Author Note: This chapter was written before anything of Avalon was put in, so if anything doesn't fit please let me know.
Oh, and Mark Evans has no claim to Avalon as he is related to Harry and Petunia through Petunia's father's family not her mother's.
Chapter 12-Going HomeHarry watched the muggles pass by his cart full of his odd assortments of magical items. He always found it strange that people never noticed anything odd going on the day Hogwarts students' ran into a stone pillar between platforms nine and ten with caged owls, cats, toads, and rats. Harry wasn't sure but he didn't think too many people in the muggle world were allowed to keep owls as pets, and he found it even more unlikely that the boarding schools in the area would allow students to keep them in their dormitories. The muggles, too concerned with getting back to work on time, seemed not to notice anything but their train's docking and departure. Even during Harry's second year when the house elf Dolby blocked the entrance to platform nine and three quarters, and Harry had hit the stone pillar and tipped his cart, the station director didn't even realize anything peculiar about Harry's possessions.
Harry just shook his head at this muggle world that had become almost as unusual as Hogwarts really was. His thoughts drifted away to the last summer and the person who had finally given Harry a real family. Harry zoomed through the stone pillar onto Hogwarts' train platform. Students and their families were saying their final good-byes, and quickly loading their things to the train's storage areas. Harry sighed looking for the shaggy black dog that openly hugged Harry last year at this time. He knew Sirius wasn't there, but that dream he had this summer still held to Harry like a possible confirmation for what Harry wanted to be true . . . the violet eyed woman's voice echoed in his head . . . "Sirius is alive." Feeling a small bit of hope for the coming year, Harry breathed in deep and boarded the train behind the Weasleys and Hermione.
Ron and Hermione retreated to the prefect compartment to get their orders from the Head Boy and Head Girl. Harry walked with Ginny to the last compartment on the train. Inside, three students were already talking. Neville Longbottom held out his toad Trevor and showed Luna Lovegood how he could change Trevor into a parrot now. Harry sat down on the bench across from them next to a little boy who looked very familiar. "Oh . . . Hello Mark," Harry said quizzically.
"Hi. Who are you then?" Mark replied not seeing Harry's scar under Harry's shaggy bangs. Harry had forgotten that he had never been introduced to his cousin before.
"You don't know who he is?" Neville said to the boy as if Mark was the thickest person he'd ever met. "He's Harry Potter."
"Wow! Really! That's so wicked!," Mark reacted with enthusiasm, but rolled his eyes while he did, and then with a puzzled look on his face he said, "But hold on, how do you know me." Harry explained how he had seen Dudley beating Mark up. Harry had threatened Dudley later that day. That moment had turned out to be the moment the dementors came. "Well, thanks Harry. Dudley hasn't bothered me since." But then under his breath he whispered, "Not that I can't take care of myself." Harry not hearing this kept talking to Mark,
"Mark, out of curiosity, do you know that we are related? My mom was an Evans."
"Well, yes. I think ma might have mentioned that you were my cousin only a hundred . . . no a thousand times by now. Second cousin, but still blood." Harry looked his cousin Mark over. Yes, he definitely saw his resemblance to his mother. Mark had the same green eyes, the same nose, and his hair was straight and burnt red. Harry sighed trying to think of something to say, but just as he thought to show Mark his mother's portrait, that he got from the Weasley twins at his birthday party, Malfoy buzzed to Crabbe and Goyle loudly in the corridor outside their compartment,
"Can you imagine? Potter's mother, a Death Eater? She was right there with Professor Snape cheering the Dark Lord on. That's why the Dark Lord wasn't going to kill her, but for whatever reason she protected the bastard child. If only she wouldn't have been brave. She would have been one of us for good. She'd probably be Lily Snape even now, and little Potter Wotter wouldn't even exist." Crabbe and Goyle grunted out a loud laugh, and then suddenly the train begins to shake from side to side like it was about to jump off the bridge it was currently crossing.
Harry and his friends looked out their window and the river's waves taunted them with their huge peaks of white beating against the bridge and the shore's rock. Malfoy screamed and tried to run, but could get no further than the compartment next to Harry's due to the violent convulsions shaking the train. Students screamed and screamed again. Harry was flipped to the other bench and Neville was knocked out on the windowpane. Mark's head landed in Ginny's lap and Luna somehow managed not to move an inch. Screeches were heard coming from the front of the train. Harry could only imagine the green train engine beating against twisted steel. The intensity of the noise was a hundred times louder and higher than nails scraping over a chalkboard.
Harry decided he had to do something. He rose from the bench he had been thrown to, and managed to stand before the next vibration hit. He waited for it to pass before he left the compartment. Crabbe and Goyle were huddled over Malfoy's unconscious body protecting him from whatever was going on. Harry took his time moving through the hallway toward the engine, until he was finally there. Ron and Hermione had already managed to figure out what was happening, but had no idea how to fix it. The train's tracks had been severed and the train was trying to go over them, but instead the tracks had popped up and buckled underneath the ruined train engine. There was no way to stop the train from moving and no way to get the students off without jumping the bridge, where the students would fall a hundred feet before they crashed into the horrid river, followed by the cars of the train minutes later. Out of nowhere a flash of white light blinds them, and Professor Dumbledore appears asking Hermione where the engineer is,
"I don't know, Professor. He was here earlier, but now?" Hermione shrugged her shoulders.
"Professor the tracks are buckling . . . how do we fix it?" Harry said quickly trying to get to some action. Dumbledore disappears again and the students look out the engine's cockpit to see a giant Dumbledore blazing blue with laser sharp clarity. Dumbledore held the train back with his air ridden wand while he touched the tracks with his crystal blue lit hands. The tracks glowed a burned molten red, and then Dumbledore put the tracks in their spots, breathed icy blue breath on them, and disapparted with a crack. Ron, Harry, and Hermione nodded with astonished grins as they felt the train moving on its merry way as if nothing had ever happened.
"Wow! Wicked!" Ron exclaimed. "Who would've thought we would see Dumbledore in top form on the way to Hogwarts?" He laughed, and Hermione frowned.
"If that's what happens on the way to Hogwarts, what is bound to happen during the school year?"
"How did he get here anyway? Since you can't appartate or disappartate from Hogwarts's grounds?" Harry and Hermione looked at Ron and shook their heads. 'How, indeed?' Harry thought.
"It's Dumbledore," said Harry raising his hands up to the heavens, as if it explained everything. Had they only looked at their feet they would have saw the commonly owned student item that allowed Dumbledore to appear at a moments notice—Dumbledore's picture on his very own Chocolate Frog Wizard card.
Professor Dumbledore nodded to Professor McGonagall and she placed the sorting stool in front of the fidgeting first years. She laid the sorting hat on the stool and stood back, thus giving the sorting hat its signal to begin the traditional song about Hogwarts's four founders and the reason for the sorting. The sorting song was different each year. Last year the sorting hat had given the students a warning telling them that though its purpose was to divide them, they needed to unite together or Hogwarts would crumble from within.
The warning had initially stunned both professors and students with its moral commentary, but the words were soon forgotten with Professor Umbridge's own reign of terror on Hogwarts. She had taken her rules to extremes and made the students in Slytherin even more despised when she gave them privileges to take away house points for whatever they deemed necessary. The Inquisitional Squad, or the Idiot's Squad as some called it, had done their best to take away privileges from anyone not in Slytherin House or whose family was not full of pureblood wizards. In so doing, the other three houses' hatred of the students in Slytherin grew to a deep loathing. The actions of the "Idiot's Squad" confirmed what was often believed, that the students in Slytherin would turn out to be the most evil witches and wizards in the world. As far as the students in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff were concerned, the students in Slytherin could leave anytime they wanted, and go work for their Dark Lord, Voldemort.
The great hall was quiet with anticipation. The older students waited remembering last year's warning and whispered to those who clearly had forgotten. Then the old ratty hat's brim opened and began to sing:
With each passing age I've written
And sang the praise of our founders.
Each song's expectation only
To explain Hogwarts history.
You must understand your founders
And their reason behind choosing
To sort out their students between
Houses, divided but equal,
In their once ideal beginning.
This year I tried my very best
To find the words that would impress.
To find the words that have so far
Gone by unnoticed among you,
Now lost to new terrors and threats.
Searching throughout my memories,
I found no words truer than those
I sang a year ago tonight.
As there is no rule that binds me
Not to sing the same song twice,
For the first time in all of my
History I repeat myself . . .
"In times of old when I was new
And Hogwarts barely started
The founders of our noble school
Thought never to be parted:
United by a common goal,
They had the selfsame yearning,
To make the world's best magic school
And pass along their learning.
"Together we will build and teach!"
The four good friends decided
And never did they dream that they
Might someday be divided.
For were there such friends anywhere
As Slytherin and Gryffindor?
Unless it was the second pair
Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?
So how could it have gone so wrong?
How could such friendships fail?
Why, I was there and so can tell
The whole sad, sorry tale.
Said Slytherin, "We'll teach just those
Whose ancestry is purest."
Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose
Intelligence is surest."
Said Gryffindor, "We'll teach all those
With brave deeds to their name,"
Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot,
And teach them just the same."
These differences caused little strife
When first they came to light,
For each of the four founders had
A house in which they might
Take only those they wanted, so,
For instance, Slytherin
Took only pure-blood wizards
Of great cunning, just like him,
And only those of sharpest mind
Were taught by Ravenclaw
While the bravest and the boldest
Went to daring Gryffindor.
Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest,
And taught them all she knew,
Thus the Houses and their founders
Retained friendships firm and true.
So Hogwarts worked in harmony
For several happy years,
But then discord crept among us
Feeding on our faults and fears.
The Houses that, like pillars four,
Had once held up our school,
Now turned upon each other and,
Divided, sought to rule.
And for a while it seemed the school
Must meet and early end,
What with dueling and with fighting
And the clash of friend on friend
And at last there came a morning
When old Slytherin departed
And though the fighting then died out
He left us quite downhearted.
And never since the founders four
Were whittled down to three
Have the Houses been united
As they once were meant to be.
And now the Sorting Hat is here
And you all know the score:
I sort you into Houses
Because that is what I'm for,
But this year I'll go further,
Listen closely to my song:
Though condemned I am to split you
Still I worry that it's wrong,
Though I must fulfill my duty
And must quarter every year
Still I wonder whether sorting
May not bring the end I fear.
Oh, know the perils, read the signs,
The warning history shows,
For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes
And we must unite insider her
Or we'll crumble from within
I have told you, I have warned you. . . .
Let the Sorting now begin."
The students who were seeing the sorting hat sing for the very first time were amazed and slightly worried. The first years looked toward the professors at the head table wondering if one of them knew the magic that gave the hat its "brains." Some of them even contemplated that they would be able to do even greater magic some day. Mark Evans, Harry's cousin, was one of these students. Their ambitious thoughts running wild as they waited, they imagined themselves as the greatest witches and wizards of the past millennium. They would, of course, be much greater than Harry Potter, or even the Dark Lord. But luckily, for the school, not all of the new students were having those same thoughts. Some of the students were just excited to get to go to Hogwarts's library for the first time. Others, about a quarter of them, had no idea where they would fit in, and the last quarter couldn't wait to play Quidditch with Harry Potter, and find all the hidden passageways the school was known for. Professor McGonagall watched the first years, seeming to know their thoughts, and without even a hint of the smile she held inside her, began to call out their names alphabetically,
"Jenny Adams." A rather lanky long blond haired girl with a dazzling smile sat on the sorting stool. Professor McGonagall placed the hat gently on her head. It took quite a long time before the sorting hat finally choose for her,
"Hufflepuff." Jenny smiled timidly and joined the other students who looked every bit as nice as she did.
"Kassandra Becker." A girl who would obviously break hearts someday with her silky raven hair, dark eyes, and pale skin took the stool. Kassandra knew her accomplishments in school and the sorting hat listened to her thoughts intently. Kassandra wouldn't say that she had the highest marks her primary school had seen in the past 30 years, nor would she dare to claim to deserve to be a Ravenclaw. She had no idea where she deserved to be. The sorting hat knew the type,
"Ravenclaw."
"Horatio Bradley." This time a sandy blond haired boy with a face hidden in freckles, laughed as he gallantly strode to the stool. This boy knew before the sorting hat even began to sing that he wanted to be in Gryffindor. The sorting hat agreed immediately and roared,
"Gryffindor." The students in Gryffindor bellowed with the familiar sight of the quick to choosing first year. Horatio strutted to the table already feeling at home with the others he knew must have also chosen their place.
"Mark Evans." The boy with Harry's mother's eyes and hair looked out to the Gryffindor table and saw Harry. Mark sighed and thought that if he was really as courageous as his cousin, maybe he would do well in Gryffindor, but deep inside he knew his family wouldn't want to see him in the same house as Harry. Mark knew he had no choice, but also felt excitement in knowing where he would end up. It did not take the sorting hat much deliberation before it said,
"Slytherin!" Three houses booed as Mark came down from the sorting chair. Harry waved at his cousin with his eyebrows raised. If Mark was his cousin, why has he ended up in Slytherin? Harry, always reminiscent during the ceremony, remembered what the sorting hat had said to him, "You'd do well in Slytherin, but if you're sure . . . Yes? Then it has to be Gryffindor!" Even after he had pulled Godric Gryffindor's sword from the sorting hat while fighting the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets his second year, he still had thoughts about how life would have been different if on that fateful day he wouldn't have chosen for himself and let the sorting hat put him in Slytherin. Mark's head was down, as he was booed toward his table. Dumbledore, furious, stood up. The mob looked at him with terrible fear. The headmaster said calmly, "Remember the words of the sorting hat." For the rest of the sorting not a word was peeped, except by those houses cheering on and welcoming their new members.