Thanks for all the lovely reviews!

I just want to say that I don't know how much longer I'll able to publish the chapters at this speed. Three term papers are waiting to be finished and I have to work from next week onwards. But I promise to do my best.

I've worked out a complete plot line by now and I can tell you that we will meet many characters from Harry's, Hermione's and Ron's school days.

And now: enjoy!

The Slytherin Common Room

The prefect whose name Sirius had forgotten the second he had heard it, and another prefect girl led all the first year students to the Slytherin part of the ancient castle.

Vicky walked next to Sirius. "Do you remember their names?" she whispered.

"No, damn! I thought you would…"

A boy closeby looked at them. "I know their names! The boy is Andy and the girl's name is Melissa." He had a mild Irish accent. "And I'm Baldric Greengrass by the way."

"Hello, Baldric." Vicky and Sirius chorused.

"Okay, listen, first years!" Melissa shouted and the small crowd became quieter. They were now in a hallway from which stairs led up and down. "Some of you may have heard from their parents or grand-parents that Slytherin House was in the dungeons. Well, this is no longer true. In the fight against You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters parts of Hogwarts Castle above the dungeons broke down, and under that weight the dungeons caved in. The re-builders of Hogwarts, in agreement with the portraits of the former headmasters, decided that all four houses from now on should live in a tower. So, first years, that's why we're going upstairs now."

The boys and girls started to suggest to each other what the new tower might look like, their fantasies getting further and further away from the truth the more stairs they climbed. The group stopped in front of a huge portrait depicting a view of the Hogwarts castle with the lake in the background. Two male figures were waiting in the picture, and the Bloody Baron hovered next to it.

Andy demanded: "Silence, please!"

The ghost was the first to speak to the children. "Welcome, first years, to Slytherin tower! This tower will be your home for the most part of the next seven years. Here you will sleep, study, find new friends, plan Quidditch tactics, celebrate the matches you've won, booze and snog and"-

"Thank you, Bloody Baron!" Melissa interrupted.

The first years snickered.

"Now to the password procedure you have to follow in order to enter." Melissa pointed at the huge picture.

One of the portraits, a slender man with short black hair and a goatee beard, dressed in green old-fashioned robes, started to speak. "We, the former Slytherin headmasters of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, cordially welcome you to our lovely new tower! This is Severus Snape" – the speaker forced the other portrait (pale-faced beneath the curtains of long black hair and clothed in long, black robes) with a little nudge to smile – "and my humble self is called Phineas Nigellus Black. We will occasionally drop by in our portraits in the common room, because this lovely frame here actually belongs to the Bloody Baron's portrait who seems to be absent right now…"

"You kicked him out." accused Snape.

"Oh, we don't need two of the Barons at the same time, don't we?" assuaged Phineas him.

The ghost next to the portrait raised an eyebrow.

"Anyway," Phineas continued, "dear first years, the Baron or any other Slytherin portrait is authorised to demand the password or password phrase from you. If you answer correctly, the portrait will swing open and you may enter. Now, dear Melissa, what is this week's password?" Phineas grinned.

Melissa sighed. "The password is, and I'm quite embarassed that you chose this one, Headmaster, Slytherin kicks ass."

Phineas applauded, the picture swung back into the wall and gave way to the entrance.

"When you enter make sure that all of you receive a timetable from us!" Andy said and walked inside first.

Sirius and Vicky were torn between looking at their timetables and gazing at the enormous common room.

Vicky cried: "We've got Flying class together with Gryffindor!" Of course she had checked her father's subject first.

Sirius was busy taking in the spectacular room. The common room was similar to a long rectangle corridor, only that it was about fifteen metres wide and one hundred metres long. On the left hand side from the entrance there were huge panorama windows from which one had a lovely view over the lake and the mountains surrounding Hogwarts. Next to the windows were dozens of sofas and other seating arrangements in different shades of green where the older students were sitting and chatting. The floor and the walls were held in silver. On the right side there were some fire places and portraits, a trophy cabinet and delicate, black book shelves and some stairways leading to the upper part of the tower.

Not unlike the magic candles in the Great Hall, fish of all kinds and colours floated along the high ceiling. Sirius could have spent the whole evening staring at them, but then the prefects called the first years together one last time.

The seven girls left with the female prefect who led them up one flight of stairs.

Andy lead the eight remaining boys up the stairs to the first years' dormitory. "There are two sleeping rooms for you, so four each. Your trunks are already in there and your owls have been given places in the Owlery. If you have any questions, I'll be in the common room till ten o'clock. You can stay up as long as you want to today, but from tomorrow onwards bedtime is ten thirty. Breakfast is from seven to seven fourty-five, so make sure you set your clocks and get up in time. Lessons start at eight fifteen. To make sure you arrive at your class rooms in time, Melissa and I will escort you to your first lessons this week and the teachers will show you to all following classes. Meeting point is eight sharp at the house table."

Baldric Greengrass got the next bed to Sirius. The other two boys were Alexander Hill and Robert Lennon, both of them looking a little lost in today's events. They had gotten acquainted on the train and were relieved they now were in the same house, since they both came from Muggle families.

"The two of you are from wizard families, right?" Robert asked. "So what's the fuss with calling all normal people Muggles?"

"It's not polite to call someone a Muggle. The correct word is non-magical." Sirius said. Non-magical was the politically correct term for all people outside the wizarding community, Hermione had made sure her children used the phrase.

Alexander wondered: "Is it racist to call someone a Muggle?"

"It used to be the normal word for all non-magical people, but then a little more than a decade ago an evil wizard who named himself Lord Voldemort tried to kill all witches and wizards who were born outside the wizarding community." Sirius explained. "He wanted the so-called purebloods to rule and give them exclusive access to magic. They killed many people who's parents were Muggles, and they also attacked non-magical people. Voldemort's followers called themselves the Death Eaters, and they fought against the Order of the Phoenix that was founded by Albus Dumbledore. He was the last headmaster before Snape from the portrait outside and McGonagall."

Baldric said: "Voldemort lost the fight here in Hogwarts, that's the fight Melissa mentioned, why Slytherin House is no longer in the dungeons."

"Your family is pureblood, right?" Sirius asked him. Not that it mattered anymore.

Baldric was almost ashamed to admit this. "In Ireland the conflicts weren't as bad as here..."

"And you?" Robert asked Sirius.

Sirius shrugged. "I don't know. My parents adopted me when I was only a few days old. That's why my sister Rose is only six months younger than me. My mom is the only witch in her family and my dad is a Weasley, they are one of the oldest wizard families of England."

"His dad's a famous Quidditch player!" Baldric told the other boys.

It soon became obvious Alexander and Robert had no clue what Quidditch was. And even more obvious when they hung up football posters next to their beds.

Sirius and his family had once been to a football match between two local clubs near Godric's Hollow with Uncle Harry's family. James shared his father's appreciation for the sport, but Ron and Ginny hadn't liked it. Sirius didn't care that football was less interesting than Quidditch because they had brought plenty of delicious food with them and he had a lot of fun with his family.

"Where's the point in a ball game with no brooms?" Ron had asked and Hermione had kicked his shin for being rude. So Ron had moved out of his wife's kicking range and sat down next to Sirius. He whispered in his son's ear: "I wish they had at least something like the Snitch so the boring game could end sooner…"

The boys in the dormitory told each other more about their families, where they lived, how many siblings and what kinds of pets they had.

Baldric asked: "Who wants to check out the common room?"

Lex and Robbie, as they had been nick-named by now, agreed.

"I'll come down in a minute," said Sirius. "I wanna put some stuff from my trunk in the drawers and on my desk."

"Okay, see you later."

Re-Decorating the Dormitory

Sirius had already put the orange-and-black blankets of his father's club, the Chudley Cannons, on his bed, and hung up a poster with all the signatures from his dad's team mates on the wall.

Out of a side pocket of his trunk he pulled his memory box. Actually it was just an old cigar box that his Uncle George had had as a boy, but the cover was enchanted and the coloured parrot on it shrieked when it was touched. And memory box sounded much more mysterious than cigar box.

Sirius put the box on his bed and sat down. He opened the lid and the parrot shrieked. On top of all his possessions was a black-and-white photograph of his namesake Sirius Black. Uncle Harry had replicated the moving picture for him and transformed a teaspoon into a frame. Harry told him that his father James had taken the picture during the Marauders' sixth year in Hogwarts. The sixteen-year-old teenager version of Sirius in the photograph looked fabulous, wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes, his broom raised in his right hand, strands of wavy hair escaping from his long dark ponytail, his head thrown back in roaring laughter and mischief sparkling in his eyes.

Young Sirius admired that boy and the man he had never met. He wanted to be like Sirius Black, wanted to sneak around in the secret passage ways of Hogwarts, play tricks with his own gang of Marauders, win the Hogwarts Cup, fight against evil wizards…

Whenever Sirius was very sad, he used to tell everything that had happened to the portrait. Somehow the other Sirius seemed to understand him. Of course, he was only a picture who couldn't talk, but when Sirius spoke to him, he sometimes stopped laughing, walked to the edge of his frame and sat down on his broom to listen to him.

As Sirius became older he spoke less often to the other Sirius. It felt childish now, he was no longer a little boy. But he still wanted to be like the other Sirius, and so he had decided to start with looking like his idol. He had let his black hair grow and since last year it even reached his shoulder blades.

Sirius put the photograph down next to the clock on his nightstand.

The next item from his memory box was a family portrait of himself, Rose and their parents. Even the new baby was in the picture, although one had to know that Hermione was pregnant, because one couldn't see anything yet.

Sirius imagined that Rose had put her copy of the picture on her bedside table just like him.

Then he walked over to his desk. With a magnet he stuck a Chocolate frog card with his father on it, flying on his broomstick in front of three goal posts, to one of the metal bookends on the table. Then he retrieved the pile of school books from his trunk and put them between the bookends.

Sirius kept one book and put in on top of all the other books: his copy of Hermione Granger-Weasley's Muggle Studies: The New Revised Edition. He turned the book upside down so he was able to take a look at his mother's photograph on the back cover. He knew by heart the words that she had written on the front page for him:

Dear Sirius,

your father and I wish you a wonderful first year at Hogwarts! Enjoy making new friends and studying magic! We love you and are proud of you!

Love and hugs, Mom

And underneath his father had scribbled:

See you at your first Quidditch game! Love, Dad