CHAPTER THREE : THE SORTING HAT

"First years!" a loud voice boomed from near the front of the platform. The Hogwarts Express had come to a stop about five minutes ago and Harry, Draco and Hermione had finally pushed their way through the craze of students off board. Following the general direction of the crowd, they proceeded ahead, glancing all around them at the extensive features of the very old fashioned train depot around them.

A tall wall blocked their view of anything that might lay on the other side of the depot. There were four archways carved gracefully out of the brick, and placed sparsely down the long platform that could barely contain the massive Express which delivered all the Hogwarts students.

"First years over here!" the voice boomed again. As Harry, Draco and Hermione followed the rest of the students forward, their mouths dropped as they discovered who the booming voice belonged to. How they hadn't seen him before they got to where they were currently standing, none of them knew. The man who's voice rang so clear throughout the platform was at least nine feet tall, with short straggly hair that hung noisily in front of his gaunt face. His coat was large, making him look even taller, and seemed to be made from a variety of animals as well as many unwashed years of mountain dwelling.

As the three glanced around, they noticed they weren't the only ones gaping at the massive man in front of them. Most of the other students were doing likewise. The man looked as though he had come one gene short of the mixing pool; either by his height, for he didn't appear tall enough to be fully giant, or build, which was rather thin to be considered justifiable to his height.

"Have you ever seen a giant before?" Hermione hissed between Harry and Draco.

Harry shook his head, but Draco scoffed. "He's no giant! Giants are twenty to thirty feet tall! He looks like he was hit with a poorly performed engorgement charm."

"But they'd be able to fix that at St. Mungos!" Hermione insisted, her eyes still locked upon the man, who was still grinning despite the anxious looks from the crowd of students.

Before Draco could respond, the man spoke again, causing an immediate hush to overtake the mass. "Welcome to Hogwarts," the man beamed, his arm stretched gangly upwards in a half wave. "My name is Hagrid, Rubeus Hagrid, but e'ryone 'round des parts jus' calls me Hagrid. My job here, besides to welcome you lot, is gamekeeper, but I also fill in for the Care of Magical Creatures teacher now and then." A murmur swept through the crowd like a sudden gush of wind, but was once again hushed as Hagrid continued speaking. "We're gonna take carriages up to the castle, so I ask yuh to find a group of five and follow me through the archways to the courtyard."

Harry, Draco, and Hermione looked at each other, as though to count and verify there were only three of themselves. Shrugging, they looked around, and Draco point across Harry. "Harry, look, there's two people," he said. Both Harry and Hermione looked in the direction of Draco's finger where two, quite out-of-place, red headed students stood.

The girl, catching Harry's eye, turned scarlet, but Harry waved at them. "Oy, you there," he shouted. "Care to join us? We need two more!"

The two, who Harry suspected to be brother and sister due solely to their hair color, glanced sheepishly at one another and strode over to where Harry, Draco, and Hermione stood.

"Thanks," the girl said, her eyes flickering over Harry's face interestedly. "Oh, look, we're moving." She nodded towards the group ahead of them who had begun their procession through the archways.

"Right. Okay then," Harry muttered, inhaling deeply. He led his small band of companions in the steps of their fellow classmates, through the archways and into an enormous courtyard at the foot of a very steep and extravagant hill. They heard gasps of shock and shrieks of glee from all around them, and joined in staring awestricken at the magnificently outlined castle set atop the hill. High, at atop the hill. The sight was wordlessly beautiful.

As they kept walking, they soon found themselves in line to be distributed to horse-drawn carriages by a variety of older students. Well, Harry reckoned the carriages were horse-drawn. Curious, he thought, I've never seen horses with wings.

"Wicked!" Draco whispered excitedly. "I wonder if the carriages are bewitched to move or something."

Hermione was squinting, her brow furrowed. "There are bindings for horses, I wonder where they are. Do they tie them up around here somewhere?" But as she looked around to see if she could see any horses, she caught sigh of Harry's perplexed face. "What?" she asked indignantly.

"Don't be thick!" he scoffed. "There are horses already tied to them. Look! They're pulling that one there!" He pointed to the first carriage, who's beasts had just begun its trek up the hill. To his dismay, all four of his companions gasped.

"How are they doing that?" Hermione gasped.

"The horses are pulling them!" Harry said, beginning to get annoyed. They were approaching the nearest carriage now, and the two winged-horses attached to the one in front of them were clearly visible.

"What horses?" asked the red-headed boy. "Do you mean there are horses pulling the carriages?"

Suddenly, in a wave of pure ignorance, it hit Harry that somehow he was able to see these horses, but his companions were not. "My god," he said, his mouth dropping, "I reckon these are Thestrals!"

"Thestrals?" Draco asked, his nose scrunching slightly in puzzlement, and slightly in exasperation that here was yet another thing Harry probably had detracted from a book.

"Thestrals!" Hermione said excitedly. "Harry, are you serious? Ohh!" She jumped up and down happily and stared intently slightly to the left of what she thought was the location of the nearest Thestral. Then, suddenly, she frowned. "Oh Harry…" her voice became low and sallow. Harry glanced at her, realizing that she knew the nature of Thestrals and why she was now looking upon him with pity.

"What the bloody hell are Thestrals?" the red-headed boy asked, slightly irritated by Harry and Hermione's lack of comprehensible words.

"Well," Harry started, "in short, you can only see them if you've seen someone snuff it."

Both the red heads opened their mouths in amazement, but Draco and Hermione lowered their heads. Draco, although able to maintain a rather tough-guy attitude at most times, had never quite been able to know what to say when Harry brought up the fact his parents had been murdered, not that he did so often. But Harry had noticed that his best friend only seemed to show sympathy for him.

"Wow!" the red-headed boy finally said, gaping at Harry. "Who've you seen die?"

"My parents…I guess…" Harry mumbled, after slight hesitation. This confirmed it, then. He never knew exactly where he'd been in relation to his parents' death, but he knew that he'd been in sight of at least one of them dying. According to Sirius, it was probably his mum.

The boy's grin faded, and he too became slightly ashamed.

"You fry brain," Draco sneered at the boy, "he's Harry Potter."

Both the girl's and the boy's heads whipped around so quickly that a tough of the girl's hair blew into the boy's. At that very instant, Harry saw the resemblance between them; it was strange the way they wore the same unbelieving, yet awestricken look.

But before either could say anything, although their mouths had been open for a good ten seconds, they heard a hastening voice ushering them towards the next carriage. "Come on," the tall, blonde boy opening the door to the carriage said. "You'll have plenty of time to chat inside." He helped Hermione and the red-head girl up the steps, and Draco graciously offered Hermione a hand the rest of the way, but she slapped his hand and did it herself.

Harry, Draco and Hermione sat on the longer bench, and the red heads on the other, rather shorter bench, both were still somewhat staring at Harry in awe. Shortly, the carriage began to move, and they felt the steadily incline towards the top of the hill commence.

"Yes," Harry sighed, as the two didn't seem to be interested to stop looking at him. "I am Harry Potter. This is Draco Black and Hermione Granger."

"Are you twins?" Hermione asked, quickly, before either could introduce themselves. They nodded. "I thought so," Hermione continued. "You have unmistakably the same eye structure, its spectacular." She smiled pleasantly at them, and their muscles seemed to loosen slightly. "What are your names?"

"I'm Ginny Weasley, and this is Ron," the girl said.

"Weasley?" Harry asked. "As in Arthur Weasley in the Department of the Regulation of Scelero and other related Muggle Controversies?" The Ministry of Magic had many departments, and long ago they transformed the Department of Improper Use of Muggle Artifacts to encompass most of the indecencies caused by Sceleros, or those wizards who were considered a pollutant to the wizarding world. Sirius had always explained that there were Muggles, Muggle-born Wizards, and Pure-Blood Wizards, then, wenched somewhere between Muggle-born Wizards and Pure-Bloods, were those who were so proud of their half-blooded nature that they had begun a sort of committee that intentionally presented Pure-Blooded Wizards with defective Muggle artifacts and intentionally caused discrepancies between Muggles and Wizards, in a sort of attempt to expose the Wizarding world. It was all the Ministry could do nowadays to track down these wizards and contain them. Most wizards were terrified of them because of how well they tended to blend in with the Muggle population.

"It isn't that they envy Muggle livelihood," Sirius had said, huffily. "It's that they were so ready to notify the Wizarding world of their unlikely entrance into our world, with no history of magic in their bloodline, that they went to great extents to, in a sense, brag that their blood was extra sensitive to magic." Harry always thought this idea was spurious, and it should really be the Pure-Bloodline that was magically enhanced, due to its long history amongst Wizard kind, not short-lived, spontaneous birth. Among most Wizards, the Pure-Blood superiority was generally accepted, and audited upon. However, the more Pure-Bloods were accentuated, the worse Muggle controversies tended to get. The Sceleros were beginning to become contained, however, since it technically ran in blood just as Muggle-blood and Wizard-blood did.

"Yes," Ron replied nervously, seemingly shocked that Harry knew this much about his father. "That's our father." He cast his sister a nervous glance, as did she to him.

Harry shook his head and blew inaudible air out his mouth. "Wow, I give him props. My godfather always says that Mr. Weasley has enough backbone to head the Ministry itself. I don't think I'd ever be brave enough to fight against Sceleros. It sounds more dangerous than an Auror job at times."

Ron's face brightened and a look of sheer pride enveloped his freckles. Then he blushed crimson. "He's always coming home with a ton of stories about how difficult the Sceleros make the survival of Wizards."

"I always wondered what happened to make the first half-blood to crack and turn sour," Draco said darkly. "Consider most half-bloods, I mean…they're terrified of us. Mum always says that if the oppressed aren't scared, they're rebelling."

Hermione sighed, "Lord Voldemort is a prime example."

Harry nodded, "But he wasn't considered a Sceleros, was he. When Dumbledore revealed in the fourth edition of The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts that Voldemort was a half-blood, the wizarding world went into an uproar."

It was commonly known among wizards that at the height of Voldemort's reign of terror, that is, before Harry's mysterious debacle of the dark lord, he was able to possess people at will. However, since no one could figure out the pattern which Voldemort used in possessing, he was therefore impossible to defeat. His knowledge of the dark arts was remarkable, reveled by the most achieved professors of the age. But since this fact was revealed, apparently much to Dumbledore's discomfort (however necessary the information was to the furthering of the understanding of the dark arts), Muggle-borns had been terrified owing to the single fact that because of Voldemort's half-blooded nature, it was only possible for him to possess other half-bloods. Since this point, about ten years ago, the abundance of Sceleros had gone down considerably (there were still those who considered Voldemort to be dead and acted upon that).

Many wizards blamed Albus Dumbledore, who is considered the most powerful wizard of the age, even to Lord Voldemort himself, for the destruction the dark lord caused through Dumbledore's hesitancy in revealing this little known fact about Lord Voldemort. It wasn't as though Pure-Bloods had little to worry about, for although they could not be possessed, they still suffered the affliction caused by the dark lord's actions, which at times were so tremendous that it wiped out entire Muggle-Wizard villages. With Dumbledore's knowledge, however, the International Confederation of Wizards and Wizengamot, of which Dumbledore has held head for many years, has been able to dramatically further their understanding of Lord Voldemort's movements and be able to prepare for him if or when he reappeared. Harry was particularly excited about this area of learning, according to his first year Defense Against the Dark Arts book The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, first years at Hogwarts were to learn the basics of Lord Voldemort and ad the most important means of protecting oneself, why it is so important to understand these aspects of wizard-distress.

The remainder of the ride was held in silence, all five intently staring out their respective windows, admiring the scenery as the carriage proceeded uphill. Every once in a while, Harry and Draco exchanged meaningful glances, that only they seemed to understand and had little to do with either the carriage ride or the scenery.

The ride in total took nearly twenty minutes, and as it ended, their door was promptly opened and they were escorted down the steps and in line with the mass of students who had already debarked from their Thestral-driven carriages. The horses, however mystifying their essence seemed to Harry, sent a wave of bone-chilling sparks shooting up and down his spine. Harry shook the Thestrals from his mind and focused on the massive castle laying before him.

"Well, here we are!" Draco said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. Harry's anxiety faded as Draco's excitement overtook him, and he felt his heart begin to quicken. Draco was right, they were finally here. What they both had been waiting for ever since they could remember. If Sirius could only see him now. He hoped that no matter what happened here, he would be able to make his godfather proud and, if possible, begin to pay him back for the care he'd provided for Harry over the years.

The crowd of students seemed to stop in front of two colossal doors, which both Harry and Draco instinctively paid respect to in looking from bottom and following its extravagant art develop all the way up to the top. They looked at each other, grins spreading across their boyish faces. This was going to be a great year.

"Attention!" and elderly woman stood on a step slightly elevated from the rest of the students, and she rapped a rolled parchment onto her hand like a mallet. Instantly the voices died and all eyes were turned towards the woman. "My name is Professor McGonagall. In a few moments I will direct you inside the Great Hall where you are to be sorted into houses. It will be quite painless, I assure you, but it will take some time considering there are so many of you. So I ask for your patience as we proceed with the Sorting Ceremony." A soft bell rang behind her and she straightened up, even more than she already was, her beady eyes widening beneath her square-rimmed glasses. "That's our signal. Alright, align yourselves in a row of two and follow me."

There was a scramble to get into a line, a few curses thrown out in a hushed voices, but eventually they had all arranged themselves accordingly. Draco and Harry stood in front of Hermione and a boy who had introduced himself as Neville Longbottom, and behind them were the twins, Ron and Ginny Weasley. Most of the students looked terrified, but the whole way into the Great Hall and down the aisle of assorted students, Draco and Harry cracked jokes under their breath, trying as hard as they could to suppress their laughter.

As they approached the head of the enormous room, who's ceiling had been bewitched to look like the night's sky, a tall, gangly man with a long, white beard, whom Harry recognized immediately as Albus Dumbledore, stood and stretched out his hands in a warm welcome.

"Welcome! Welcome!" Dumbledore said, his voice echoing throughout the hall. "It is wonderful to see so many faces, new and old, but especially the new. I trust that you students standing before me are writhing with excitement to start your studies…" Draco nudged Harry in the ribs "…and are anxious to get on with this Sorting Ceremony. So, before we eat, let us continue with our Sorting! Professor McGonagall, if you would be so kind."

Everyone's attention was drawn to the single stool set in the middle of the platform immediately in front of the staff table. Upon the stool was a very ugly hat, which was due the million funny remarks that raced through both Harry and Draco's heads, but obediently suppressed their remarks. Before McGonagall could move, the hat formed a face, and seemed to rise on its own. To their surprise, the hat began to sing, and as they saw on McGonagall's face, it had been the very thing she had been dreading.

If you've ever head the saying,

don't judge by what you see,

then please take to heart,

that this applies to me.

Underneath the dirt and clod

lays brilliance beyond compare,

for the founders of Hogwarts

charged me with distributing their share!

So you see it is my job

to look inside your heads

and determine what role you'll play,

if you will wear green, blue, yellow, or reds.

There is not a thing you hide inside

that I cannot seek or find,

so do not try to persuade me,

I'll only change your mind.

If I call out Gryffindor,

it is implied your heart is noble,

to those who wish to defend

the throne of the dutifully royal.

But better yet your bones are strong

and do not give wear to toil,

they can build your mind to meet your heart

that which cannot be a foil.

Or perhaps I'll call out Hufflepuff

who's members are just and loyal

who wish their rights be recognized

and too, do not give way to toil.

I may call out Ravenclaw!

You lucky ones are blest with brains.

Of the smartest, you are full of wit

and know learning is the horses' reigns.

Lastly, but not leastly, you may belong in Slytherin

who's friends are always friends.

Known for their cunning acts are these,

who love to carry out the bitter end.

I outwit any cap

that you will or have ever seen.

So put me on, you lucky bunch

if you are so keen.

A rousing applause followed the conclusion of the hat's interesting song, and McGonagall, after suffering through it as well, stood next to it and unrolled the parchment. "As I call your name, please come forth and put the hat on! Abbott, Hannah!" A small girl ran up the steps, picked up the hat and set it on her head. The eyes of every new student were upon her, to see how exactly the hat worked (as though the song were not enough).

"Hufflepuff!" the hat shouted, about fifteen seconds later.

Draco and Harry cast each other a glance. Was there any indicated of which way the hat was going to toss you? Hannah removed the hat and replaced it on the stool before running to the table on the far left who'd applauded her entry. A couple students were called before, "Black, Draco!" was called. Harry thumped him on the shoulder and watched as Draco bounded up the steps, gave the Great Hall a broad grin, then shoved the hat on his head.

Harry tapped his foot anxiously, his heart pounding a mile a minute, and unconsciously holding his breath. He kept tapping…and tapping, and suddenly became nervous. Had the hat stopped working? Had it fallen asleep? Harry squinted and could see Draco's lips moving, but couldn't hear anything. It took nearly two minutes for the hat to finally call out, "Gryffindor!" And Draco removed the hat, shook his head hard, and bounded down the steps to the Gryffindor table.

Several students later, Hermione raced up the steps and, within seconds was, "Gryffindor!"

Time, however, progressed slower between the students after Hermione until Harry's turn, and it became almost unbearable to him as student after student was sent to Gryffindor. Is there going to be enough room for me? He thought nervously.

Finally, though, his time arrived. "Potter, Harry!" McGonagall called. A hush dropped upon the student body like a silencing charm. Not a whisper escaped the lips of any student in the entire hall; every eye was upon him. Already somewhat used to such attention, Harry ignored the stares of his fellow first-years, and picked up the hat, set it on his head, then sat down on the stool.

Harry nearly jumped off his seat as a voice spoke to him. It was so loud, he wondered if this was the first time the hat had spoken since his song. But as Harry focused more on the voice, the stranger it was. The voice seemed to be coming from inside his own head.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Potter. Great courage, I see, a desire for excellence, achievements! Clearly worthy of the intellectual characteristics of Ravenclaw. But I also see deviousness! Rebellion, lurking beneath the core of your wit. Perhaps Slytherin is where I should put you. Mmm, but yet there is more. Deeper, shall we go then? There is daring, above rebellion, and nerve, above deviousness. Clearly, yes! I see it now!" the voice stopped from inside his head and he heard the familiar voice ring throughout the hall, as it had done during its song. "Gryffindor!"

An enormous uproar sent the whole room into an upheaval as every Gryffindor rose from his or her seat to welcome the Harry Potter into their house. Older students clapped him on the back and Draco shoved some other students aside to make room for Harry next to him. They grinned broadly at each other.

"I almost thought the hat was going to put me in Slytherin," Harry whispered, as the next student was called to the hat.

Draco nodded, "Me too. Then there was something about daring and nerve…"

"Boys!" Hermione hissed from across the table. She pressed a finger to her mouth and nodded towards the Sorting Hat. The boys shrank into their seats, but refocused their attention upon the sorting. Time seemed to pass much quicker after Harry's debut, and before they new it, Ron and Ginny Weasley were being placed into Gryffindor as well and McGonagall rolled up her parchment and removed the Sorting Hat from the stool.

"I'm so hungry!" Draco complained, clutching his stomach. "When are we going to eat?"