Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters are not mine! They
are owned by J.K. Rowling, and all I do is borrowing them for my fanfic.
I've read only the first 3 books (that's only because we won't get the 4th book
before September here), so this fic is about the sorting ceremony in Harrys
4th year.
The sorting ceremony
A fanfic by MalfoyGirl
The sorting hat had just finished it's song, and the sorting ceremony was about to begin. Everyone's eyes were at the new students. Many of them looked nervous, because they didn't know what was going to happen now, others looked like they knew what was going on, but they still looked nervous. Harry watched them from his place between Hermione and Ron at the Gryffindor table. It was the first time he got to see the complete ceremony, so it was interesting. Now it was his turn to clap his hands for every new student sorted into Gryffindor. Ron whispered comments about the new students, and tried to guess who would go to which house, but Hermione interrupted him in a low voice. "It's not possible to guess things like that! Can't you just concentrate on the ceremony instead?".
McGonagall explained how the sorting ceremony was done and then she started reading out names from her list. The Gryffindors clapped and shouted happily every time a new student was sorted into their house, and Ron poked Harry in the ribs every time someone got sorted in the house he had guessed beforehand. It wasn't all that often. Even though they were watching the ceremony, they didn't focus all their attention on it. But, about mid-way through the sorting, McGonagall caught Harry's attention when she called out the next name on her list.
- Malfoy, Melina
Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other - shocked! Of course it shouldn't
have been a surprise that someone they knew at school had a sister, but they
just never thought about the possibility. And the girl was obviously Draco's
sister - at least she looked pretty much like him, Harry thought. She had the
same eyes and the same silvery hair.
Ron whispered "guess where she's going?". in a sarcastic voice. He
waited for a few seconds, and then answered his question himself - "Slytherin,
of course!". He said it in the same tone, which showed clearly what he
thought about the Slytherins.. Hermione shook her head. "I don't think
so", she whispered.
Both Harry and Ron took their eyes off the girl walking up to the sorting hat
for a short moment, just to send Hermione a strange look.
"What do you mean you don't think so?", Ron whispered. He sounded
like he thought Hermione's comment was totally stupid, but turned to watch what
happened now.
Melina put the sorting hat on her head. Harry had expected the hat to scream "Slytherin" as soon as she put it on her head, just like it had done with her brother four years ago. With a family like that, he didn't expect that the girl was any different. But, she just stood there with the hat on for what seemed like an eternity. Surely, the hat had not taken so long time to decide which house was right for anyone who had been sorted today. Harry wondered what the hat was "saying" to her right now, because he thought about how it had been talking to him when he got sorted. It had actually wanted to put him in Slytherin, too, but he was really glad it didn't put him there. Now it was about to sort a girl from a family where everyone had been in Slytherin for generations, and it was taking so long time as this? What was going on?
The hat interrupted Harrys thoughts when it suddenly screamed "GRYFFINDOR"! It wasn't just the Gryffindors who looked shocked, even some of the teachers looked like they just dropped down from the moon. After the first shock, most Gryffindors quickly pulled themselves together and clapped and shouted, just like they did for all the other new students in their house. But it wasn't hard to notice that they did it just because they were supposed to - the shouting just didn't sound as happy now as it did for the others. As far as Harry could see, Melina's facial expression didn't tell anything about what she thought about being sorted into Gryffindor. But he noticed she turned her back to the Slytherin table without even looking up, before she gave the sorting hat to next student. Oh well, not that it helped a lot to avoid looking at the Slytherins - there was still no way she could avoid feeling the furious look from her brother as she walked towards the Gryffindor table.
Even though the gryffindors acted friendly enough towards the new students, the atmosphere around their table seemed unusually quiet and somewhat cautious for the rest of the evening. Harry was just glad that most new students were seated at the other end of the table, so that he didn't have to think about what to say or do next. He had thought that the worst part of meeting new gryffindors would be when one of them recognized him, because he hated it when people's opinion about him suddenly changed just because they considered him to be famous. Because he didn't consider himself something special, he didn't like it when other people thought about him as that either. But all of this suddenly seemed like minor details, because the sorting hat just gave Harry another, much more difficult problem to think about. He didn't want to have anything to do with Malfoy's little sister, but it was impossible as long as they were in the same house. But there had to be a reason the sorting hat put the girl in Gryffindor? Harry wondered if sorting hats (he thought like that, even though he only knew about one such hat) could make mistakes, but suddenly Hermione's comment a moment ago came to mind. What did she really mean she didn't think the girl was going to be sorted into Slytherin? Such things were impossibe to know...weren't they?
The next night someone tried to wake Harry up. What was the point in waking him up now? It was night and he wanted to sleep. "Ron! Go back to sleep" he mumbled, but it sounded more like he mumbled to his pillow than to someone standing by his bed. A low voice whispered his name - it was Hermione! That was so strange that Harry immediately woke up completely. "What are you doing here? This is the boys' dormitory!" he whispered. Ron's voice was suddenly there, too. He whispered so low that it was almost impossible to hear him. "If this takes any more time, we're gonna wake everybody else up, too!" Hermione gestured that she wanted them to follow her down to the gryffindors' common room, and they tried to do it without making a sound.
When they got down to the common room, they didn't need to whisper anymore, and Ron said: "So! What's the point in waking us up in the middle of the night anyway?" The way he said it showed clearly that he was just as confused as Harry was. Hermione just wasn't one to disobey the school rules, and sitting in the common room in the middle of the night they probably broke a rule, even if nobody found out. Secondly, for Hermione to be in the boys' dormitory - even if it was just to wake them up - was definately breaking a rule. Harry didn't get any more time to think about it, because now Hermione started talking. In the light from a torch on the wall, she looked rather angry.
"I didn't think you two were as stupid as this!" she snapped. But she didn't pause long enough to let any of them ask what she meant by that. "Certainly you noticed the strange atmosphere here yesterday?" she continued. "Such silence, such cautiousness just isn't a good way to welcome new students! At least some of us should try to act normally!". Hermione glared at them, as if she was trying to see if her words had any effect at all. Harry wondered what to answer to something like this, and all he got to say was "I see what you mean, but..." Hermione interrupted him: "there is no "but" anything! I'll tell you something - as long as you talk like that, you aren't any better than the Malfoys! (Those we already know, at least!). They hate people who are muggle-born, and if you judge a person only by her last name, you are doing the exact same thing!". Hermione stopped talking, and she didn't even look angry anymore. It seemed like her anger went away as soon as she had said what she wanted. She took a deep breath before she said: "All I ask is that we give her a chance, because I don't really think the sorting hat makes mistakes. Besides, she is a gryffindor now, whether we expected that or not." Hermione didn't even wait for an answer, she just turned and ran up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. Harry and Ron just stood there staring after her, but none of them said a word.
Ron was the one to break the silence. "Why does Hermione drag people out of their beds just to say that stuff?" he wondered. "I guess she thought that was the best way to speak to us alone", Harry answered, but he heard himself just how stupid it sounded. If Hermione wanted to talk to them, it couldn't be that hard to find a quiet place at school - at daytime? He was sure Ron was thinking the same thing, even though he didn't say anything about it. After all it was nighttime, and they were both too tired to spend much energy on thinking out what Hermione was doing. They stole upsairs to their dormitory, and stopped to listen at the door, just to be sure that everybody else were still asleep. It appeared they did, even though Harry couldn't understand that Hermione didn't wake up the whole Gryffindor tower when she ran up the stairs a moment ago. "Maybe she knew some kind of charm which made it possible running without making a sound" he thought. "But, no, and they would probably never learn something like that in school anyway, even though it would have been very useful".
On his way back to his bed, Ron kicked something along the floor, and it hit the wall with a loud crack. Strangely enough it seemed that all the others were still asleep. Harry couldn't understand it? Were they completely unconscious or what? Or wasn't the crack that loud after all? Did it just sound like it because he didn't want to make a sound? Oh well, it wasn't so important - now he wanted to sleep! The school year had not even started yet, and there had been more going on at Hogwarts already than what was going on for the whole summer at the Dursley's house.
So! Now I updated this one! What I wrote before wasn't the complete first part, but you've probably already figured that out. This fic isn't being true to the original H.P. "plot" (or how to say it), but who cares? I did it just for fun anyway!