Harry was very thankful that the ticket Hagrid had given him also came with instructions on how to get to the train. Otherwise he would never have considered walking into a solid brick wall. After stepping through Harry was surrounded by sounds and chaos of families running around and saying their goodbyes to each other while robes of various colors passed him by. Harry slowly meandered through the crowded station unaware that the longer he stayed the more he was noticed.
Finding an empty compartment hadn't been too difficult; he had arrived early enough that any ones he passed by that had people in them only held a couple. Since these were all just faces to him he hadn't bothered to remember from one carriage to the next that each room only held girls. This would come back to him later on in the day.
But somewhere in the middle of the train Harry had just finished securing his trunk in the overhead racks when the door slipped open followed by a gasp. However before he was able to turn to face the entrance the door had shut and whoever it was had taken off.
Deciding that he should continue to read his new school textbooks, since he wanted to make a good impression on the teachers, Harry had become so engrossed in reading that it was when he heard shouting outside his door it startled him enough to toss his book across the compartment to the other bench. Lots of blurred scurrying could be seen outside his door but in the time it took him to open the door everyone had scattered.
He remained relatively undisturbed until the door was quite rudely opened without so much as a knock. "So it's true then?" A young blonde girl smirked standing in the doorway, the outside hallway blocked by two other girls. "Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts."
Taking a deep breath Harry nodded, acknowledging the girl's statement. "Um yes, I'm Harry Potter." He offered his hand for a shake to the young girl who stared for a moment before roughly grabbing his hand and placing a sloppy kiss on the back. "Uhhh…" Harry droned for a moment before retracting the appendage. "Well you know my name, but I didn't quite catch yours?"
The weird blonde girl chortled and looked over her shoulder at her two accomplices. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of me. I'm Dracaena Malfoy, Scion of House Malfoy, quite an influence in our world."
Waiting for a moment Harry then coughed slightly. "And your two friends?"
Dracaena scrunched up her face then snorted. "You don't have to worry about them, but if you must know they are Vicky Crabbe and Grace Goyle."
"Well hello Victoria and Grace," Harry offered a smile before one of the girls he couldn't tell who was who just yet spoke up.
"My name's Vicky, not Victoria."
"Oh um, I'm sorry." Quickly offered an apology since he hadn't wanted to offend anyone, not this soon anyway.
"Don't worry about her, her parents were just too dumb to know how to spell Victoria," Dracaena said then laughed at her own putdown.
Shifting his eyes between Dracaena and the other two girls he nervously chuckled because he had seen Dudley and his friends put down each other and laugh but he wasn't sure it would be alright for him to do that, not that he wanted to anyway. While the blonde girl moved to seat herself across from him in the corner of his eye he could see that more students had been held up by the two followers stopping anyone from passing.
Before he could ask this strange girl if her friends would move so the others could move about the train, other much older girls came by and started ordering the walkway to be cleared. "Malfoy," a girl who wore green robes hissed out. "You know not to do that now."
"Oh please Flint, we all know as soon as I get to the castle that I'll be in charge and that rule goes out the window." Malfoy sneered disobediently.
"Yeah well until then you follow the same rule the other houses do," Flint snarled and dragged Malfoy out of Harry's compartment.
The blondes frustrated grunts from trying to break the older girl's grasp on her robes. "Stupid bitch, I'm a Malfoy. How dare you stop me from taking what is rightfully mine."
As soon as the young girl was gone Harry noticed that outside his door a few of the older girls were still standing. "We're sorry about that mesir, she should have known better than to bother you."
Harry rubbed his arm nervously at how formally this older girl was speaking to him. "She wasn't bothering me all that much." He tried to speak politely even though Dracaena was making him uncomfortable.
"Well if anyone else comes to bother you, we're just in the next carriage, so don't hesitate to shout, okay?" the older girl gave Harry a soft smile that he returned with a nod.
For the remainder of the train ride no one so much as touched the handle on the compartment he was in. It seemed like someone had put up a sign warning others that he was in the room.
He was surprised that the train ride had taken as long as it had since they had departed at a little after eleven in the morning and it was well into the night based on how dark it had become when the train came to a stop at the station.
Stepping out of the train and into the night, dressed in the robes that had been sent to the Dursleys, which he thought looked really nice despite his random guesses in the shop, so either the nice clerk had just picked better choices for him or she really knew how to make it all work together.
Harry hurried over when he heard the loud voice of Ms. Hagrid calling for all the first-years to gather around her. "Hello Hagrid," Harry happily smiled upon stopping in front of the massive woman.
"Ello Harry, did you have a good ride up? Didn't have no problems along the way did ya?" Hagrid inquired as to how Harry had done on the Express.
Harry nodded his head. "It was alright, a bit lonely but I'll just have to try and make friends when I get up to the castle."
"I'm sure you're not going to have a problem with that," Hagrid chuckled under her breath before leading the new group of first years to the boat.
Sitting in any of the floating vessels, Harry nodded to the three girls already occupying it. "Hello, I'm Harry Potter," only this time he offered a small wave so as to not have his hand kissed which Harry had been certain he was supposed to do to girls, not the other way around.
"He-he-hello H-Harry, I'm D-d-d-Daphne Green...grass," the blonde managed to sputter out before grimacing that she had sounded like a fool.
The two other girls snickered a bit at this failure of an introduction, but that one girl had already messed up made them not want to share the same fate. "Tracy Davis, mesir," the brunette stated while also shooting a grin at the blonde. Of all things she hadn't expected to see her friend completely lose it when confronted with a boy.
The redhead however went right in for something a tad more unconventional. "Ronalda Weasley," the overeager young girl said while lurching forward to try and grab Harry's hand, the sudden movement caused the boat to rock and in an effort to stabilize it, everyone overcorrected and Harry went overboard with a splash. To the shouts of the others who had seen it happen.
Thankfully the Durlseys did make sure Harry knew how to swim, which might have been one of the few positive skills they taught him other than some less positive things, Harry only splashed around for a moment before he was able to climb his way back onto the boat. Instead of giggling at his expense like he had expected, the blonde and brunette were still as statues and Ronalda looked horrified. "It's fine, the water's not too cold this time of year," making sure to be loud enough so that Hagrid could hear him as she looked about ready to throw herself in after him.
"I am so sorry, oh Merlin," Ronalda reached out but then reeled back like she had touched a hot stove. "Oh no, I completely bungled this entire thing." Tears were starting to form in her eyes already for reasons Harry didn't know.
Ruffling his hair to get most of the water out and shucking off his outer robes so they wouldn't weigh him down or give him hypothermia, Harry just shrugged and chuckled. "Accidents happen, it's only water. I know you didn't mean to Ronalda, plus I was the one who lost my balance."
Despite feeling a tad annoyed at his short but sudden aquatic adventure Harry hadn't wanted to get mad at any of the magical people as the entire time they had been nothing but kind and genial to him, so a small accident shouldn't be held against them.
But as soon as the boats landed on the shore he found himself quickly surrounded by a bunch of the other girls who were fussing over him and one of them even said they knew a drying charm that could help him, which left him still a bit damp. Because of him being in a sea of girls Harry had just assumed all the boys had gone on ahead, but he thanked the girls all the same, even some of the other girls who hadn't gone crazy over him being soaked had at least looked worried.
"Ruby," Professor McGonagall hissed seeing the still wet Harry standing with all the other first years. With a flick of her wand any of the still remaining water in his clothes was gone and Harry actually felt a tad warmer now on top of it.
"Oh thank you Professor," Harry kindly said knowing that the witch had been the one to do that.
"It's no problem at all Mr. Potter," Minerva smiled and nodded towards Harry, before quickly turning back to the groundskeeper with a look.
"He fell off the boat and got out before I could do anything," Hagrid sheepishly responded before being shoved along through another door.
"It's fine really, just a bit of a shock," Harry interjected so as the older woman didn't think that Hagrid had just let him flounder about.
"Yeah because Weasley is such a klutz she practically pushed him into the lake," Malfoy spoke up haughtily, which served to make the aforementioned girl's face turn nearly the same shade as her hair.
"I didn't mean to," Ronalda whimpered from all the glares sent her way.
Harry, not wanting to see a fight break out, spoke up in defense of the other girl. "She just wanted to shake my hand, I'm the one that lost my balance, no harm done."
With the lull created by Harry's statement Minerva quickly sorted the students into two neat lines and led them into the Great Hall. "Woah," Harry said upon seeing all the decorations, floating candles, a magical ceiling that another girl said was described in one of the books she had read. Then there were all the faces and that was when Harry noticed that nearly every single face belonged to a girl, from where he stood if there were any boys he couldn't pick them out of the sea of eyes that all stared at him.
He knew they stared at him because he could hear the whispers of Potter and that's him and surprisingly enough, he's really cute. That while individually were quiet but with a few hundred voices at once it might as well have been shouted.
That was when everything came back to him, his trips to the alley, not a single guy except for Ollivander and the goblins, maybe… the families dropping off their children, all mothers and daughters with a few older fathers. And lastly on the train ride up to the castle every compartment he passed by only held young ladies. Hogwarts as far as Harry could tell was an All Girl School.
That sudden information overload had taken up so much of his brain power to process that he didn't pay attention until his own name was called by Professor McGonagall.
Every step towards the stool where he would put on the magical sorting hat was agonizing, as he knew he was the center of attention. Taking the seat on the stool he felt the hat settle on top of his brow. "Ahh Mr. Potter, what a pleasure to see you," a voice suddenly spoke up inside his mind.
"Don't worry about that my dear boy," the hat chuckled. "Oh ho, I can see that they might have forgotten to mention that little detail to you." It never ceased to amuse the hat to absorb the reaction of muggleborns and more importantly wizards who had no idea what the magical world was like when confronted with the quite alarming discrepancy between the sexes.
"Uh yeah," Harry thought back to the hat. "Did they make a mistake sending me here? Should I be at some Wizard school instead?"
"Dear Merlin no my boy, Hogwarts is for both witches and wizards, just in the last half millenia or so there's been a slight conundrum world wide."
"Not enough wizards?" Harry surmised what that might be but had no idea as to why it was that way.
"Quite right, but it wasn't always this way, but I won't bore you with the details, I do need to go on and sort you after all," The hat said to return to its ultimate purpose.
"A bright young lad you are while also humble and kind, you'd make for a wonderful Eagle or Badger. Really any of the houses would be glad to have you, so much potential in a wizard after all. A clever mind, one that could lead the House of Snakes, just like another had done years ago."
"Who?" Harry inquired as to the identity of this mystery person.
"A scarily brilliant young man or maybe it was brilliantly scary, either way he saw what his full potential could bring him in our world,'' the hat ominously answered. "But you also showed quite a bit of courage to not back down from the situation you found yourself in, quite like a fiery young lady who would have been great in any house, but she wanted to be known as brave."
"Was that girl my mother?" Harry asked.
"That she was. Lily Evans was a lovely child, friendly to everyone, a mind sharp as a whip and she knew how to use it, but what she wanted others to know was that she wasn't a scared little girl in an unfamiliar world. She held her head up high through everything this world would throw at her and I'm quite proud of her. That she willingly and bravely stood up to that monster, I just know I made the right choice."
"I want to be where you sent my mom, I want to live up to the person she was," Harry decided, if there was anyone he wanted to honor it would be his parents. Joining the house she had been in would be the first thing he could do.
"You will never be Lily Evans, but I would suspect that she wouldn't want that for you either, you will be Harry Potter, and you can do that in…" The hat trailed off before its mouth spread open at the brim. "GRYFFINDOR!" Its voice bellowed, echoing throughout the hall which was soon followed by an explosion of cheers from the red clad table.