Harry and the Pirates, Chapter 03
The School in Spite of Itself
by Technomad
Harry gasped at his first sight of Hogwarts, high on its hilltop. He wasn't alone, though. Every new firstie, whether Pureblood with a long history or Muggleborn, was in awe. Beside him, Dudley murmured: "Looks like I always imagined Camelot!" The boys had devoured the tales of Arthur and his knights, imagining themselves as heroes of days gone by.
Beside them, Draco grinned proudly, as though he had personally designed and built it. "The current castle is largely the work of my ancestor, Lucien Malfoy. He was a student here in the 1500s, and donated the money for the expansion, as well as doing a lot of the design work. He also designed Malfoy Manor."
Behind them, Hagrid, who was easily the largest person Harry or Dudley had ever seen, chuckled. "Come on now, kids, down to the boats! Your first time, you ride a boat to Hogwarts." Prompted, the mob of children straggled down to the water's edge, where a bunch of boats awaited them. "Four to a boat only!" Hagrid called as they began to climb on in.
Harry, Dudley, Draco and Ron all claimed a boat, and looked around for things they could use to make it move. Harry and Dudley had been out with the Black Lagoon enough to know what to do in boats, but Ron and Draco apparently hadn't ever been in one before. Just as the boat started to move under what seemed to be its own power, Harry grabbed Ron and sat him down forcefully; the redhead had been inches away from toppling into the water. "Sit down, Ron! When you're in a boat, you can tip it over by standing up!" Ron blushed as red as his hair.
When the boats came to a dock under Hogwarts, the foursome got out, and Hermione Granger came up to join them. She'd been in a boat with Vince Crabbe and Greg Goyle, and a rather pug-faced girl named Pansy Parkinson. She and Pansy exchanged dark looks; apparently they hadn't hit it off well at all. As she joined her new friends, she hissed: "That little bitch! She spent the whole time telling me how I wasn't fit to shine her shoes, because I wasn't raised in the magical world!"
"That's not just a slap at you, that's a slap at us," Harry murmured, as Dudley nodded. Both boys gave Pansy a long, measuring look. She would last about five minutes in Roanapur, with that attitude, Harry thought privately. In Roanapur, arrogant people who couldn't back up their attitudes tended to end up at the bottom of the harbor. He had also managed to head Hermione off telling everybody that she was Muggle-born. Mentally, he blessed Professor McGonagall. Knowing that neither boy was familiar with the magical world, she had given them a quick run-down on basic "dos" and "don'ts," emphasizing that Muggle-borns, and half-bloods, albeit to a lesser degree, were looked down upon by many purebloods despite having equal magical power.
Goddamned fools, thought Harry mordantly. In Roanapur, who you had been before you got there didn't much matter. People could be descended from nobility, or from gutter scum, and if they could claw themselves a place in Roanapur, they'd get respect. Nobody thought the worse of Chang for having been a policeman once, or Revy Two-Hands for having been raised in the gutters of New York City, a wretched hive of scum and villainy that made Roanapur look like Beverly Hills. Harry had heard his hometown compared to "a live-action experiment in Social Darwinism, run by a bored researcher with his finger on the fast-forward button."
Standing there with his cousin and new friends, Harry listened as Professor McGonagall, who was much sterner in public, gave them a quick rundown on Hogwarts and the House system. She wouldn't say just how they would be "Sorted," and Harry wondered how it would work. He was hoping for Slytherin, privately; Draco's sales-pitches had had more of an effect than he had realized.
When the first-years walked in, Harry heard people muttering his name, and felt another stab of irritation. If going to this school meant seven years of having to live up to a heroic deed he didn't even remember doing, he could just about do without it, he decided.
They brought out an ancient, battered wizard's hat, which began to sing a silly song. Apparently, the procedure to be Sorted involved sitting down, putting the hat on, and letting it look into your mind.
Balalaika could use that power, Harry thought. But then, she was already highly perceptive, and giving her the ability to see into others' minds would be gilding the lily.
OOO
"Dursley, Dudley!" Dudley walked up and sat down, putting the hat on. As it did with the other sortees, it came down over his eyes, and he fought the reflex that told him to take it off, quickly. Having one's eyes covered in the streets of Roanapur was not a good thing.
"Oh, what have we here?" A strange voice seemed to echo in his head. "You have had an interesting time of it! In some ways, you're more mature than our seventh-years, you know! Many of them, the purebloods in particular, are very sheltered. Interacting with you would definitely broaden their horizons, which would not be a bad thing at all! And you really want to improve yourself! For you…SLYTHERIN!"
As Dudley pulled off the hat, he noticed that his tie had gone green-and-white instead of black, and the table under the green banner with its white serpent were cheering their newest member. He went to sit down, making sure to keep some open spaces beside him. He hoped Harry would join him there.
OOO
"Granger, Hermione!"
Hermione put on the hat, and started when a strange voice sounded in her head. "Don't be frightened. I'm the Sorting Hat, and I'm going to look through your mind." An odd, not-entirely-unpleasant sensation as though her mind was being rummaged through, like a bookshelf, followed.
After a short while, the voice came again. "My dear, you have one of the finest minds I've ever had the privilege of seeing. Tell me, do you want to be the best witch you can possibly be?"
Yes. Hermione nodded vigorously. Ever since she had discovered that she was a witch, and the existence of the magical world, she had wanted to be not just a witch, but the best witch.
"Are you up for a real challenge?"
Yes! Hermione loved challenges. One reason she had been overjoyed to go to Hogwarts was that she'd been bored silly by her Muggle school; geared, as it was, to keep the slow learners going, it had presented her with very little she couldn't master standing on her head. Had she been less aware of just why rules existed, she'd have been one of the biggest hellions in her year, just from boredom and resentment at being forced to work at levels far below what she could do when she really put effort in.
"Very well then. You shall have challenges aplenty in…SLYTHERIN!"
OOO
"Potter, Harry!"
Harry sat down and put the hat on. In his mind, he heard: "Oh, you're another from that town in Thailand! And you've had an interesting time, too…even more than your cousin! Your parents murdered by a mad wizard, growing up overseas, and with such interesting people! You have great things ahead of you, you know. Do you want to be equal to them?"
Yes. Harry wanted Aunt Petunia, and Balalaika, and everybody else he knew to be proud of him. Balalaika in particular had always encouraged him to face any challenge he met "boldly, like a good soldier." He really didn't want to disappoint Balalaika.
"Do you want to be great?"
Yes!
"In that case, you may join your cousin and your new friends…and an interesting assortment they are, indeed…in SLYTHERIN!"
OOO
"Weasley, Ronald!"
In the darkness under the Hat, Ron heard: "Oh! Yet another Weasley? Is there no end to them?" A soft chuckle, then: "Just joking, Ronald. Looking into your mind, I can see some interesting things. You feel overshadowed by your brothers, don't you?"
Yes! Ron had always felt like he was overlooked by his family. Not unloved, but not much considered, and of no great weight in the scheme of things. To his parents, he seemed to matter much less than the twins, or Bill or Charlie, or even little Ginny. The people who paid the most attention to him were the twins, mostly because he was such a perfect target for every stupid practical joke they could think of. They thought they were hilarious, while Ron was getting good and tired of it. Some of their stunts, like giving him an Acid Pop that had burnt a hole through his tongue, or turning his teddy bear into a spider, had really hurt or frightened him, and nothing their parents could do seemed to stop it for long. The thought of spending years trapped in a tower with those two, with their parents a long ways away, did not appeal at all.
"Ah. I see. I can't blame you for being tired of them. They do tend to push things a good deal too far, don't they? And with them around, nobody pays any attention to you, do they?"
No, they don't! At home, it was all their mother could do to keep up with the twins' endless chaos, and she was about the only person who could keep them under any sort of control at all. She had tried putting Percy in charge, but the twins had made a dead-set at him and driven him nearly frantic. Their father wanted to help, but he was away from home with his job a great deal.
"You want to stand out from your family, as an individual? You want people to see you as you, and not just yet-another-Weasley?"
Yes, I do! Put me anywhere at all but Gryffindor! Weasleys were Gryffindors, that was one of the ineffable laws of nature. However, being a Gryffindor meant having to deal with the twins, and having Percy on his back as well. Percy meant well, but he had never related well to his brothers.
"You have friends already there, so it's SLYTHERIN!"
Ron pulled off the Hat, patted his new green-and-white tie, and walked over to the Slytherin table. At the Gryffindor table, Fred and George gaped at him like he'd grown a second head, and Ron could see them putting away some things that he was sure would have had very unpleasant surprises for him had he sat there. Percy, on the other hand, seemed frozen with shock…and then he gave Ron an unmistakable wink.
OOO
After a rather nonsensical speech by the Headmaster, who looked like the illustrations of Merlin in their King Arthur book to Harry and Dudley, and a huge feast, the whole school sang a silly song and headed off to bed. Along with the other Slytherin firsties, Harry and Dudley found themselves taken in tow by a prefect who introduced himself as Marcus Flint.
As they were marched down toward the dungeons, Harry remarked in Thai: "He looks a lot like Boris, doesn't he?" Dudley looked at their guide, then snickered. Add a scar and a few years, and Flint could, easily, pass for Balalaika's right-hand man.
The password, it transpired, was "Serpents rule," and once inside, the common room was surprisingly cozy. Before the first-years were dismissed to go to their dormitories, Flint told them that the next day, their House Head, Professor Snape, would want to talk to them individually.
Snuggling under his blankets in his lovely four-poster bed, Harry reminded himself that he'd need to write to Aunt Petunia and Balalaika as soon as he could. He could hardly wait to begin learning magic.
END Chapter 03
