The morning of September 1st, Sirius didn't talk to me. Even saying goodbye to me was too much for him to manage. The only words he aimed in my direction were words of ridicule or contempt, and even then he wouldn't address to me directly. I tried to explain that I had had no choice, but he wouldn't listen. He never listened. His pride was too great to ever admit he had been wrong.
Sirius was sent off to school with great fuss and commotion. Everyone wished him luck, although no one but Father and I went to the station to see him off. The rest of the family wanted to avoid being around so many Muggles. Mama kissed him repeatedly on the forehead and told him to make her proud. Uncle Claudius told Sirius and Narcissa to sit together on the train. Everything went off well.
And then the letter came. Narcissa sent her letter first, almost immediately. Sirius' arrived the next day. By that time, Aunt Elladora had already spread the news all around the family. Everyone awaited Sirius' letter with tense anticipation, hoping for an explanation, a promise of action. We were all disappointed; Sirius' letter was very short. It read:
Dear Mum, Dad,
Have been sorted into Gryffindor. Funny, what?
Love,
Sirius
Father was shocked. Mama was furious. Aunt Elladora was delighted. She kept coming over to "console" the family, but even I wasn't fooled into believing in her sincerity. She couldn't stop grinning. The scandal was widespread. All of the distant family kept sending owls or stopping over to see if it was true. It had never happened before that a Black was sorted into Gryffindor. Not a true Black. Not a pure Black. And certainly not the head of the clan!
Sept. 1st, 1971
Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry
"Gryffindor!"
For a long moment I just sat there, contemplating what the Sorting Hat had said to me, wondering if I had heard correctly. There must have been some sort of mistake. I was not meant to be sorted into Gryffindor. The Hat must be wrong. Uncle Claudius had said that Gryffindor was where all the dirty, uneducated Mudbloods ended up. That was definitely not the House for me. Even as I thought this, I got the distinct impression the Hat was laughing at me.
My reverie was interrupted when the sour-faced head of Gryffindor House herself pulled the Hat off my head. "You have been sorted, Mr. Black," she said stiffly, but I noticed one of her pencil-thin eyebrows was arched and the faintest hint of a smile played about her lips. She even looked a bit bemused, or at least pleasantly surprised.
All the same, I felt my face fill up with blood. I knew I must be blushing like a beet, and I could hardly bring myself to look at the Gryffindor table as I approached it. The usual cheering had died down and given way to laughter and whispering, mostly, I guess, due to the fact that I had remained seated after being sorted with the Hat on my head like a bloody idiot. But I also caught snippets of conversation involving the words "Black" and "Slytherin." I guess the students in Gryffindor must have been just as confused as I was. Sure, there was no guarantee for getting into any House, even if your whole family had been in it, all the way back to the ancients, but there was an unspoken understanding that some families remained pure, no matter what. The Blacks were just such a family. And as such, I was an inexplicable phenomenon.
I hastily took a seat at the empty end of the Gryffindor table and stared at the place setting in front of me. The Sorting Ceremony went on and I was grateful for the noise that once again filled the Great Hall. I was counting the number of ridges on my finely-crafted porcelain plate when someone poked me roughly on the shoulder. Looking up, I saw a young Gryffindor—he must have been a second or third year—raising an eyebrow at me.
"There's someone over in Slytherin wants your attention," he said jovially, as though it was some kind of great inside joke that I was wanted by a Slytherin. Even more mortified, I glanced around and caught sight of Narcissa; she was crouching backwards on her seat and waving to me while Bellatrix—seated next to her—smirked. An older student, a boy with hair so blond it was almost white, was whispering something in Bellatrix's ear. I tried to sink lower onto the bench as though that would make me invisible, but Sissy, having met my gaze, only waved harder and called out, "What are you doing?" across the whole Great Hall, as though my having been sorted into Gryffindor was some big joke which I had organized in order to confuse her.
Several Gryffindors snickered. Everyone nearby was looking at me. One big boy with close-cropped hair sitting across the table from me scowled and said: "What do you want here, Black? Why aren't you with your own people?"
I rather resented the implication that Bellatrix and her posse, or any of the Slytherins, were "my people," especially as I felt that I was equally unwanted over there, but on the other hand, they were my family. "I…I don't…" I started, but I felt uncommonly small and insignificant next to all those older boys and girls, Gryffindors no less. Some of them were probably Mudbloods. I looked up curiously to see if any of them had facial hair like monkeys, but all I saw was a sea of frowns and knit eyebrows.
"I know who you are," the broad-shouldered boy continued, which surprised me as I had surely never met him before in my life. I would have remembered; he actually did look a little like a monkey, though without the facial hair. "Don't try anything."
Some other students nodded in agreement. Most of them seemed to have forgotten me; they were focusing once again on the Sorting Ceremony which had added several more first-years to Gryffindor's ranks, filling up the seats next to me. I looked back down at my plate and wished, oddly, that I were sitting with the Slytherins. At least then I would be with people I knew how to handle. I wished even more that Ann had not graduated. I know she would have cleared me a spot at her side and asked me to sit down. She would have straightened my cap and smiled fondly at me and told me how proud she was that I was in Slytherin. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and to my great horror, one of them slid down my hot cheek. Blacks don't cry, I told myself angrily, but that only caused several more tears to spill over.
Headmaster Dumbledore gave a speech, but I hardly listened. What did my Hogwarts career matter? I was hoping to wake up and find myself at home, asleep in my bed, with my mother shaking me and telling me harshly to get up, to discover that it was all just a bad dream.
I didn't speak to anyone all through the meal; I barely ate. Afterwards, a Gryffindor prefect, an older girl with a badge, lead everyone at the table to the dormitories. I saw Narcissa briefly on the way out of the Hall. She said, "what are you going to do?"
"About what?" was my moody response.
"About…you know…being in Gryffindor!" Her eyes were big and round in her pretty face. "Why don't you come with us?"
"You can't just switch Houses," I retorted.
She shook her head lamely at me. "But you can't stay there…"
"I'll do what I want to do!" I shouted, out of pure contrariness. I hated being told what to do, especially by my cousins, who had no right to boss me around. I was head of the house, after all, even if I didn't like it.
"Mr. Black," a cool, dry voice cut through our conversation, and I felt a long shadow fall across the floor in front of me. Sissy got bug-eyed and ran away towards the rapidly receding group of Slytherin first-years who were trudging down to the dungeons. I turned around. The tall, sharp-nosed Gryffindor prefect was standing behind me, staring down. The entire class of Gryffindor first-years was standing behind her, whispering or exchanging glances with each other. I wanted to die.
A little while later I was curled up on my new bed in Gryffindor Tower. All the rest of the first-years were down in the common room, socializing and exchanging excited tales of their train ride. Not wanting to answer any more questions about why I wasn't with my family or what I thought about being in Gryffindor, I sulkily pulled my robes off so I could get ready for bed. As I unbuttoned my shirt, I became aware of something cold and hard against my skin; it was the signet ring, on its chain, still hanging about my neck where Mother had fastened it.
I took the ring in my fist and looked down at it. The chain was long enough that I could just hold it out in front of my chin. The big, black stone glinted dully in the candlelight and the curving spirals of the "B" etched into it caught the light. B for Black.
That big, heavy ring on my palm represented my Mother. It represented family and duty and honor. It represented being the heir and doing the right thing. The only thing it didn't represent was me. Slowly, I undid the clasp—with a little difficulty since I had no mirror to help me see what I was doing—and removed the chain from around my neck. I let the chain, ring and all, fall onto my crimson pillow—crimson for Gryffindor. I felt like a great burden had been lifted. I had never once considered what might happen if I didn't get into Slytherin. I had never imagined that other possibilities lay open to me besides the ones my mother had dictated to me all my life.
Being sorted into Gryffindor had shaken my world, and all of her carefully built plans collapsed as one. I looked back on my conversation with Sissy and realized something important: I could do whatever I wanted. Mother was not here, and she couldn't change anything. Instead, everything about this incredible castle with its ever-changing staircases and enchanted ceilings and talking hats was unpredictable and exciting. Here, one didn't have to be well-behaved and conventional and submissive. And here, I knew, I would finally be free to pursue my own life. If Mother thought she could bind me to her with this stupid ring and chain, she was wrong! Gleefully, almost maliciously, I grabbed the ring, opened my trunk, and thrust the bejeweled monstrosity as deep into the depths of the trunk as I could.
As I brought my empty hand back up, it brushed against a package of chocolate frogs my father had given me as a going-away present. I had forgotten about them or else I would have eaten them on the train. Just as I had returned to my bed with my pajamas and my chocolate, and was shoving the first struggling, kicking frog into my mouth, another first year boy clattered up the stairs and into the room. Slightly out of breath, he paused in the middle of the room and pushed his round glasses further up his nose. His big eyes squinted at me through the thick panes of glass as he eyed the brown frog leg sticking out of my mouth. I pushed the rest of the frog into my mouth self-consciously.
I chewed in silence. "Can I have one," he asked after a moment, eyeing the heap of little blue cartons on my bed. It was bad manners to ask for other people's food like that, Mother used to scold me terribly when I was little for just such behavior. I gave him a skeptical look. He hadn't even said "please."
"I've got some really good cards," he continued, unabashedly, nodding at the card of Cob the Magnificent of Backwater I had just removed from the Chocolate Frog carton in front of me. "If you give me some frogs, I'll trade you my best ones."
Mother had thrown out all of my Chocolate Frog cards when she "reorganized" my room—I had had an impressive collection consisting of pretty much every card from every Frog I'd ever eaten and quite a few I'd stolen from Regulus and Sissy, and even a few that Ann and, more rarely, Bellatrix had given me. The thought of those lost cards made me grimace. Cob the Magnificent was more or less the only card I had now. I decided not to mention my embarrassing lack of trading material, and was, therefore, glad to make the boy a present of a handful of Chocolate Frogs instead.
"Thanks…" he said, plopping himself down on the bed to the right of mine and tearing into one. He leaned over a bit to try to make out the name engraved on the clasp of my trunk.
"Sirius," I informed him quickly, not wanting him to read the elaborate, looping "Master S. Black" on my trunk.
"Sirius," he repeated cheerfully. "Thanks, Sirius." He extended his hand to me across the gap between our beds. His fingers were sticky with melting chocolate, but I took it anyway. "I'm James."