N/A This work was originally written in Spanish. English is not my native language, and no one has corrected it, so please excuse me for any possible translation mistakes you find. My only intention is that more readers could enjoy it. Thank you.
Single Chapter. Challenging the Hat
Two little ones sat face to face with their legs crossed, on the carpet before the fireplace in their brand new Common Room.
"Go, eat a chocolate frog," the girl offered, holding out the pentagonal little blue box.
"No, thank you, I don't feel like it," the boy rejected it, and although it was true, because he did not like sweets, his main reason for doing so was that it was she who acquired in the Express the pile of sweets that accumulated between them.
After the opening fest of the school year, the prefects of their house had led them to the west wing showing them the castle and how to enter the Common Room, to their respective rooms of first-year boys and girls.
Just before they separated, she, who had held his hand for the entire tour, whispered in his ear, "Go back down when everyone falls asleep, so we will be together for a little while longer…"
To which the boy simply nodded smiling to her and looking into her beautiful green eyes.
"Come, take it, so we see what card it brings," insisted the girl, and he ended up accepting for not disappointing her.
They opened the wrappers at one time, and she said, "I have gotten Isaac Newton... was he also a wizard?" She knew him from the subject of Science of the Muggle school she had attended until the previous year.
"Well, of course," he replied, "How do you think he was able to discover so many things?"
"What about you? Which one have you gotten?" she asked crawling over to his friend on the carpet, sitting next to him to look at the card.
"Hypatia of Alexandria," he replied.
"And who is that?"
He showed her the small cardboard, holding it horizontally on his knee, which grazed hers, to get a better view in the dim light of the fire, both leaning over to read it. Their heads came together.
"Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer born in Egypt in the fourth century," he read. "She was the first witch who excelled in Geometry and Algebra, thanks to her scholarship in Arithmancy. She invented the astrolabe and the density meter, and devoted herself to teaching. She was murdered by a mob of Christians in 415 accused of paganism."
The face of a beautiful woman with her hair pulled back in a classic hairstyle smiled at them slightly from the card, looking at them with gravity.
"My..." said the girl. "At that time it was dangerous to be a witch..."
"Of course, we didn't hide from the Muggles until much later, and they feared our powers."
"Save them for the collection," she said, giving him her own as well. "We will do it together."
While he barely nibbled on his frog, she swallowed hers in three bites. And she moved aside and leaned back, holding on the palms of her hands resting on the carpet, contemplating the ornaments that decorated the walls of the Common Room in darkness, glowing bronze in the light of the flames.
"Everything is very beautiful and amazing, as your mother told us..." she commented. "But I worry about entering the house, you have to answer a different riddle every time..."
"Don't get overwhelmed, the older students will help us at the beginning, and soon you will learn, you are very smart."
"Yeah, well…" she said thoughtful. "That's what the Hat told me…" And she began to tell him animatedly, "When that lady so serious put it on me, I thought all the time that I wanted to go to Slytherin with you. I got very scared when it spoke to me, 'Forget it girl, Salazar's house is not for you,'" she said trying to imitate the voice she heard in her mind. "And realizing it could hear what I was thinking, I said, 'I want to go to Slytherin, I want to go to Slytherin,' but it said, 'Muggle-born, and not at all cunning… definitely not;but very brave, I think the best place for you will be Gryffindor.' Then I remembered those nasty boys on the train, ¿do you remember? One of them was already in that house, and the other one said he wanted to go there, and I thought, 'Not Gryffindor, not Gryffindor, Slytherin, Slytherin,' and the Hat replied, 'You're making it very difficult for me, little girl… Well… you seem to be very clear about what you want and yes… also very intelligent.Not for you, not for me… RAVENCLAW!' I was very sad for not having entered the house we wanted and thinking that we would be separated, but I did everything I could..." she finished with a tone of pleading apology.
The boy remembered how she looked at him when she got down from the stool, with her green eyes so afflicted, and that when passing by him to go to the table of the eagles she had extended her hand, brushing their fingers, both turning to continue looking at each other,as if saying goodbye, while all the members of the bronze-blue house applauded the arrival of their new member.
"Are you sad that you didn't get into Slytherin? Didn't the Hat talk to you?" she questioned him, concerned.
He answered both questions, truthfully to the first and lying to the second, with a concise monosyllable, "No…"
And he kept remembering his change of option during the long interval that passed between their surnames, since the new students were being called in alphabetical order to be selected, while he kept turning to look at her sitting at the table in her house, always catching her with sorrow and restlessness in her eyes, which never leave him.
When the stern lady finally called him, he had been thinking for a long time, if it were up to him, he would prefer the house of the eccentric eagles just to be with her, to his lifelong aspiration to be part of the snakes.
At the moment that the Hat spoke to him, he also got a tremendous scare. 'A difficult case, certainly a brilliant mind and diligent student, but it is clear that because of your ancestry and ambitious personality, Slytherin suits you better. After all, it is what you have always longed for.'
"Until half an hour ago," he thought, and he stared at her, contemplating the anxiety that her eyes betrayed, both of them waiting for the sentence that would cause their separation.
"But I see something else…" continued the Hat, "…in love at your age, and so deeply… Now I understand how much trouble that little red-haired girl has given me.I will not be the one who contributes by separating you, to hinder the most powerful magic, Love… RAVENCLAW!'
He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw her face light up with her most beautiful smile, the first of all the eagles beginning to applaud him.He smiled back to her, walking directly toward his friend, who was already moving aside to make room for him next to her.
"Well, you don't seem very happy…" she snapped him out of his reverie, after his long silence.
"No way! Yes, I am," he answer, turning to her and smiling shyly. "I was just thinking…"
The girl, used to her friend's reveries, wanted to encourage him, as she always did. "Well, I'm very happy, we'll always be together!" And she threw herself at his neck, hugging him, making him fall on his back on the carpet, lying on his thin body, eating his face with kisses.
And she pulled his raven locks, and they tickled each other, and laughed... And they fantasized what their life at school would be like from now on, learning magic, sharing classes, living together in the high tower of the bronze-blue house...
When the prefects tasked with escorting the first-years to the Great Hall for breakfast came down to the Common Room in the morning, they found them asleep, still dressed in the black-tie uniforms they wore before they were assigned, goodies strewn about their feet, cuddled up on the rug in front of the fireplace.
They looked at each other smiling with a tender expression, and woke them up very gently, so they could go change and prepare for their first day at Hogwarts.
