Author's note: I hope that people are enjoying this story! I certainly like writing it. I just wanted to change a small detail from the last chapter: I said that Dolly was about 14 hands tall. I realize now that 14 hands is actually pony height, and rather short for a jumper. I'm changing her height to 15.2 hands, or 5'2" feet (157 centimeters) for non-equestrians.
I hope you are all staying healthy and at home with the coronavirus!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
The train station looked like an honest mess. There were kids everywhere with both their horses and their parents, and the floor was coated in sawdust, so it was easy to shovel manure. The horse's owners tried to keep their animals apart from the others, but some still got into small brawls. I carefully led Dolly, whose ears were all the way back, ¾ of the way down platform 9. There was a line of kids all herding their horses to the end of the train, where the cars with stalls were. Dolly and I got situated in the end of the succession next to a family of red heads.
"But mom," I heard the only redhead girl say. "I want a pony now."
"Ginny, you know you have to wait until you go to Hogwarts," a frazzled-looking woman said to her daughter. "Look at Ron. He wanted a pony too, but he waited until his first year." The lady pointed to a short red head about my age who had a short bay gelding on a lead rope. The boy turned around to smile at his horse and caught me looking at the bay.
"His name's Ace," Ron said, turning to me. "We got him at Ollivanders. It's my first year."
"Oh, it's my first year too," I said to Ron. "My horse is named Dolly. I really like your horse's coloring."
"Thanks!" Ron said. "It's kind of family tradition to get a bay. They're normally the cheapest, and they go well with most saddle pad colors. All mine are hand-me downs, so I don't really choose the colors."
We had moved up to the front of the line by then, and I carefully led Dolly into the stall after Ace. She was a little stubborn to go in, but eventually relaxed enough to be led inside. I got her situated with her hay and feed, and then followed Ron back onto the platform.
"Ron, it's time to board now," I heard one of the redheads said. Ron scurried away to a car, and I went into a different one. I didn't want to seem too needy for friends.
I got settled into an empty compartment and looked out the window as the train pulled away from the station. All the families were waving to their children as they left for school. I wondered what it would feel like to have my parents wave at me like that.
"Can I sit here?" Ron knocked on the door to my room. "Everyone else is full."
"Yeah, of course," I said, looking up, happy for some company. "My name's Harry."
"I know," Ron said. "I can see the scar."
"Oh." We were quiet for a minute, and I looked out the window. It was weird that everyone here knew me. In Tennessee I would get recognized by a stranger occasionally, but I always brushed it off as a weird coincidence.
"Any purchases here?" A lady rolled up a cart filled with candy. Suddenly, I felt incredibly hungry. I realized I hadn't eaten since the morning.
I pulled out my pouch of coins and showed them to her. Ron's eyes got big when he saw the money, and his jaw dropped a little.
"We'll take the lot!" I said.
Ron and I talked while gobbling down the candy for most of the ride. The equine world even has different types of sweets- my new favorite is called chocolate ponies, and every package has a card in the back with a famous horse. I got Seabiscuit and Stroller in my packages.
A couple of hours into the ride Ron and I started comparing tack. He knew more about it than I did because he came from a family of equestrians, so he showed me the names of the different pieces.
"This is the cantle." Ron pointed to the front of his saddle, which was worn-out and dirty. I looked at my polished cantle and felt a bit guilty. Why should I have new tack while Ron must make do with his brother's?
"That's the pommel." A girl with brown frizzy hair was standing in the doorway of our train compartment, wearing cream-colored breeches and a teal shirt with a horse silhouette on it.
Ron looked up at her, clearly surprised. "I don't think so. Trust me, I know my way around tack."
"Then you would know that the cantle is in the back," the girl said without a beat of hesitation. "What's your name, anyway?"
"I'm Ron Weasley," Ron said.
"And I'm Harry Potter."
"I know who you are," the girl said. "I've read all the front-page headlines of The Equine Times from the last twenty years. Thank you for getting rid of him, by the way."
"Oh," I said, surprised she knew so much, about both me and the world in general. "What's your name?"
"I'm Hermione Granger," she said with pride. "Have you seen a rat around here? A boy named Neville lost his."
"Why would someone bring a rat to a barn?" Ron wondered aloud. "That sounds like a recipe for disaster."
"That's what I thought. It might actually be good that he lost it now, rather than see it die at school." Hermione said.
"We haven't seen it," I chipped into the conversation.
"Okay. Well, thanks. Oh, and you might want to change into your breeches soon. We're supposed to arrive in twenty minutes." Hermione left, strolling to the next car.
Ron and I changed into our clothes, and then came back to the compartment. By now it was night, and we couldn't see much outside of the window. Eventually, though, I could see lights in the distance.
"Ron," I said, "Look!" I pointed towards the window, at the light.
"Wow!" Ron said, looking up from the bridle he was cleaning. "Our first glance of Hogwarts!"
"I know!" I said. "I can't believe we're actually going."
"What house do you think you'll be in?" Ron asked me.
"House?" I responded. There was still so much I didn't know about the equine world.
"Yeah. There are four houses for each of Hogwarts's main events- Gryffindor is show jumping, Ravenclaw is dressage, Hufflepuff is hunter jumper, and Slytherin is cross country." Ron finished Slytherin with a look of disgust.
"What's wrong with cross country?" I asked.
"There's nothing wrong with cross country," Ron responded. "Cross country can be fun sometimes. But Slytherin is Gryffindor's sworn enemy, and everyone in my family has been show jumpers. And Slytherins tend to be meaner- they have a history of abusing their horses or pushing them too far." Ron leaned closer to me, as if telling a secret. "They even say You-Know-Who was a Slytherin."
"You-Know-Who?" I repeated.
"You know, Harry," Ron said. When I didn't show any recognition, he leaned even closer to me and said in a voice that was barely load enough to be a whisper, "Voldemort."
"Oh, him," I said nonchalantly.
Ron gave me a look of disbelief, as if he couldn't believe I had made him say the name just for my casual reaction. He shook his head before continuing.
"Anyway, all my brothers were show jumpers, as well as my parents. I don't know what I'll do if I don't end up in Gryffindor."
"How do they decide what house you're in?" I asked.
"They watch you ride and collectively decide," Ron said. "It'll happen tonight, at the bonfire. So, what house do you think you'll be in?"
"Well, both of my parents were show jumpers, so maybe Gryffindor?" I said.
"Cool," Ron replied. "It would be fun if we were in a house together."
We sat in silence until the train came to a stop, and then gathered up our luggage and grabbed our horses. Dolly seemed more relaxed once she was taken out of the car and got a breath of fresh air.
"I'm sorry, girl," I said to her. "You won't have to go back in there for a while."
Dolly gave a small snort in reply.
"First years this way!" I turned and saw Hagrid's enormous frame to my left. Dolly and I made our way to him, Ron trailing behind with Ace. We all gathered in a clump around him, trying to keep the horses separate.
"Most of you don't know your horses well yet, and most of them don't know you well. So, we are going to walk around the lake," Hagrid gestured behind him, to a murky pond. "In the mud and water to the bonfire. This will build trust between you and your horse. Some of your horses may not be quite happy about this- it is important to listen to them and keep them under control. The older kids are riding bareback to the bonfire, which you will do next year."
"Excuse me," a snarky-looking boy with a shiny gelding behind him said. "My horse-who is a rare Akhal-Teke, by the way-and I have a great relationship already. I doubt we need to do this, and I don't think my parents would be very happy if either of us got dirty."
"What's your name?" Hagrid asked the boy.
"I'm Draco Malfoy," the blonde boy responded with his nose in the air.
"Well, Draco, all of the first years are going to be walking the horses. If you would prefer to ride through the lake, you may. As for your clothes, I don't care what your parents say. I can promise you, though, that you will stay much cleaner if you walk."
Draco grumbled to himself, looking away.
"I bet he's a Slytherin," Ron whispered to me. I nodded in agreement.
We started walking in single file around the lake. I was glad I was wearing my cowboy boots, as opposed to my English boots I had gotten for riding and showing. Besides the sounds of horses picking their feet out of the mud and slight whinnies, there was almost no noise.
When we got to the part of the path where we had to walk through the water, Dolly started having problems. She stumbled a little while walking, which spooked the horse in front of me. This created a chain reaction, where most of the horses stopped to whinny their distress. Hagrid finally had to come around and calm everyone down.
When we finally got off the trail along the lake, we walked over to a field and Hagrid had us stop. I could see the bonfire in the distance.
"Now, class," Hagrid said from the front of the group. "You will meet Mrs. McGonagall. She will inform you of what will happen. I will see you all at the bonfire." Hagrid then waved goodbye and walked away towards the fire in the distance.
"Hello, first years," A short lady with a tight bun said, stepping in front of the group. "I am Mrs. McGonagall, and I am head of the Ravenclaw house. I teach dressage and basic stable care. If you become a Ravenclaw, you will be seeing me often.
"We will decide your houses using the traditional method, which was created when Hogwarts was first founded. You shall ride across a 50-yard stretch in front of the teachers and other students, and the teachers will decide your house. You shall only ride with a neck rope- I know most of you are beginners, and do not totally understand neck ropes and riding basics. The teachers are aware of this, and simply ask you to do your best. After you get assigned your house, take your luggage and tie your horse up at the edge of the field. We will get you and the horses situated later tonight."
We all scrambled to get out neck ropes from our bags, and then Professor McGonagall herded us to the area we were to start riding from, and then called out the first name on the list. "Abbot, Hannah!"
A nervous-looking girl carefully jumped off of a fallen log onto her horse, before walking across the field. The teachers watched intently, though I'm not sure what for- the horse and girl looked like any other equestrian pair would. However, once Hannah reached the spot where we were told to stop, all the teachers nodded to each other and Mrs. McGonagall shouted out "Hufflepuff!"
The picnic tables with the Hufflepuffs cheered, and Hannah smiled. Mrs. McGonagall called the next rider and the cycle continued.
"Granger, Hermione!" McGonagall called out after a few names. Hermione jumped up on her horse faster than anyone before her, and they marched across the field.
"Gryffindor!" the McGonagall called out after a minute of discussion with the teachers. I heard Ron sigh behind me.
Too soon, my name was called. I heard a few whispers about it ("Potter! Didn't he kill He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"), but I was too nervous to care. I gave Dolly a reassuring pat before climbing on her. The path we were supposed to walk on was relatively straight, and I was thankful that I didn't have to do too much steering with the neck rope. When I got to the edge of the field, I dismounted and waited for the teachers' decision.
It took the teachers almost a full minute before McGonagall shouted out "Gryffindor!" I breathed a sigh of relief. I just didn't want to get Slytherin.
I tied up Dolly before taking a seat at the end of the Gryffindor table, where multiple kids glanced back and forth from each other to me in shock. I considered it to be because of my name. I took a seat on the wooden bench, next to one of the Weasley twins I had seen at the train station.
The rest of the sorting passed quickly, and to Ron's relief, he got Gryffindor. Ron took a seat next to me at the table, and after the rest of the sorting passed, we ate. I don't think I had ever had food so delicious in my life. The twins, whose names were Fred and George, told me that every year the bonfire had the same menu. There was corn on the cob, ceasar salad, ribs, and huge bowls of ice cream.
I was also able to get a good look at all the teachers. Fred (or was it George?) pointed them all out to me. The one that seemed the most intriguing to me was Mr. Quirrel.
"He's new this year," Fred/George said. "He teaches Basics to Horse Training. They say that he was once on a pack trip and got attacked by wolverines, and now he wears that cowboy hat everywhere because they ripped the hair from his scalp. I don't think anyone has ever seen him with his hat off."
"Huh," I said. I wasn't too interested in his back story. If he can teach me the basics of horse training, I'll be happy.
After dinner we got situated in our dorms and the horses situated in their stables. The first-year Gryffindor stables were farthest away from the dorms, but I didn't care too much. I was just overjoyed that I finally had a horse, as well as a home for it.
Even though it was late, we unloaded our tack into our assigned tack rooms. Every year shared a tack room, where we kept all our feed as well as riding supplies. We all got a Gryffindor saddle pad, to be used in team riding competitions. Ron and I kept our tack right next to each other.
After I got Dolly situated into her stall, the prefect, Percy (who happened to be another one of Ron's brothers) showed us where we would be sleeping. Hogwarts had acres of space, so they were able to make the cabins where relatively large. The cabins were in the shape of a horse bit. There was a common area in the middle of the girls' and boys' cabins, which would be the center of the bit. Off the common area branched two hallways, which connected to seven different cabins on each side. The first-year boys slept in the cabin at the far end of the hallway.
The cabins were surprisingly nice inside. There was a fireplace on one wall, and ten wooden beds lined the long side of the room. Each bed had red comforters and two pillows with horse silhouettes on the cases. I claimed a bed in one of the corners, next to a window that looked out over the fields. I let the cat that Hagrid had given me, who I decided to name Hedwig, out, and she settled down on my bed. Ron chose the bed next to mine.
Percy showed us where everything was and explained the rules, and then let us know that we would have to wake up at five A.M. every morning to feed the horses and start on our barn chores. Hogwarts created a schedule for when each year should wake up so we wouldn't all be in the barn at the same time, and naturally the first years woke up the earliest.
It was late, so we all changed and got in bed rather quickly. I couldn't help but think before going to sleep about what the Dursleys were doing back home. I sure didn't miss them.
Thanks for reading! It would make my day if you reviewed! Constructive criticism is always helpful (emphasis on constructive).