"First years with me, first years come along. Smartly now." Hagrid boomed happily, if something that sounded like a fond foghorn could be called happy rather than simply intimidating. He gathered the bewildered first years by sheer force of personality and decibel and herded them like robed and bewildered ducklings towards the dock, while the laughing senior years got into carriages pulled by the most alarming lizard/skeleton/Pegasus creatures.
"Hagrid, what are those things?" Harry pointed with alarm at the nightmares pulling the carriages.
"What things?" Asked Hermione.
"You mean the self-driving carriages? Hogwarts had them long before muggles did." Neville said smugly.
Hagrid stopped and looked alarmed at Harry and responded in a much more serious tone.
"You can see them then lad? I know about that night of course, but with you being so young and all, I hoped, I mean we all assumed ye would not remember." Hagrid looked troubled.
"They aren't self-driving carriages Mr Longbottom. They are pulled by Thestrals. Much misunderstood creatures your Thestral. Very protective of their young, gentle with each other, but they get a bad reputation among light wizards on account of only those who have seen and accepted death of their own kind can see them." Hagrid concluded.
Placing a hand very firmly behind Harry, he pushed him towards the boats.
"All right first years. In you get. Four to a boat, no shoving. The only way to truly see Hogwarts the first time is from the Black Lake under moonlight." Hagrid boomed, pushing the first years towards the boats.
"Hagrid, nothing is pushing the boats. There are no runes, no motors, no tow ropes, and I don't think goblins can even swim. None of us can steer the boats, and none of us even knows the way." Hermione said with the firm voice her mother used in explaining why a proposed course of action was the way to inevitable doom and must be abandoned immediately.
"Are you sure its safe?" She said, throwing the well meaning giant adult a way of backing away from a poor life choice endangering children before she was forced to question authority openly (something both her mother and father taught her to avoid wherever possible).
Hagrid laughed with the sort of booming belonging to artillery or falling buildings, and slapped his sides before waving madly at the deep water. A long orange dotted tentacle wider at its widest than her outstretched arm and tall as a pine tree rose from the water and waved back.
"We aren't trusting students to drive, or even to stay in the boat. I mean, Hogwarts has been dealing with First Years since before muggles learned to make gunpowder, and we haven't drowned one yet! This here be the giant squid. Helga Hufflepuff herself raised it when they were building Hogwarts and they have been guiding First Years across the lake ever since." Hagrid boomed happily at the waving tentacle.
Some students, younger siblings or those who actually listened to their parents stories snickered. Others who were not as clued in, the normal muggleborns, and those who had tentacle related issues screamed, and Hermione Granger, her safety concerns addressed in what she thought was a full and complete manner began stomping forward firmly.
"Right then, three to a boat. Best even the weight so left and right in pairs, and best keep the sizes about even to keep it from tipping." Hermione stated firmly, remembering her lessons in boating from the Royal Life Saving Society summer camp.
With Harry being broader and heavier than Hermione and following her to the bow, Neville scooted behind Hermione and felt the boat lurch slightly. A rather big boned girl with a permanent scowl came to the side of the boat and blushing in deep embarrassment asked if she could join them.
"Would it be possible to join you? I am Milicent Bulstrode. I was travelling with Miss Greengrass, but she has 'so kindly' informed me that my cow like half-blooded body would likely tip the boat of delicate pure blooded girls." Milicent said with the sort of contained anger that showed what being raised half blood in a pure-blooded house could offer.
"Please do!" Said Neville where he gribbed the transom firmly, trying to stabilize the boat.
"Me gran says Longbottom boys were made to swing axes not wands. If we don't get a fourth with some actual substance I think we are all going to meet the tentacles a few times on our way over."
As Milicent stepped carefully into the boat, Hermione proved her mastery of the theory of female social interaction while simultaneously ruining the practice of it.
"Ignore them Miss Bulstrode. My mother says that young girls target bigger girls in elementary school out of fear they will develop boobs and the skinny girls won't. It's all body shaming nonsense anyway. We are learning to become the kind of witches boys will be terrified to even glance at, not vapid over bred maidens who will swoon in the face of danger while some limp wristed wizard will struggle to raise a wand in our defense!" Hermione said firmly.
Milicent choked, Harry laughed and Neville finally burst forth.
"Blimey Hermione, you can't just say things like that! Gran would have my hide off in strips for even mentioning boobs and wands in the same sentence! It's not decent." Neville said in embarrassed horror.
"Not wrong either." Milicent muttered so quietly no one beyond the boat heard her.
Harry forgot boobs and wands, pure-blood culture and wizard etiquette altogether as they slipped from the shore and trees and for the first time in his life, he saw the stars.
The sky was a cavern made of the whole universe. The Moon blazed like goblin silver in the sky, its great craters and mountains, stone seas and scars comforting the way the native rock of the caverns below Gringotts could only be to a goblin, but beyond its light blazed thousands of tiny candles.
Stars.
Stars and planets, perhaps even comets.
No living goblin child had seen these in centuries since the Wars of Shame. While the Goblin Rebellions had secured a place for Goblins in wizarding Britain, it was a place below ground, denied the sun and the stars. Denied the endless cavern of the infinite.
Harry wept.
Hermione looked over in terror. Harry was crying and she was panicking. She was a very sensible girl, one who pried rationality as her tool for understanding the universe, and she DID NOT UNDERSTAND what had Harry looking up at the sky and shaking.
"Harry," She asked softly "What's wrong?"
"The sky, Hermione. The stars." He turned to her and broke at last. "My mother and sister will never see them, my brother will only see them if some High Born lord lowers himself to call him to attend him above ground some evening. They took the stars from us Hermione. They stole the sky, and I am the only one who gets to see it!"
Harry was weeping at the loss of his race, his nation, and his family. A goblin to the soul, the irony that he was himself a lord who could make that call was the farthest thing from his mind. He was a goblin child beneath the stars his people would be forever denied, and he cried.
Hermione had no answer, save to hug him tightly as her parents did when she cried and could not make them understand why. When you had no answers, you hugged. It was what her family did.
Neville and Milicent looked on in the horror that those raise among the pure-blooded elite (especially if a half-blood that had to ape the standards she would always be judged by) could feel to openly expressed weakness, emotion, and affection. The long tormented presumed squib boy and the half-tolerated half-blood saw the raw wound in Harry and mutely vowed to pretend they hadn't. Their own wounds and lack of support bound them in an unspoken but no less potent vow of silence.
They had recovered from the unexpected emotional display when the calls from the other boats drew their attention from the vault of the heavens down to a more earth bound display of lights. Hogwarts loomed by the shore of the Black Lake, but Hermione felt her sensibilities break at its sight.
Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria made a castle that became the model for Disney's famous fairy tale castle that all muggle boys and girls judged fantasy castles by, but it was a pale timid thing beside Hogwarts.
It rose like a mountain of stone and lights, gothic and brutal it loomed like a mountain of man made stone, towers thrust proudly to the sky, as if defying the howling winds of the Scottish Highlands to do their worst, for it cared not. The walls were studded with battlements and looming gargoyles that implied firmly that should they chose to wake up and fly, they could indeed do so and it would be best for you not to be in their path when they so chose.
Windows burned with flickering torchlight, more windows than strictly speaking their ought to be, as if however large the castle seemed to be from the outside, either the floors were only four feet high, or there was, in fact, rather more of the castle inside than it chose to show you outside.
To Harry and Hermione, the greatest part was the burning aurora thrown up by the walls to the sky, painting the night in a wash of colour and a song, for the energy rippling from the wards sang to anyone with magical senses at all.
"Oh my god Hermione, those are the WARDS, the wards are so powerful they light up the sky, so powerful they make the very air sing. I never dreamed there could be any wards in all the world half as strong as Gringotts but this is..." Harry trailed off.
"Magical!" Hermione gushed.
"Wards so powerful, we can't make Muggles notice the castle if we wanted to. Can't even get non magical animals inside. The wards Notice Me Not is so strong the elves have to butcher the meat animals beyond the wards because you can't even get a non magical animal inside the place unless its still in the egg. It's why the budget for Hogwarts allows for a gamekeeper who lives outside the walls, otherwise we would all be trying to stay alive in a Scottish winter on nothing but oatmeal and stewed vegetables." Milicent shuddered at the thought of going vegetarian in the driving sleet of Scotland.
"They passed beneath the ivy arches to the docks, where Hagrid counted slowly on his fingers, comparing his answer to his parchment, to make sure he had again the same number of first year ducklings he left with, then led them to the heavy wooden doors.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" His heavy fist struck the door like a mediaeval battering ram. A stern looking witch in long dark green velvet dress with a matching broad witch's hat with a scarlet band clasped with a golden lion buckle eyed him with the hauteur of a queen.
"The first years, Professor McGonagall!" Hagrid gushed happily.
"Thank you Hagrid." The regal woman, Professor McGonagall presumably, said, ushing the children inside. They were lead down a long hallway towards the growing sounds of children reunited after an excited summer and all trying to talk at once.
"Now if you will all form a line by last name, you will be called one by one for your sorting. You will be each sorted into one of the Houses of Hogwarts, which will be like a second family for all of your years at Hogwarts.
Each of the Houses represent one of the Founding Four, the greatest Witches and Wizards in the history of Wizarding Britain, and each of these Houses can guide you using the tools and gifts that come easiest to you, to become the Witch or Wizard you were meant to be. You will live as a House, take classes as a House, and you will receive, and in time provide, mentorship to and from other members of your House.
While the Houses exist to teach you individual excellence, they rise and fall together, as the individual successes and failures of each member contribute to the House Points and eventual House Cup that only the best House at Hogwarts receives each year.
For first years, the cup is mostly about honour and glory, but from third year onward it will bring tangible privilege and access to limited resources and knowledge that provide a significant advantage to those with the wit and will to use them." McGonagall continued, managing to weave a little of the classic motivation of all of the Houses into her spiel.
"The four houses are Griffindor, the House of Lions, where the brave and bold carve a path to greatness through daring and will. Ravenclaw, the House of Eagles, where knowledge is hoarded like gold, and wielded like weapons upon the path to glory. Slytherin, the House of Serpents where cunning and ambition guide the path unseen for those who dare to follow to its greatness. Hufflepuff, the House of Badgers, where those who find no glory won without comrades worth having, and who value no thing unearned will follow the hardest road of all to a victory whose price they learned full well." Professor McGonagall described the houses with a bit more poetry than the books did, but in his goblin soul, Harry felt the challenge of the House of Badgers rise within him, thundering in his blood like a call to battle.
Noodle slipped from his sleeve and hissed at him. "$ You are being stupid and gobliny again, aren't you? $ Noodle hissed.
Harry grinned. "$ No thing unearned. I am for House Hufflepuff. $" Harry hissed in Parletongue, causing most of the nearby students to move away suddenly.
"$ In House Slytherin I would have grown fat by the fire, every terrified pure-blood laying stunned rats before my like offerings to an uncaring and abusive god. You would have been Prince of Slytherin just because I find you mildly tolerable as perch and a better conversationalist than my idiot siblings. $" Noodle hissed.
"$ You would have gotten fat and lazy, and some Post Owl would have eaten you as a treat when you lost your hunter's edge. Your mother would die of shame that a serpent of her clutch was prey to a wizards messenger bird by accident. $" Harry replied with a smirk.
Noodle hissed in laughter. "$ If Mouse-Bringer learns to speak, I am leaving you!$" Noodle concluded without any shame, then head butted his dim goblin ward and returned to his nap.
The great hall was vast, so vast that indeed Harry was aware of the fact that rooms inside Hogwarts did not match the external dimensions, even as they appeared to retain absolute internal relative relations. He suspected the arithromancy required for such a feat would be forever beyond him. So distracted was he by the magical mathmatic implications that he almost missed when a large floopy and utterly disreputable had sitting on a stool in the middle of the great hall suddenly turned and scowled at the First Years.
Harry froze. When magical object without a visible brain begin thinking and acting on their own without any external direction, smart goblins stand behind someone as much stronger and more disposable as they can find. Harry yanked Hermione and Neville directly behind Professor McGonagall as the hat began...to sing.
The song was utterly horrid, and the voice had harmonics that Harry was terrified to notice were in his mind not his ears, but it was filled with the sort of humour his father Griphook and arms masters had when playing with the children. The casual humour of the truly powerful when amusing themselves with beings so far removed from being able to defend themselves that the hat or goblin in question had to err on the side of softness so as to not accidentally obliterate the delicate younglings they played with.
"Hannah Abbot." McGonagall said firmly, and a blond girl with pig tails wandered to the stool and sat the hat upon her head. Her eyes and ears disappeared under a hat far too large, but the hat's mouth and the girls both turned up in mischievous grins as they chatted about something before it shouted loudly "Hufflepuff!"
The next girl was rather more businesslike, but Susan Bones followed Hannah Abbot to the Hufflepuff table before Milicent Bulstrode took her place beneath the hat. The hat nodded comically on her head as her arms waved about as one does when they cannot speak without their hands, and whatever she was saying the hat seemed to agree wholeheartedly. Whatever silencing charm it used vanished as it opened its slit mouth wide and shouted.
"Never really a question was there? Slytherin!" The hat shouted, and the large square girl strode to the Slytherin table like a gladiatrix to her next battle.
Harry couldn't really bring himself to care about the other sortings, although he caught the frown on Milicent's face when Draco stalked past her to claim primacy among the first years at the far end of their table. Hermione also noted Milicents snubbing and frowned thoughtfully. Neville noticed and tugged her arm.
"Listen Hermione. I know you want to help, but pure-blood manners are a thing in our culture, and while some like Griffindor make a show of ignoring them in public, even their pure-bloods only really excuse ignoring it among those they consider friends. You can't break their society rules without painting a target on her." Neville begged her.
Hermione of course, took what she wanted from that, and proceeded to be Hermione anyway.
"Right. Rules." She said firmly as her name was called.
"Hermine Granger." McGonagall said primly, and Hermione marched towards the hat like a Sgt Major about to inspect a load of new recruits in need of a proper terrorizing.
"Morgana's tits, she's going to do something!" Swore Neville.
Harry just grinned. Hermione wasn't oblivious to social norms, she just didn't feel they in any way described the limit of her logical actions. She was his friend, and if she was going to make a play, he would back it.
"HUFFLEPUFF!" Shouted the Sorting Hat with obvious relish, and a loud chuckle.
Hermione did not, in fact, move to the Hufflepuff table already beginning to cheer, but to the Slytherin table. Draco, preparing for a scene, had his sneer in place and a racial slur already queued up to release when she stopped before one of the badged Slytherin Prefects.
"Heir Secundus Pucey, I thank you for your earlier courtesy and beg leave to correct my earlier oversight and complete our introduction." Hermione said loud enough to cut through the rising chatter.
"Hermione Granger of New House Granger, honoured to make your acquaintance." Hermione said and dipped into the full curtsey of a lesser house acknowledging a greater for the first time.
Pucey rose languidly. "Well met Mouse Bringer. House Pucey welcomes your acquaintance and wishes the House of Granger to grow in the shadow of your grace and power." The Prefects smile made his friendliness clear, even as his formal bow made his recognition of her a matter of record, to scorn who he had thus accepted would be an implied discourtesy to his own House and position as Prefect.
Hermione turned and curtseyed again this time not as deeply.
"An honour to see you again, Miss Bulstrode." Hermione said, meeting the eyes of her former boat mate.
Milicent rose, as if being the only first year, neither heiress nor of a particularly high house, singled out for acknowledgement was the most natural thing in the whole world, and no less than she deserved.
"The honour is mutual Miss Granger. The House of Badgers knows not its fortune this night." Milicent offered wryly.
"Nor the House of Serpents, I think." Said Hermione, aware that she had begun a challenge to the assumed primacy within the Slytherin first years.
Hermione's passage past the instructors' tables had both Professor Snape and Sprout following her passage as if observing some strange new forest animal that had wandered into the hall unknowing. Snape had more horror, and Sprout more wonder, but there was a mix of each in both.
When he heard his name called, Neville had actually not noticed that his earlier indecision between the Griffindor he had been programed from birth to follow his maimed and martyred father into or the Hufflepuff his heart had been spending a train and boat-ride beginning to yearn for, was over.
No Neville somehow internally declared for Hufflepuff as he marched towards the sorting hat like a warrior to the battle line. The questions in his brain were, do I try to limit the damage she has done by challenging the House of Malfoy and the pure-bloods of Slytherin in general (for her own good), or do I pull something Griffindor and double down? This is why Neville never thought he would make a good Griffindor. The move seemed stupid.
He placed the hat on his head almost without noticing.
No. Hermione had done what she had done to show Milicent she was not alone. If Neville tried to protect Hermione from the backlash by softening the insult, he would be showing he didn't trust her judgement, and that friendship to both Milicent and Hermione was worth less than placating the powers that ran the school, and honestly their society.
The smart move would be to soften the blow. Gran always said I was an idiot. Hermione was a friend. If she stood with Milicent, then Neville shouldn't have to think twice before doing the same. Gran would explode, but Neville would stand with his friends.
"Well that doesn't really leave a whole lot for me to do does it boy. Better be Hufflepuff!" The hat shouted, and Neville just about died of shock. He had forgotten he was being sorted. The hat began laughing and was almost in tears, if something that dusty could muster tears, before he set it back on the stool.
Marching firmly to the Slytherin table, he offered a regal nod to Prefect Pucey who was deeply amused.
"Pucey." Neville said, the greeting of equals his Aunt would have lost more than a few heartbeats to see her stuttering, nervous heir offer with iron firmness.
"Longbottom!" Pucey cheered, raising a glass in salute and grinning like he had front row seats at the goal hoops of the Quiddich world cup.
Turning slightly, he marched past both Draco Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass, the only other two heirs from the Sacred Twenty Eight, the only other names and lineages in the Book of Gold to stop in front of a half blood girl whose family was only barely in the book of silver and bow to the millimetre the exact degree one offered in public to acknowledge a Friend of your House to those you wished to mark such a relationship.
"Miss Bulstrode, your company on the boat ride over was most agreeable. Convey my respects to your lord father and lady mother." Neville offered with a formality that had Draco seething, because to offer such honours to a lesser house while ignoring two greater houses seated right beside them at a first formal and very much public introduction was a statement that would make the gossip columns the way such a gesture from a mudblood never could.
Milicent rose again, blushing lightly, as her heart rate matched Nevilles in the awareness that her entire career in Hogwarts and Slytherin would be a battle, but at least she would not be, entirely, alone.
"Mr Longbottom, you are as well mannered as you are bold. Please convey my deepest respect to Dowager Longbottom for raising such an heir." MIlicent said, loudly enough to cut through the rising whispers that made the Slytherin table resemble the snake pit it was so often called.
Neville didn't notice the looks he got from the staff table, but the cheers he got from the Hufflepuff table made it clear that the House of Badgers had a very real appreciation for the size of the bludgers beneath your broom to make an open challenge to the whole House of Slytherin on your first day in first year.
Harry simply grinned. It was almost goblin. The kind of loyalty that didn't simply inspire moments of suicidal courage, but endless days of effort and nights of struggle to be worthy of the loyalty you were offered in turn. This is not Griffindor courage or Slytherin cunning. It may indeed be such obvious foolishness as to ban you utterly from Ravenclaws house of the wise, but it was the heart and soul of Hufflepuff. No thing unearned. Loyalty was a debt, and debts didn't get paid by anything less than every bit of effort you had in you, and if that wasn't enough, then you simply became more until it was enough.
"Harry Potter." Professor McGonagall said with a note of worry as she looked at the madly grinning boy beside her. That is not how you approached your sorting.
Harry charged the hat like a king stag opon a pretender to his herd. Taking the hat in hand, he slammed it onto his head like he was crowning himself king, and ready to get on with defending the title.
"You could at least pretend there are other houses you know? Why am I even here? Fine, lets get this charade over with. I just hope you don't get blood all over the dessert trays before the feast is even over." The hat said that, apparently without bothering to use the silencing charms it was required to use on its private sorting discussions, based on the shocked and horrified looks on the staff table as the hat shouted.
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
Placing the hat carefully down, and patting it on the head twice as if to console it. Harry turned with a smile towards the now expectant Slytherin table.
Pucey was grinning widely as Harry Potter strode to the table.
"Heir Secundus Pucey, I must offer my heartfelt apologies for my earlier discourtesies in not formally introducing myself when you came to settle that regrettable incident. I am Harry Potter, Heir Presumptive to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Potter." Harry said as he bowed deeply, more than their order of precedence required, but allowable in the particular case of apology.
Pucey stood and bowed respectfully. "Good to put a name to the Speaker, Heir Potter. Think nothing of the irregularities of our earlier meetings. As Prefects one expects a bit of disorder, and expediency rather than formality seemed best under the circumstances." Pucey offered casually.
Noodle recognized the voice and slitered up Harry's collar and out the neck, rising almost two feet to taste the air and have a look.
"$ Look, it's the sensible one! Make more friends like these. I can't eat all the idiots in this place, I am not a basilisk.$" Noodle hissed.
The Slytherin table froze, some in shock, Malfoy in fear, and half the professors had shot upright at their own table. The Hall was busy exploding in reaction, but Noodle, Harry, and Pucey carried on as if this was standard light dinner conversation.
Harry sighed and translated for Pucey, who took it as no more than deserved. He tossed a bit of raw chicken that he had had one of the House Elves procure for him as the feast began, against the possibility of needing to bribe a rather large and extremely deadly magical snake.
"Good to see you again Noodle. There are indeed too many idiots to eat them all, but if this crop of firsties fails to shape up, I just might find it in my heart to carve a bit off one now and then for certain discerning and deserving serpents." Pucey offered as the snake lashed out faster than any human reflexes to gobble down the tossed meat.
Harry's hissed translation for Noodle resulted in Pucey and Noodle sharing a very grave nod.
As Harry turned toward the first year end of the table, Draco, Crabbe and Goyle fled to huddle at the back of the hall, while Daphne Greengrass went pale with the determination that she would die in place rather than shame House Greengrass by flight. Milicent simply sighed, knowing what was going to happen next.
"Miss Bulstrode, I thank you for joining us for the boat ride this evening. Without your company and thoughts, it would have been a much less delightful voyage." Harry said with a bow.
Milicent stood and bowed again. "Heir Potter, your company and words both honoured me, then and now."
Her attempt at formality ended when Noodle slid out and tasted her skin to take her scent. She giggled, which was not a sound that the rather physically intimidating girl seemed suited for, but when she began to stroke the snake and coo at it, as it closed its eyes and swayed softly at her caress, it brought a gentleness to her features that made her seem shockingly pretty.
The senior years were looking at her stroking Heir Potter's magical snake familiar with the sort of frown that said they were busy redoing the math that settled social precedence again in their head and beginning to think their earlier sums may have been wrong.
Harry slid between Hermione and Neville at the Hufflepuff table and began a much less formal round of introdctions as his housemates visibly puffed up with pride. The snide sneers of the supposed House of castoffs were going to be harder to make this year. The Hufflepuff first years were off to a legendary start.
As the feast progressed, Draco Malfoy was seen approaching Professor Snape and after several minutes of what was clearly Draco's best performances, Professor Snape marched to Professor Dumbledore where he held court in the center of the table like some beneficent god before his lowly worshipers. After a few muttered phrases, a very stout witch rose from her end of the table and charged the quiet conversation like a small, maternal, but nonetheless enraged badger and turned the discussion into what must be a rather loud three way argument judging by Dumbledores winces, but due to silencing charms, you couldn't really tell.
Oddly, as Harry observed this over a rather large meal of unfamiliar dishes (between Neville and Hermione they were able to introduce the Goblin raised boy to what passed for English and Scottish cuisine, it was Professor Quirrell in his purple turban whose eyes seemed to be boring into Harry with the focus and intent of goblin drill bits.
Cedric Diggory, the social center of the third years of Hufflepuff, and their star Quiddich seeker noticed and leaned over.
"Look Harry, do you know Professor Quirrell already? He's looking at you like Filch would if you shaved his cat. I know why Snape is about to pop a blood vessel, but Quirrell was Ravenclaw, isn't related to any of the pure-blooded idiots you have started a feud with, and usually can't stutter his way through a sentence far enough to even think about insulting someone, but he seems to be right pissed at you." The third year asked softly, looking to see if there was anything he needed to warn Professor Sprout about ahead of time.
Harry looked back at him. "I was told there was a professor here that hated goblins, but that was supposed to be Bins." Harry said trying to remember his pre-school briefing.
Cedric nodded. "Yeah. He hates goblins so much he died about forty years ago, and got up and went to work the next day to tell us all about goblin rebellions and atrocities. My dad's about as anti-creature as you can get (nothing personal Harry), and even he thinks Bins is a racist prat. Dad says Dumbledore only keeps him on because he's a ghost and works for free. Salary just disappears into Dumbledore knows where until he hires a new living professor to receive it." Cedric offered.
Harry shrugged. He was used to it. Goblins were hated by everyone who wasn't a goblin. As a goblin who was also human, he was even hated by most other goblins. Harry was used to being hated. Maybe Quirrell simply hated snakes? All kinds of bigots in the wizard world, but this treacle tart thing, that was worth putting up with a few racist prats for. Harry dug in with his spoon and forgot about angry teachers.
Professor Sprout stood as the students were led by their prefects to the dungeon common room and quietly pulled aside Harry, Hermione and Neville. With a smile she gave them all a welcoming nod.
"Good evening students, I am Professor Sprout, you head of house. Let me start by saying that I have been quite please both with your sorting and with the degree of courtesy and loyalty you have demonstrated before the whole school tonight."
She sighed and deflated a little bit.
"That being said, Professor Snape has brought to our attention what he claims is a very serious case of attempted murder that he feels compelled to bring before Professor Dumbledore for judgement. As your head of house, I will of course be there to defend and advise you, as you cannot be expected to know your own rights, let alone see that they are respected."
Hermione looked terrified. Neville looked resigned, as if this sort of thing happened to him every day, and while he wished it didn't, he didn't really expect it to stop. Harry felt the thrill of battle, and the very goblin awareness of every clause and codicil that unwary wizards would offer a cunning and ruthless goblin in any sort of administrative combat. Don't fight a dragon in the sky, or a banker over penalty clauses. That was one of the first things his father taught him. Time Hogwarts learned it too.
The gateway to Dumbledores private office was guarded by a gargoyle that was carved in stone, but somehow capable of turning to glare at them anyway. Harry was beginning to suspect that so much magic had soaked into Hogwarts that it's toilets might have developed enough sentience to contemplate suicide at the combination of student digestive tracts and Hogwarts feasts. That was about as far along that line of thought as he wanted to go.
Professor Sprout, for all that she looked like the very picture of plump maternal softness took the stairs like she had places to be and that the stairs had best get out of her way. Harry matched her pace with a grin, but Neville and Hermione were without breath when they got to the office, which probably kept them from reacting to the sneering Draco and Snape combination, like a little blond budgie trying to imitate the looming bat behind him.
A rather smugly smiling Professor Dumbledore showed the grace and cheer of a person who had spent the last hour looking for his glasses only to sneeze and have them fall out of his hair and back into place. Clearly his terror at misplacing the Boy Who Lived and losing his chokehold of control as the boys only possible source of aid was relaxed in the face of Harry's assumed predicament.
Professor McGonagall was presumably present in her deputy headmistress position, and Professor Flitwick's presence was either due to all three other heads of house being there, or because he was half goblin and someone had the sense Athena gave post-owls to bring a goblin expert into a clash of cultures involving a legal goblin citizen.
"Ah, thank you Professor Sprout. Now Harry, I think before we begin, you will have to allow me to stun and contain your snake. Rock Vipers are a class X magical creature, controlled by the Ministry, and not at all on the approved list of pets for Hogwarts students." Dumbledore said with the voice of an elder offering guidance to a particularly stupid youth that would likely never survive potty training without at least a full time House Elf supervising.
Harry smiled in a wide smile that had Professor Flitwick flinching, as it was the "warning to enemies" smile that Goblins offered not as a threat, but to announce the war was already on, best see about resisting a bit before dying.
"My father advised that you were indeed a most ancient elder, and might be forgiven what would otherwise be a deadly insult from a wizard of greater youth and vitality,"
Harry offered in a very slightly veiled insinuation that Dumbledore was senile, and then proceeded to pull out a parchment which he offered to Professor Sprout, not to Dumbledore's outstretched hand.
"As this was submitted to both Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress per the regulations for students with sensory support animals, I retained a certified true copy for my Head of House once sorted. As clearly indicated by my Clan Healer, and signed off by Hogwarts own Madame Pomfrey as Hogwarts Healer, my snake is my bonded familiar, required to deal with my visual handicap, and thus no more reasonable to ask me to remove than to strip Auror Moody of his artificial eye and leg." Harry said, referencing the famous Mad Eye Moody who was the single most effective Auror in the last war, and the only living member of Dumbledore's ORder of the Phoenix that goblins were worried about.
Dumbledor frowned, glaring at Harry's face, noting the lack of glasses with deep suspiscion even as Professor Snape snapped out sarcastically.
"What handicap Potter? The inability to murder other students with magic like a real wizard? Not wizard enough for a spell, or goblin enough for a sword either?" Snape smirked, looking down a long and hooked nose at him.
Flitwick burst before Sprout could do more than open her mouth to object.
"Mind your tongue Severus. Harry Potter is a Goblin, second in line for the lordship of his clan and in every legal sense as much, if not more, a goblin than I am. That being said, he is not a goblin born, and in any tunnel or room where there is no magical light, or where light may be taken away by his enemies or superiors in magic, he is more blind than any goblin infant. His snake is a Rock Viper, its senses do not rely on visible light at all to see, and as long as they are paired, he is effectively sighted. To attempt to separate him from his bonded snake would be the same as taking away glasses from a student with a prescription!" Flitwick said, and his hand hovered over his wand in a way that made Snape grow very still. Flitwick had been European dueling champion for decades, and he retired still holding the title.
"He is not a goblin." Snape insisted.
"According to Hogwarts, he is." Professor Sprout insisted, pulling out her own sheaf of student medical parchments that were delivered to her by Madame Pomfrey after the sorting.
Waving the parchment in front of Dumbledore, Professor Sprout looked more like an angry badger than she had any right to physically as she turned and braced the acknowledged Champion of the Light and defeater of the Dark Lord Grindelwald.
"Not only is he accepted by Hogwarts as a goblin, and Noodle as his visual support familiar, but as I had a copy of this parchment since his sorting you have had it from his ACCEPTANCE. Your ignoring this to cripple the boy is not simply illegal, it is shameful." Professor Sprout said pushing her face far enough across the desk to force the headmaster to lean back to avoid her.
Dumbledore reset and tried another argument. "A Rock Viper is a class X magical creature and a proximal threat to other students. Had this been some other sort of animal I might be persuaded to allow some sort of compromise, but how could I face the parents of other Hogwarts students if I allowed such a monster within our halls." Dumbledore smiled as if he had just won re-election in the Wizagamot, not noticing the angry stare Snape now directed at him.
Harry's blood was up, and he responded with fury rather than forethought.
"Some other animal? Some other animal? This is Hogwarts! These walls were raised by Salazar Slytherin himself, the wards are woven with parslemagic as much as the runes of Ravenclaw and the charms of Hufflepuff and you dare say serpents are not welcome!" Harry raged, and Noodle slid out of his collar looking for proximal threats, hissing and tasting the air.
"$ You dare tell a parsletongue that he must surrender his bonded serpent because he is not welcome withing the walls raised by Slytherin himself! A parseltongue and his serpent are one being, this was written into the founding law! $" Harry hissed in Parseltongue, causing the serpents in the portrait frames of the Slytherin portraits to rise from their frames and hiss at Dumbledore angrily.
Harry realized his mistake and translated into English.
"You dare tell a parsletongue that he must surrender his bonded serpent because he is not welcome withing the walls raised by Slytherin himself! A parseltongue and his serpent are one being, this was written into the founding law!" Harry repeated, this time slowly and firmly as if repeating the exact terms of a penalty clause to a contract defaulter.
"You cannot expect me to be bound by some bit of historic trivia? I am Headmaster, I decide what is allowable and safe here, not some third year with what everyone in wizarding Britain knows is a suspect and most likely dark gift." Dumbledore said, his control slipping and his hand slamming down on his desk, causing every child in the room except Harry to flinch.
Dumbledore realized his kindly grandfather mask had slipped and leaned back, stroking his beard and tried to collect his thoughts.
"Are the traditions of my House no longer worthy of your respect then Albus, are the words of the Founders, the laws upon which your authority is based and from which your only legal power is derived then no longer in force? Shall I now pick and choose which among your orders and regulations I find worth obeying. Please tell me this is so, for I find many of your regulations..." Snape allowed his voice to slip an octave deeper and his voice grow actively venomous "restricting."
As Dumbledore opened his mouth to object, McGonagall settled the issue with no small amount of anger.
"Give it a rest Albus, you haven't a foot to stand on. Your own familiar is a ruddy Phoenix, easily capable of burning half of Hogwarts down, and all the students in it before any of us could stop it. The law is the law, and it bind you too. Now can we get on to the actual complaint? Some of actually spend the day working and would like to get to our beds sometime before dawn!" McGonagall snapped angrily.
Dumbledore reclaimed control of the meeting and coached Draco through a very dramatic and slanted retelling of the story. To hear Draco tell it, it was Harry's stated intention of tormenting and murdering Draco Malfoy to avenge the loss of his parents. Hermine was about to explode, and only Neville physically restraining her and whispering some political analysis into her ear was keeping her from shouting at every lie.
Harry on the other hand was a Goblin, and didn't believe in letting the enemy choose the particulars of a battle he was actually in. He turned to Professor Sprout and whispered to her. With a surprised nod, she raised her wand, and a shining silver badger leapt from her wand and shot out of the office. A round of sharp glances from inquiring to accusing bounced off the stout woman's shoulders like so much potting soil during a mandrake repotting.
Hermione fared very poorly under Dumbledores visibly partisan interrogation, as she lacked any sort of natural affinity for twisting, spinning, slanting, or outright perverting the truth so it was unrecognizable in any sense other than, unfortunately, legal. She was reduced to silent tears before the end.
Neville was well trained by his grandmother, but wilted under the scorn of Dumbledore who wielded his authority like a whip to cow the beaten boy. While Neville was able to keep Dumbledore from twisting his words, his testimony ended being given mostly in a whisper with his eyes cast down and fists clenched with rage.
Harry was halfway through his own description, showing every inch of the training his Goblin family drilled into them every single evening. There was a reason why Goblins ruled the wizard economy. Wizards lacked the ruthlessness and attention to detail to ever get the better of a Goblin of Gringotts. Lilly Evens was thus held to be some sort of semi divine figure or cautionary tale to budding account managers of that institution. Albus Dumbledore, for all his power, magical and otherwise, was not.
The door to Dumbledores office irised open, and Slytherin Prefect Adrian Pucey swept in, striding to Professor Sprout and handing her three vials.
"There you go Professor Sprout. Happy to help." Prefect Pucey smiled, pretending only partially successfully not to notice the eyes of some of the most powerful sorcerers in the British Isles who were focused rather firmly upon him.
"And what, Mr Pucey, would that be? For that matter, may I ask why a Prefect of my House is running errands for another Head of House?" Snape asked with a slow lazy drawl that showed where Pucey had learned it, and who had so influenced his education that he imitated him.
"That is just the thing sir, as you briefed us when we were tasked to look after the First Years upon the train. In your words sir:
'The students before sorting are under the protection of all Houses. As a Prefect of the noble house of Slytherin, you are charged with showing every student that they will be protected, nurtured and disciplined as needed by the designated Prefects of Hogwarts regardless of their status and presumed destination. I expect as Slytherin prefects that each of you will show in your duties why the house of Slytherin is the most noble and true of all the founding four.' "
Pucey concluded as if he had not just repeated Snape's Slytherin supremacy in front of the other heads of Houses as a justification for showing up at the Hufflepuff head of house's orders.
"Per Professor Sprout's orders. I have the extracted memories of Crabbe, Goyle, and myself of the whole incident. Just a bit of First Year idiocy sir. Honestly, Noodles was the designated adult of the whole thing. If we had one of him in every compartment, the Prefects could nap on the whole ride in." Pucey offered with a smile that was genuine only in the sense that it was a mask very clearly labled "mask" and waved clearly to the entire audience so they were very clear that it was indeed, a genuine mask and not a real expression. The gesture was so very Slytherin that Snape was forced to smile.
"Very good, Mr Pucey. You remind me how you earned that badge." Snape said icily.
"Very good indeed, Mr Pucey. Ten points to Slytherin." Professor Sprout cheered happily, then continued with a husky and dangerous undertone.
"Now perhaps we could all pop these in that pensive I see behind you Albus and we could settle the matter and see which, if any, students require punishment." Professor Sprout said with a smile that Neville watched in open horror, Flitwick with appreciation, and Hermione with the beginnings of understanding.
Dumbledore flinched, and retreated. "Perhaps young Mr Pucey has the right of it. A bit of first year nonsense that was blown out of proportion. No sense keeping the children up any further, I think we can end it here as a bit of unfortunate overreaction that shall not happen again, yes? Albus offered, the mask of the kindly grandfather again in place.
"A moment sir. A matter has come to my attention that I must beg to be allowed to address with Potion Master Snape." Harry blurted, his earlier intention to address the matter privately failing in the face of the opportunity everyone's presence together offered.
Professor Snape sneered as he looked upon the very image of that strutting peacock that was James Potter, again strutting to arrogant life to demand recognition for his mediocre talents and monumental ego.
"My house mate Neville, Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Longbottom, has been discovered this day to be the victim of intentional long term poisoning by exposure to a Suppressor Toad. While I have been trained by the finest goblin potioners in how to make a chelating solution, my own efforts would only suffice to remove the toxin currently in his blood.
I was told it would take the work of a true Potions Master to safely remove the build up of Suppressor Toad venom and its leathal breakdown products that would have built up through long term exposure without either killing the victim, or at best, leaving him with magical channels so badly comprimised he would be little better than a squib.
When I asked my own potions teacher at Gringotts, where such Potion Masters could be found, the only name that my own professor would cite as sufficient to such an exacting potion creation was Potion Master Severus Snape.
Sir, House Potter begs Potion Master Snape to attempt such a therapy, with the understanding that the success of such a therapy cannot be guaranteed, even with perfect mastery."
Professor Sprout gasped in horror, and her wand began waving over Neville in a series of long and complicated motions as she chanted softly. Professor Flitwick joined her and the two of them muttered together before looking over at Professor Snape and nodding gravely.
Snape, for his part, looked down his nose at Harry Potter, his eyes focused like a striking serpent upon the hated vision of his rival reborn. His eyes locked upon those of blazing green, so like those of his mother, the woman who had shown similar loyalty to him that her son showed to his friends today. A loyalty he had, only twice, and most irrevocably, failed.
Harry Potter stared back at him, resolute in placing himself in life debt to one who was a sworn Death Eater, in fact if not in allegiance, and who had been no small part in his parent's death. The boy did not know. The boy did not know that Snape already owed House Potter a life debt for saving him from Sirius Black's "prank" that nearly saw him killed by the werewolf Lupin. He further did not know of the second, less grudging life debt Severus swore when his unknowing sharing of the Trelwany prophesy resulted in Lilly's death at the wand of Voldemort.
"There is no debt to assume, Heir Potter. I stood in the debt of your house already, though you knew it not. You are correct, there are none living in Wizarding Britain, and indeed no more than three in all of Europe who are capable of such a treatment. Of them all, I am, without boasting, the most skilled." Snape said slowly and firmly.
Professor Snape turned to the Longbottom boy.
"Mr Longbottom, you will owl your grandmother this night with a complete accounting of how you came to be poisoned, the fact that such long term poisoning and its effects on your core have been confirmed by your head of house, and ask her written permission for me to begin the potion therapy required to clear your tissues and magical channels of the toxin itself, and the potentially lethal breakdown products."
He sighed.
"Mr Longbottom, please be advised, as you have most likely been unable to perform any magic without putting an almost inhuman degree of focus, intent, and brute force to get any effect at all, when your magical channels begin to clear, I expect you will be somewhat of a danger to yourself and others. Kindly strive to be at least somewhat aware." Snape finished, rubbing his temples at the thought of the cauldrons this would cost him.
It is safe to say that all four heads of Houses left that office with much to think about. The Headmaster that remained looked upon the wreckage of his plans for "The Boy Who Lived" and sighed.
"Still," Dumbledore mused, "if he is not alone and without any support or guidance than me, he has delivered to me other hostages to fortune that can, should circumstances require it, be used to motivate him to make the required sacrifice."
Dumbledore sighed regretfully.
"For the Greater Good."
At this point, he had sacrificed so much upon that altar that three more dead children were hardly noticed. The cost of being the Light's Champion was too high for any but himself to pay. That is why no one but himself would be allowed to know, or to shape his vision of the necessary future.