Disclaimer – JKR owns the world and all the characters from the books. I'm just building a few castles in her sandbox.
Chapter 10
Malcolm had never seen the Great Hall packed with so many people. Four very long tables dominated the room, dozens of students lining each side of the trestles. Each of the large tables also had a translucent figure floating above it. Malcolm stared hard at what he guessed were the house ghosts. They hadn't been hanging about the castle the previous two weeks. Do ghosts take holidays? he wondered idly.
The faculty now sat separately, their table on a raised platform on the end opposite the main entrance. Professor McGonagall led the first year students to the open area before the platform. A simple stool waited on the flagstones, a ragged old hat perched on the cushion. Malcolm swore under his breath when the pointed top twitched, and he stared as a rip near the edge opened up and a voice filled the hall with song:
The hall is lit with candles tall.
The year, it has turned.
The leaves are changing, soon to fall.
The students have returned.
New faces peer, full of fright.
How shall we sort you out?
Time to choose, get it right
I'll see smiles, nary a pout.
Fair Ravenclaw, a clever lot,
Have minds honed and sharp.
Those Slytherin have clever plots,
Tuned to ambition, played like a harp.
Oh Hufflepuff, steadfast and true
They never carp, hard workers all.
Gryffindor, the courageous few-
Against their foes, they never fall.
As a thinking cap, I am no fool.
I'll see your place, your proper nook.
The founder's helper, Godric's tool,
Put me on, I'll have a look.
Malcolm was forcibly reminded of something he'd learned his first day at Hogwarts during the summer: "If it can make your day a little weirder, expect it to happen."
The new students were all looking at each other and muttering when McGonagall's voice silenced them again. "When I call your name, place the hat on your head and sit on the stool."
"Archibald, James."
A smallish boy with dirty blond hair hesitantly made his way to the stool and put on the hat. It barely stayed up, balanced on his protruding ears, while he sat on the stool. After a moment, the 'mouth' opened up again and the hat announced, "Ravenclaw!" in a loud voice.
The boy carefully placed the hat back on the stool and then raced over to the table under the blue and bronze banner. The Ravenclaw students clapped and waved him over to an empty seat.
"Brice, Edna." A short girl with frizzy blond hair crept up to the stool, looking all around her and swallowing.
"Hufflepuff!" The hat yelled almost the instant it touched her head.
She yelped and almost dropped the hat before she ran over to the cheering students under the yellow and black banner.
Malcolm listened as the stern professor worked her way through the alphabetical list. Soon, she called out "Dolohov, Annalise."
The small blond girl tucked a stray lock behind her ear as she swept toward the stool. Her velvet-trimmed robes, cleansed by Patricia's charm, looked like they'd just been laundered. She donned the ragged Sorting Hat without a trace of awkwardness and sat on the stool closing her eyes. There was a long pause before the hat called out "Slytherin!"
She removed the hat and swept toward the table under the green and silver banner. No one sat on the far end of the table, so she sat on the very corner. Annalise never looked back as she passed the unsorted students still lined up, but Malcolm noticed her jaw seemed clenched.
After a few more students, it was "Fortescue, Patricia."
The tall girl sauntered toward the stool, head held high. After a moment, the hat called out "Slytherin!" and Malcolm heard Perren gasp. Patricia didn't say anything, but her face bore a slight frown as she walked over to sit opposite Annalise.
Her reaction was nothing compared to Perren's. When the hat announced "Slytherin!" his eyes bulged and he tore the hat off his head. He glared at the offending headwear for a moment, and Malcolm wondered if he was going to rip it in two. He stalked over to the table and sat down beside Patricia.
As more students were called up, Malcolm wondered why Perren was so upset. He recalled the boy saying most of his family was in Ravenclaw, but did this make that large a difference?
He was thinking so hard about the implications that he almost didn't notice when Tobey left his side. The hat was on his head for no more than a moment before it announced "Slytherin!" Tobey didn't look at all surprised, and quietly walked over to the Slytherin table and sat next to Perren. Patricia was talking to the boy in low tones, and he looked a little less upset when Tobey sat beside him as well.
Next came "Smith, Malcolm."
Malcolm stepped forward and walked over to the stool. He could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on him, and it gave him a peculiar itchy feeling between his shoulder blades. He picked up the hat and made sure he was securely sitting before he placed it on his head.
"Well, well, well," an amused voice echoed in his mind. "I did not expect to see you here."
"What were you expecting?" Malcolm replied silently, "an erkling in platform shoes?" His weird-shite-o-meter was getting overloaded and his headache was back again.
The hat did not seem to pick up on the sarcasm. "It's been a while since a LeStrange was back at Hogwarts. Your bloodline has a long history with the Slytherin house. It should be easy to place you there… you've got the ambition, the drive, and more than your fair share of cleverness. You value secrets and do not trust easily. But…"
"But I have to be a pureblood to be in Slytherin," Malcolm objected.
"But you are," the hat replied. "Your lineage is more than enough to satisfy Salazar's requirements for his house."
"But my mum, she-"
"Was a pureblood witch; that much I can tell, but no more. The only question regards the fact that you also have qualities that would serve you well elsewhere. There's bravery enough for a Gryffindor, or-"
Malcolm thought of the people he'd ridden the train with, sitting together at the end of the Slytherin table, and broke in at that point. "Slytherin is fine with me," he interrupted.
"How very odd," the hat replied after a moment. "Joining Slytherin out of loyalty, something no Hufflepuff would ever do. I could see where you would end up, but not why. I think this could make for a very interesting year, young master LeStrange. I'll be listening, as I sit in the headmaster's office. I'll expect great things of you in-"
"Slytherin!" the hat shouted, making Malcolm jump. He doffed the hat as he slid off the stool. The protracted conversation inside his head seemed to take less time than he realized, because no one looked at him oddly as he stumbled toward the green and silver banner with the snake motif.
Malcolm felt his stomach lurch a little at the smile he saw on Patricia, Perren, and Tobey's faces. Annalise didn't turn around, but she also didn't object when he sat down beside her. "Hell of a coincidence," he whispered as he slid onto the bench. The three sitting opposite of him nodded and even Annalise turned and smiled faintly.
He sat thinking about probabilities as the Headmaster welcomed them to another year at Hogwarts and warned them (a bit belatedly he thought) about the dementors guarding the school. Nigel taught him never to accept a coincidence at face value. Annalise and Tobey didn't seem surprised to be sorted into Slytherin, but Patricia seemed surprised and Perren looked downright horrified. No other students had been sent to this table, while the other three houses had eight to ten new students. Some of the older students to his right seemed to have noticed this and he heard two of the closest muttering darkly to each other about their house being shorted this year.
What are the odds, Malcolm mused darkly, that the five people in that compartment end up being the only ones sorted into Slytherin this year? That bloody hat is up to something.
Dumbledore continued to speak, and they learned that the shabbily-dressed wizard on the train was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Malcolm figured anyone who could drive off a dementor probably knew what he was doing, but the older Slytherin students felt his robes were a disgrace. Maybe he does look a bit threadbare, he thought in disgust, but what does that have to do with how well he can teach us? The only real applause came from the Gryffindor table, which lead to even more sneering.
Malcolm had to restrain himself from applauding when Professor Hagrid's promotion was announced. He was supposed to be angry with him about the detention, or risk blowing his cover. From the malice directed toward the new teacher by the older Slytherins, Malcolm concluded he would do well to keep his opinions to himself. The applause from the other three tables (especially the Gryffindors) more than made up for the icy silence that descended on their table.
He looked across at Tobey, who was scowling darkly as well. Malcolm wondered what the problem was, but then he remembered the 'detention' he was to serve that night. He raised his eyebrows at the angry boy and shrugged. "I'll see how bad this detention is before I decide to hex him," he said in a low voice and Tobey snorted.
With that, the Headmaster told everyone to dig in, and in a blink the platters and serving dishes before them were piled high with hot food. Malcolm smiled as he and his friends dug in.
A/N:
I'd like to thanks Runsamok for her help with the Sorting Hat song. A lot of fan fics manage to arrange things so they skip that song, so I wanted to go against the cliché and have one in there.
After spending more time than I care to think about trying to write poetry, I understand better why they skip it!
Without Runny's expert assistance, Malcolm would have to have undergone a serious attack of daydreaming during this chapter, or maybe fallen out of the boat and gotten water in his ears. Seriously, my poetical ability maxxes out at limericks. Thankfully, her's doesn't.
On another note: I've been trying to find a way to indicate scene breaks, but everything I've used so far is getting eliminated when I post. I've tried pound signs, asterisks, break-codes, but nothing seems to work. If anyone knows of a way to do this that won't get zapped, please let me know in a review or email.
Thanks for your time!
PS- Edited on 10/7/05 to fix a small error in the table description in the main hall.