The rest of the trip went uneventfully, and we all disembarked at the train station outside the castle as the sun was setting. Hagrid called out for the first years, so the tiniest three of our travel buddies hurried off to follow him. Apparently, first years rode in boats over the lake to get a really impressive first view of the castle. Everyone else rode in carriages, and when we saw them, hitched to dozens of fanged, bat-winged, black horses, I declared, "Huh. Hogwarts is 'effin metal."
"What?" one of the twins asked.
I was about to explain what "metal" meant, but then it hit me that these were thestrals, and they were invisible to anyone that hadn't seen death up close. Most of these students were probably blissfully unaware of the beasts, and thought the carriages were magically powered without horses. I'd been able to see them the first time Justin took us on a field trip, but I remembered that Elaine couldn't see them, and was freaked out when she touched one. She hadn't had a front-row seat to being orphaned like I had. "Nevermind," I demurred.
Fortunately for my anxiety, it was four to a cart and the rest of my compartment-mates didn't feel the urge to run off, particularly once they saw Lee and the rest of the quidditch team in their own cart, so I had people to ride up to the castle with.
We got into the great hall ahead of the firsties. I'd taken a few meals here over the last month, though it mostly seemed easier for food to get sent up to the Gryffindor common room for me. The floating candles and golden plates were definitely a festive touch over the mostly-bare room of the summer. Also, a couple-hundred students filing in to sit at the four long tables were many times the previous maximum I'd seen in here. It was amazing how filling up a large room could make it feel even larger.
Given how there wasn't any food set out, but the sorting hat was prominently on a central stool, I guessed, "We don't eat until all 40 of the new kids are sorted, do we?"
"No, but it's usually pretty fast," Oliver answered.
"Good. They didn't serve anything to eat on the train except sugar. Do they want everyone to stuff themselves and then immediately crash out after dinner?" The twins suddenly realized that was probably true, and looked betrayed.
I wasn't exactly prepared for the hat to sing a song about the houses, but then the kids began to file in. Our table got a handful of students, including one excitable dark-haired boy with a thick Irish accent whose name I thought Dumbledore had mentioned to me previously. Hermione practically flew up to the stool and was almost instantly sorted to our table to great applause. Shortly after that, Neville calmly walked up to the stool and the hat took a bit longer than it had for Hermione, but still sent him our way. Shortly after, surprising no one, Malfoy went to Slytherin.
My stomach really started to grumble down the back half of the alphabet, and I didn't recognize anything about the few other kids that came our way before it was down to Ron and one other boy. Ron was clearly relieved when he was instantly sorted into Gryffindor. Once the last kid got sent to Slytherin, this hunger-intensifying procedure was finally over. While most of the new first years had grouped themselves into the end of the table, Oliver and the twins had made certain there was a spot for Hermione to sit next to Percy, and Ron had boldly shoved his brothers apart to get a spot. We'd probably have made room for Neville, too, but he seemed interested in making connections to his year-mates rather than spending more time with the older kids.
Dumbledore stood after the hat was removed and there was relative silence. He made a weird dad joke about a "few words" that probably had everyone thinking he was crazy rather than just not as funny as he thought he was. But since it led to no additional time delay before the food materialized, I was willing to spot him his eccentricities.
The food was, indeed, worth waiting nine hours for, but I almost choked taking a drink of what I thought was orange juice. "What the hell is that?" I coughed. Hermione tried the juice and got a similar look of confusion on her face.
"Pumpkin juice," Percy explained. "They don't have it in the muggle world for some reason, but it's good for you. It has all the vitamins growing teenagers need."
"I'm… suspicious of that statement," I said, cautiously smelling and then re-tasting the concoction that was like someone pulped an under-sweetened pumpkin pie. "Is this just for the feast, or…"
"Every meal, mate. Learn to love it," Oliver grinned.
They'd mostly been serving me water over the summer, and I finally spotted a jug of it that I could use to replace this terrifying concoction. It was, however, becoming abundantly clear that I'd have to solve the problem of the total lack of Coke sooner rather than later. I wondered, if I got a case of it, would the elves keep it in the kitchens and send it up for me.
Hermione hurried to finish eating, even managing to choke down the pumpkin juice, before she launched into all the new magical theory and class syllabus questions she'd thought up in the half hour since we'd separated on the train platform. Everyone made sure Percy was on the hook for answering them, and he looked vaguely persecuted for the first question before realizing that he actually liked having another information sponge to share with. The rest of the quidditch team had sat next to the twins and Oliver, so that chunk of the table turned to more sports talk. Percy's fellow prefect, a dark-haired girl who introduced herself as Alexis Marie, asked to swap seats with me so she could get in on that discussion.
That finally gave me a minute to meet my other roommates, Chris Horton and Toby Lennox. Chris was a member of a wizarding family that specialized in broom manufacture and quidditch, and had disappointed Oliver in particular for not being particularly good on a broom. Toby was an Irish muggleborn who was considering whether he'd continue onto his NEWTs or go back to muggle education after he got his OWLs this year. Both seemed like middling students more interested in hanging out with each other, and their girlfriends.
Also, there were ghosts hanging out, but they seemed to be house mascots and nobody minded, so I just ignored it.
Finally, once everyone seemed to be more or less finished, Dumbledore gave a more substantial speech. The Forbidden Forest was, of course, forbidden, though he made a particular point of implying the Weasley twins were known offenders. I felt bad for Filch, as there was basically no chance of anyone following through on his desire to keep magic out of the hallways. I wondered if anyone actually cared about the quidditch trials; the houses seemed to be pretty set on who they wanted as it was.
The headmaster's pronouncement about avoiding the very painful death on the third floor saw a ripple of confusion pass through the hall. "That is strange," Percy frowned, "I thought he might have told us prefects his reasoning, at least."
"McGonagall mentioned to me that it was out of bounds when I got here a few weeks ago," I volunteered, "but she didn't say anything about a very painful death. I've seen Hagrid going that way a few times. One time he had a whole dead deer with him."
Percy considered and suggested, "Could be a creature they imported for Care of Magical Creatures or Defense and want to keep away from the rest of the forest." That seemed reasonable to me and everyone else in earshot, or at least no one had a chance to provide a counter argument before Dumbledore launched into a completely tuneless joke of a school song. I couldn't wait to be an old, eccentric wizard so I could amuse myself at everyone else's expense like Dumbledore did.
After that, it was on to the house tower. I was tagging along with Percy and Alexis as they led the first years, when a collection of walking sticks floated around a corner, and then started flying individually at Percy. He narrowly dodged one, groaning "Peeves!" I wondered why he wasn't shielding, before remembering that most wizards were terrible at making barriers that could repel physical objects. I shook my shield bracelet out of the sleeve of my robe and put up a barrier between the bizarre arsenal and the students. As the sticks bounced harmlessly off my shield, Percy gave me a nod, impressed, and yelled, "Peeves! Show yourself!"
Nothing seemed to happen until several canes had bounced off my shield and then a tiny, translucent man with dark eyes appeared, holding the sticks. "No fun!" he shouted, "Wizard shields are for spells, not for sticks! Zoom!" He rushed at my shield and it caught the sticks with a thrum, but allowed him to pass through. The wood clattered to the ground while he tumbled through the air over everyone, making raspberries all the way before flying around a corner.
I dropped my shield, a little winded by handling so many impacts, but tried not to let it show. "You want to watch out for Peeves," Percy explained to everyone. "He will not listen to any of the prefects, or any of the other ghosts except the Bloody Baron. Lindquist, a third year over in Ravenclaw, can also manage him somehow." We walked up a few more flights of stairs to the portrait of the woman in the pink silk dress, and said, "Here we are. The new password is Caput Draconis."
As everyone filed into Gryffindor tower and off to bed, I suddenly realized that this day wasn't really an aberration. I'd be sharing the castle with hundreds of students for the next several months. I didn't really internalize it until the bedroom I'd had all to myself for a month was full of near-strangers.
This was going to be a hell of an adjustment.
