Chapter 2 – A Statue and a Castle
Disclaimer: I own the plot, the whole plot, and nothing but the plot.
A/N: Hello dear readers! I hope you are all well. Again I would like to send a big kiss to my beta Ceanen. :) Thanks babe!
I suppose that now the Order of the Phoenix is out this fic is technically an AU. I wrote these characters (James, Peter, Sirius, Remus, Severus and Lily) how I thought they would be, and that doesn't quite concur with the way Rowling portrays them when we see what they were like at school. From the beginning I had planned to write them as being cruel to Severus, but I never imagined them being as horrible as J.K made them out to be. So I will continue the way I started, because to me it seems that the characters I am writing would have grown up to be the ones in the book. I hope you can recognise them too. Anyway…Onward! Please leave a review to let me know what you think. =D
***
At last the train came to a lurching halt, and Remus followed the three boys out of the carriage and onto a platform, unlit but for the bright glow of the moon and stars. Suddenly the world seemed strange, hostile and unfamiliar, all the sights and sounds distorted and offensive. Remus had no idea of where he was or what he was doing there, and although he knew his name, he couldn't remember who he was. Then someone in the crowd bumped roughly against him, and with a start he was brought back to reality and realised that he couldn't see his travelling companions. Feeling bewildered and disorientated, the werewolf looked up to find an older boy watching him. He was tall and very handsome, in a cold, sharp way. His hair was an impossibly pale silver-blond, his eyes a steely grey, and his skin alabaster. Standing there in the moonlight, he looked rather like a fine statue, his features perfectly sculpted and hard as marble. He was poised with his arms crossed over his chest and his cruelly beautiful mouth twisted into a sneer, which Remus, with his poor knowledge of facial expressions, couldn't understand. All he knew was that it affected him like a blow to the midriff, and left him feeling physically sick and dizzy. But then Sirius reappeared from the melee and grabbed Remus' arm, and the statue came to life at once, whirling around to be lost in the crowd.
"Come on, or we'll get separated from the other first years!" Sirius urged, pulling his new companion away. Sirius didn't seem to have noticed the pale boy, so Remus followed him willingly and blindly. All awareness, as it frequently did, had retreated to some hidden depth, a place as yet uncharted by any living being. The strange encounter was for the moment forgotten, cast into the pile of buried memories already within his mind.
*
The site of a thousand burning torches reflected in bottomless black water brought Remus to life. He was in a boat with the three boys he had encountered on the train, and before him loomed his future. It was a great castle, magnificent and utterly terrifying. For a moment it seemed to Remus as if it was not a building, but an ancient, powerful creature, and something stirred deep within him, he almost identified it –
"Remus! Are you alright?" the words shattered any chance Remus might have had of interpreting what he felt, and the moment was irrevocably lost.
"I'm fine, thank you," he replied, blinking at James in confusion.
"Okay," said James carefully, "its just that you seemed a little distant." Remus didn't answer, but merely gazed at the castle, so his companion returned half-heartedly to the conversation concerning the hairy giant of a man who had led them to the boats. For the remainder of their trip across the lake, James carefully and guardedly observed the strange, golden-haired young wizard. There was something about the other boy that was hauntingly familiar, but the memory lurked stubbornly at the back of his mind, refusing to reveal itself.
*
Finally the magical boats reached the shore, and the first years clambered out, craning their necks to look up at the castle. Following the great, booming voice of the enormous man who had met them at the platform, they soon found themselves climbing the grand stone steps that lead to a huge double-door. Their guide, who had by now identified himself as Hagrid, thumped one great fist three times against the studded wood before suddenly blowing out the lantern he had been carrying. A crack of light appeared, and the doors swung inwards with a friendly creak. Without being told the children poured forward into a spacious entrance hall flooded with soft yellow light. As the doors closed behind them with the same sound, Remus noticed that Hagrid had disappeared, and rather easily for one so big.
The first-years had hardly been there for a minute when a neat, authoritive voice caught their attention.
"I am Professor McGonogall," said the owner of the voice, a stiff-looking young woman dressed in long scarlet robes and a black pointy hat, "Head of Gryffindor House. I teach Transfiguration here at Hogwarts. In a moment I will return to lead you through to the Great Hall, where you will be sorted into your different houses. They are Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Gryffindor, and it is an honour to be selected for any of them. Please make yourselves presentable." With that she turned and left through another huge door, which opened only enough to allow her passage.
There was a buzz of chatter and a flurry of movement as the score or so of children nervously adjusted their robes and flattened their hair, all the while anxiously speculating on what was to come. No one seemed to actually know how students were sorted at Hogwarts, although there were some intimidating stories being passed around. It seemed like an age before Professor McGonogall finally returned.
"Form a line and follow me," she said, "and quietly! The Sorting Ceremony will begin."
*
There was an echoing swish of material as every head in the Great Hall turned simultaneously to face the arrival of the youngest students. With his sensitive nose Remus could smell the anxiety of his peers as they stared in awe at their surroundings.
The teachers sat at a long table at the farthest end of the hall, while the rest of the students sat at four larger tables, one for each house. The vast room was lit by countless candles that hung burning in the air and never melted down, and when Remus lifted his eyes further, he saw only open sky where a ceiling should have been. The night sky was cloudless, and the stars glittered coldly in the void. There was no sight of the moon to spoil Remus' calm as they followed McGonogall up to the front of the hall, where they stood in a line before the teachers' table, facing away from their professors. McGonogall disappeared to the side for a moment, then returned followed by a small, sour looking man bearing a stool. He put it down between the line of first-years and the four house tables, before stalking off. The Head of Gryffindor house then placed a ragged, floppy, once-black wizard's hat on the stool and retreated to the one end of the row of children with a scroll of parchment. The first-years just stared at the hat in stupefied confusion. What was such an unremarkable, scruffy object doing at the Sorting Ceremony in the Great Hall of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry? Their amazement only increased when a rip near the brim of the hat opened like a mouth, and it began to sing.