The cool night wind tousled Sirius's hair as he made the hike up a flight of steep stone steps to Hogwarts Castle, James Potter hopping along at his side. He'd met James on the train to Hogwarts, and already he liked him a hundred times more than any of the prissy pure-blood boys his parents always made him spend time with.
Of course, James was going to be placed in Gryffindor, Sirius was sure—and Sirius would be Sorted into Slytherin, just like everyone else in his inbred family. Then he'd be right back where he started, with the prissy pure-blood boys. He supposed he should enjoy his time with future-Gryffindor James for as long as he could.
"Bloody hell," James breathed, craning his neck to take in the castle. "It's huge!"
Sirius grinned at him. "Good. Lots of places to hide from professors." James raised his eyebrows mischievously.
The burly Hogwarts gamekeeper Ogg stepped up to the giant oak door leading into the castle and turned to wait for the crowd of first years to join him atop the steps. "All right there?" he asked. Everyone nodded, and Ogg raised a fist to pound on the door.
A cross-looking black-haired woman answered, thanking Ogg and ushering the first years inside. She led them off to the side of the entrance hall and silenced everyone with a simple clearing of her throat. Even Sirius was impressed by that.
"Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," the lady began. "I am Professor McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor House and professor of Transfiguration. In just a few minutes, all of you will be Sorted…."
"Maybe I changed my mind about Gryffindor," James whispered in Sirius's ear. "She doesn't look like someone to mess with."
"My mother's told me about McGonagall," Sirius said back. "Mostly to stay away from her because she's a filthy half-blood Muggle-lover."
James smirked. "I'm surprised pure-blood parents like yours even let their kids come to Hogwarts."
"Oh, they almost didn't," Sirius told him wryly. "They hate Dumbledore. But they still respect Slytherin House, so here I am."
"Assuming you're put into Slytherin, that is."
"Assuming I'm put into Slytherin," Sirius repeated. "If not, they'll probably barge in here and drag me back home."
"Is there a problem, boys?" McGonagall's stern voice cut through the end of Sirius's words. His head snapped up to find the professor glaring down at him and James, hands crossed tightly over her chest.
"No, Professor," James said earnestly. "We were just admiring your choice of robes. The green really brings out her eyes, don't you agree, Sirius?" Sirius nodded solemnly. Some of the first years behind them laughed, albeit quietly.
McGonagall's lips went taut. "Follow me, all of you," she said, turning deliberately away from James and Sirius. "It's time for the ceremony to begin."
She led them through a set of double doors into the Great Hall, where the messy line of first years quickly proceeded to gawk and gasp at everything around them—the floating candles, the clear starry sky above, and the four House tables filled with older students waiting to find out who would join their ranks.
Sirius swallowed, keeping his eyes fixed firmly ahead. He didn't want to see the Slytherin table, where he knew his cousin Narcissa was snuggling up with her boyfriend Lucius and his brand-new prefect's badge. He had too many second cousins and family friends at that table, too many people he had no interest spending his days at Hogwarts with.
I can't be put in Slytherin. I just can't.
The first years were lined up at the front of the hall just beneath the professors' table. McGonagall dragged out a stool topped with a frayed old hat and placed it in front of them. The Sorting Hat; an old patchwork bit of charmed fabric that held the fate of Sirius's next seven years in its hands. And it didn't even have hands.
"Don't you think the way they Sort is a bit stupid?" he murmured to James as the hat ripped itself open and began to sing a song about snakes and badgers. "Couldn't an actual person do a better job at it than a bewitched hat?"
James shrugged. "Like who, Dumbledore? He probably doesn't want to deal with angry parents sending Howlers because their kids weren't put in the right House. Best to leave that to a thousand-year-old hat no one can argue with."
"Guess you're right," Sirius admitted. As the hat finished its song and the Hall broke out into applause, Sirius narrowed his eyes at it, wondering if it would yell "Slytherin!" the second it touched his head as his parents had boasted it had with them.
"When you hear your name," McGonagall said, "please step up to be Sorted." She cleared her throat, unrolled the scroll of parchment in her hands, and began: "Aubrey, Bertram!"
Sirius was third on the list; when McGonagall called out his name, his legs seemed to turn to lead. James had to elbow him in the side to get him to move. "Go on, mate," he said.
Taking a deep breath, Sirius stepped up to the stool and sat, grabbing the Sorting Hat from new Slytherin Michael Avery and dropping it over his head. It covered his whole face, leaving the sounds of the Great Hall muffled and his vision black. It was just him and the hat now.
"Hmm," a disembodied voice muttered in his ear. "A Black. Certainly a Slytherin family. But you're a bit different, aren't you?"
That's an understatement, Sirius thought, assuming the mind-reading hat could hear him. I don't want anything to do with them.
"I can see that quite clearly," replied the hat. "No, definitely not a Slytherin. I think we'll go with…GRYFFINDOR!"
Sirius sat for a minute in stunned silence under the hat as he heard a thunderous applause break out from the hall. Then he stood up, flung off the hat, and bolted down to the Gryffindor table, where all the older students had risen to their feet to welcome their first new member of the year. Him, Sirius Black, a Gryffindor.
A ginger-haired boy stepped out to meet Sirius, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. "Welcome to Gryffindor House, Sirius," he said brightly. "I'm Gideon Prewett, your new prefect."
Prewett. Sirius knew that name, though he definitely didn't remember this boy ever stopping over for dinner at 12 Grimmauld Place—he was probably from a family of blood traitors one of the unmentionable Blacks had married into. Sirius grinned; his parents were going to love hearing about all of this.
He took a seat amongst the Gryffindors and watched the rest of the Sorting Ceremony in a semi-trance. The red-head girl he and James had met on the train—her name was Lily Evans, according to McGonagall—was the next first year to be placed into Gryffindor, no doubt upsetting her boyfriend Snivellus. Feeling unusually charitable, Sirius moved over to make room for her as she approached the table; she narrowed her eyes at him as she took her seat and turned away from him pointedly, making an indignant "hmph!" sound as she did so.
Two boys named Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew came to sit on Sirius's other side, and then it was James's turn to be Sorted. "GRYFFINDOR!" the hat yelled out immediately, just as Sirius had predicted. James threw off the Sorting Hat and ran down to the table with his arms in the air, barely stopping to talk to Gideon Prewett before sliding in between Sirius and Lily.
"Guess we just can't get away from each other, Sirius," James said with a blindingly-white smile. "I thought you were so sure you'd be in Slytherin."
"Thank Merlin I'm not," Sirius replied. "I can't wait for my mum's Howler tomorrow morning."
"You think it'll get here that fast?"
"Positive. Our family owls are some of the fastest in Britain."
By now the Sorting was over, and Albus Dumbledore had risen to his feet, spreading his arms wide to both quiet the crowd and greet all his students. Sirius craned his neck to get a better look at him; his parents hated Dumbledore, which meant that Sirius was obligated to be a fan of him. He was an old, old man with a beard almost long enough to scrape the table beneath him, clad in long purple dress robes. Supposedly, he was one of the most powerful wizards in the world, though in the Black household he was only ever referred to as "that batty old Muggle-lover."
"First years," he began, "it is my greatest honor to welcome you all to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And to all of you who have returned to us from your summer holidays, it is equally my honor to welcome you back." He stopped for a minute to wait for the students' cheering and applause to die down. "As always, I have a few quick rules to bore you with before the feast can begin. Firstly, I'd like to remind our students that the Forbidden Forest is, as much as ever, forbidden to enter without faculty supervision."
"Wonder what's in there," James said.
"I heard werewolves," the boy Peter Pettigrew answered nervously.
"Yikes."
"Also," Dumbledore continued, "as some of the returning students may have noticed on their way in, the Hogwarts grounds has a new resident—a tree transplanted and tended to by our own Professor Sprout, of a rare species known colloquially as Whomping Willows." He smiled. "And if you get too close to this particular tree, you will soon learn how exactly it got its name. My advice would be not to test it."
Sirius gave a curious glance to James, who only shrugged. Why would Dumbledore have wanted a dangerous tree planted on the school grounds? Maybe he was a bit touched in the head.
"And now that we've gotten through that," Dumbledore said with a wave of his wand, "let the feast begin!"
Immediately the plates and goblets in front of them filled with food and drink. Sirius grabbed a pair of chicken legs and dug in, wasting no time on table manners. James laughed as he watched him eat.
"What?" Sirius asked with his mouth still full. "I'm hungry, okay?"
"Fair point. I am, too." And James grabbed his own chicken legs and began to eat in the exact same fashion.
Lily scoffed behind them. "You two are disgusting," she said, turning her nose up in the air.
"We are?" Swallowing his food, Sirius turned to the two boys beside him. "Do you think we're disgusting?" he asked them.
The one called Remus Lupin choked on his goblet of cranberry juice. "I don't know about that, but whatever they put in this certainly is."
Sirius, James, and Peter all laughed, and Lily turned away from them again with another "hmph!".
Once the feast was over, Gideon led the first years up to Gryffindor Tower, using the password "peppermint toad" to get past the portrait guarding its entrance. The common room looked nice and cozy, with a huge fire roaring in the back of it and a smattering of scarlet-and-gold sofas and armchairs all around.
"All right," said Gideon once they were all inside. "Girls' dormitories are on the left, and boys' on the right. The top floors of each should be marked off for the first years. Get settled in, and be sure you're up bright and early for classes tomorrow."
Sirius led the way up the spiraling stairs on the right until he reached the room at the top of the tower, with James, Remus and Peter following behind. It was marked with a little golden plaque that read FIRST YEARS.
"Home sweet home," James said as they pulled open the door.
Inside were four four-poster beds, all neatly made, as well as all the boys' luggage. James immediately ran over to the caged eagle owl perched on top of his trunk. "Aw, Lexie, I missed you!" he said, giving the owl a treat. Sirius wished his parents would've bought him an owl, but that was never going to happen. Especially now that he was a Gryffindor.
The boys grabbed their trunks and dragged them over to the beds they claimed. They began to undress, Remus drawing the curtains shut around his bed to do so, which Sirius found to be a bit odd. James opened a window to send his owl off to the Owlery, and they extinguished all the lights, feeling more than ready to get to sleep.
As Sirius pulled his red-and-gold sheets tight around him, the faint roar of one of the lion portraits outside reaching his ears in the silent room, he decided that this day would go down as one of the best in his life.
