IV. Choice

The Hogwarts Express had slowed to a stop at last. The same disembodied voice reminded the occupants of the train that they should leave their luggage on board, as their things would taken up to the castle later by magic. Remus was happy to learn that he wouldn't actually have to drag both his and Andromeda's trunks up to the castle, as the Head Girl still hadn't returned.

"I'm starting to regret all those sweets I ate," Lily murmured, as they filed out into the corridor. Remus felt much the same way—still, it was assuring to him that he wasn't the only one with a bad case of nerves, as Lily was now looking faint with terror and Severus' breathing had gone shallow.

Sticking close together proved exceptionally difficult once they'd left the train and joined the mob of students at Hogsmeade Station. Remus, in fact, would have walked off unthinkingly with the rest of the crowd if it weren't for Lily giving him a yank him in the right direction.

"Firs' years! Firs' years!"

Just ahead, most of the first years had already converged around an enormous man carrying a lantern. Nobody could seem to stop staring at him—he wasn't scary looking, per say, but the man was still at least three times taller than even the tallest of wizards. Remus felt positively minuscule by comparison.

"Is that a giant?" Lily hissed to Severus.

"Can't be," Severus answered, but he seemed unsure.

"Welcome ter Hogwarts!" the giant of a man said, beaming around at them all. "Don' be scared now, all o' yehs, yer in good hands—"

The giant led the way onward—he moved very quickly for someone of his size, and soon had at least fifty terrified witches and wizards scrambling just to keep up with him. The path they followed eventually came to an abrupt end at the shallows of the Great Lake, and the giant instructed everyone to clamber into a fleet of boats so that they could make the customary crossing. Most others stumbled off on command, but Remus felt compelled to look up—he could see the outline of a massive castle off in the distance, faintly illuminated by moonlight.

"C'mon," Severus muttered, so Remus tore his eyes away long enough to follow his friends into an unoccupied boat. Remus had only just seated himself when the boy from the train reluctantly joined them—he looked as though he would much rather be in any other boat besides the one occupied by Lily Evans, but the others had already been filled up.

"Hi," greeted Lily, but the boy just shrank back in fear. Remus looked at him pityingly.

The giant shouted out that it was time to move—Lily and several others gasped as each pair of oars came to life and began to row the little boats in formation across the lake. Severus stuck his hand in the water to watch the rippling effect it made in the lake's surface but Remus looked up again, this time in the direction of the willow tree from earlier. It reminded him strangely of a guard dog, ready to attack.

"Whoa there! Stop!" commanded the giant, and the fleet abruptly paused.

"Over there!" exclaimed Severus. He pointed to where one of the boats had been impeded in its progress by a giant tentacle, risen out of the water. Remus heard a girl scream in terror as the tentacle moved closer and prodded at her head.

"He's jus' tryin' ter say hello!" said the giant, looking jovial. "Go on, give 'im a shake!"

None of the four first years in the stalled boat seemed eager to do this, so at last a black wizard stood up, his face set. The same girl who had screamed cried out, "don't do it, Kingsley!" but he had already grabbed the end of the tentacle and given it an awkward handshake.

"Wotcher?" said Kingsley. The tentacle shook his hand politely and then waved at them all before sinking back under the water.

"Off we go again!" said the giant, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and the boats moved once more. Remus looked over with amusement at Lily, who smiled her weakest smile yet.

The first years all reached the other side of the lake at the same time, and then they all went slipping and sliding up the sloped edge of the lake, which was covered in smooth pebbles. They appeared to be in a sort of underground harbor, which led them led along a passageway and up to a door at the top of stone steps, where a stern-faced professor brought them inside. She gave them a short speech about Hogwarts' four houses, and asked them to wait patiently for the Sorting process to begin.

"I can do this," Lily whispered. She closed her eyes and began repeating the words to herself like a mantra. "I can do this. I may or may not be about to throw up, but I can do this—"

"You can do this," Severus assured her, but Remus was struck by a sudden and horrible thought—what if he couldn't be sorted? No werewolf had ever come to Hogwarts, so how would the Sorting Hat react to him? Would it turn him away and announce to everyone what he was...?

"But is the Sorting Hat always right, Sev?" Lily asked, pulling at her own hair. "Oh god, what if I get up there and it puts me in the wrong house?"

"The Sorting Hat puts people where they believe they belong," answered Severus. "So it's less that the Hat can be wrong, and more like—"

But his explanation was cut off by the return of the witch from earlier, and now she beckoned the first years to follow her once more. Everyone scurried into a semblance of a a single file line, and then, to Remus' great dismay, a certain someone came sliding in between himself and Lily.

"Evening," said Sirius, with a mouth that twitched like he was struggling to hide a laugh. "I see we meet once again. It must be destiny."

Sirius was obviously trying to redeem himself from the disaster on the train. What surprised Remus, however, was that the mark on his face had all but gone away—either he or James clearly knew some magic already, and now he was reluctantly impressed.

"You've still got a bit of dried blood under your nose," Remus told him smartly.

"I don't believe you," said Sirius, but wiped at his lip anyway.

Lily abruptly turned her head.

"I thought I heard your voice. Funny, I didn't think you'd be asking me to hit you again so soon, Black."

Thankfully they entered the Great Hall before the situation was able to escalate again, and Sirius now chose to retreat behind James. This didn't do much to separate Sirius and Lily, however, as it turned out that James had been standing behind Remus too. Wonderful, Remus thought. His time at Hogwarts was off to a really great start.

"Hullo," James whispered to him. "No hard feelings?"

Remus didn't answer. He decided to look around the Great Hall instead, which was just as magnificent as it was gigantic. Several hundred Hogwarts sat divided between four tables that spanned the length of the room, and while Remus found himself briefly enchanted just by the sight of a thousand floating candles, the truly marvelous thing about the Great Hall was its ceiling. It was unfortunate, really, that such a beautiful sky of stars would be spoiled by the presence of a waxing crescent moon.

The stern looking witch had set a very dirty hat on top of a stool before the High Table, and Remus supposed this was the Sorting Hat. Everyone applauded obligingly once the hat's song had been sung, but Lily, still just ahead of Remus, seemed to have lost all of her nerve again. She was now back to whispering her mantra: "I can do this, I can do this..."

The Sorting began once the witch came forward once more with a long piece of parchment. She began calling the first years in alphabetical order, and two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff had already been sorted before the first familiar name was called.

"Black, Sirius!"

The Slytherins already had their hands together, preparing their applause for when he would join their table. Remus was amazed that he could feel sorry for Sirius as he shifted out of line—he wanted to be in Gryffindor so very badly, that much was clear, yet he really had no choice in the matter. The Sorting was a reflection of one's heart, and the values instilled in a person by their upbringing—it was not, as Andromeda might put it, a matter of getting into your preferred House out of sheer stubbornness.

Come to think of it, Remus saw that Andromeda Black was standing up at the end of the Slytherin table, fondly surveying her cousin. Beside her, sitting down, was a haughty looking boy with white-blond hair and a prefect badge. Looking down the Slytherin table, Remus noticed that many of them carried a similar air—like they were all very full of themselves and believed others to be beneath them.

Even Sirius couldn't help but glance nervously at the Slytherin table. His face looked as green as their ties just before disappearing under the Sorting Hat.

They were kept waiting for a long time. Remus had learned from his father that some people simply took longer to decide upon than others, but after seeing the first few sorted in less than ten seconds each, four minutes now seemed like ages. At one point the Sorting Hat's mouth ripped open wide but then closed again, seeming to wrinkle with puzzlement. The Slytherins were fooled—the white-blond boy even put his hands together once before realizing that the hat hadn't said anything. Professor Dumbledore—whom Remus recognized from the time he had personally visited the Lupin household last spring—leaned forward in his seat with interest.

Silence ensued for several more thoughtful seconds, and then—

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Sirius nearly fell off the stool. James might've hissed with pleasure from behind Remus, but several Slytherin jaws had fallen open, and even Andromeda had gasped. None of Sirius' limbs seemed to work properly anymore as he staggered off to the Gryffindor table.

"She did say Black, didn't she?"

"That can't be right..."

Only a scattered, reluctant clapping broke out, rather than the polite applause everyone else had recieved. Remus looked around wildly—the Slytherins, even those whose mouths remained shut, all looked like they'd been slapped across the face, and even the Gryffindors looks scandalized that an intruder had just sat down with them. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, seated both to the left and right of the line of first years, had their eyes darting back and forth between the tables on either end of the room. Professor Dumbledore alone seemed amused by the Hat's decision—the rest of the staff looked rattled.

The stern witch at last took control of the situation by calling out for the next student. Whispers about Sirius Black continued clear until "Evans, Lily" was called.

Lily stumbled out of line and quivered the entire way up to the stool. The Sorting Hat took no time at all before shouting, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Severus let out a groan of disappoinment as Lily looked back at him with a sad smile. She went to join the Gryffindors, and Sirius, though looking ghostly pale at the moment, had the presence of mind to move down the bench to make room for her. Lily couldn't have been less thankful for this, though, and glared at him before casting her gaze determinedly the other way.

It was Remus' turn before long. He looked to the Ravenclaw table as he left the line of first years, glad that they at least looked like a generally more decent group of people than the Slytherins. Remus sat down gingerly on the stool, and the stern looking witch gave him a look that implied she knew Remus' story quite well before dropping the hat onto his head.

The Sorting Hat fell over Remus' eyes, obscuring the Great Hall and the attentive faces of the student body from view. Perhaps they had seen the witch's expression and were waiting for another surprise.

"Ah," a voice mused in his ear. "A werewolf, eh? The very first at Hogwarts, you know! Lucky child, you are… though two minds in one will certainly make this difficult…"

Remus panicked as he imagined for a moment that everyone in the Great Hall had just heard the Sorting Hat's comments, but then he forced himself to remember that the hat had never once said such things out loud.

"Oh no, I'd never tell your secrets, boy, don't worry…"

Remus was a bit startled to realize the hat was reading his thoughts with perfect clarity, but then again, this did make sense. Surely no lesser hat could be entrusted with the task of Sorting.

I don't want to be in Slytherin, Remus thought as loud as he could, though he'd never tried to think loudly before. Even if Severus was Sorted into it, he had a feeling that the other Slytherins would never accept him.

"Of course not," said the hat. "You simply wouldn't belong there, would you now? Hm... always a sad thing to see, this is, a child already so exhausted by the world— quite fed up with toiling, aren't are? Far from the makings of a Hufflepuff."

Remus did not even begin to defend himself on this point. The last seven years of his life had certainly drained him of Hufflepuff-ish virtues...

"So what will it be then, child? Ravenclaw? Or Gryffindor…?"

Remus didn't really care either way. He was smart, he knew that much—he was always reading, always imagining, always pursing new knowledge. He was also never quite satisfied unless he was dreaming up the next big task he could potentially take on, like designing another tree house he could never build because his parents didn't trust him more than a meter off the ground. He loved these things, of course, or else he wouldn't do them all the time. Right?

Certainly not. Remus knew the truth—that he'd only taken to intellectual pursuits because he hated the mindless beast he became once a month. He'd only kept to himself because he had no friends, no companions, no playmates that would ever accept him for who he was. No one even liked him, aside from his scared mum and dad, and they had taught him to live a life of misery for his own protection...

I just want to be normal, Remus announced in his thoughts. And more than anything, I want to have friends.

"A fine ambition," commended the hat. It cried loudly to the Great Hall at last, "GRYFFINDOR!"