The rest of the trip passed in silence. Blaise pulled out a magazine and started reading it, and Alex, for lack of anything better to do, pulled his cloak over his head and, to his surprise, managed to get to sleep. He woke up about twenty minutes before they pulled in at Hogwarts. The English countryside wasn't much to look at anyways, in his opinion.
They were met at the station by a group of carriages pulled by invisible beings that Alex presumed from his reading were thestrals. There was also an enormous man waiting there. "Firs' years! Firs' years this way! He was holding a photo in his off hand, and when Alex got off the train, he said, somewhat quieter, "Mister Smith? You'll be comin' with us, then. All righ' then, firs' years, follow me! Smith, you comin?"
"Right. Coming." The man led them down to the lake, and Alex got his first view of Hogwarts. It was a castle. A very hugely twisted castle that was obviously magical. He understood why all the anti-Muggle spells were on it. The sheer aura of magic around the thing was enough to make his head hurt.
The man called "Four to a boat now! Four to a boat!" He turned to Alex. "You're big enough that we'll take the same boat. I'm Professor Hagrid, Care of Magical Creatures." Alex nodded, as Professor Hagrid continued. "Pleasure t'meet you. So what House do you think you'll be in?"
Alex shrugged as he got into the boat. "Haven't given it much thought. Doesn't really matter to me. Are Houses really all that important? I mean, of course there's rivalries, and they play Quidditch together, and they live together, but do they block friendships?"
Hagrid nodded seriously. "Yeah, they do. Not always, but often enough. 'Specially between Slytherin and t'other three. I mean, Hufflepuff gets along with everyone who'll let them, an' Ravenclaw keeps the rivalries friendly, but you don' wanna get on the bad side of Gryffindor. An' Slytherin…well, you start on their bad side. Possible to get on their good side if you really wanna, but that puts you on Gryffindor's bad side."
Alex sighed. "I get the feeling that I'm going to annoy people because I don't know the little social rules. Oh, well. You live life." He got a big grin and an enthusiastic nod for the last line.
"You live life. Don' matter what they throw at you, so long as you're alive and enjoyin' yourself. Eh?"
Alex nodded. "That's what you gotta do," he said as their boat pulled up to the dock.
They were met by a woman with very forbidding spectacles. "Right this way, then, Mr. Smith, first years. I am Professor McGonagall. Mr. Smith, as a transfer student, you'll be Sorted first. Right this way." They stopped in a small room. "Mr. Smith, come with me. First years, stay here. Sir Nicholas?" A ghost who had been hovering in a corner floated over to them. "Could you watch the first years for a bit?" The ghost bowed, and turned to the first years with a jolly smile.
Alex followed Professor McGonagall out into what he knew from his reading was the Great Hall. He looked around in a bemused fashion as McGonagall led him to an old beat-up hat on a stool. "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Alexander Smith. Mr. Smith is a transfer student from the Washington Institute of Magical Studies in Washington, DC, and will be joining the sixth year. He will be Sorted prior to the main Sorting Ceremony." She paused and glared at the hat, and continued softly enough that only Alex…and the hat on the stool…could hear her. "That includes the song. Right, then, Mr. Smith, if you would sit on the stool with the hat on your head?"
Alex did so, and the hat spoke to him in his mind. Not his first experience with that. "Now don't mind that old bat, you'll get to hear the song later. Let's get down to business. Hmm…plenty of courage, plenty of cunning and ambition, oh my, a total passion for knowledge, not so much desire to help your fellow man, though, pity about that. You'll do well wherever I put you, but I think I'm going to go with RAVENCLAW!" The last word was shouted out loud so everyone in the hall could hear, and applause was heard. He took the hat off, and McGonagall gestured him towards the table clapping the hardest.
He sat in an empty seat, next to a pair of young men about his age who immediately started questioning him about the American magical schooling system, but fell silent as the true first years walked into the room. The hat sang some song about the Houses that Alex didn't really listen to, the first years were Sorted, and Alex started answering his fellow students' questions.
"The American schooling system is actually based on the Muggle system. You're put into elementary school at the age of four or five, you're taught math, science, grammar, spelling, history, geography, and stupidly basic magic. You go into a middle school at the age of ten or so, and then into high school at thirteen or fourteen. The older you get, they put more focus on magic and less on Muggle things, but the main difference is that you're targeted to graduate at seventeen instead of eighteen like in the Muggle American schools. The Institutes of Magical Studies are a group of pretty prestigious combined middle and high schools."
One of the other sixth years leaned across the table. "But America doesn't have the O.W.L.s, does it? It has those other tests. Did the N.E.W.T. board accept those instead of O.W.L.s for you?"
Alex smiled. "Not exactly. The N.E.W.T. board passed my Magical Aptitude Test results on to the O.W.L. board, which awarded me O.W.L.s based on my M.A.T.s. That seemed to be the simplest way to handle the situation."
"So what happened to bring you here? I heard from somewhere that you got expelled." The girl to his left grinned to show him what she thought of that idea.
"You heard from Malfoy, I take it. No, my mother works in the Department of Magical Affairs. Division of Foreign Relations. She got promoted, up to European Section Head." He grinned a little. "She's starting to get a little bit of a swelled head."
"And your Dad? What does he do?" Alex's grin disappeared like it had never been and his face turned stony. "My father was a Blue Eagle, our version of the Aurors. He died fighting the forces of Voldemort the last time the bastard tried to take power." Some people around him flinched at the name. "That's part of the reason why the American government is taking such an interest in England. They're worried that your Ministry isn't going to take the Dark Lord seriously again, and they're leaning on your Minister to do something."
"You said part of the reason, Alex?" It was the girl who'd asked him about his transfer, trying to break the awkward silence that followed his words. "What's the other part?"
He grinned at her again like the awkwardness had never happened. Jokingly, he said, "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." Everyone laughed as the conversation smoothly went into much less serious topics of conversation.
He glanced over to the Slytherin table once or twice, spotting Blaise each time. The second time, he caught her looking at him. He gave her a solemn nod, and smiled inwardly when she returned it.
That night, in his new bed, he thought over the day. And the thing that stuck with him the most was what the Sorting Hat had told him. You'll do well wherever I put you.