A/N: Chapter three, in which Harry travels to Hogwarts and gets Sorted. Cyanigosa does not appear in this chapter, but she's slated for another appearance in chapter 4.
Harry the Blue
Tyragos kicked his feet up on the table-thing near the window in his otherwise empty compartment of the Hogwarts Express, his Transfiguration text ready to be read. His trunk was tucked away in a corner, close enough to reach if he needed something, far enough that it didn't bother him, and Hedwig had been sent to Hogwarts already, because it was cruel for an owl to be stuck inside a train for hours.
Creatures of flight should be able to stretch their wings, he'd thought as he opened his textbook to the first chapter. He had just read the first sentence when a red-haired girl opened the door and peered inside.
"Oh hello there," she said. "Do you mind if my friend and me sit here?"
"Not at all," he said, waving to the empty bench opposite him, stowing his book while was at it. It was unlikely he'd get to read in peace with company in the compartment.
"Thanks," the auburn-headed girl chirped, motioning for her friend to join them. "My name is Susan Bones, by the way," she said, extending her hand, "and this is Hannah Abbott."
"Hi," Hannah said brightly, also extending her hand.
Tyragos clasped Susan's hand, taking care to not fully enclose his fingers around it, and bowed, bringing his lips close – but not actually touching – to the back of the girl's hand. The girl blushed, a very pleased smile on her face. He repeated the motions with her friend.
"It is a pleasure to meet ladies as lovely as yourself," he said, ignoring the blushes that appeared on both their faces. "I am Ty- Harry Potter," he continued, barely managing to stop himself from saying his draconic name. Malana had said that people expected Harry Potter the Human, so they would get Harry Potter the Human. It was hard, though. He identified primarily as 'Tyragos the Blue, son of Cyanigosa', not as 'Harry Potter, child of James and Lily née Evans'. It was a minor miracle he hadn't messed up during the Diagon Alley shopping trip, and he likely only did that because malana almost constantly addressed him as Harry, rather than Tyragos.
"You're Harry Potter?" Hannah said in a higher-than-before pitch, her eyes raking his frame from head to toe. He suddenly felt self-conscious. His choice of clothing wasn't the finest he had available, but it was obviously well-cared for and of superior craftmanship.
"It's an honour," she breathed. He blushed at her tone. "Do you really live in a castle in Avalon with a pet Nundu?" she asked, and without pausing to get an answer continued, "Are you really allied with the Fae, did you subd..."
"I'm really nothing special," he said, blushing slightly, interrupting her before she went full steam ahead and likely became impossible to stop without resorting to methods he didn't want to. "I read a few of those books they wrote about my supposed adventures, but the only things that even remotely match are that my adopted mother took me to Egypt when I was eight, and to a Romanian dragon reserve when I was nine. Both were for no more than two weeks, as they were holidays."
"Right," Hannah said with a renewed blush and a disappointed expression. "So no living in Avalon with the Fae and having a pet Nundu?"
Tyragos shook his head. "No. Though I did see a Nundu once, three years ago, but I can guarantee you it wasn't in any mood to become a pet, especially mine."
Hannah pouted.
"I told you those books were lies, Han," Susan said, before an official-sounding note crept into her voice. "Mr. Potter, were you aware as the books were being published that they were?" Susan asked. "And that they contained lies?"
"Call me Harry," Tyragos said as he shook his head. "And no, I didn't."
"Sounds like a case of... what did Auntie call it again?... 'misappropriation of name or likeness for monetary gain'," Susan said, adding a pompous note to her official-ish voice when she started quoting.
"Who is your aunt then, Ms. Bones?" he asked. "Obviously a legal or paralegal-type to use that kind of language, but..."
"Call me Susan," Susan said with an impish grin. "My aunt is Amelia Bones, Head of the DMLE. Department of Magical Law Enforcement," she added when Tyragos just looked at her blankly.
"That sounds like a pretty big shadow to live in, Susan," he said. Susan grimaced.
"Don't I know it. Up to now it's almost always been 'Madam Bones' niece' this and 'you're Amelia's relative, right?' that, and it's driving me up the wall," she said with not a little bite to her voice. "For stuff like this, however," she continued after she'd calmed down a little, "Aunt Amelia would be your best bet if you wanted monetary compensation, or to take the books out of circulation."
"I'll write her some time this week then, or write malana to do it in my stead," Tyragos mused.
"Malana?" Hannah asked. "What's that mean?"
"It liberally translates to 'mother' in my mother's native tongue," he replied, inwardly cursing himself for slipping into Thalassian. Hannah nodded her comprehension, a light blush still dusting her cheeks.
"It's a pretty word," Hannah said. "Flows off the tongue like water."
Tyragos nodded."The entire language is like that."
"Can you give an example?" Hannah asked excitedly.
Tyragos considered it. Malana had told him not to stand out, but expectations were already so high for him due to those novels that proficiency of a language no-one else spoke would be okay, wouldn't it?
"Sure," he said, not seeing the harm in sharing more of the language. Additionally, maybe they would think it so beautiful that they would be enraptured by that and skip asking the uncomfortable question of 'where is it spoken?'. It was a distant hope, but these were Human pre-teens and malana said that they were often easily distracted by shiny things, just as – admittedly – all children were, even draconic ones. Perhaps... Yes, that phrase should work. "Anu belore dela'na."
"Almost as pretty as you," Hannah said, her voice once again taking on that breathy quality. It rather unnerved him, truth be told. Was this what a fangirl was like? "What does it mean?"
"Essentially, it means 'The eternal sun guides us'," he said.
"I have to agree with Hannah on this, it does sound very beautiful," Susan said. "If I wasn't planning to go into law, I would have liked to learn it."
"What's stopping you?" Tyragos asked curiously, rather glad that his gambit, minor though it was, had worked.
"Law doesn't mix with other things that well," Susan said. "The time investment required to be any good at it is rather ridiculous. It's a prestigious career, so the benefits are worth it, but it's still very time-consuming."
"I can imagine," Tyragos said with a thoughtful hum. "Personally, I'm not sure what to do yet when I graduate. Probably research or spell development of some kind."
He turned to Hannah. "How about you, Ms. Abbott?"
"Call me Hannah," Hannah said absently, biting her lip. "And I'm not sure yet too. Part of me wants to be a musician, part of me wants to start the first magical day-care, part of me wants to be a Healer."
Tyragos raised an eyebrow. "All noble pursuits, Hannah," he said. He wanted to add more, but at that moment the door slid open and revealed a cart, pushed by a plump witch wearing maroon robes with a stylized 'H' on the chest and sleeves. The cart itself was laden with sweets of various kinds, and Tyragos' stomach took this as its queue to rumble, earning a giggle from his two female companions.
"You want something from the trolley, dear?" the witch asked, gesturing towards the proverbial mountain of sweets on the large cart.
"A little of everything, please," he said, grabbing his purse. "Mother did not take to sweets or allowed me, so I want to at least try it all and find out why."
"Very well, dear," the cart-witch said happily, grabbing a handful of small paper bags, all adorned with the same stylized 'H', from the interior of the cart and loading portions of everything into. "That'll be a Galleon, two Sickles, and a Knut."
After exchanging the money for the bags, Tyragos walked back into the compartment with his chest and head obscured by the bags of sweets. He deposited all of them on the unused bench, and carefully inspected some of the boxes the bags contained.
"You've really never had sweets, have you?" Susan asked, raising an eyebrow at his close inspection of several containers of sweets.
"No," Tyragos replied without turning. "Malana considered them to be nothing but detrimental and wouldn't allow me any, except for bites of chocolate whenever I was struck by a fever, which wasn't very often."
"You poor thing," Hannah said sadly, then opened some bags that she apparently recognized immediately. "This one is Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans. Keep in mind that when they say 'every flavour', they mean every flavour. There's the more common flavours of raspberry, strawberry, vanilla, and apple, but also flavours like sprouts, spinach, cauliflower, pepper, liver, and tripe, all the way to the much more yucky flavours of snot and earwax."
"So each bag is an adventure, is it?" Tyragos asked.
Hannah nodded, a small grin on her face that somehow made the light blush she'd been wearing the entire time looked better. "Yeah, for sure," she said, then held up a rectangular-ish box from a different bag. "These are Chocolate Frogs. Like the name implies, they're frogs made from chocolate. However, unlike other sweets, these frogs are enchanted to make a break for it. Why they did this, I don't know, but swiftly biting off the head 'kills' them. Each Chocolate Frog box also contains a collectible trading card featuring important witches and wizards from history. Think of names like Merlin, Paracelsus, Flamel, Aggrippa, Dumbledore, and Morgana."
Tyragos nodded, and Hannah steamed on. "These are the very popular Sugar Quills. They're multi-purpose in that they're fully functional quills when the writing tip is dipped in ink, but the rest of the quill is made from sugar so that nibbling on the quill when you're thinking hard on something is tasty, rather than feathery."
"Useful," Tyragos said, appraising one of the white quills. "I can see why they're popular."
Hannah grinned. "They certainly are," she agreed. "Next, there's one of my personal favourites, the Cauldron Cake, which is exactly what it sounds like. Their variety of possible flavours is second only to Bertie Botts', but unlike the beans, they don't mix flavours in one bag."
"Someone's got a sweet tooth," Tyragos said teasingly. Why else would she know so much about sweets?
Hannah blushed again. "Susan's got just as much a sweet tooth as I," Hannah countered.
"Guilty as charged," Susan said with a congenial nod before a small grin appeared on her face. "I, however, don't know enough about the sweets I eat to talk for ten minutes nearly non-stop about them."
Hannah stuck out her tongue, earning a laugh from both other occupants. "So what house do you think you'll be in?" she said in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
"I don't know," Tyragos said, going with the flow. "Malana wouldn't tell me the characteristics of each House to keep my opinion of each of them unbiased. She's heavy on maintaining an open mind."
"Very wise," Susan said with a nod. "But your ignorance cannot stand."
At these words, the pair of girls launched into a long explanation of the Houses of Hogwarts and a little bit of the known history of each, though Tyragos did notice that they made an effort to keep personal biases out of their story, a fact for which he was thankful.
Hufflepuff was the house of the hardworking and the loyal, and sounded a great place to be in, but he wasn't too sure about the whole 'friends with everyone' deal. He didn't make friends very easily.
Gryffindor was the house of the brave, chivalrous, and determined. This, too, sounded like a great place, but the stories the pair shared told him that 'thinking things through' was not in the vocabulary of the common Gryffindor, and he had been taught to always think things through.
Ravenclaw was the house of the intelligence, learning, and wisdom. To a scholar, it was heaven incarnate, but it seemed too good to be true. The girls had literally nothing bad to say about Ravenclaw House, which set him on edge as everything that was good had a bad side. Balance was one of the première tenets on which he had been raised, and to encounter a lack of such meant that they were just more adept at hiding it, or it wasn't immediately obvious.
Slyhterin was the house of the cunning and ambitious, a very admirable combination. He frowned as Susan and Hannah said that it had been overrun by pureblood supremacists since the late eighteenth century, and that cunning was very few and far between according to their parental figures, and that familial power was the defining trait these days, rather than personal accomplishment.
It wasn't very hard to deduce that neither liked Slytherin very much.
"So which house do you think you will end up in?" he asked of the pair after they'd stopped talking.
"We're not entirely sure, no one is until they get Sorted, but we're hoping for Hufflepuff to keep both our families' tradition intact," Hannah said. "The Abbotts and Bones' have been Hufflpuffs as far back as anyone can remember, even my muggleborn mother was a 'Puff," Hannah finished with a grin.
"No non-Hufflepuffs whatsoever?"
"Nope," Hannah said, popping the 'p'. "At least, not that's been recorded, much like every other family with such a tradition. Some even go to the extreme of disowning family members for not being in the 'right' house," she added with a shrug-shudder hybrid. "Crazy, isn't it?"
"It is," he agreed. "Things like that make me glad that I'm the last of my line and that there is zero familial pressure for me to go to a particular house."
"Not that it would have mattered," Susan said with a snort. "The Potters were notoriously multi-house. The last ten generations have seen six Slytherins, five Ravenclaws, seven Hufflpuffs, and ten Gryffindors, not counting marriages, and none of them have been disowned or otherwise publicly ostracised."
Tyragos raised an eyebrow. "That's good to know," he said. It pleased him that, at the very least, his family was recorded as being open-minded. He'd probably never know for certain, but this put something in the back of his mind at ease that he didn't know was under tension. "How do you know that so off the top of your head?"
"As Heiress to the Bones, one of the oldest families of magical Britain, I am expected to know not only the history of my own family, but also at least a passing familiarity with that of others so that I may bring the greatest glory to the Bones," Susan said with only a minor grimace. "I've been studying familial history since I was four, like practically every Heir and Heiress in my situation."
"Sounds like a lot of work," he said. "Being an Heir."
He steadfastly ignored the fact that, according to Wizard's Nobility, he was an Heir as well, technically. He liked learning, but he had limits.
"It is, but fortunately there are child-safe charms to temporarily improve absorption of dry facts. Banned while at Hogwarts, of course, but in interfamilial politics no shortcut is prohibited beyond what the family is comfortable with."
Once again, Tyragos' reply, which would have been something along the lines of 'where can I learn those charms' was interrupted by the door opening. Instead of the cart-witch, there was a pale, blond boy standing outside their compartment. He was flanked by two dumb-looking children that towered over the blond between them by at least a full head, and were nearly one and a half times as wide. Unlike some people he'd seen in Scarborough and York, the few times malana took him out of the cave they called home, this wasn't flabby fat, but there was a hint of tension that said that, while there was a large amount of fat present on their bodies, it was supported by a good layer of muscle.
The blond, on the other hand, was rather scrawny and pale. His frame was slim, his clothes were of the type to scream 'my family is richer than yours', and what little Tyragos could see of the boy's physique beneath the clothing told him that this boy had never physically exercised.
"It's true, isn't it?" the blond demanded in a drawling voice, looking at Tyragos with a lot of interest. "They're all saying that Harry Potter is on the train and in this compartment. So it's you, isn't it?"
Tyragos narrowed his eyes. "So what if I am?"
"You'll soon find that some wizarding families are much better than others," he said pompously. "Like mine. I'm Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, and I can help you find the right sort."
He extended his hand, and Tyragos regarded the appendage coolly, his mind whirling with simulations and consequences of every option he had open to him. It took him two long minutes to reach a conclusion, two minutes in which Malfoy's face started colouring slightly as he was reduced to a signpost more and more with each passing second.
"I am confident I am capable of finding the 'right sort' autonomously, thank you," he eventually said with ice in his voice. Malfoy's hand remained ungrasped.
Malfoy's cheeks coloured pink as he balled his hand while it dropped back to his side. "I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," Malfoy said slowly, trying for a hint of danger in his voice and failing miserably. Malana could be more threatening on a good day, let alone her bad ones. "Unless you're a bit politer, you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't know what was good for them, either. Associating with this riffraff," his eyes slid over to Hannah, leaving absolutely no doubt who he meant, "will rub off on you."
"I remain confident that I am capable of gathering my own group of friends and allies, Draco," he said, folding his hands over his lap, palms down. "Additionally, I am currently quite comfortable with my chosen company."
Malfoy's cheeks turned red, his eyes narrowed, and a slight tremor started in his shoulders. Tyragos gave a vicious internal smile at the success of his multi-layer insult. Outwardly, he appeared the definition of haughty serenity, just the way malana had taught him.
"Watch it, Potter," Draco muttered, his hand clenching and unclenching without apparent conscious thought. "You'll get yours."
Malfoy stormed off without a further word, his two lackeys following him.
Tyragos placed his hands behind his head as he leaned back into his seat, his earlier victorious smile now once again pasted on his face. Susan and Hannah looked at him with a glint in their eyes he couldn't readily identify.
"I'm not sure that was entirely wise, Harry," Susan said cautiously. "The Malfoys are powerful, even if the only reason they're out of Azkaban, the wizarding prison, is because they knew to pay the right people and claim they were bespelled."
"I'll deal with it as the time comes," Tyragos said calmly. "His general demeanour, not to mention that speech about some families being better than others, told me he was not someone I wanted to associate with, and I made it abundantly clear to him that this remained the case." He hummed thoughtfully. "Why exactly was he under the impression he was better than others?"
"The Malfoys are part of the Pureblood Supremacist camp," Susan explained with well-hidden distaste. If he hadn't had draconic senses he doubted he'd have picked it up. "They who believe that purebloods – those with multiple consecutive generations of wizards and witches on both sides – are better than anyone else by virtue of their blood. Hannah here is considered a 'half-blood', since her mother is a witch born to Muggle parents while her father is 'of pure blood'. I'm a pure-blood, while you, too, are a half-blood due to your mother, though he didn't seem to care about your blood-status." She folded her arms across her chest.
"The only reason he didn't outright attack you was because my Aunt is looking for any excuse whatsoever to bring the Malfoys to justice, as she knows he was a Death Eater in the war and got off."
Tyragos nodded in understanding. "And my decision is reinforced."
"We will arrive at Hogsmeade station in approximately one hour. All students are reminded that school uniforms are required wear before entering Hogwarts' halls."
All three looked at each other in surprise at the sudden announcement. None of them had noticed that the sky outside had been darkening steadily. "I'll wait in the hallway while you get changed," Tyragos said, suiting action to word. Ten minutes later, he switched places with the girls and simply threw his black school robe over his other clothing.
They talked about things of little consequence in the remaining hour as the train continued down the tracks towards Hogsmeade station. Tyragos departed the train with his two new friendly allies – possibly friends? – close behind him.
"Firs' years o'er 'ere!" a large man with a shaggy mane of hair and an equally shaggy beard said. "Firs' years this way!"
The trio approached the man and Tyragos had to revise his opinion. He was not just large, he was massive. He estimated that this man was equal to slightly more than two-thirds of malana'draconherleft front leg, and malana'draconwas a Wyrm, not an itty bitty Drake like Tyragos would be in a few years. The leg in question was a good sixteen feet tall.
He seemed friendly, though. He had a broad, happy grin on his face that looked natural despite the craggyness of his face, his eyes were gleaming with mirth, and he carried himself with joviality.
"This ever'one?" he asked loudly in the direction of the platform after all the first years had crowded around him.
"Aye, Hagrid," came the response from somewhere. "Off wit' ye. McGonagall is waitin'."
"Excellent," he said, then turned back to the children. "The name's Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. I'll be guidin' you to the castle proper. Follo' me."
Hagrid led them down a twisting and winding stone path in the pitch-black darkness of the Scottish night. Tyragos could barely make out the trees lining the path, even with his better-than-Human eyes.
"Yeh'll get yer firs' sigh' o' Hogwarts in a min," Hagrid said at the same moment that the group approached a corner.
"Oooh," most of the group exclaimed when they spotted what laid on the other end of the corner. Despite himself, Tyragos was impressed. This was a proper castle, the like malana described in her stories. Its many parapets and towers gave a larger-than-life impression that was very imposing, and the illuminated windows – most of them stained with some seriously detailed artwork of dragons, merfolk, and other creatures – sent rays of light to the dark lake below, lighting up the black like that one time he'd seen skyglow up in the polar circle last year.
One such light illuminated a dozen or so boats lying in wait at the shoreline.
"No more 'n four to a boat," Hagrid bellowed. "An' keep yer hands out of the water."
"What happens if we don't?" someone asked.
"In the best case, nuthin'," Hagrid said with a shrug. "In the worst case, a nearby Grindylow could see your hand a tasty meal. This par' o' the lake isn't meant fer swimmin'."
"What's a Grindylow?" another asked.
"Nasty buggers, that's what. Them's live mostly off algae and other fish, but are known to enjoy a bite o' human now an' then. They're crossbreeds of magical angler fish and octopi."
"Ew," a bushy-haired first-generation girl said with a shudder, swiftly stepping into a boat and hugging herself tightly. "That's just gross."
"The wizard tha' did it wasn' all there," Hagrid agreed. "Now come on, we ain' got all day."
Tyragos, Susan, and Hannah clambered into a boat, where they were joined by a boy who hadn't started shedding baby fat yet, beating out a gangly red-head – Ron, if memory served – by a few seconds.
The boats shuddered once, and set off for the castle.
Tyragos noted with surprise that their boats appeared to glide over the lake, as the surface was as smooth as glass despite the presence of multiple boats that should have left waves in their wakes. The castle appeared to grow as they boats approached, casting the new students in an eerie light.
"Keep yer heads down," Hagrid said, who did not bend downwards. "Yer heads are safe from the rock, but the ivy here can do a pretty number on yer heads."
Most students saw fit to follow Hagrids advice – even Malfoy, he noted absently –, and Tyragos saw why when the boats sailed underneath the ivy. At first glance, the ivy itself was fairly normal for ivy that had existed in such a magic-rich environment for its entire life. When one looked deeper, however, things departed from the normal. This ivy had needles. Not thorns, but needles, each a sickly purple that screamed of poison, though thankfully the needles disappeared just above Tyragos' head even when he sat upright.
He still ducked though. His skin was rather fragile in all of his humanoid forms, and he wasn't very keen on subjecting himself to poison.
After the boats passed the ivy, they passed through a dark, underground tunnel that doubtlessly took them underneath the castle before they eventually docked at a small underground harbour, at which point they disembarked onto gravel. Tyragos spotted a toad – a leg-band clearly marking it as a pet – making a break for it and swiftly snatched it up.
"Found: one toad. Any takers?" he said loudly, holding the toad above his head.
"Trevor!" the fourth person from their boat said. "I thought I'd lost you again."
"Everyone after me!" Hagrid bellowed, illuminating a pathway hewn into the rockface with a hand-held lantern. The pathway soon turned into a stone staircase that led to a pair of large oak doors that they crowded around. "Everyone 'ere?" Hagrid yelled over the crowd. "You there, yeh still got yeh toad?"
Receiving no reply to the negative, he nodded and knocked three times on the doors, the sound echoing in the silence.
As if someone was waiting on the other side, the door cracked open immediately, revealing a black-haired witch in very sensible emerald-green robes. Her lips were rather thin, her eyes sharp, and his sensitive ears picked up the light tapping of her foot. She had been waiting on the other side.
"The firs'-years, Professor McGonagall," Hagrid said.
"Thank you Hagrid. I will take them from here."
The witch pulled the door wide open, allowing the new first-years to see the large entrance hall. It was bigger than most four-person family homes he'd seen in their rare trips away from the caves, and was appropriately lit with flaming torches above head-height – their head-height, anyway – at regular intervals. A door interrupted the masonry at the far end of the room, while a smaller one did the same on their left. A large marble staircase led away into the heights of the castle on their right. The ceiling was high enough that the light of the torches was just enough to allow Tyragos' eyes to see it, and it was a fairly standard piece for a castle built when Hogwarts: A History said it was.
The witch, Professor McGonagall, led them through the smaller door into a small, empty chamber that was barely large enough to fit them all. "Welcome to Hogwarts," McGonagall said. "Soon, you will enter through these doors into the Great Hall to be Sorted and join the start-of-term banquet with your house. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because your house will be like your family throughout your stay here. You will eat together, you will sleep together, you will learn and shed sweat together.
"The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and its fair share of outstanding wizards raised within their halls. While you attend Hogwarts, your triumphs will award you house points, while rule-breaking will ensure you lose house points. At the end of the year, the House Cup is awarded to the house with the most points.
"The Sorting Ceremony will begin in a few minutes. I suggest you tidy your appearance," she said, casting a few pointed looks at the assembled children. "I will return when we are ready to begin."
She turned and swept from the room. Harry turned to Hannah. "Do you know how we are sorted?"
"No," Hannah said. "It's traditionally been kept a secret to increase the suspense. I have been told that its a test of personality, but nothing else."
"So no magic used at all?" he asked at a slightly raised volume, steadfastly ignoring the whisper from the bushy-haired girl close by that began reciting spells at a furious pace the moment McGonagall left. It wasn't out of a sense of altruism, but more a desire to quell the students in order to reduce his headache. Her whispering had been picked up by a few people, who started whispering themselves, and before anyone really figured what happened they were talking normally.
The acoustics of this room were... decidedly sub-par, and the soundwaves swiftly started to resonate, amplifying the volume and prompting the students to talk even louder to beat the resonance, which increased the volume of the resonance, etcetera.
Tyragosa had used only a little bit of magic to make his voice penetrate people's ears without having to raise the volume unduly, and his question had the desired effect. Everyone fell silent.
"If there is, we'd be thoroughly out on our butts," Susan said into the sudden silence, blushing slightly as all the attention fell on her. "I've never cast any magic yet, nor has Hannah, and I seriously doubt that the vast majority of muggleborn learned spells in the time between their letter and the train, since the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery is in effect the moment you accept your place at Hogwarts."
A reply was, for the third time that day, cut off by outside events. This time, it wasn't doors opening but people screaming. "What the –," someone said, pointing a shaky finger at the wall.
Tyragos raised an eyebrow at the sight, using years of meditative exercises to clamp down on a very similar reaction. Twenty actual ghosts had emerged from the wall, and they seemed to be arguing. "Forgive and forget, I say," a ghost that could be described only as 'fat, short thirteenth-century monk' said. "We ought to give him a second chance –"
"My dear friar," a ghost wearing a ruff and tights said with a shake of the head. "Have we not deigned to give Peeves more chances than he deserves? He's not even a real ghost, as you all know, and he ensures our reputation plummets by proxy – I say, what are you all doing here?"
"We're the new first-years," Tyragos answered after a moment of silence.
"Ooh, it's that time of the year already isn't it?" the friar said. "About to be Sorted, aren't you?"
Tyragos nodded.
Click.
Tyragos trained his eyes on the door, which McGonagall was in the process of opening.
"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff," the friar said jovially. "My old house, you know?"
"Move along," McGonagall said sharply. "The Sorting is about to start."
The ghosts floated away through the wall into the hall that McGonagall had just come from. When the last ghost had left, she turned to the students. "Form a line of pairs," she said. "And follow me."
Tyragos paired up with Susan, while Hannah stood next to that boy with the ever-escaping toad, and entered the hall behind the bushy-haired witch that was indirectly responsible for driving him to a near-splitting headache. He didn't hold it against her much, she was just as nervous as the others – even himself, though he hid it better –, and everyone had different coping mechanisms.
The line entered the Great Hall, and Tyragos felt his jaw drop. It weren't the sheer amount of people present – several hundred –, or the golden cutlery, silver plates, and crystal glasses at every seat, nor the decorations – rather standard fare, truth be told, banners with the coat of arms of each house over each house table and a banner with the Hogwarts crest behind the staff table –, nor the seemingly non-existent lighting, lacking a chandelier and torches on the walls as far as he could see, but rather the ceiling.
"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," the bushy-haired witch in front of him whispered as they were led to the front. "I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."
It was an extremely well-done enchantment, as even he could not see the ceiling beneath the enchantment. If he didn't know better – a ceiling-less castle would be a stain on the reputation of everyone involved in its construction – he would have doubted that a ceiling existed at all.
McGonagall placed a rickety four-legged stool in front of the staff table and placed an old, dilapidated hat on it. Tyragos raised an eyebrow when he noticed that everyone was staring at the hat plus stool. He wondered what was going on when a tear along the hat's rim opened up and the hat started singing.
A bloody singing hat.
The song itself was rather standard fare. Some words about itself and its function in Hogwarts, enumerating the core qualities of each of the Four Houses. He was sort-of worried about the words 'there's nothing in your head I can't see', though. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the Hat was allowed to tell the Headmaster everything it saw. The other option was that the Hat wasn't allowed to talk about it except to the student under heavy privacy wards or in the open with the permission of the head of the family. Wizard's Nobility mentioned how jealously the old wizarding families guarded their knowledge, so either the familial heads would wait until after the Sorting, or they wouldn't send their children here without guarantee that familial secrets remained secret. Tyragos didn't want people knowing of his non-human nature just yet, if at all.
McGonagall produced a large scroll of parchment, and unfurled it. "When I call your name, step forward, sit on the stool, and place the Sorting Hat on your head to be sorted.
"Abbott, Hannah!"
Hannah stumbled forward, her twin pigtails waving in the air behind her, and sat down on the stool. In a rather comical display, the hat fell right over her eyes and nose. She had to wait but a moment before the hat loudly proclaimed, "HUFFLEPUFF!"
The table on the far right cheered as Hannah, a victorious grin firmly in place, placed the hat back on the stool and ran off to meet her new House. Ten seconds later, Susan joined her in much the same manner.
Boot, Terry became the first of the new set of Ravenclaws, swiftly followed by Brocklehurst, Mandy.
The Sorting continued, and Tyragos tuned most of it out. He only noted that the boy who hadn't yet shed most of his baby fat was called Neville Longbottom – Gryffindor after four minutes of deliberations –, Malfoy went to Slytherin, and the bushy-haired witch was called Hermione Granger and Sorted into Gryffindor.
Eventually, McGonagall reached the 'p', swiftly sorting the Indian-looking Patil, Padma into Ravenclaw and Patil, Parvati into Gryffindor. Tyragos drew himself up. His name was due any moment, and he didn't think he'd be Sorted as 'Tyragos', given who the letter was addressed to.
"Perks, Sally-Anne," McGonagall said, and the crowd quieted after she was Sorted into Hufflepuff. It didn't last. "Potter, Harry."
Urgent whispers broke out, all of them quite audible to him. "The Harry Potter?"
"Do you think he'll sign my copy of Harry Potter and the Well of Life?" another said excitedly.
Tyragos snorted. Not bloody likely.
He walked forwards, not a single falter in his step. Even if it hadn't been cultivated by his own machinations, he had an image to maintain, and until he could supplant it with an image formed from his own actions, going against the existing image – which wasn't all that bad, to be honest – would be needlessly antagonistic.
He sat down and placed the hat on his head, trying his best to keep up the rudimentary mental barriers he had since he was four.
After a minute or two, Tyragos could hear the sound of a throat being cleared, but his ears didn't register anything, as if it was transmitted directly into his mind.
"A very curious mind you have there, Mr. Potter. No small amount of courage, quite a bit of talent, no small drive to learn, though information-avarice would be a better term, and if I weren't a thousand years old I'd have keeled over in shock at your past. As it is, I've seen weirder.
"You're quite correct in your assumption about me passing on knowledge, by the by," the Hat continued. Tyragos breathed a sigh of relief. His secret would be safe. "The familial heads of yesteryear demanded that I couldn't share knowledge gleaned from the heads of their children with the Headmaster. Guess the paranoia of old magical families works out sometimes, eh?"
"That's good to know," Tyragos said softly to the hat's rim, barely moving his mouth. "It would have been trouble if that got out. Anything else you feel like sharing?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. I never thought I'd actually get to use this phrase I learned from a very peculiar Human that was Sorted a few hundred years ago who graciously allowed the sharing of this language. Fortunately for you, this language and his command thereof was deemed a family secret, and so I couldn't divulge it without his Head's permission. Since you are a speaker of this language and, more importantly, I haven't divulged the name of this student or what criteria ISorted him to Gryffindor on, I can use it as much as I want to."
"And the phrase is?"
"Bal'a dash, Dracon'bandu."
Whatever he'd been expecting, this wasn't it. His thought process ground to a halt as the words entered his mind. The meaning of the words – 'greetings, blue dragon' – registered next. Only after this had happened did he fully realize the implications of these words. The Hat knew Thalassian. Ergo, there had been someone from his mother's original world here before. The words slipped out before he could stop himself.
"What the fuck?"
"Let's move on to the actual Sorting now, shall we?" the Hat said happily, ignoring Tyragos' whirling mind as he tried to process the bombshell the Hat had just dropped. The Hat could speak Thalassian. "You have a difficult mind, Mr. Potter. Or is it Tyragos?"
Tyragos tried valiantly to refocus on the current situation – the Hat could speak Thalassian! –, his accompanying headshake making the Hat fall in front of his mouth as if he'd planned it. "Tyragos to malana and to my own mind," he answered, rather absently. "Harry Potter to the mages, wizards, here."
"I see," the Hat said. "You would do well in all four Houses, truth be told. You have the cunning for Slytherin, the chivalry and courage of Gryffindor, a work ethic that would make any Hufflepuff want to imitate you, and a drive to learn that would make even Lady Rowena shudder in envy."
"But I'm not really that ambitious, unless one counts getting through life as an ambition, nor do I feel really brave, or particularly amenable to making friends."
"If everyone was required to exhibit all virtues of each house, absolutely no-one would get Sorted, ever," the Hat said with what sounded like a snort. "If I were to exclude one virtue from each house, the houses of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw would be the most populous with a population of less than a percent of their current sizes, but Gryffindor and Slytherin would not nearly be as well off. Children of eleven don't possess the combination of chivalry and bravery and courage, nor cunning and ambition, unless their childhoods have been... highly unusual. There is also the additional fact that simply possessing the values doesn't necessarily mean one is Sorted to that house. When multiple houses are an option for a student, as it is in most cases, I look for the virtues the person in question values. For example, you possess a drive to learn similar to the one possessed by Rowena back in the day, but you also have a sense of chivalry and honour that ties you between the Raven's Nest, the Badger's Den, and the Lion's Pride. However, while you value the virtues of the House of Lions, you are far from enamoured of their consequences. Recklessness in particular is something you detest."
Tyragos nodded. That sounded very much like him. One of his first memories was malana admonishing him for not taking proper precautions – such as mattresses waiting on the floor –before he climbed the wall of the cave that was his room. Over the years that he'd grown up under malana's care, this had only been reinforced, Particularly when he tried his hand at Summon Water Elemental, the most docile of its kind.
To say he'd messed up and could have prevented it with proper preparations was understating things.
"Then the badgers or the ravens?"
"Yup," the Hat replied. "The badgers are a friendly folk, honourable and very loyal. The ravens, on the other hand, are more reclusive and interested in learning. There is, however, a qualification that makes Ravenclaw both the best and worst house for you. The Nest houses the intelligent, but rarely the smart or open-minded. From a personal perspective, Ravenclaw would be the worst fit of all the houses, despite being perfect at a superficial glance. From the perspective of Hogwarts in its entirety, Ravenclaw would be best because you'd encourage the other students to open their minds by simply being you. Hufflepuff is more neutral to you, neither very good nor very bad. You'd find friends in Hufflepuff, but you don't really need to be in Hufflepuff to make friends with Hufflepuffs, especially since you met Ms. Bones and Ms. Abbott on the train to give you a way in without appearing creepy."
"I suppose that's true," Tyragos said thoughtfully. "But does Hufflepuff have its own library like I suspect Ravenclaw does?"
The Hat laughed. "No it doesn't, and yes, Ravenclaw does. I guess that makes the choice for you, doesn't it, Tyragos of the Blue Dragonflight?"
"It does," Tyragos said with a nod. "Ravenclaw, please."
"Then so be it. RAVENCLAW!"
– – – –
Thalassian:
Bal'a dash: Greetings
*Bandu: blue. 'Bandu' is canon (it's in the random words list when non-Blood Elves read words you type with Thalassian enabled in-game), but the meaning is all mine.
As you may or may not have inferred from the Sorting Hat's last sentence, in Thalassian adjectives follow the noun they qualify. Dracon'bandu therefore translates to 'blue dragon', but the literal translation is 'dragon blue'.
– – – –
A/N: Try to guess who the Human the Hat learned Thalassian from is. You have all the hints you'll get except for two: time between the two dimensions doesn't correlate one to one, and the Human in question is a canon character as of 2015/06/01 (y/m/d).
As mentioned before, Tyragos is, like all children, easily distracted by shiny things. Tyragos' definition of 'shiny' just happens to be 'information'.