Thank you to my new reviewer! Yay! :D There's some stuff in here that contradicts canon, if you take Pottermore as canon, but hey, the middle of Nano is not the time for worrying about that.
At six o'clock that evening, Mathilda stood in front of the big, ancient, rarely used fireplace in the drawing room. She eyed its coal-stained bricks with unease, and smoothed her hands anxiously down her clean, brand new robes. Yes, they were black, but still ... Her mother laughed from where she was stood behind her.
"Here, you silly thing." She handed Mathilda a purple apron with long sleeves. "Stop pulling that face." Much to Mathilda's embarrassment she insisted on rolling up the sleeves and holding them out for Mathilda to put her arms through, like a little girl. The apron came down to her knees and it looked utterly ridiculous, but it would definitely do the job of protecting her new clothes from soot and dirt.
"That fireplace has seen many generations before you off to school," her father added. She ran her fingers along the perfectly sewn seam of her sleeve and hoped that he wasn't about to start off on a potted family history. He liked to do that when he got excited or tense.
This was another reason that she had been feeling more nervous than excited. Her family didn't take the Hogwarts Express, because steam trains were Muggle technology no matter how much certain wizards had tinkered with them since. The family had used the unreliable and difficult to find Portkeys for a century or so after the State of Secrecy was imposed in the seventeenth century, and then when the Ministry had stopped providing them they had switched to Floo Powder, Flooing straight into the fireplace of a friendly Hogsmeade resident. This year, just like her father had, Mathilda would be arriving in Madam Rosemerta's fireplace, then following directions to the station (which her father had drawn and Charmed for her), in order to meet up with the students as the Express arrived.
So, she wouldn't have the time on the train to meet people and familiarise herself with their new faces. She would be several hours behind socially from the first second she saw her fellow first-years. All of the Hogwarts testimonials always made a big deal about the bonding experiences they'd found on that long, picturesque journey into the Scottish Highlands. She wouldn't have any of that. It wasn't a nice thought.
And then what if she got lost in Hogsmeade and couldn't find the station? Or couldn't find it in time and all the first years had gone to the lake and all the carriages full of older students had rolled away up to the castle, and she was left there all alone in the pitch black night with no idea of what to do or where to go?
Would she have to come home again, tail between her legs? Were you even allowed back if you failed to get there for the Sorting?
Oh! Sorting! Just when she thought she'd run through all her paranoia for the day! The uncertainty of not knowing which House she would be Sorted into was an awful thing. Her father had been a Slytherin and her mother a Hufflepuff, so she presumed she would be in one or the other of those two. She didn't think she was all that clever (a bit clever, but not a lot) or brave, so the other two Houses didn't seem at all likely. And her father was always going on about how Slytherin was the House for the ambitious, for people who wanted to get somewhere in their lives and were driven and determined in achieving that. Absolutely not one single word of that description matched Mathilda in any way that she could think of. She would really be perfectly fine just living in this one House her entire life, reading her books and talking to Jez. But she knew she couldn't do that – and she did really want to learn magic. Hufflepuff was the obvious pick. The leftovers House, her father had once said, several glasses into bottle number two of port. Her mother had hexed his mouth shut and refused to undo it for thirteen hours (her father wasn't good at non-verbal spells).
What if the Hat refused to sort her? What if it said that she wasn't even nice enough for Hufflepuff? That she was just such a boring, mousy little girl that none of the Houses suited her?
With a mental shove she pushed herself out of her downward spiral of thoughts and climbed into the fireplace. It was so big that she and her entire trunk fit in with enough space to shuffle from foot to foot.
"Just give Rosemerta the apron, she'll send it back," her mother advised. Mathilda nodded woodenly. It felt like her stomach was full of snakes.
"You can Floo-call us at any time, there's a nice fireplace in the - in whichever common room you end up in, I'm sure." Her mother went pink at the telling slip.
Well, Mathilda thought dully, Mother thinks I'm a Puff too. Fair enough. "Or send us a little note via owl, just to let us know you're settled."
"Katherine, do stop drawing this out," her father said impatiently. "Mathilda does still have to get to the train station once she Floos."
"I'm not drawing it out! Don't you want her to let us know how she is?" Her mother's voice was getting that edge. Mathilda and her father both winced away from it, and in doing so Mathilda saw the time. Her stomach sank into her shoes.
"Yes, of course Mother, I'll Floo-call you tonight or tomorrow," she gabbled as she grabbed a handful of Floo powder. Calming herself so that she could speak clearly, she shouted, "The Three Broomsticks, Hogshead!" and the swirl of Floo whooshed her away.
All opinions welcome!
xIlbx