truth soon enough.

They got through the barrier in such a hurried jumble that Percy tripped over Ron and sent them both sprawling, and sent Scabbers squeaking off at a panicked run. They could only vaguely hear the snickering of Fred and George as they dumped their things in the loading pile and scampered off into the crowd without further ado. Percy scrambled to his feet, ears burning, and dusted himself off; Ginny, giggling quietly, helped Ron up. "What's so funny?" he grumbled, red-faced, as they dragged their own things over to the pile. She pointed over his shoulder. Percy had, in his attempt to stride away purposefully, walked directly into one of the other prefects, a blonde girl who was now giggling at him as he rather shamefacedly followed her to the front of the train. "Oh," snorted Ron.

"C'mon c'mon, we've got to get on the train!" said Ginny, tugging on his sleeve as the whistle blew. Ron followed, and only after they'd joined Neville and Seamus in a compartment did he remember that he'd been planning not to let her sit with him. After all, he hadn't been allowed to sit with his older brothers on the train; Ginny ought to make her own friends. But by the time he'd opened his mouth to shoo his little sister away, she'd read Seamus' T-shirt (which was bright green and had back-to-back yellow K's on it, the logo of the Kenmare Kestrels). Then Ginny was off at a thousand miles an hour about the Kestrels' Keeper and Seeker, who had recently landed themselves in St. Mungo's with all three of the Ballycastle Bats' Chasers after a reportedly-spectacular bar fight, and "he was the only Keeper who consistently blocks Gwenog Jones, how's the reserve?" and "I bet you anything Holyhead wins the league this year," and so on.

Ron blinked, and sat down next to Neville as Seamus talked enthusiastically about the odds that Barry Ryan would recover in time for the second half of the season, and decided it wasn't worth it. "Neville," he said, opting to ignore the conversation about Quidditch (as he was wont to do whenever the discussion was about any team other than his beloved Cannons), "how was your summer, mate?"

Neville smiled a bit nervously. "Ehm ... pretty good, actually? Gran was pleased with my exam results, so she let me explore the greenhouse properly once I'd got my summer homework done." He scratched ruefully at his left hand with his right, showing Ron a still-red scar running across the back of his hand. "Turns out my great-uncle Algie's got fanged geraniums in there. He has some really nice fire lilies, too, though, and he let me help trim some of them!" Ron had no idea why lilies would be worth getting bitten by plants, no matter how pretty they were, but he figured he'd take Neville's word for it.

Besides, he had a question. "Isn't your great-uncle Algie the one who dropped you out a third-floor window?"

"Er ... yeah?" said Neville, puzzled.

Ginny interrupted herself mid-sentence to say, "He what?", which made Seamus break into snickering. They had been in the middle of talking about one of the Ballycastle Chasers' "fantastic" skill at knocking people off their brooms, which made her indignant interruption sound extremely funny.

Neville seemed a bit surprised at her vehemence. "Erm ... well, for the longest time my whole family thought I was a Squib," he explained, "and so they were always trying to find proof one way or the other, and, this one time Uncle Algie was dangling me over a balcony and he got distracted and dropped me, and I bounced! Everyone was really pleased, and he bought me Trevor."

This story had sounded strange the first time Neville told it, and it sounded even stranger now that Ron thought about it again, especially with Ginny sitting there looking horrified. "But," he said slowly, "wouldn't you have died if you had been a Squib?"

Neville frowned, thinking. "Oh," he said, "yeah, I guess so?"

"But that's terrible!" burst out Ginny, evidently baffled that Neville wasn't indignant on his own behalf. "Squibs are people too, just like Muggles are! They should've tried something that wouldn't have killed you, if they really wanted to know that badly! This great-uncle of yours sounds like a terrible person!"

"Er," said Neville, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, "well, see, technically since he's my grandfather's brother, he'd be Lord Longbottom if I died or if I was a Squib. And, um, purebloods, you know, they tend to be really ... " He made a vague, helpless gesture. " ... he figured it'd be better if I died, a lot of them think like that, you know? Like being a Squib is literally a fate worse than death, and - and it kind of is, isn't it?"

Ginny subsided, frowning. Like many purebloods, she had never seriously considered the question of what her life might have been like if she weren't magical. "Well ... I mean ... yeah, but ... but murder is still murder," she muttered, looking distinctly unnerved. Ron felt sort of the same way; they had always been taught that everyone was equally important, that being nonmagical (like Muggles) or having nonmagical parents (like Muggleborns) didn't make you not a person; that was one of the lessons their father had drilled into them ever since they were old enough to understand it. That was what he was having a fight in the Ministry over with Malfoy. But ... Squibs were awfully prone to throwing themselves off bridges and things, it was one of those horribly depressing things you found out about when there was an article in the Prophet about it when you were nine, and then after that you tried really hard to not think about it ...

Seamus was looking at all of them with an expression of great bemusement. "Purebloods are so weird," he said.

Percy measured his steps slower so that Penelope, who was quite a bit shorter than he was, could keep pace, and smiled as he heard Hagrid yelling for the first years. "My little sister's starting this year," he said happily, "that's all of us!"

"Oh, wow," said Penelope, "that must be really weird for your mum, she hasn't not had any kids around since, what, before your brother Bill was born?" Percy nodded. "He was Head Boy when we were second years, right, so that makes him ... twenty-one? I wonder if there's studies on what the average is, you know, what the average split is between the time the eldest child is born and the youngest goes to Hogwarts ... it's probably doesn't quite correlate with the average number of kids ... " Penelope had only one sibling, a little brother who was just five, and had always been fascinated by the enormous Weasley family - though, of course, she was fascinated by almost everything else in the world, too.

Percy nodded. "I couldn't tell if Mum was really excited or really sad, actually," he admitted, and then after a moment's thought, offered, "maybe a little of both? Ginny's over the moon, though," he added, smiling. "She's been whining about not getting to come to Hogwarts since before she was old enough to pronounce it, and when Ron started - " He stopped very suddenly, eyes wide, and came to a halt in the middle of the path, staring at the carriages that performed the comforting ritual, every year, of ferrying them to the school while the first-years boated over the lake. Of course he knew what he was looking at, he'd gotten an O on his Care of Magical Creatures OWL, but that didn't really restore the sense of pleasant routine that had so abruptly deserted him.

"What's wrong?" asked Penelope in surprise, her faint glazed expression (the one that indicated she was half listening and half consulting the library in her head) disappearing and being replaced with one of concern.

In a very quiet voice, Percy said, "I can see the thestrals."

Percy was still very quiet when he rejoined the Gryffindors at the table in the Great Hall; mercifully, the twins were busy making faces at Ginny, who appeared to be glaring at them from the vicinity of the High Table, mouthing angrily it's just a hat!, and apparently fascinating the blond boy next to her, who had the sort of faint, permanently astonished expression that marked him for Muggle-raised, and was looking at her as if she were a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, or possibly a dragon. Ron wasn't paying attention, either; he was busy having a whispered conversation with Neville (something about how he'd lost Scabbers on the platform and somehow found him again in the entrance hall). Oliver noticed, though.

Oliver asked quietly, "You alright, Perce?", and Percy considered the question seriously before nodding. Yes, he would be fine. He probably wasn't going to tell his parents he could see thestrals now, though. Bill and Charlie can see them, he thought, and they always say they wish they couldn't.

The Sorting seemed to go on forever; absently, Percy counted the students, and noted with interest that there were fewer than there had been last year. Hadn't Professor Vector said something about that last year, in Arithmancy class, when they'd been talking about population analysis? This Halloween marked the eleven-year anniversary of the end of the war; so this year's group would be much smaller, the few kids who'd been born in the very last year of the war, widely considered the worst. But next year there'd probably be something like twice as many.

This year that meant fewer new Gryffindors, he supposed, but that was alright, so long as one of them was Ginny; and it wasn't like the bright little chatterbox had any chance of belonging somewhere else. She was practically Bill in miniature, according to almost everyone, and he'd been a classic ideal Gryffindor.

This thought in mind, Percy was quite puzzled when Ginny's time under the Hat lengthened. The twins seemed to be having the same thought: they looked over at him, inquiring. What's she doing still up there?, that look asked. Ron, however, had a pensive expression that suggested he wasn't confused at all. Percy gave his youngest brother a curious glance. Ron made a face.

(Ron was thinking about his own Sorting. I wonder, he was thinking, if it's offering her Slytherin, like it did me. And if she said yes, what would he do? She'd still be his little sister, of course, but - )

"GRYFFINDOR!"

( - moral dilemma over. Thank Merlin.)

Ginny sped over to the table beaming widely; the twins ruffled her hair; and everyone forgot about it.

Dear Tom,

The Hat tried to put me in Slytherin, does that make me a bad person?

Of course not, dear heart. There are good Slytherins just like there are evil Gryffindors, even if the world likes to pretend there aren't. Let me tell you a story ...