Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter Two
Sorting
Neville—or "Professor Longbottom" as Albus was supposed to start calling him—led the new students through a maze of dank stone corridors. From what Albus could tell by the torchlight that illuminated the passageways, they were indeed in the dungeons as Rose had supposed. Albus couldn't be sure, but it seemed like they were slowly ascending from the bowels of the castle.
As they walked, their footsteps echoed off the walls. No one was speaking, and Albus supposed that he might not be the only one that felt nervous about the sorting. They came to a large flight of stairs, and as they climbed it felt like the ambient light started to get brighter and the air a bit fresher.
Albus heard Rose let out a small breath beside him. He knew that she didn't like enclosed spaces very much. It had been that way from the time that James had played a prank and locked her in the broom shed when she was a little girl. James had gotten grounded for two weeks and had seemed legitimately sorry afterward. It was one of the few times that Albus had seen his father show any anger towards his children. Since then, James had been more discreet with his practical jokes.
At the top of the flight of stairs, they took a few more twists and turns before finally coming to a stop in front of a set of huge wooden doors. The Hogwarts coat of arms was emblazoned across the doors: the "H" in the middle bisected by the astragal, separating the lion and badger on the left from the serpent and eagle on the right. Behind the door, Albus could here the murmur of hundreds of voices conversing with each other.
Neville turned and smiled at the first years, spreading his arms wide. "Welcome to Hogwarts!" he said warmly. "As I told you before, I am Professor Longbottom: head of Gryffindor house and the deputy headmaster of the school. In a few moments, the doors behind me will open, and you'll all follow me into the Great Hall to be sorted. I will call out each of your names individually. When I call your name, you are to step forward, place the sorting hat on your head, and you will be sorted into one of the four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin." Neville gestured to each house's emblem as he spoke its name. "No matter which house you get sorted into, you will be expected to represent it, along with the school itself, to the best of your abilities. If you perform well in classes, or otherwise, you can be awarded house points. However, if you act inappropriately and reflect poorly on your house, then a teacher or prefect can take points away from your house. At the end of the year, the house with the most points wins the house cup. I encourage all of you to perform to the utmost of your abilities during your time at Hogwarts."
Albus thought it was a lot to take in. Were it not for the fact that he came from a magical family, Albus suspected that he might be beginning to feel overwhelmed. As it was, he still hadn't quite managed to wrangle the apprehension he had about the sorting. Looking around, he saw from the several pairs of wide eyes that he wasn't the only one.
In the silence that followed Neville's address, Albus heard the voices beyond the door die away, as one person's strong tones rose above them all. From what he could make out, the person speaking was giving some sort of speech. Most likely, he was introducing the first years. Albus strained to listen, but his concentration was broken when he felt someone poke him in the ribs.
"You're aren't still nervous, are you?" Kris whispered to him when he turned to look at her.
"Maybe a bit," Albus admitted after a moment.
Kris shook her head, looking a bit amused. "You'll be fine," she said.
"Thanks.
The girl shrugged and pointed at Rose, who had wound up on her other side. "Your cousin asked me to check."
Albus rolled his eyes. Of course Rose had asked. Albus briefly thought about what an overbearing mother Rose would someday make, and almost shuddered in pity for her poor imaginary children. But before he could voice a witty retort for Kris to pass along, the voice from beyond the doors came booming through them as though they didn't exist, causing most of the students to jump.
"Please welcome, our first years!" it declared, accompanied by the double doors swinging open of their own accord.
The sight beyond the doors was spectacular. Even though he had heard Hogwarts described many times by his family and friends, Albus quickly came to the conclusion that no amount of description could really do justice to the old castle. Four long tables ran from one end of the giant room to the other, seating hundreds of students. At the other end of the room, directly across the doors the first years were currently marching through, a fifth and smaller table ran perpendicular to the rest. This one sat on an elevated platform and seated the professors and other staff members.
As he was being corralled up the aisle between the two innermost tables, Albus looked over to the Gryffindor table on the far right. Scanning up and down the seats, it wasn't long before Albus spotted his brother. James made a face at Albus, who rolled his eyes in return. Further up the same table, their cousin Victoire sat surrounded by her seventh year classmates. She smiled and waved at Albus, who returned the gesture in kind. Glancing over to his left, Albus saw her siblings Dominique and Louis sitting at the Ravenclaw table. Dominique was whispering something to a friend, and didn't notice Albus, but Louis gave him a thumbs up as he walked by.
Albus returned his gaze to the head table, and was interested to get his first good look at the headmaster, who was currently standing in front of his seat and leading the school in applause. The man's weathered face and graying hair betrayed his age, but his eyes seemed alert and youthful as they scanned the students entering the hall, constantly in motion. They finally came to rest, locking straight on to Albus's own. Albus felt a jolt of surprise under the man's stare. The feeling of surprise was compounded when he felt someone jerk him backwards by the arm.
He stumbled back to find that Kris had saved him from further embarrassment. He had been so busy looking around that he hadn't noticed Neville come to a stop at the front of the hall. Albus swore he could hear James snickering behind him, but pushed it out of mind, hoping that no one else had noticed.
Neville motioned for the first years to remain where they were and then turned and ascended a small set of stairs onto the elevated platform at the front of the hall. He approached an odd looking three-legged stool and spun to take a position beside it. Albus was a bit perplexed, but before he had time to wonder what was going on, Neville waved his hands over the stool. An old, severely battered hat appeared out of nowhere before landing on the stool with a plop. Neville reverently backed away from the hat a few steps, and a lectern sprung out of the ground in front of him with a roll of parchment on it. Neville looked up at the headmaster expectantly, and the man motioned for the applause to cease. Satisfied that all the clapping had stopped, the headmaster sat and stared intently at the hat.
Albus noticed that everyone else seemed to be looking at the hat too, so he fixed his own gaze on it, feeling rather foolish. Much to his surprise, a particularly large seam in the hat split open, and before Albus's eyes, it began to sing. He watched in amazement as the hat wove the tale of the four founders of Hogwarts; somehow managing to relay the history of each house and emphasize the qualities behind them succinctly and on-key. It ended the song with a challenge to the first years waiting to be sorted: if they wished to someday have their deed sung about as the founders had, then they must start by placing the hat on their head to be sorted into one of the four great houses of Hogwarts.
The headmaster stood and began to applaud again, causing the rest of the hall to join in. Albus felt slightly dazed as he clapped for the hat's theatrics. Again he wondered if he would really be expected to do things as great as the founds of Hogwarts. After a moment, the applause in the hall finally died down, and the headmaster resumed his seat. Neville glanced up at the man, who motioned for the Deputy Head to continue.
Neville cleared his throat, and then clearly enunciated, "Ewan Adamson!"
Albus looked to his left, and found that Ewan had paled a few shades upon hearing his name called out first. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and then marched courageously up to the hat. He carefully picked it up and sat down facing the students before dropping the ancient artifact onto his head. It slipped down his forehead, almost over his eyes. There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the hat, before the seam opened and the hat cried out, "GRYFFINDOR!"
The Gryffindor table erupted in cheers as Ewan took the hat off and set it gingerly on the stool before happily joining the Gryffindor table. He sat at an empty seat near James, and immediately received several slaps on the back from his new housemates. Neville waited for the cheering to die down before calling the next name—Liam Angelus, who went to Gryffindor as well—and so on. The crowd around Albus began to thin out as students were slowly sorted. Anthony Cratchwell went to Hufflepuff, along with a tall boy with dark hair whose name Albus missed. Michael Fletcher and Patrick Keller went to Ravenclaw, Scorpius Malfoy went to Slytherin, and one by one the students discovered which house they would call home for the next seven years.
"Kris Pembroke!" Neville called out.
Albus felt Kris stir next to him. He watched as she made her way of the stairs, chin held high. She swooped the hat off the stool, turned, sat down, and placed the hat on her head in one more-or-less fluid motion. The hat seemed to be taking its time deciding, and Albus found himself holding his breath. He was hoping that Kris would end up in Gryffindor along with him, Rose, and Ewan, as he'd started to become comfortable in their company throughout the day. However, Albus's wishes seemed to be dashed when the hat finally made up its mind and announced, "SLYTHERIN!"
The Slytherin table cheered while Kris made he way over to her new housemates. Albus saw James make a rude gesture at her out of the corner of his eye. He'd done it for all the Slytherins, but this time Albus's temper flared at his older brother's antics. Before he had time to get too angry though, all his emotions seemed to drop away in favor of anxiety as he heard Neville say, "Albus Potter!"
Albus slowly walked towards the hat, suddenly painfully aware that every single set of eyes in the room was focused on him. He looked up at the headmaster, and quickly looked down again, not quite brave enough to meet the older man's intense gaze. At the top of the stairs, Albus took a few deep breaths to steady himself, and thanked Merlin for Neville's encouraging smile. Albus reached out and grabbed the hat carefully. Up close he could see all the rips and fraying in detail, along with what appeared to be scorch marks. With one more deep breath, Albus sat down and dropped the hat on his head. Thankfully it covered his eyes. Albus didn't really want to see everyone watching him as the hat made its judgment.
"Ah, so you want to go unnoticed?" a voice suddenly spoke in his head. "Hmmm, no that's not quite right is it? You just don't feel worthy of the notice. You want to earn that worth with great achievements. Interesting." Albus fought the urge to speak to the hat out loud, and instead decided to let himself be judged based on what the hat saw. "You're difficult. Much more difficult than your brother... more like your mother and father." Albus wasn't sure what the hat meant by that, but he didn't dwell on it and listened to the hat instead. "The ambition is certainly there, along with bravery, and plenty of wit. Well, I've never met a student I couldn't sort, and in the end I think it had better be..."
Gryffindor, Albus thought.
"SLYTHERIN!" the hat shouted.
Albus felt shock course through his body like ice water. Numbly, he removed the hat from his head, hardly even noticing the cheer from his new housemates. The other three tables were staring at him with what Albus figured was a good outward projection of his current feelings. Albus slowly walked over to the Slytherin table and sat down next to Kris, who happily waved him over and cleared a spot for him.
Not wanting to look, but unable to contain his curiosity, Albus glanced over at the Gryffindor table... and immediately regretted it. His brother was staring at him with a look of pure betrayal on his face. Albus looked away, turning to Victoire instead. She seemed to be perplexed, but smiled at him and shrugged when he met her eyes. Over at the Ravenclaw table, Louis was looking at him thoughtfully, while Dominique was rapidly carrying on a whispered conversation with her friends while they all cast furtive glances at Albus.
It seemed like some kind of joke that the hat had placed him in Slytherin because he didn't want to be the center of attention. If it wasn't a joke, then maybe the hat wasn't so good at its job after all.
Albus looked up at the head table, and saw that most of the teachers were still looking at him rather than the girl that had followed him in the sorting. The headmaster's gaze bored into Albus once again; it was intense but not unkind. When he saw Albus returning his look, he nodded in acknowledgment and turned back to the sorting. Finally, Albus turned to look at Rose, who was regarding him with what he called her "don't bother me, I'm thinking" face. Her brow was furrowed and nose slightly scrunched up. Albus felt like he could practically see the gears turning in her head.
Following Albus, there were only a handful of students left to be sorted. The girl that had gone directly after him had been sorted twice—or so Albus had thought before he realized that the girls were actually identical twins. A girl with the straightest black hair Albus had ever seen went to Gryffindor. A boy named Horowitz Septimus went to Hufflepuff along with a girl named Bella Sutler. A few more students were sorted before Aidan Walker joined Albus at the Slytherin table, and then it was Rose's turn.
"Rose Weasley!" Neville called, rolling up the parchment as the last student approached the hat.
Rose walked briskly towards the stool, wearing a look of determination that Albus had seen on her face when she was trying hard to learn a complicated subject. She dropped onto the stool, and slid the hat down on her head. After a few moments of silence, Albus was surprised when he noticed Rose's lips moving silently. The realization hit him that she was speaking to the hat, and he suddenly remembered his father telling him before he boarded the train that the hat takes your preference into account.
In all the excitement leading up to the sorting, Albus had forgotten. He briefly wondered if the hat would have placed him somewhere else if he'd tried to converse with it, and he couldn't shake the feeling as he watched Rose, who was seemingly carrying on a long conversation with the hat. A murmur began to rise from the assorted students as Rose's time under the brim lengthened even further without a decision. Just when Albus was beginning to wonder if his cousin had lectured the hat to death, the seam in the front finally opened, and the hat shouted out its verdict.
"SLYTHERIN!"
The shocked reaction that swept through the hall was even greater than the one that had followed Albus's sorting. James's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. Neville rapidly blinked several times as though trying to wake from a dream. And Victoire had clamped a hand over her mouth in surprise. The rest of the hall was deadly quiet as Rose—seemingly oblivious to the reaction she'd created—cheerily walked down the steps and over to the Slytherin table.
A few of the Slytherins seemed to regain their senses and began clapping politely for their newest housemate. Albus joined them, and some of the tension in the hall dissipated as Rose took a seat next to him. He gave her a questioning look, but she just shrugged it off and gestured towards the head table, where the headmaster had stood once again.
Neville vanished the hat and stool. He walked over to the head table and took a seat next to Hagrid's enlarged chair. The half-giant had yet to return from wherever he went after dropping off the first years, but there was no question which seat belonged to the massive man. The headmaster politely waited for Neville to settle himself before clearing his throat. The attention of the entire room immediately focused on the distinguished looking wizard.
"Well, that concludes this year's sorting ceremony," he said. "I know you're all feeling hungry, but I have a few announcements to make." There was a pause and some of the students grumbled audibly, much to the amusement of the headmaster, who smiled slightly. "However, over the past few years I have learned just how unwise it is to stand between the students and food." This turned the grumbling into laughter. "Enjoy the feast!" the headmaster concluded grandly.
Before the man had even sat down, the various plates and platters on the tabled filled with food of all kinds. Albus, along with several other first years, gasped in surprise. He quickly recovered as he felt a pang of hunger in his stomach. He reached for a particularly tasty dish, but was forced to pause when Rose beat him there, snatching up a portion and adding it to her plate. Albus looked over to see that she had already filled her plate entirely with a different assortment of foods, and was looking up and down the table to see if there were any dishes she was missing. Albus loaded up his own plate and dug in. Thankfully the food was excellent, and gave him an excuse to not look at anything other than his plate. He wasn't particularly feeling up to looking anywhere else at the moment, particularly in the direction of the Gryffindor table.
"Don't worry about your brother," Rose said between bites of food. Apparently she had noticed his unease. "He'll come around in a day or two."
"If he can get over himself," Kris muttered from the other side of Albus.
"Yeah," Albus said, not sure which of the two he was agreeing with.
"Anyway," Rose said, changing the topic. "I wonder who the teachers are. I've read about some of them of course." She took a sip of her drink as her eyes scanned the head table. "That's obviously Hagrid's seat," she said, nodding her head at the vacant chair at the far end which was easily twice the size of the others. "Then there's Nev-uh-Professor Longbottom." Rose smiled briefly as she regarded their parents' friend. "I'm not sure who that is next to him," she said, gesturing to a blond man with glasses who was currently engaging the headmaster in conversation. "The man he's talking to is obviously the headmaster, Professor Soranis."
"Who?" Albus asked, only partially surprised that Rose knew the man.
"Professor Soranis. He's in one of our history books, or maybe it was one of the books I picked up for fun... Anyway, he's mentioned a lot in chapters about the Second War. Apparently he was the head of the Auror department during the reconstruction. He was the head right before Uncle Harry took over actually," she said, her brow furrowing. "I wonder why your dad has never mentioned him before."
"I guess that is weird," Albus agreed, absorbing the information.
"Even if he had, you probably weren't paying attention," Rose said with a laugh.
"Hey! I listen to my parents," Albus complained. "And you know dad doesn't talk about work with us very much."
"Alright, alright," Rose conceded.
She continued naming teachers as she worked down the table, but Albus wasn't paying attention. Instead, he was focused on the headmaster, whom Albus would swear had been looking at him not a moment earlier, just like he had been during the sorting. Currently, the man seemed to be looking at everything but Albus, his dark eyes had returned to the state of constant motion they'd been in prior to the sorting. Albus was about to chalk his feeling up to imagination when Kris changed his mind.
"He was looking at you," she whispered to him. "In fact, he's been watching you almost since we first came in, but you only caught him once."
"Why would he be doing that?" Albus asked, feeling a bit put off.
"No idea. Maybe he was wondering how someone like you got into Hogwarts?" she mused.
"Hey!" Albus said a bit too loudly, drawing looks from those seated around him.
"Just kidding," Kris said, assuming a conversational tone. "Honestly though, I have no idea."
That left Albus's head spinning slightly. It was only the first day and he'd already drawn the notice of the headmaster. Albus racked his brain for what he could have done that would make the headmaster interested in him. Oh, well there was that time you got sorted into Slytherin, he thought to himself sarcastically. But Kris had said the headmaster had taken in interest in him before that. A tap on Albus's shoulder drew his attention back to the world around him.
"Hey Al. Have you noticed that Hagrid still isn't back? Surely it can't take that long to take care of the boats, can it?" Rose said to him, sounding more curious than worried.
Albus glanced up at the head table and confirmed that Hagrid's seat remained empty at the head table. He shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. Where do you think he is?"
"I don't know. I hope nothing went wrong."
Rose turned back to the feast, leaving Albus to his ruminations. Albus absentmindedly pushed some mashed potatoes around on his plate. Playing with food probably wasn't the most proper of habits, but it was something Albus had done since an early age. Rose had once joked that she could always tell how hard Albus was thinking by looking at how much he'd spread out his peas.
"Hey Potter, are you going to play with your food or eat it?"
Albus's eyes traced a line from his plate to the person that had spoken to him. The speaker turned out to be a boy seated across the table and one person down from Albus. He had a rather aristocratic face with blond hair and an unmistakable air of pompousness about him. Albus immediately recognized the boy as Scorpius Malfoy, and his thoughts flashed to the stories his Uncle Ron liked to tell about Scorpius's father. Of course, Albus had been warned by his parents about Malfoy, and he decided to take their advice and not rise directly to the taunt.
"Why not both?" Albus said simply.
Scorpius's eyes narrowed as he stared at Albus. "Didn't your parents teach you manners, Potter?"
"Well, yeah," Albus said lamely.
"Don't you think you're being a bit rude?" Malfoy asked, rather ironically in Albus's opinion.
Albus paused for a moment, as though carefully considering Malfoy's question. He took a moment to push his food around a little more, just to annoy the other boy, before responding. He decided to pretend that Scorpius was James, and act like he did when he was trying to annoy his older brother. Over the years he had found that taking a left turn in the middle of a routine conversation had a tendency to frustrate his brother. He hoped that principle applied to more than just James. "I guess it is rude to play with your prey before you eat it," he said slowly.
"What are you on about?" Malfoy asked. "It's food, not some living thing that you've got to hunt."
By now their exchange had gained the attention of most of their classmates sitting nearby. "Well technically everything on my plate was living at some point," Albus said, deliberately being obtuse, another thing that James hated.
Malfoy was clearly frustrated now. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and leaned forward slightly, closing the distance across the table from him and Albus. "Listen Potter, you're a Slytherin, and whether you like it or not, you're going to have to treat your classmates with respect."
"Oh lay off, Scorpius. He's only joking." The boy directly across from Albus spoke. He had dark hair and a somber face as he looked between his two new housemates.
"He's being a prat," Malfoy complained.
"I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it. Right, Potter?"
"Right," Albus confirmed. He was starting to feel sorry that he hadn't just ignored Malfoy from the start.
"See, Scorpius? He was just giving you a hard time. Really, you shouldn't let people get a rise out of you like that." The boy clucked his tongue as though chiding Malfoy, who was not amused.
"Mind your own business, Nott."
"Like you said, Scorpius, we're all Slytherins now. Like it or not, we are each other's business." He leaned back and smiled devilishly. "Besides, I'm only trying to help you. I don't think you want to go and make enemies on the first day... Especially not ones that will be sleeping in the same room as you."
Malfoy ignored him and turned back to whomever he'd been conversing with before the confrontation.
For the next hour or so, Albus got to know his new housemates. The boy who had come to his defense introduced himself as Jacob Nott. He, Scorpius, and Aidan Walker would be the other boys that Albus lived with. Aidan seemed nice enough, but his presence was mostly overshadowed by Nott.
Next to him, Kris and Rose were busy talking to the other Slytherin girls. One of them—Melody from what Albus could gather—had a mass of thick hair that rivaled his Aunt Hermione's. She spoke softly, and Albus had to strained to catch what she was saying.
The other had much more conservative hair. She wore a set of glasses that seemed to blunt her already dull grey eyes. She rarely seemed to display much outward emotion, and even when she did it seemed forced. She introduced herself formally as Morgan Green, and she and Kris conversed about their lives before Hogwarts.
Something about the way they were talking seemed odd to Albus. He nudged Rose and inclined his head towards the duo. Before he could even ask the question, his cousin had opened her mouth to respond.
"Purebloods," she said simply, as though that explained everything.
"What?" Albus asked. Rose had a bad habit of assuming that everyone was as knowledgeable as her. "What about purebloods?"
"Oh Al, you really ought to learn something about the society you live in. Purebloods teach their kids to act more mature than others. Especially when they're around other purebloods. Look, you can practically tell who's who by watching how people sit."
Albus ignored the sleight and glanced down the table. His cousin was right. It seemed that a good third of the table was observing every proper table manner, while the other students were far more relaxed. Kris and Morgan were both sitting ramrod straight as they conversed. And the way they were talking was strange. They sounded like adults did when they spoke to each other. It as strange to hear coming from two eleven-year-olds.
"Huh," Albus said.
"Kind of silly if you ask me," Rose replied. She punctuated her point by smashing a slice of bread into her mouth in a perfect imitation of her father.
Finally, the various dishes were replaced by deserts, which themselves vanished after a few minutes of gorging by the students. At last, after all the plates were cleared, the headmaster stood again, and the hall quieted.
"Another year is upon us!" he began with a smile. "With it comes new and exciting opportunities. I wish you all the best in having a fulfilling experience at Hogwarts this year. However, students are to note that, as always, dueling in the corridors is strictly prohibited. Additionally, the Forbidden Forest is still, as the name suggests, forbidden." A smattering of chuckles went up and the headmaster smiled kindly.
"You wouldn't think they'd have to remind anyone of that," Nott remarked in a low voice.
The headmaster gestured to an old and worn man in the back of the hall. His hair was long and thin, with a cruelly wrinkled face doing a poor job of hiding contempt. "Mr. Filch would like me to stress that Weasley Wizard Wheezes are restricted to the approved list, which you may find posted in your common rooms. As with other prank products, they are not to be used in classrooms or corridors."
Rose chuckled at that, and Albus smiled at the thought of his Uncle George.
"That's all of the announcements for this year. May it be filled with good fortune, and may your heads be filled with knowledge before its end! To your common rooms now. The prefects will guide the first years."
In a mass of people, the students in the hall stood and began to file out of the room. Albus stuck close to Rose and the rest of the first years as they shuffled off to the side where their assigned prefect was waiting. He was a tall and skinny boy who wore glasses under unruly brown hair. He introduced himself with a smile as Harry Colville and led them down a flight of stairs back into the dungeons. The path he took was winding, and Albus began to lose track of where exactly he was when Harry came to a stop in front of a blank stone wall.
"For the first week or so this might give you some trouble, but you'll get it eventually. After all, you wouldn't be in Slytherin if you didn't have some smarts in you." Harry winked at them.
Albus looked at Rose in confusion, but found no answers in her befuddled expression. It seemed that she didn't understand why they were standing in the middle of an abandoned hallway either.
"The password is Wolfsbane," Harry said clearly. His last word was met with gasps from the first years, as the wall before them slid back and aside to reveal a common room teeming with older Slytherin students.
The prefect led them through the common room. It was furnished with dark green leather chairs and a couch centered around a stone fireplace. There were tables spaced evenly around the room, nearly all of which were currently occupied with older students. Harry stopped at the back of the room in front of two descending staircases. A peek downward revealed identical hallways with evenly spaced wooden doors set into the walls.
"These will be your dormitories," Harry said. "Boys down the left staircase, girls to the right. Try not to get it mixed up, please." He smirked slightly. "You shouldn't have any trouble figuring out which room is yours, but if you do, here's a hint: it has 'first years' carved into the door."
He followed up his dry remark by listing off the rules of the common room. They seemed more like loose guidelines to Albus than actual school rules (they included "no obnoxious snogging" and "no blowing things up"). The one thing that did stand out as important was the curfew times, and Albus made a mental note not to be found in the corridors after hours.
When Harry had finished his lecture, he bid them farewell and then moved off to join a group of older students in a corner, leaving the first years to fend for themselves.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to my room," Rose said. "Mom gave me a book I'm dying to start as a going-away gift."
"You didn't finish it on the train?" Albus asked. He was only half-joking.
"No, she made me promise not to start it until we were here," Rose said with a hint of complaint. "Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow morning." She said her good nights and then moved down the staircase on the right.
Albus turned to Kris, who was looking at him expectantly. "Alright, I guess I'll be going to my room too. I'm not really in the mood for... that." He gestured to the commotion going on behind them.
"Oh come on. Are you afraid of crowds?" his new friend teased.
"No, just tired," Albus responded. It was true. Even though he'd mostly just done a lot of sitting that day, and taken an unintended nap, he felt exhausted.
"Okay then. See you in the morning." Kris said, moving to join some of the other first years brave enough to venture into the jungle of socialization.
Albus walked down the boys' staircase and found his room easily enough. As Harry had said, 'First Years' was carved neatly on the front of the door. He pushed it open and found four identical beds inside. Each of them was a four-poster with curtains hanging all around, and they all had someone's luggage waiting in front of them.
Albus identified his own trunk easily enough and made a quick change into his pyjamas. By chance, it seemed that the house-elves had put his trunk down in front of the bed he would have chosen anyway, and Albus slipped under the covers with a stifled yawn.
He reflect on the day he'd had. It seemed strange to think that less than twelve hours earlier he'd been at his parents' house. It was stranger to know that he wouldn't be back there for months. There was a small pang of homesickness, but it was weaker than he might have expected before his arrival.
Albus lay there wondering what tomorrow would bring, and before long, he had drifted off to sleep.