Draco didn't warm up to Neville during the train ride. Harry thought maybe since they were both wizards that there would be some common ground, but Draco seemed stubborn to not be friends with him. Oh well, I can't exactly judge, Harry thought. His newfound extrovertedness surprised the both of them. Harry had always been the quiet one, the one who didn't want friends. His actions on the train were especially out of character for him. If Harry really thought about it he would say that it was just because of the new, exciting environment that he was placed in.
This place was magic, quite literally. They were led over to boats floating on the glistening water by a large man, who introduced himself as Hagrid, the groundskeeper. He seemed nice, at least. And, Harry discovered, could be quite scary when he yelled for attention. They all climbed into boats, with Harry, Draco, Neville, and a blonde girl who introduced herself as Tracey Davis being in the same boat. They made meaningless small talk on the way to the castle, stopping when the castle came into view.
If Harry had thought that the platform was teeming with magic, then Hogwarts was brimming with it. The magic in the air was so potent that he could practically see it's iridescent appearance. The castle itself was gorgeous, with tall towers and high rooftops. Not to mention the forest next to it was probably larger than the castle itself. From the looks of it, they were heading towards one of the buildings with only one floor, probably a boathouse or something of similar value.
Harry's assumption was proved correct as they docked the boats in a dark boathouse lit only with torches. "A bit medieval, don't you think?" Tracey muttered next to him, looking at the mediocre torches.
"They fit the aesthetic," Draco argued, "though they are pretty ugly, aren't they?"
The conversation was cut off by Hagrid the giant ushering the group of kids up a lot of stairs and into an entrance way. Large wooden doors were opened by an older woman, whom Harry had never met but Hagrid introduced her as Professor McGonagall, the transfiguration teacher.
They got told about the houses as the professor led them into the Great Hall. It was more beautiful than anything he'd ever seen. They could see the starry night through the glass rooftop, and while Harry had never been all too into astrology, he was starting to see the appeal. His eyes were moving everywhere, trying to take everything in. There were floating candles. Floating. Candles. That… that defied every one of Newton's laws. There was no way that the candles were actually floating, right? It's not possible. Harry's breathing picked up and the ever present pain in his chest returned with a vengeance.
Just when he thought the magical place couldn't defy any more scientific laws, ghosts flew through the wall. Literal ghosts. Of all colors and shapes, arguing about something he couldn't quite make sense of. The people around him screamed, including Draco, who looked like he'd seen a ghost. Harry snorted, how accurate. There were ghosts. They actually existed. Harry never thought that he'd ever see one, but here were about twenty of them, just talking with one another. That… that shouldn't be happening. His eyes teared up a little as his body clenched tight without him knowing it. Everything got louder and he felt the urge to cover his ears. He held back the urge and just closed his eyes, trying to breathe like his mother had told him to do.
He felt a hand on his back, turning him around and he opened his eyes to see Draco saying something. Harry blinked, his vision swarming as he tried to hear him. Oh, some small part in the back of his brain said, this is just a dream. None of this is real. He could feel himself being moved out into the hallway, his mind not registering what was going on. His back hit something hard and Draco across from him raised a hand to wipe the sweat off Harry's forehead. His mind started to focus and he could barely hear what Draco was trying to say.
"You're okay. You're gonna be fine, Harry. This is all manageable, okay? Can you breathe with me?" Draco looked more panicked than he had ever seen him so he barely managed a small nod, breathing in sync with Draco for what seemed like an hour (but was really a minute or so).
"I'm okay. I'm okay." Harry pushed off the wall, stumbling a little bit then catching himself before Draco could. "I'm fine. Let's just go eat, yeah? I wanna know what house I'm getting." He managed a small smile at Draco, who looked suspicious. "Really, I'm fine. Just tired, that's all."
Draco and Harry walked back in through the door, slipping into the back of the group of first years without any complications. The hat (which apparently is what sorted them into houses) had just stopped singing a song when the sorting started. Harry didn't know that hats sang songs, but he supposed that a hat would be pretty easy to enchant.
Hermione was placed in Slytherin, to everyone who had met her's surprise. Neville had gotten into Gryffindor, to an insane amount of cheers. He exchanged a nervous glance with Draco as his brother's name was called by professor McGonagall. Draco walked toward the sorting hat, shifting his nervousness into false confidence and practically strutting. He looked like a peacock. He sat down on the stool and after a moment of deliberation, the hat loudly declared "SLYTHERIN!" Draco hopped off the stool with a smirk and sat down at the end of the Slytherin table. Before long, it was Harry's turn as Mcgonagall called out his name.
He could hear the whispers around him. All the same questions that he'd been asked all of his life. He held his head high and walked to the hat, sitting down and jamming it down on his head.
"Ooh, difficult. Son of Gryffindors but raised with Slytherins, how interesting." The voice sounded in his head.
"Just put me in the same house as Draco. I need to look out for him." He said to the hat, wanting to get off the stool as soon as possible.
"You seem pretty Hufflepuff to me, but I suppose it'll have to be SLYTHERIN!" Harry hopped off the stool, Slytherin house cheering while Gryffindor boo'd at him. He couldn't care less. He was here, with his brother. That was all that really mattered to him. As he sat down next to Draco, he looked up towards what he assumed was the staff table. Dumbledore, from the chocolate cards, was looking down at him weirdly. He wrinkled his brows, and turned away from the staff table. The rest of the sorting continued, and Dumbledore made a speech that Harry really didn't care to listen to. He just wanted to eat.
"Can you believe that?" The girl across from him said, and he noted in the back of his head that she kind of looked like a pug. "It's like he's tempting the Gryffindors to 'die a painful death'" She made air quotes around the last part, reminding Draco of a friend he had back home, Katie.
"What?" Harry asked, as the food appeared on the table. It was the most food he'd seen in his entire life. Like a starved man, he started piling food onto his plate, watching the upper years to try and gouge what the appropriate amount of food was.
"Weren't you listening?" Hermione interjected, "Dumbledore said that the third floor corridor is off limits to all students." Hermione continued on a rant that Harry tuned out for the most part. Publicly declaring something like that? How odd.
"Hello!" An older boy popped into his field of vision and stuck his hand out towards Harry. Harry reached out and shook it, the boy introducing himself as Adrian Pucey. He was pretty, by conventional standards. All dark hair and dark eyes, but a bubbly personality. It was refreshing compared to Draco's aloofness.
Speaking of Draco, he was having a hard time due to one thing. Well, more than one, but only one thing was his main problem. The bloody baron, a ghost covered in blood, had chose to sit next to him. Draco tried to edge his way closer to his brother, who was introducing himself to a boy older than they were. The bloody baron just looked at him like he didn't care and just continued staring into nothing. Draco gathered up his courage. "Why are you all bloody?"
"I killed someone." He gave Draco another look, one he couldn't decipher.
"Who?" Draco felt himself ask, cursing himself on the inside. He did not want to know the answer to that question, he knew that he didn't, so why did he ask it?
"None of your business, unless you want me to kill you too." Draco let out a small squeak and twisted on the bench to look at his brother, gripping his arm.
"Trade me seats." Draco told him, when his brother looked up.
"Why?" Harry squinted at him, as if trying to figure out his motives by reading Draco's mind, like a superhero in one of his comics could do.
"Because the ghost just threatened to kill me, that's why!" Draco whisper yelled at him, and Harry begrudgingly switched him seats. He continued his conversation with Pansy at an awkward angle, and to his joy, Draco joined in on the conversation. It was the first time Harry had seen Draco come out of his shell today, it was nice.
Soon enough, houses were being led out of the hall and to their common rooms. The Slytherin group was one of the last to leave, only leaving before the Hufflepuffs. A girl with bright red hair led them down a confusing number of corridors until they reached a bare stone wall at the end of a hall. The girl turned towards them for the first time.
"To enter Slytherin common room, all you have to do is tell the password to this wall right here." She tapped her wand against the stone a few times as if using a pointing stick. "The password changes every two weeks, and the change is always noted on the pinboard at the back of the common room. Right now the password is 'cunning'." She turned around and said the word to the wall, and just like the wall at the entrance to Diagon Alley, the wall opened. They were led down into the Slytherin common room, and all of the first years huddled together at the front of the common room.
In one word, the Slytherin common room was…. Posh. A wall on the far end looking out into what appeared to be the lake they had come into, with snakes carved into the borders of the windows. A fireplace in front of that wall was also adorned with carvings of snakes. Lots of low backed couches and chairs facing each other everywhere. Chandeliers, torches, and the lake were the only light sources in the room, but somehow it managed to make it feel almost homey in the room.
Harry was interrupted from his observing by the red haired girl yelling for everyone other than first years and prefects to get out. When only a few people were left in the room, she gestured for them to sit down and they all scrambled to find a seat, to the amusement of the older kids.
"Alright, since Higgs doesn't want to do his damn job, it's up to me to teach you lot about Slytherin. First rule, don't bring anyone into the common room from another house. It's forbidden for a reason. I don't care if it's your brother's uncle's niece or whatever. No outsiders." A boy booed at her from a chair by the fireplace, and she said a quick "Bugger off Higgs," before continuing her explanation. "Second rule is that no one cares what you do or what rules you break, just don't get caught. If you get caught you're ruining Slytherin's reputation and you'll most likely get cursed for weeks. I'm not going to help you when you get leg locked in the common room and can't get to your dorm, you'll just have to figure out how to fix it."
"Third rule, and the most important," she continued, "is that Slytherin's stick together outside of this common room. I don't care what old family feud two of you will have within the next year, and you can take it out all you want in the common room or in the privacy of your dorms. Outside of this common room, you stick up for each other. Blood doesn't matter outside of these walls. You've had the luck to get put in Slytherin, and you're going to be fucked over in so many ways that you won't remember how it is to be favored by your teachers. You need to be a united front otherwise this school will kill you." The girl gave them all a scathing glare, as if to reinforce her point. The boy from earlier, Higgs, whistled at her and she whirled around, pointing her wand at him. "You make one more comment towards me, Higgs and I will not hesitate to hex you into next week."
Higgs held his hands up as if in a gesture of innocence. "I'm sorry I can't resist you, Farley. Really, you're too hot when you're angry."
"Jesus, Higgs, I'm trying to actually help the first years out here and all you can do is make snide comments? Fine then, you get to finish the lecture if you're so eager to talk." Farley blew a strand of hair out of her face as she sat down. Higgs stood up and turned his attention to them lazily.
"Don't get caught doing things you shouldn't be doing, and if one of us catches you, you'll get hexed every day of the week and make sure everyone knows what you did. If we can catch you, anyone else can catch you. Be aware of your surroundings, and if you're going to go gallivanting around the forest grounds, at least learn an offensive spell or bring an older year student with you." He placed his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels, surveying them. "Your fellow students will hate you because you're a Slytherin, so you need to build a tough skin. People are ruthless, especially Gryffindors, who have a tendency to attack without warning. You need to keep your grades up, and earn as many house points as you can. If you're struggling in a class, there's a list of people who are willing to tutor in a certain subject and when they're available. You all can also form a study group for your year, as pretty much every other year has. They help keep your grades up, because one person simply can't be good at everything no matter how much you try. Once you become second years, you can join the Slytherin dueling club, which really isn't much of a dueling club and more of a club that teaches you things that are actually useful rather than turning a matchstick into a needle. And, I think that's it." He looked towards the girl and she just shrugged at him. "Oh, and don't try and sneak into other people's dorms, especially older years. Many of the older years have had experience with nosy first years and curse their dorms. Last year Montegue indirectly cursed a first year into having hideous boils for the whole year. It was hilarious. Anyways, your dorms are that way, and your schedules will be given to you in the morning. Go to sleep, will you? We've got a party to throw." He turned away from them, and gave a sarcastic bow to Farley, who rolled her eyes.
The first years drudged down the stairs to the bottom level of dormitories, where the girls went down one hallway and the boys went down another. There were two doors in the hallway, three beds per each dorm. Harry opened the second door and stepped in, seeing Hedwig at the foot of one of the four poster beds, and Jinx at the end of another. He tugged Draco into the room, observing the room. Just like in the common room, there was a wall that looked out into the lake. There were the three green canopy beds along with three desks, fit with lanterns. The rest of the room didn't have much in it, he supposed that it was because they were able to decorate it to their liking. There was a door across from the wall of glass, and when Harry opened it, he saw a little sitting room, with more desks and couches. When he entered the dorm room again, Draco was already greeting the other boy who had entered and sat down on the bed by the entrance. Draco was talking a mile a minute and Harry smiled, that was more like Draco. Upon further inspection of their roommate, Harry noted that it was none other than Blaise Zabini, Draco's childhood best friend. Of course Draco was comfortable with him, they had grown up together. Harry sat down heavily on his bed, not even talking to anyone. He was exhausted. His panic attack earlier had taken so much out of him that he didn't even feel like reading anything, he just wanted to go to sleep. So he got up, and changed into his pajamas, not even caring that Blaise was in the room. He didn't have any energy left to be bashful about his slight chubbiness. He only had one thought in mind: getting to bed. He laid down on the green silk sheets and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.
