The door swung open just as Hagrid lowered his fist. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood before them. She had a very stern face and scanned the first years gathered on the steps before her with a cool gaze.
"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," announced Hagrid, clasping his hands proudly behind his back.
Professor McGonagall. Aurora recognized the professor immediately from the stories Cedric had told her. He had always spoken rather fondly of her but was also quick to note how strict she could be, especially, it seemed, during the Quidditch season.
Aurora loved her already.
"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."
She swung the door wide. The entrance hall was absolutely enormous. The stone walls were glowing with flaming torches, spread out so that their shadows danced around the room. The ceiling was much too high to make out clearly, and the grand marble staircase facing them opened up to reveal the dizzying upper floors of the castle.
Aurora was in absolute awe. Out of all the stories she had been told, from Cedric or Amos or even Marius' occasional recollection, not a single one had been able to correctly capture the beauty of seeing Hogwarts in person.
The first years followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Aurora could hear the buzz of intermingling voices from a large doorway to her left, which made her stomach flutter even more with nerves. The rest of the school must have arrived during the first year's boat journey. Aurora could only imagine the faces of Cedric and all his friends, waiting for the first years to make their grand entrance. Just as she felt she was going to burst, Professor McGonagall instead ushered the first years into a small, empty chamber off to the right. They crowded in, squeezed a bit too tightly for anyone's comfort, and peered around nervously.
"Welcome to Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall started, a small smile blooming on her face as she glanced around at the first years. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room."
Hermione grabbed Aurora's hand again nervously. She squeezed back, never taking her focus off of McGonagall, who continued.
"The four houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you're at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours."
"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting. This will be your first impression."
Professor McGonagall scanned the first years, as if examining them for any flaws, her gaze lingering unabashedly on the buttoning of Neville's cloak and Ron's still dirt-smudged nose. Aurora moved to pick nervously at her nails, only stopping herself once she remembered what Marius would have said about the habit.
"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."
She left the chamber in a whoosh of her cloak. Aurora let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.
"Sorting? What exactly does that mean?" Aurora overheard a blonde whisper to her friend nearby. Realizing she didn't have a clue either, she nudged her way to get closer.
"I dunno." The blonde's friend, a girl with inky black hair, replied lazily. She seemed completely unbothered by the entire ordeal. Aurora recognized them as the pair of girls that had run arm-in-arm across the train platform, but now it was only the blonde who had her hair in a neat bun; the other girl's hair had been mussed and fell just above her shoulders in a short bob. "My brother wouldn't tell me much."
"Do you think it's a test?" the blonde asked, biting her lip. "Because I didn't read any texts yet."
A test? Oh, Merlin, no.
Anytime Aurora had asked Marius about her upcoming Sorting she had been brushed away, told that there was nothing to prepare for and not to ask so many ridiculous questions, she was raised to be sorted into Hufflepuff, end of conversation. Or she had been laughed at, like when she had asked Amos after he had had a little too much holiday sherry. He had just told her he didn't want to ruin all the fun, and that she'd have to wait and see before tapping his nose knowingly. Cedric had been more upfront: he told her she would have to make a speech all about herself to the rest of the school, and the houses would have to fight over who wanted her the most.
But what if no house wants me?
She gulped at the thought. Was it possible to be a house-less loser? Is that something Hogwarts would allow, or was there a fifth, lesser-known house for those who were cast aside like dirty socks? Suddenly, the room felt much too small and warm.
At least everyone else looks scared too, Aurora thought, glancing around at the sea of worried faces. Hermione was the only one talking, mumbling something too softly for Aurora to hear at a dizzying pace. Harry looked like he was about the be sick, Ron looked as pale as a sheet, and Neville had his eyes squeezed shut. Even the confident blonde from the train - Draco - was concerned, his eyes darting around the room. When they met Aurora's he stood up straighter and smirked, feigning confidence under her gaze.
Suddenly, several yelps came from the back of the room. Aurora jumped, looking around for the cause of the commotion.
"No way -"
She gasped in disbelief. About twenty or so ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Aurora remembered Cedric mentioning the 'ghosts of Hogwarts', but she had laughed it off as one of the tall tales used to keep the first years from wandering the halls at night. But here they were, pearly-white and slightly transparent, gliding across the room as they talked to one another, hardly glancing at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. What looked like a fat little monk was saying: "Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance -"
"My dear, Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost - I say, what are you all doing here?"
A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had noticed the terrified group of first years.
Nobody answered.
"New students! First years!" cheered the Fat Friar. He did a double-somersault mid-air before leaning back, his hands resting across his stomach. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"
A few people nodded mutely.
"Splendid! Hope to see you in Hufflepuff! My old house, you know," said the Friar. His silvery eyes met Aurora's and his pudgy face burst into a grin. "Well, hello there! I never forget a face, and I spy another Fawley, come to grace the Hufflepuff halls!"
Aurora suddenly felt every eye in the room turn to see who the Friar was talking to, and she blushed a bright pink at the sudden attention.
"Right good lot, the Fawleys!" he continued, not even noticing Aurora's embarrassment. "Long line of some of the best Hufflepuffs, if I dare to be so bold!"
"Move along now," interrupted McGonagall, cutting off the Friar before he could unintentionally embarrass Aurora more. "The Sorting Ceremony is about to begin."
Professor McGonagall watched as one by one the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall, muttering to each other once again. The Fat Friar gave Aurora a little flutter of a wave before disappearing out of sight.
"Thought your last name was Rosier?" Ron asked. He must've snuck closer while the ghosts were drifting away; Aurora hadn't even heard him approach.
"It is," she sighed. "My mum and her family, they're the Fawleys. But I got my dad's last name."
Ron let out a 'hmm' at this, turning back to Harry.
Aurora took a deep breath. Barely ten minutes at Hogwarts and she was already being grouped in as 'just another Fawley'. She had expected it, or at least Marius had trained her to, always talking about the 'great Fawley legacy' and how deep their bloodline ran throughout the 'hallowed halls of Hufflepuff'.
She just didn't expect it to happen so soon. And she didn't realize how much it would bother her.
"Now, form a line," Professor McGonagall instructed the first years, "and follow me."
Aurora got into line behind Ron and Hermione joined her, with Neville nearly quaking behind them. They walked out of the small chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors, straight into the Great Hall.
Aurora's jaw dropped. She never could have prepared herself to be greeted with such a lavish sight. The massive room was lit by hundreds upon hundreds of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the Hogwarts students were sitting. The tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets, just waiting to be filled. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were standing, watching as the first years filed in.
Professor McGonagall led the first years to the front of the hall, arranging them so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, now with the teachers sitting behind them. Hundreds of faces stared back. Dotted here and there among the students, ghosts shone a misty silver. Aurora could just make out Cedric at the far right table with Malcolm, grinning wildly and waving to try and catch her eye. Too nervous to wave back, Aurora craned her neck to the ceiling, only to be greeted by a velvety black sky dotted with stars.
"How'd they -!"
"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," whispered Hermione, also transfixed. "I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."
"Wicked." Aurora sighed as a shooting star blinked across the magical night sky.
She looked back down to see Professor McGonagall reverently placing a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool, she placed a pointed wizard's hat. It was patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Aurora's nose crinkled; she couldn't fathom what it could be for, other than to make them look even more foolish, begging a house to accept them.
Everyone else in the Great Hall seemed to be fixated on the hat. For a few seconds, the room was completely still. Then the hat twitched. Hermione let out a soft squeak as a rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth - and the hat began to sing.
"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,
But don't judge on what you see,
I'll eat myself if you can find
A smarter hat than me.
You can keep your bowlers black,
Your top hates sleek and tall,
For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat
And I can cap them all.
There's nothing hidden in your head
The Sorting Hat can't see,
So try me on and I will tell you
Where you ought to be.
You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry
Set Gryffindor apart;
You might belong in Hufflepuff,
Where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true
And unafraid of toil;
Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,
If you've a ready mind,
Where those of wit and learning,
Will always find their kind;
Or perhaps in Slytherin,
You'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folks use any means
To achieve their ends.
So put me on! Don't be afraid!
And don't get in a flap!
You're in safe hands (though I have none)
For I'm a Thinking Cap!"
The Great Hall burst into applause as the hat sang the last note. It bowed to each of the four tables individually before becoming still again.
"So we've just got to try on a hat!" Aurora overheard Ron grumble to Harry over the din of the applause. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."
Aurora wanted to laugh at the thought, but the sound got caught in her throat. All they had to do was try on the hat. Yes, that was much easier than giving a speech or casting spells or wrestling a troll, but she couldn't get the hat's song out of her head. It was asking a lot, to let it see into her head, to dig deep and analyze everything.
Worst, Aurora didn't feel very 'just' or 'loyal'or 'patient' like a Hufflepuff was expected to be. But at the same time, she didn't feel very 'brave' or quick-witted' or 'cunning' either. If she was being honest with herself, she felt much more 'small' and 'scared' and maybe even a little bit 'sick'. But there didn't seem to be a fifth house for that.
She closed her eyes and squared her shoulders, letting Marius' final sentiment wash over her. You are going to be brilliant. It was a good thought to begin her Hogwarts adventure with. She had been preparing for years, now all she had to do was be herself and things would fall as they were meant to.
Professor McGonagall stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.
"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"
A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat (which fell right down over her eyes), and sat down. A moment's pause -
"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat.
The Hufflepuff table erupted into cheers and clapped as Hannah skipped over to join them. Aurora watched Cedric celebrate along with the rest of his house.
Aurora smiled. Not so bad. This should be easy.
"Bones, Susan!"
"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to the still-beaming Hannah.
"Boot, Terry!"
"RAVENCLAW!"
The table second from the left clapped this time, several Ravenclaws standing up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.
Hermione grabbed Aurora's arm suddenly, leaning over with urgency as another girl skipped up to be sorted.
"We'll still be friends, even if we're not sorted into the same house. Right?"
Aurora turned away from the sorting and was shocked by the intensity in Hermione's eyes. She nodded fiercely, pulling Hermione into a hug as if to seal her promise. "I swear it."
"Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Aurora could see the twin Weasleys cat-calling.
"Bulstrode, Millicent" then became the first Slytherin. Aurora watched the reactions from the final table in the hall, right between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The Slytherins didn't look as nasty as they had been described. They whooped and cheered as fiercely for their new arrival as the other tables had and, despite the dirty looks shared between some members of the other houses, they didn't seem like all that bad of a lot. She, however, seemed to be the only one of her new friends who felt that way.
"There isn't a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin," Ron sneered, while Harry stared at the green and silver table with a grimace.
"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
Aurora noticed that sometimes the hat shouted out the house at one, and sometimes, for only a few first years so far, it would take a bit longer to decide. "Finnigan, Seamus", the sandy-haired boy she had shared a boat with earlier, sat on the stool for almost a full minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.
"Granger, Hermione!"
"Oh, no. Okay, relax." Hermione braced herself before nearly running up to the stool, jamming the hat on her head before she lost her nerve.
"Mental that one, I'm telling you," Ron muttered.
"GRYFFINDOR!" shouted the hat. Ron groaned.
Aurora grinned wildly as Hermione skipped over to the Gryffindor table. Then, like a deflating balloon, her spirits fell.
It could be worse, she reasoned as she watched Hermione shake hands with Percy the Prefect. I'm sure Cedric has friends outside of Hufflepuff.
Resolved to not let Hermione's sorting affect her more, Aurora turned back to where "Greengrass, Daphne", the nervous blonde from the chamber earlier, had just been declared a Slytherin.
When Neville Longbottom was called, he fell over on his way to the stool, scurrying quickly to grab his toad before he could escape again. The hat took the longest time thus far to sort Neville. When the hat finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!", Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amidst gales of laughter to give it to "MacGougal, Morag".
Aurora watched Draco Malfoy swagger forward when his name was called. The brim had barely brushed his blonde head before it screamed, "SLYTHERIN!"
Malfoy, looking pleased with himself, went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle (both already sorted into Slytherin, of course). Aurora could hear Ron scoffing again.
There weren't many people left now.
"Moon" -, "Nott" -, "Parkinson" -, then a pair of twin girls "Patil" and "Patil" -, then the girl with braids from the boat, "Perks, Sally-Anne" - and then, what everyone had been waiting for -
"Potter, Harry!"
As Harry stepped forward, whispers broke out throughout the hall like little hissing fires. It seemed that Harry's arrival wasn't as common knowledge as Aurora had thought.
"Potter, did she say?"
"The Harry Potter?"
Aurora and Ron, now standing shoulder to shoulder, waited anxiously as the Sorting Hat was placed over Harry's eyes. She was nearly as excited to see where he would be sorted as she was for herself. Everyone in the Great Hall seemed to feel the same, all craning their necks to get a good look at The Boy Who Lived. It felt as if his sorting took years longer than anyone else's, and Aurora saw how white his knuckles had gotten from clenching onto the stool. Finally -
"GRYFFINDOR!"
Ron nearly collapsed with relief as Harry shakily made his way over to the Gryffindor table. The cheers for him echoed throughout the hall, the loudest for any student yet. Aurora watched Percy leap up to welcome Harry as Fred and George chanted "We got Potter! We got Potter!" from their seats.
There was a growing flutter of nerves in her stomach. As "Rivers, Oliver" donned the hat, the flutter turned more into a sort of stampede.
"Rosier, Aurora!"
The walk to the stool seemed to be miles long, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. As she took a seat and waited for the hat to be placed, Aurora scanned the Great Hall. She could see Hermione crossing her fingers at the front of the Gryffindor table, Cedric grinning at her with the rest of the Hufflepuffs. Even Draco Malfoy was watching her curiously, no doubt to see which house would claim her pureblooded status.
Then, everything went dark.
She waited.
"Hmmm." The voice seemed to be reverberating from all around her. "I've been anxious to meet you, Aurora Rosier. Waiting to delve into your mind, unravel the damages. Your mother and your father were quite different, but they were sorted fairly, very fairly indeed."
"Hufflepuff. I know I'm a Hufflepuff." Aurora replied like a trained bird. However, there was a waver to her voice that she hadn't expected.
"You know, do you? Or is that what your uncle has convinced you of?" The hat chuckled. "You can't blindly believe everything your uncle has told you, dear. You are too your father's daughter."
And there it was. Chills ran down Aurora's spine at the mention of her father, her fingers clenching the stool in anticipation. Eleven years of dancing around the subject, and now a talking hat was the first one brave enough to bring him up.
She had never dared to admit it to anyone before, but Aurora had always felt an intense connection to her father. Or at least, the idea of her father. Partly it stemmed from knowing nearly nothing about him - from living with so many connections to her maternal family, she had at least an inkling about her mother. Her father, however, was an enigma, someone she didn't even know - and that desperation for a connection is what intrigued her more and more.
"Yes, it's quite a shame you never knew your father," the hat continued, reading Aurora's desperation like an open book. "Yes, he was a powerful wizard. The things he achieved - well, that's not my tale to tell. You have his raw power, his determination for success. And yet, there is your mother's loyalty. A wondrous balance, Aurora." The hat paused, digging deeper. It sighed contentedly. "Aahhh, yes. A solid mind, and plenty of courage. Forced to grow up living a life already planned for you, hidden from the outside world. My dear, you have a path forged in destiny, though it may surprise you yet. A shame your family has tried to hide so much from you."
Aurora could feel her head humming with power as if she was being heated up from the inside. She was beginning to hate how much the hat could see, and yet how little it seemed to be telling her. She was beginning to feel scared, waiting in the dark while her mind was read like a good book.
"The question is, dear - what do you want?"
"I want to be great." It wasn't the answer Aurora had expected, but she knew it was true. "Like my father. I want to be brilliant."
The hat chuckled, pleased with Aurora's honesty.
"And brilliant you shall be. Better make it - SLYTHERIN!"
Aurora heard the hat's decision echo throughout the hall.
Before McGonagall removed the hat from her head, Aurora heard it whisper in finality.
"Destiny can be a fickle thing, my dear."
*gasp!* A SLYTHERIN?! But what will her Uncle think?
Thank you all so much for the love, please review & let me know what you think of Aurora's journey so far!