After the boat ride, Hagrid handed the first years off to Professor McGonagall, who led them all into the great hall, past all the other students who were waiting for the sorting and for the welcoming feast.
It was really getting late, and they were all hungry, though most of the first years were more concerned with the entry hall, his hundreds of floating candles and the ceiling, which was enchanted to look like the sky outside… or that was what Hermione was telling Susan.
She had always managed to read 'Hogwarts: A History'? How could she have stayed awake though it? Was that girl even human?
Shirou himself was scanning the audience, looking for any other familiar faces, since he'd had a few friends and enemies in the Clocktower, and wondered if any others would be there. Sadly, he didn't recognize any of the faces. Few were like Rin and Luvia, who had extremely easy to recognize hairstyles and tended to draw attention to themselves.
Though he did recognize some students from when they stopped at the Leaky Cauldron.
The only hairstyle here that jumped out at Shirou was an older girl at one of the long tables, probably a seventh year, who had long, bright purple hair. Though as Shirou looked at her and the two made eye contact, she smiled, and her hair changed from purple to the same shade of red as Shirou's own and shorted to shoulder length, before she gave him a wink.
Odd.
The first years were brought before a stool where an extremely old looking hair sat, with a fold that looked kind of like a face. The resemblance that became more distinct when the hat suddenly broke out into sound.
The song could be summarized as saying that it was the Sorting Hat, and that the founders had enchanted it to decide which students went into which of the four houses based upon their traits.
Gryffindor, the house of bravery and daring.
Ravenclaw, the house of wit and wisdom.
Slytherin, the house of the cunning and ambitious.
And Hufflepuff, the house of everyone else.
…That seemed kind of rude. The way the hat put it, the founder of Hufflepuff didn't particularly care who was in their house and just let anyone who the others didn't want in. The implied insult that they were not smart, or brave, or ambitious enough for the other houses felt kind of wrong.
Shirou remembered Tom saying that Hufflepuff was supposed to be the house of the loyal and hard working, but that wasn't the way the hat put it.
After the song was over, they started to be called up to the seat in alphabetical order, based on their last names.
"Bones, Susan!" Professor McGonagall shouted, and Susan walked forward to try on the hat.
It sat on her head for a few seconds before calling out a name.
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
Shirou clapped with the others as Susan took off the hat and went to join the students at the Hufflepuff table. The people there seemed friendly towards her, and she didn't seem unhappy. Maybe there wasn't a negative stigma around Hufflepuff after all.
A few more students got sorted before it was Shirou's turn.
"Emiya, Shirou."
A few auditory gasps came from the Slytherin table at Shirou's name, which confused him, but he walked up to the stool and put on the hat.
…Shirou sat there for a few seconds, wondering what was supposed to be happening when he heard a voice in his head.
'So many… so many swords. How? Why are there so many swords in here?' The voice of the hat said inside of Shirou's mind, and the magus tensed up, realizing for the first time how they were being sorted.
The hat didn't merely measure their spirits to determine where they should be, it read their minds… or at least, it tried.
'Kid, what is with you? The only thing in here is swords. It just stretches on forever and ever. There isn't even a shred of human thought in here.' The hat said. 'It has to end somewhere. There has to be something else.'
The hat was made to be able to read human thoughts, but Shirou's own perception of reality was so deviant, that the hat could make any sense of them, and only saw the endless field of weaponry.
Not giving up, the hat kept searching through the field of the Unlimited Blade Works, trying to find something that wasn't a blade, and as time stretched on and minutes passed, the object seemed to be starting to have an existential crisis over it.
"It doesn't end… It doesn't end…" The hat said out loud. Though not loud enough for the students to hear clearly, it still caused Shirou to get weird looks.
Wanting to find a way to shut the hat up, Shirou used his Structural Analysis on the hat, in order to learn about its enchants.
Everything about the hat's making and its history, every head it had ever been placed on and things it had learned from those heads, all that information came flooding into Shirou's mind. 1000 years of use, since the day that the founders had made it, and a very long list of witches and wizards, some with dark secrets that the hat was enchanted to never reveal.
The hat noticed what Shirou was doing… and it freaked the fuck out.
"No! Stop it! That's confidential information! You're not allowed to read that! No! Get out of my head! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" The Sorting Hat screamed, raving about on top of Shirou's head until it finally threw itself off of him so that it landed on the floor.
It started to sob.
"Are you… okay?" Shirou asked the hat, bending down to pick it up. The hat flinched at his touch, but since he didn't try to analyze it, it calmed down a little.
"I… I can't. I can't sort you." The hat said in despair. "Just go. Go to Hufflepuff. Just go already!"
"Um… Alright." Shirou said, making to put the hat back on the stool, and trying to ignore all the eyes on him, when something came falling out of the hat. Shirou bent down and picked up the small purple bag and looked at it.
"It… It can't be…" The hat said in disbelief. Then, with a more sure voice he said. "It has chosen you, so take it, and don't let anyone take it from you. It belongs to you, hear? Not Hogwarts, but you."
"Alright." Shirou said in confusion, putting the hat down and starting towards Hufflepuff's table.
His body had been blocking people's sight, so no one but the Professors at the head table had been able to see the bag fall from the hat and hear what the hat had told Shirou.
"What was that all about?" Susan asked Shirou as he sat down next to her.
"No idea. Guess the hat just doesn't work on some people." Shirou whispered back.
It wasn't until a few students later, when Hermione had being welcomed into Gryffindor house that Shirou snuck a peek into the bag.
He immediately closed it, his heart skipping a beat from what he had seen inside, and he quickly shoved it into his pocket, hoping no one would ever ask about it.
Inside of the bag was an expanded space, and inside of that space was the broken shards of a old sword. A sword which had once been pulled from the stone. A sword that had been wielded in the name of chivalry. A sword which choses kings.
The students continued to be sorted one by one, with Iris's sorting getting a bit more attention than others, and taking a bit more time.
It seemed like she was arguing with the hat, but when it finally let her go, she was sent to Gryffindor, and while the Gryffindors cheered, she sent Shirou a sorry look which he returned with just a smile and a shrug.
It wasn't like they wouldn't be seeing each other around, and he would still keep an eye out for her.
Hufflepuff had gotten a few more students and Shirou had gotten more than a few questions about what he had done to the hat, all of which he deflected.
Rin had been called up as well, and had quickly been sorted into Ravenclaw.
Made sense, though Shirou would argue that she could have fit in at any of the houses. She was certainly brave, smart, hard working, and ambitious. At least, his Rin had been.
He suspected that her going to Ravenclaw over Slytherin had less to do with her being more fit for one house over the other, and more to do with the fact that Luvia had already been sorted into Slytherin.
It seemed that this Luvia also had a love of showmanship and overblown rivalry banter straight out of a professional wrestling promo, as she stopped after being sorted in order to openly gloat towards Rin in front of the whole school about how she was in the best house and going to win at absolutely everything.
If Hogwarts was still standing after the year was over, with these two in it, it would be a miracle.
The sorting came to a close, and Dumbledore gave a few words… very few words. "Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"
And with those wise words(?) from the old wizard, the feast began and food was magically transported onto the tables.
Everyone throughout the Great Hall happily dug into the food… all save one.
It wasn't that Shirou didn't eat it. He was just kind of disappointed, as the fatty, greasy, comfort food was not something he was a fan of. It wasn't even the best of its kind that he had tasted.
The turkey had dried out too much and the skin not having a distinct texture to it. The mash potatoes weren't soft and didn't have anything but salt and butter in them. The bread was just plain, dull white bread. The healthiest thing there was the pumpkin juice, and even that had been sweetened to the point where it would appeal to young children.
It was alright, but not up to Shirou's standards.
It was clear he would have to prepare his own meals in the future.
So while everyone else bonded over a happy feast, Shirou was left wondering where the kitchens were.
Dumbledore had had a long day, and was glad it was almost over, even if none of the problems had been solved.
Even the usual troubles and work that always came with the start of a new year at Hogwarts didn't compare to this.
It had started off when he had gotten news that Iris's aunt and uncle's house had been raided by the Muggle authorities, and they had found the cupboard under the stairs. Now both of them are being dragged away and all looking at criminal charges for multiple cases of serious abuse, and if Iris doesn't make her presence known, the disappearance of Iris Potter. With the severity of the offenses, they would probably end up in prison for the next thirty years, and without them being able to tell where Iris was, there was no hope of a plea bargain for them.
All of it had been documented and even published in a local paper before Dumbledore had gotten wind of it.
Now, he was going to have to figure out a way to explain to the Minister why they needed to clean this up in order for Iris to live with people who had abused her all her life. Something that would be impossible unless he could get Fudge to accept the fact that Voldemort was still, in a sense, alive, and confide in him how exactly Voldemort had died in the first place. Something that Dumbledore believed was a very bad idea, considering the company that Fudge kept. But if Iris didn't stay with her relatives for at least a month out of the year, the protection of her mother's charm would fade, and Voldemort's soul fragment would likely kill the girl.
And while this was all being dropped on him, he received a very angry message from the Senjo Clan in Japan, demanding to know why he was asking around about their heir.
It took a while for him to understand that they had gotten wind of the pictures that Dumbledore had circulated around of Shirou Emiya, hoping to find out who exactly he was.
Turns out, he looked completely identical to the heir of the Senjo Clan, Shirou Senjo, even sharing the same name.
The boy was eleven years old that year, and one of the last living descendant of the legendary magic swordsmith Muramasa, and the one for whom the ancient blood flowed most true. Though when Dumbledore asked if the two could be the same person, the elders of the clan had shouted at him, telling him that their Shirou had never even left their family's mountain home in his entire life. He wasn't missing, nor did he have any siblings or cousins.
The Senjo Clan were a group of purists, who rejected sending their children to Mahoutokoro, on account of the western influence on the place. The magic they practiced was the pure Japanese style magic of their ancestors, without any wands, completely unchanged from the days of old. So Shirou Senjo had never been sent to school and would be practiced in wandless magic that dealt with the shaping of metals and imbuing them magical properties. ...But it was not this Shirou?
Two people with the same unique appearance, of the same age and with the same name, both talented in a form of magic not normally taught to children. It couldn't be a coincidence, but Dumbledore struggled to see how they could possibly be related either. According to the Senjo Clan, no other boy with that appearance should existed, and they had no reason to lie. If anything, trying to stake a claim to the boy would be advantageous to them, if his identity was truly related to them.
That was why they were preparing a spell for Dumbledore to use that would check if the two boys were indeed related by blood.
The Emiya family in Germany had also been interested enough in an unknown Emiya to send two of their extended family members over to act as teachers, to see what they could find out about the boy. This couldn't have come at a worse time, because while he had been in need of new Muggle Studies and Alchemy Professors, and full respect for the Einzbern family for the role they played in getting assistance from Germany when dealing with Voldemort, he hadn't wanted to allow them anywhere near Hogwarts while he was still getting the Philosopher's Stone squared away.
Doubtless they had heard about prophesy regarding the impending theft of fabled stone, and had guessed that it would be transferred into Hogwarts' care in hopes of protecting it. It would not surprise Dumbledore at all to find out that they were merely using the boy's presence as an excuse to send people. Though their lack of true interest in him might have changed.
Dumbledore glanced over at Sella and Leysritt von Einzbern, towards the end of the head table. The pair were making idle conversation with the other professors, but their eyes constantly went towards the boy, their interest barely contained, and not likely having anything to do with his unexplained family name.
They had barely taken their eyes off of him since he had first walked up to the hat. Though many people glanced in his direction.
It wasn't like the hat's reaction to the boy had been subtle, and all of the professors had noticed when the small items had fallen from the hat, into the boy's possession.
Dumbledore could only guess as to what it all meant, and he knew the Sorting Hat's enchantments wouldn't allow him to discuss it with anyone.
He just hoped that his guesses were wrong, or else he would have to send the Philosopher's Stone somewhere else.
After all, how do you hide anything from a true psychometry?
Why would everyone in Slytheron be afraid of Kiritsugu?
Kiritsugu is the kind of guy who if he found a Death Eater would take the Death Eater's family hostage and force them to betray their allies while holding their child at gun point. Then in the end, he would put a bullet through them anyways (the Death Eater, not the kid).
He'd also not give a shit how high they are ranked in the Ministry of Magic.
Don't try to deny it. That's what he would do. So he would basically be their boogieman.
Psychometry is the ability to extract knowledge from something through touch.