-Chapter Five-

The Chamber Snake


As Professor McGonagall left, Harry was glad that he had already made friends. The stern witch had told the nervously shuffling group of first years that they would soon be sorted into their houses. This was permanent; there was no going back. Part of him wished that Professor McGonagall had told him about the houses so that he would know which ones were the good ones. The rest of him didn't want to know, just in case he'd be disappointed at where he'd be sorted. It didn't come as a surprise that the professor hadn't told him, though; he remembered that she'd left the promised conversation about his parents to Madam Longbottom.

Looking around, he caught the eyes of Neville, Hannah and Susan. They each exchanged encouraging smiles, confident in their vows of friendship, no matter what houses they were in. With any luck, they'd all be sorted into the same house. Harry calculated that it would be a one in sixty four chance - a little over one percent. He started running the numbers on how likely it would be that they all joined different houses, but was brought back to Earth by a scream. Looking around, Harry saw that a handful of ghosts had floated through one of the walls, engaged in a discussion about something called Peeves.

"I hope to see you in Hufflepuff," the ghost of a jolly priest said when the translucent group had noticed the more substantial crowd. He seemed nice. Perhaps every house had a lovely ghost to help the new students settle in. Harry imagined what it would be like to be a ghost. He decided that he would like to haunt a library, so that he could spend the rest of eternity learning and helping to pass on the knowledge of how things worked.

"Come along," said Professor McGonagall, making the students jump as much as the ghosts had, "they're ready for you, now."

The mouths of the first years dropped open in unison as they were led through the great oaken doors into the hall. Every aspect of the room evoked an emotion. The long tables full of students made the newcomers afraid, not having been around so many unfamiliar people before. The long walk to the front of the hall filled the group with trepidation and self-consciousness. The first years felt a sense of wonder at the ceiling, which looked like the night sky. One bushy-haired girl commented, as a wispy cloud scudded by, that the ceiling had been enchanted to look like the sky outside. Harry was intrigued by the floating candles, some bobbing up and down, others perfectly still, as though the spectacle was the creation of a slightly disorganised group of people.

Quickly, the students to be sorted were made to gather in front of a small stool, upon which was a rather tatty old hat. Welcome to Scruffhats School of Stitchcraft and Millinery, Harry thought with a smirk. Although he hadn't made the joke out loud, he automatically turned to look at Neville. The boy still had his toad. Neville had been grateful every time Harry had caught Trevor on his way out of their compartment, if somewhat tired of the situation by the end of the train journey. It would have been embarrassing to have had to search the entire train for a fugitive toad, but Harry knew that all four of them would have searched together as a team. Neville returned Harry's smirk with a small smile, distinctly less reassuring than earlier. Suddenly, both boys' heads whipped around to face the hat on the stool. It had started singing, of all things.

Hannah was the first to be called when the hat had finished its song. She paled immediately and, with shaking steps, mounted the dais and lowered herself onto the stool. Professor McGonagall put the hat onto her head and, within a couple of moments, it yelled, "HUFFLEPUFF!" The hall erupted in cheers and Hannah was pointed towards the table of students bearing the yellow crest. This was where most of the clapping was coming from and the jolly priest ghost from before was waving cheerily at her. Harry, Neville and Susan gave her a big thumbs-up and grinned. Loyal and patient certainly described Hannah.

"Bones, Susan." Susan's grin disappeared instantly. She seemed to steel herself and settled beneath the Sorting Hat with a look of grim determination. She stayed under the hat for a few seconds, but the hat was quickly lifted off her head after a shout of "HUFFLEPUFF!" Susan scuttled over to sit next to Hannah, nodding at the boys in response to their excited gestures.

The Sorting Hat often made its decision pretty quickly, but sometimes seemed to take a while to think. Harry didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he felt embarrassed for the people who took longer than most. A heavyset girl called Millicent Bulstrode and a boy with a wicked grin called Seamus Finnegan both took around a minute to get sorted. They joined the "SLYTHERIN!" and "GRYFFINDOR!" tables respectively. Just like Hannah, every student was politely clapped by the hall in general when they were sorted, and even more enthusiastically congratulated by the table they joined. A bushy-haired girl getting sorted into Ravenclaw made a red-haired boy on the other side of the group hiss in undisguised celebration. Charming. Thankfully, this was mostly drowned out by the applause. The school felt so welcoming. Neville was quickly called to the waiting hat. He wobbled slightly as he mounted the dais, but managed not to stumble. Harry flashed him a quick smile as the hat went down over the boy's eyes.

The much-smaller group of first years began to shuffle impatiently as they waited for Neville to be sorted. Harry noticed that he kept gripping the edges of the stool and his muscles kept twitching, as though he was straining not to make any gestures. Perhaps he and the Sorting Hat were having a conversation. When Neville relaxed, Harry could tell that the hat was about to announce his friend's house. He clapped along with the rest, excited to hear that Neville had been sorted into "HUFFLEPUFF!"

When "Parkinson, Pansy" got sorted into "SLYTHERIN!" Harry knew his time was close. He thought he might be next as surely there couldn't be many people with surnames beginning with P. However, he had to wait for "Patil, Padma," "Patil, Parvati," and even for "Perks, Sally-Anne" to be sorted into "RAVENCLAW!" before finally...

"Potter, Harry." It was time. As Harry stepped forward, it sounded as though the hall was full of snakes. He could hear the susurration as a hundred whispered conversations started up at the mention of his name. He tried to drown them out, particularly the snippets that he could understand. It was embarrassing enough to be sitting alone at the front of the hall wearing a silly hat in front of hundreds of strangers. He walked up to Professor McGonagall and saw her expression, softened almost imperceptibly. Sighing, Harry closed his eyes, turned and sat on the stool. He refused to look at the sea of eyes looking at him, necks craned to get a better angle, and preferred to imagine that he was alone, perhaps on a bench in the park.

"Hmm, difficult." Harry jumped at the voice suddenly speaking in his ear. "I see you've been making friends. That takes courage. Loyalty to keep them. Plenty of talent and a desire to prove that. But where should I put you?" There was a long pause. Harry waited politely. "Any thoughts?" the hat asked.

I don't mind, Harry thought. I'm sure all the houses are as good as each other. He hadn't heard anything negative about any of the houses. Each house was given fair treatment whenever the topic had come up, as though nobody had wanted to prejudice him one way or another.

"That they are," that hat confirmed. "Well, if you're sure, I'll try to put you into the house where you'll make the most of yourself. No doubt about it, you'd better be in SLYTHERIN!"

The hat remained on Harry's head in silence for a few moments before it was slowly raised. He looked out, finally, at that sea of eyes and, unlike in his imagination, each pair was accompanied by a slack jaw. The reactions of the students were bizarre. Nobody else had been greeted by shocked silence. He stood and began to walk to the far left of the hall, to the table whose occupants wore green crests on their robes.

Halfway to the Slytherin house table, the first students and teachers began to clap. Slowly, the hesitant applause spread across the Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, then, with the green-clad students looking past him, sudden applause erupted from the Slytherin table. Harry reached his place and let out a sigh of relief. He gave the students around him a small smile and they each nodded to him. His new housemates seemed polite enough.

Harry looked across the hall towards the Hufflepuff table. Neville, Hannah and Susan had their heads together, whispering about something. He caught Hannah's eye as she briefly looked up and her eyebrows shot up. After she nudged the other two, Harry's three friends looked warily in his direction, making Harry shift uncomfortably. He shot the a questioning look, but they immediately looked away. His heart sank, but still he held onto the hope that perhaps they had mistaken his look for a scowl. Harry sighed and turned back to the front of the hall.

Now, as part of the main student body, the first year Slytherins paid polite attention to the sorting. Bubbling underneath, however, was an eagerness to move onto the next activity. Hopefully, it was dinner. Nevertheless, they hid any impatience better than the students newly sorted into the other three houses. If they had looked around the hall, they would have seen that they were hiding their impatience better than even some of the older students. Thankfully, there wasn't long to wait as "Zabini, Blaise" joined the "SLYTHERIN!" table. Harry put on his broadest grin and clapped enthusiastically to welcome another housemate to the table.

#

"Hi. I'm Harry." Harry extended his hand towards Blaise after everyone had taken enough food to fill their plates the first time and turned to conversation.

"Blaise. Pleased to meet you," the boy said with a smile. This started a round of introductions which revealed the fact that many of the new students already knew each other. Blaise and Tracey Davis seemed to be relative unknowns to the group, just like him, whereas others like Theodore Nott and Pansy Parkinson were well-acquainted with most of the others.

"Draco Malfoy," one blonde boy introduced himself. He gestured to the two rather large boys flanking him. "This is Crabbe and this is Goyle. My family's been in Slytherin for generations. I can help you settle in, if you like." He reached over a plate of sausages, towards Harry.

"Delighted to meet you," Harry replied, shaking Draco's hand. "That would be great. I take it that Slytherin is a good house to be in, then?"

"Most certainly," Draco replied. "Everybody with the right connections gets sorted into Slytherin and, for those who don't, joining our house will provide that extra boost to get ahead in later life. Much of the Wizengamot and many of the higher positions in the Ministry are filled by Slytherins." Harry decided to grin as though relishing the opportunities, rather than displaying his limited knowledge of the wizarding world by asking what the Wizengamot was. He was sure that Madam Longbottom had mentioned it during one of their conversations, but there had been such a lot of information coming at him in such a short amount of time.

"So, you'll know who the teachers are here?"

"Of course." Draco's eyes twinkled with excitement and a hint of smugness. "I'm sure you'll know the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. He's also the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Unfortunately, he was given all these positions for defeating Grindelwald and fighting against the Dark Lord, rather than for showing any skill in the job." He paused and flushed, his eyes flickering towards some of their fellow first years. Harry similarly glanced around the group and noticed Theodore Nott and Daphne Greengrass scowling at Draco. He decided to file that away for later pondering.

Draco quickly moved the conversation along and began to go through the teachers from one end of their table to the other. Harry was interested to learn of the different subjects taught at Hogwarts. Ancient Runes sounded like the perfect class to learn more about those weird symbols he'd spotted within the Remembrall, but he was disappointed to hear that it was only an elective taught from third year onwards. Charms sounded equally useful as it was involved in enchanting in later years, but it was once more a shame that the subject would be less useful to begin with. It seemed that Harry would have to be patient and learn the foundations of magic before he could make any progress on his areas of interest.

"The most important person after Dumbledore is Professor Snape, next to Quirrell. McGonagall might be the deputy headmistress, but Snape's our head of house. He teaches Potions, which can be really useful in the right situation, if you know what I mean." At Draco's description, Harry looked up at the teacher with curtains of slick, black hair. At the same time, the Potions professor looked in Harry's direction and a sharp pain shot through his scar. Harry quickly lowered his gaze to his food, but made sure not to reach up to his forehead. He could tell that Slytherin house wasn't a place to show any kind of weakness. Instead, he speared a sausage with his fork and dutifully shoved it into his face.

#

As much as the Slytherin first years were happy to inform Harry about Hogwarts, the Ministry and the wizarding world in general, they were remarkably reticent about themselves. By the time the last remnants of food magically vanished from their golden plates, Harry knew the names of his peers, who was proud to be a pureblood, that a number of them frequently met at parties hosted by their families and a few tales about prominent members of society they knew. He didn't know them in the same way as he had known Neville after sharing a meal. There were no stories of how they discovered or confirmed that they had magic or any tales of what they had got up to over the summer, both of which he had discussed with Neville before dessert in the Leaky Cauldron.

The students drowsily listened to Dumbledore as he relayed a final few notices. The edict that the Forbidden Forest was, as its name referenced, forbidden was greeted by a few chuckles from the Gryffindor table, particularly from a group of third years, where a pair of strikingly ginger heads were angled towards each other. A reminder from the school caretaker, who Harry had noticed scowling from one of the corners of the hall, was met with comparable silence. However, murmurs broke out at the mention of a corridor on the third floor being out of bounds on pain of death. Clearly this was an unusual notice, compared to the other two.

"How long before the first lot of Gryffindors are caught in that corridor?" Theodore Nott asked.

"I'd give them a week," Draco replied. "A month until one of them gets horrifically injured." Nott chuckled with a wide grin at Draco's last comment.

"Do Gryffindors not follow the rules?" Harry asked. Between Dumbledore's pointed comments and Draco's mock bet, he was starting to get a pretty comprehensive idea of the average Gryffindor student, one he wouldn't have put much stock in if it were just the opinion of a student as new as himself.

"Put it this way, Potter: Gryffindor's the only house I know of that's ever been in negative points before the end of the feast." Although she continued to look up towards the staff table, Harry could see Daphne shaking her head out of the corner of his eye. "You want to say something, Greengrass?"

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of saying anything to the contrary," she replied. Draco sat back, mollified. "However," she continued, "I'm sure one of those rude Ravenclaws would say something inflammatory about you not knowing everything that's ever happened. Well, I'm certainly glad that none of them nave actually done that, as much as I would have relished you putting them in their place afterwards."

Draco spluttered, but was interrupted from his retort but a great clattering and a scraping of benches as the whole student body was dismissed from the great hall. The teachers were talking to each other at the staff table, occasionally looking at the departing students. To Harry, it was clear that they were discussing the new first years, although he couldn't see that they had much to discuss from just the Sorting Hat's house decisions. He looked over to the Hufflepuff table, but found that Neville, Susan and Hannah had already joined the group of new Badgers following their prefects to their common room.

The Slytherin first years were kept behind in the entrance hall until the rest of the school had moved on, so that their prefects could talk to them about the dungeons and how to navigate them. As in the great hall, the members of Slytherin house were showing their fondness for secrets. Just as the prefects began to speak, Harry resolved to do the same.

"A secret kept between more than two people is a secret no more. This is the first piece of wisdom given to new Slytherin students for over seven centuries. Those of you who take Arithmancy from third year will find that it's more accurate to say that the chances of a secret being found out are exponentially greater if more people know it, but unlike Ravenclaws, we Slytherins know the benefit of brevity over accuracy.

"Nevertheless, it's important that a lot of our secrets are known by all of us in the house. For example, it would be ridiculous if we refused to tell you where the common room was and how to get in. This is what we're going to tell you about now, but you must promise not to reveal our secrets to anybody. Indeed, you will find that there are many secrets within our noble house and those secrets being leaked could have dire consequences for large numbers of people. I must, therefore, ask you all to promise never to reveal the secrets of Slytherin."

"I promise," the first years chanted together. Satisfied, the prefect who had been speaking nodded and led the way past the grand staircase and down into the dungeons. On the way to the common room, the prefects gave advice, warnings and wisdom in equal measure.

"Professor Snape is our Head of House. He teaches Potions, which is also held down here in the dungeons. The dungeons themselves are heavily warded against damage, so it's the safest place for the subject to be held. The fact that it's useful to be close to your Head of House, combined with the extra protection that we also benefit from, makes the dungeons the perfect place for the Slytherin common room.

"The dungeons are designed to be like a labyrinth - difficult to navigate for those who don't belong down here. We're also not constrained by the castle walls down here, so the dungeons can be even bigger. You should memorise this route down to the common room, but it's not the end of the world if you struggle with finding your way. If you look at this stone here, you'll see a tiny snake disguised as cracks. These can point you in the direction of the common room, but they'll take you around a pretty long route. So you see, there are benefits to knowing the secrets of Slytherin.

"Although this wall might look just like every other stretch of wall in the dungeons, this is what conceals the entrance to our common room. A useful trick is to look at the torches at either end of the wall. If you look really closely, you might be able to see that the flames are perfectly symmetrical. That means they're the same on both sides. Fire doesn't behave like that, so it's a good sign that there's some weird magic going on. To get into the common room, just say the password: Perfection."

As the prefect uttered that final word, the section of wall slid aside, although Harry noticed that it would probably be more accurate to say that the section of wall got narrower and narrower until it was flat against the side of the entrance it had revealed. He figured that this was probably a simpler piece of magic than one that made one section of wall slide into another and occupy the same space. Putting that thought aside, he hustled into the Slytherin common room, not wanting to be left behind.

The common room in which Harry was going to spend the next seven years was, to be frank, rather gloomy. There was a lot of the same dank stone that made up the rest of the dungeon complex they had navigated to get there and the furniture was made from dark, foreboding materials, whether leather or wood. The portraits hung on the walls were darkened and indistinct. On the far wall, there was a large window, although it shed no light into the common room at all, the only light instead being provided by guttering candles throughout the chamber. It was odd that the scene outside was so dark, although Harry was sure he could see some shapes passing by every so often.

As grim and unwelcoming as the common room was, Harry felt his gaze drawn towards an alcove below the window. It wasn't surrounded with candles, nor was it blanketed in deep shadow. There was no movement to draw the eye and the colours of it and its contents were as muted as the rest of the place. Still, it seemed important.

"As you may have noticed," the prefect began once more, "there is an alcove at the end of this room containing a statue of a snake. Of course, the snake is the symbol of our house, favoured by the founder Salazar Slytherin himself, who could talk to snakes. This particular snake only appears once a year and, similar to the Sorting Hat, it will put you where you belong. One by one, you will commune with the chamber snake by placing your hands upon it. It will determine your worthiness as a Slytherin and, thus, where you will be sleeping. Some of you may be sleeping in the 'Heirs' chambers, most often reserved for the heirs of the most worthy families. The rest will be sleeping in the 'Allies' chambers, traditionally used by the supporters and staff who accompanied the heirs. Those deemed to be worthy of the 'Heirs' quarters will also discover one of the secrets of Slytherin house; one which the 'Allies' will have to work hard to discover."

One by one, as the prefect instructed, the first year Slytherins each walked up to the chamber snake and placed their hands upon it. Draco went first, closing his eyes as he touched the scales of the snake, smoothed by centuries of eleven-year-old hands. After a few moments, a small metal token materialised inside the snake's mouth. He cringed as he reached past the long, pointed fangs of the snake to retrieve the token. Once he had it, he looked at the inscription and smiled.

As the rest of the group did the same, one of the female prefects explained that the token would let them into their sleeping quarters if they had it in their possession. She also reiterated her counterpart's instructions that they were supposed to be a credit to their house and, to that end, be cunning. Those not cunning enough would find their tokens taken from them. They would have to bear the shame of approaching their head of house in order to obtain a new token. However, Professor Snape could only give out tokens for the 'Allies' quarters. She wished them luck.

Finally, Harry was the only one left to commune with the chamber snake. As he approached the statue, wondering whether he would be deemed worthy of entering the 'Heirs' quarters, he found himself roughly pushed away from the alcove. One of the older prefects, rather than one of the fifth year prefects who had guided them through the dungeons, stood in front of the chamber snake, blocking his path.

"What do you think you're doing, Potter?" the boy asked with a disdainful sneer. Harry looked at the boy, mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the words for a response. Images of the Dursleys flashed into the forefront of his mind. Sometimes, he had found there was no right answer to a question. Sometimes... Suddenly realising, he dropped his gaze to the floor, no longer looking at the older boy. "That's right. Bugger off."

The boy flicked a scratched token at his feet. In the silence of the common room, the ringing sound of it bouncing on the floor was excruciatingly loud. Harry breathed a sigh of relief as the token came to rest just a few feet away, thankfully not rolling far away or under some of the furniture. He stepped over to it, bent down and picked it up, looking at its surface as he straightened. There, marred by gouges and tarnished with time, was the angular writing of the word 'Allies'. Harry turned, flushing as he noticed the rest of the first year Slytherins looking at him. Grinning, the older prefect tapped the chamber snake with his wand and the alcove sealed itself. It looked as though it had never been there and, potentially, never would be again.

"Now get to bed."