Chapter Text
The train began to move, and Harry walked alongside it, watching his son’s thin face, already ablaze with excitement. Harry kept smiling, and waving, even though it was like a little bereavement, watching his son glide away from him…
The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air. The train rounded a corner. Harry’s hand was still raised in farewell.
“He’ll be all right,” murmured Ginny.
As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absent-mindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead.
“I know he will.”
The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.
— Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters drifts out of sight, and then is obscured by puffs of steam. Albus Severus Potter lowers the hand he’d been waving, and frowns. There it goes, his childhood before Hogwarts. His childhood at Hogwarts, and the dubious domain of his entire future, lies ahead on the train tracks to Scotland.
“They’ll be alright,” Rose murmurs next to him. He glances sideways at her: his best friend, his sister-cousin. His confidant and protector. She gives him a tight grin. She’s nervous, too. “Lily and Hugo can take care of them while we’re off.”
“Yeah, I reckon it’s about time.”
Al’s pretty sure their parents would laugh themselves silly if they knew — but he and his siblings have tried to be their parents’ guardians their whole lives. It’s hard to be famous war-heroes; he knows from a lifetime of watching his parents stumble and fight through it. It hasn’t yet been half as difficult to be the children of war-heroes.
He and his siblings — Rose and her brother Hugo included in that count — are lucky that way, he supposes.
Rose flops down to the seat opposite him and kicks up her heels. She’s already in her school robes, which makes Al wonder if he should change into his, too. Her bright red hair is in two curly plaits, which Uncle Ron must have done, because they’re a bit crooked.
Al sits down and looks out the window. The Hogwarts Express must be more than a little enchanted, because London is already far behind, and the countryside rambles outside. Fresh with summer, just a hint of September in its sprinting hills.
He’s glad that Rose knows he doesn’t want to talk right now. Hugging his Dad and Mum and Lily good-bye, getting a last squeeze and shoulder-pat from Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron — those are things to process in silence.
But then the compartment door opens to a wave of good-natured chatter. Al resists the urge to jump to his feet like a startled cat.
“Firsties,” observes one of the arrivals, in yellow-and-black trimmed school robes. “This is our compartment, sorry; it’s tradition… You’re welcome to stay, of course.”
“Want to play a round of Snap?” says another.
“Gosh,” says another, and tugs at her mate to look, too. “You look a lot like Harry Potter.”
“Who?” Rose says innocently. She curls her hand around Al’s wrist with a yank. “Sorry, I’ve lost my pet toad; we’ve got to search the train for that warty little bugger…”
“We’ll keep an eye out for him!” calls one of them as Rose and Al stumble out.
Rose shuts the door behind them. She breathes in very deeply, with her eyes shut, and then looks at Al and says, very earnestly: “I don’t look like the sort of person who’d have a pet toad, do I?”
Al laughs. “Maybe with a few more warts, you would.”
“I’ll give you a few more warts,” Rose threatens. “Come on, let’s find someone we know.”
That shouldn’t be difficult at all. Al knows the train is bursting with familiar faces. And thank Merlin. Shamefully, he’s not in the mood to make any new best friends. Not with Dad’s last hug and Lily’s tears still fresh in his system. Sorry, Uncle Ron. Your daughter’s already filled the role of best friend. I can find another when I get to school.
“It’s not bad that we didn’t feel like hanging out with those kids, is it?” Rose, as usual, is on the same line of thought. “I mean, our parents became friends on the train their first year.”
“Not my mum,” Al says. Rose nods, relieved. Al’s mum is ace. “Anyway, our parents didn’t have a James.”
James, holding court in a compartment halfway down the train, greets them with exuberance.
“Hey, get in here! Before some half-witted firstie tries to take the empty seats.”
“You’ve got one whole wit right here,” Al says, gesturing between him and Rose as he scoots onto the empty seat beside his brother.
“Precisely,” James grins, and loops a tan arm around Al’s shoulders. He seems to have lost interest in the whole Slytherin thing upon being reunited with his schoolmates, for which Al is profoundly grateful.
Cousin Freddie leans over and gives Al’s knobbly knee a knock. “For luck,” he explains, brown face splitting in a straight-toothed grin. “First year at Hogwarts!”
“Really?” Rose exclaims, as Freddie does the same for her. “I didn’t realise.”
“That Ron-Weasley sense of humour’s gonna get you in trouble someday, Rosie-loo,” Freddie says, tugging on one of her lopsided braids.
The other occupants of the compartment are mostly familiar to Al. Deryn Jones juts a nod at Al. She’s all bronze limbs and bared teeth grins, and is probably the scariest person Al’s ever met. Ambrose Summers, with a gap-toothed grin like Hugo’s, offers him some Every Flavour Beans. Deryn and Ambrose have been James’s other limbs since he got to Hogwarts. They’d had Al join in on rounds of two-a-side Quidditch behind the Burrow over the summer.
Fred introduces the last two faces: “Jodie King, who’s someday going to be the most kickass Keeper in Gryffindor history. And Grace Nanako, who refuses to attend a single game out of principle.”
Grace Nanako has three moles placed so decisively across her ivory features that it’s like someone pressed them there by hand. “It’s a death wish on broomsticks! Of course I’m not going to attend!”
Jodie King’s skin is a shade darker than Freddie’s, and her hair is in bright beaded braids. “You’ll attend when I’m Keeper, or I’ll throw you into the Black Lake myself.”
Rose, who throws up when she has to get on a broom, laughs the loudest of all of them.
The train ride goes by very pleasantly. It’s not quiet enough for Al to brood on the momentous nature of the occasion, which he realises is very good for him. It wouldn’t do to march into his future with a scowl and jittery knees.
Rose argues (her preferred form of communication) with Freddie and Ambrose about Muggle pop stars and which of them might secretly be wizards (Taylor Swift and someone named Dua Lipa seem to be the top contenders). Deryn Jones, Jodie King, and James are throwing Every Flavour Beans into each other’s mouths in an intricate, hypnotic rhythm. Grace Nanako teaches Al something she calls tomato hands, which mostly consists of slapping the tops of their hands before the other person can pull away.
Al’s knuckles are indeed quite tomato-red before long. He’s sure Grace keeps changing the rules on him. He glances up when Grace pauses to bemoan that her mobile phone has gone dead with the magic of the train, and it’s then that he notices:
Scorpius Malfoy is outside their compartment, buying a mountain of sweets from the trolley.
“Can I please get a bloodsucker lolly…” for Christine Bletchley, who’s just weird enough to enjoy them “...And two of Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum…” for Ophelia and Carmella, who already think of their figures like equations “...Four Shrieking Sherberts…” for Emmeline, and James Vaisey, those absolute tornadoes “...A couple of Fizzing Whizbees…” for genial Mary Woodbridge “...And… Er.”
Scorpius recites back the list in a mutter. The only one left is him. And he has no bloody idea what he wants. This seems to be a running theme in his life.
“I’ve got t’other wee’uns to get to,” says the trolley witch boredly. She can’t be too long out of Hogwarts herself. Her hair is lime green, and she’s popping her bubble-gum ferociously.
Scorpius stumbles out, penitently: “And a packet of Jelly Buttons, please.”
“Cheers.”
The jingle of coins he drops into her pouch is depressing. Despite his parents’ careful manipulation of appearances, his purse is not that deep.
“Thank you, darlingest of Scorpiuses,” says Ophelia in satisfaction, as Scorpius hands out the sweets. It’s nice of her to say thank you, but in reality, she’d all but ordered him to buy it all.
“Ooh, actually, can I trade you for the Jelly Buttons?” says Christine Bletchley, and Scorpius obliges, though he hates blood lollies. Who would like them? Maybe Emmeline, she’s pale enough to sprout vampire fangs any time. But no, she’s already tearing into her Shrieking Sherbert.
Emmeline Nott is his closest relation in the compartment, so Scorpius shoots a glance at his own wrist. He’s pale enough to be vampiric, too, he supposes. He half-heartedly licks at the blood lolly. It tastes rotten.
Emmeline’s mother and father, Aunt Daphne and Uncle Theo, are related through his mum. But Aunt Daphne looks nothing like Mum, and so he and Emmeline have very little in common (except perhaps mild anaemia). On her other side sits Ophelia Greengrass, his cousin on his mum’s side. She pops a blowing bubble luxuriously, and then makes sure that Carmella Rosier, his cousin on his dad’s side, does the same. Carmella looks less pleased about the whole chewing gum thing, and looks longingly at her mate Mary’s Fizzing Whizbee.
“It’s extra fizzing because it’s so fizzy to finally be going to Hogwarts,” Mary says around a mouthful, at which even James Vaisey (who takes pride in being a bit of a prick) laughs appreciatively.
To all the world, these are Scorpius's best mates. He doesn’t have siblings, so he’s grown up with these kids instead. Ophelia, Emmeline, and Carmella especially, because they’re literally tied to him through blood. Also because they know a little of what it’s like to bear the weight of their parents’ names. Bletchley, Vaisey, and Woodbridge are far less sullied. In fact, the Woodbridges even supported the right side in the last war.
Out of all of them, Scorpius thinks he likes Mary Woodbridge the most. Though that’s sacrilegious to say, since Grandmother Cissa says blood is everything. But she doesn’t like James Vaisey, either, and he’s related somehow, probably. Scorpius can read Grandmother Cissa pretty well, and she never looks pleased when Mother says the Vaiseys are dropping by for tea. She always smiles at the Greengrasses or Notts or Rosiers or…
Scorpius could recite the surnames of families his Grandmother approves of, alphabetically and backwards and probably in Mermish, too. He thinks back to the train corridor, and hopes that the compartment full of Potters and Weasleys (two names she doesn’t approve of) hadn’t noticed him. He’s got enough to deal with, right here in his own seat.
Rose is thankful for James Potter when the train rolls into Hogsmeade Station — not an emotion she generally feels for James Potter. (A hurricane in a skinsuit, that one.) But he’s got a compartment full of friends wishing her and Al luck for the Sorting, and that sort of makes up for the holy horror he’s always been.
“Love you no matter what house you’re in, you git,” she hears him mutter to Al as he locks Al’s head under his armpit and ruffles his untidy hair.
“Piss off,” Al returns, but he looks a little less queasy afterwards.
Everyone in the compartment gives her and Al a punch in the arm for good luck. Her arm’s going to be bruised for a week, but she’s wobbly with nerves, so she just grins.
“I’ve got low iron,” Al says, rubbing his arm as they walk towards Hagrid, who’s yelling for first-years as if he was born to do it. Al’s a centimetre taller than Rose, but has a tendency to stand a little hunched. His green eyes are glowing. “I’ll be bruised for a week.”
“Prolly a week and a half,” Rose says. She eats ever so much more spinach than Al does.
Flora and Fauna Longbottom pounce on them as soon as they reach Hagrid and the rest of the first-years.
“Good gracious, you look ill,” Flora tells Al, though she’s trembling so much her teeth are clattering together. She links her arm through his, and then Rose’s. “Love the braids, Rosie-loo.”
“Dad did them.” Rose tugs on Fauna’s brown pigtail. “Ready?”
Fauna throws an arm around Al’s shoulder. “So horribly ready, I could keel over and die. But I have a secret weapon.”
“What’s that?” Al shrugs off Fauna’s arm and tugs on the pigtail that Rose hadn’t. “A Xanax prescription?”
Fauna laughs her babbling brook laugh, and Flora snorts and then claps her hand over her mouth. Rose is so glad that she grew up with the Longbottom twins. “That, too. But I know what the Sorting Ceremony is. It’s —” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “— putting on a hat.”
“Oh, you —” and then Al says something very profane that he learned from Deryn Jones during the train ride, and they all burst into nervous laughs. Right, it’s a hat. Can’t be too bleeding difficult.
“Firs’ years! Firs’ years!” Hagrid shouts, and then he looks at his flock. Counts them up once, twice. “Looks like we got ev’ryone, then. Off we get, yeh lot! To Hogwarts!”
The Longbottom twins, Al, and Rose climb into a boat together. The Black Lake looks horrifically deep, but its surface glitters with a thousand stars. Hogwarts rises in the distance, its windows and turrets glimmering like so many amber eyes. Rose hasn’t visited the castle in ages, and she thinks maybe it’s grown a few stories.
“D’you suppose we have to row ourselves across?” Al whispers to Rose.
“Magic, dear boy,” Flora says from her spot at the prow.
A pathetically short elf of a boy approaches and clears his throat. “Erm — room for two here?”
“We won’t capsize, surely,” Rose says, and beckons him and his pal onboard. As soon as they step on, the boat starts moving in sync with the others. “See, just in the nick of time.”
The boy sighs. He looks as if he was raised in a cupcake, all raspberry-jam pout and sugar-blonde hair in a pouffe. The girl with him smiles at Rose with a hint of hysteria in her eyes. Muggle-born, then.
Al leans over and offers a hand. “I’m Al.”
“Potter,” the boy says. “I know who you are. And Rose Weasley, and Flora and Fauna Longbottom.”
“I wonder,” Fauna says, dreamily trailing her fingers across the water’s surface, “If it would really be so hard for anyone — anyone at all! — to say Fauna and Flora Longbottom, even once. It would be so nice for my ego.”
“The Hat will say your name first,” Flora points out. “Alphabetically speaking, you come first; if nowhere else, dear.”
“I’m Lance,” the boy says, and then jerks a thumb at the girl. “And she’s Lauren Harper. We’re not friends.”
“We’re not,” Lauren Harper confirms. “We met on the train. Are all wizards as froofy as him?”
“Not quite,” Rose says with a wrinkled nose. Lance’s pointed hat has frills on it.
The boy sighs again. He seems to be adept at it. He gives them a sheepish look, as if he’s about to apologise for his entire existence. “My full name is Lancelot LaFolle.”
“Like the writer?” Al is deeply unimpressed. His mum made him read one of Fifi LaFolle’s novels and give a book report on it as punishment once. Rose and her mum had howled with laughter. Dad had quite enjoyed the book report, and kept it in a desk drawer at the shop for whenever he needed a laugh.
“My great-grandmother,” Lancelot LaFolle confirms. “Froofy has been my entire life.”
“I think we should be friends, Lance,” Rose says, meaning we to encompass Al, as well. “At least once you’re all de-frilled.”
“You might be waiting a while, then.” Lance rolls up one pant leg to show that his socks are frilly, too. “Until I’ve got the Galleons to really go to town at Gladrags for a whole new wardrobe.” He looks pleased when they all laugh sympathetically.
“Lance!” comes a call across the water. They all squint to see where it came from.
A handful of blue flames shimmers to light in the palm of a very pretty witch in the boat ahead of them. Rose dislikes her immediately. Those blue flames are her mother’s signature, and Rose hasn’t yet learned the incantation for them. How dare this random first-year who knows Lance, her new friend, also know how to summon them up before even getting ashore?
“Charlotte?” Lance calls. “Annamaria, is that you there, too?”
“Hiya!” chirps Annamaria, presumably.
“I thought I recognized that silly hat!” cries the owner of the blue flames, which must be Charlotte. “Alright, there?”
“Tip of the tops,” Lance assures her. In a lower voice, to their own boat: “Charlotte Fawcett and Annamaria Clearwater. Nicest girls around.”
When they disembark, Rose gets a proper look at them. They do look like nice girls. Charlotte Fawcett is even prettier without the glow of blue flames under her nose. She’s got her dirty-blonde hair in a neat ribbon, and her robes are spick-and-span. Annamaria Clearwater, with a dark bob, recognises Al from his famous father immediately, and bursts into nervous giggles.
Al wrinkles his nose at Rose, and they hurry a little to separate from Lance and his friends. Lauren Harper and the Longbottom twins gab easily on their tail.
“Are you thrilled to see us finally at Hogwarts?” Al says, tugging on Hagrid’s ragged coat at the head of the first years.
Hagrid beams down at them and pats their shoulders so hard Rose probably loses a centimetre of height. “‘S ridiculous, the way yeh lot keep on growin’. Makes me feel like a ruddy old feller.”
“Never,” Rose says. “You’re as spry as you ever were, and you always will be. I’m sure of it.”
Hagrid laughs hard enough to shake the stones from the castle. And let him, Rose thinks fiercely. The knot of sour-faced girls flanking silent Scorpius Malfoy are shooting them stares as if Hagrid isn’t a bloody war-hero, and a good-hearted person to boot.
As Al and Hagrid perform a convoluted handshake that they and James and Louis have spent years perfecting — Rose turns around, walking backwards up the steps, and flips the sour-faced girls the bird with an angelic smile.
She’s almost sure Scorpius Malfoy’s pale lips twitch a little.
The front doors open, and the first-years all freeze. Rose spins on the spot and almost off the step, but Al grabs her elbow in time.
A very square and handsome wizard smiles at them. He’s got dark sideburns and a scar crossing his crooked, bulging nose. Rose, who is not used to adults she doesn’t know, thinks he looks just how a professor at Hogwarts should look. Like out of a book.
“Pr’fessor Newbourne,” Hagrid booms. “The firs’ years.” He waves his hand grandly towards them. Like he’s presenting debutantes at a ball. Which, Rose supposes, isn’t too far off.
“I’ll take them from here,” says Newbourne. He steps out of the doorway to let Hagrid squeeze through. “Alright, first years. Welcome to Hogwarts.”
Somewhere in the shuffle of forty-some eleven-year-olds clambering into the Entrance Hall, Al finds a new face next to him. Well, maybe not entirely new.
“Hey, I know you,” he says under Newbourne’s lilting introductions. “Finch-Fletchley?”
Finch-Fletchley nods and extends his knuckles for Al to tap. “Chris. And you’re — James?”
“Al,” he corrects. “Your parents hosted the last DA Christmas, yeah? You live in a bloody mansion.”
Chris grimaces. He’s sandy-haired and taller than Al. He looks like he’s about to lose his lunch. “Came with the surname,” he says, and Al laughs to the tune of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He thinks Chris sort of gets him. “Hey, what’s this Sorting gonna be? My dad wouldn’t tell.”
“It’ll be easy,” Al assures. “My older brother — he’s James — tried telling me they changed it to duelling Peeves this year, just for me and Rosie, but it’s really just putting on a hat.”
“I know about Peeves — but not a thing about hats,” Chris says, and glances down at the pointed hat he’s tucked under his elbow with trepidation. He looks back up and nods his flat, friendly face at Rose on Al’s other side. “‘Lo. You’re Rosie?”
“Just Rose,” Rose says pleasantly, and then glares at Al. “You’ve met Albus, then.”
Al shoves her, just a titch. He only lets Dad call him that. “This is Chris. He’s the one with the Christmas mansion.”
Her eyes light up. “Dom and Louis were throwing up for hours after surfing down your bannisters.”
“Cheers, I s’pose.”
“Well, that about sums it up!” Newbourne exclaims, and rubs his hands together. Al snaps back to attention. “We should be able to go into the Great Hall in just a tick, so just breathe, you lot. You’ll be alright whichever House you end up in, I promise you.”
Bugger it all. He hadn’t paid attention to a whit of Newbourne’s welcoming speech. What if things had changed from what he’d been told by all his family? What if they’d changed the Sorting, and Al would have to bloody battle Peeves, after all? What if —
He glances at the Longbottom twins. Flora is muttering something soothing to Lauren Harper, who doesn’t look like she really needs much soothing. Fauna catches his eye and nods reassuringly. She mimes something like marching, then putting a hat on her head, and then cheering, and then eating a leg of lamb, and then clasps her hands under her chin like she’s fast asleep. She even mimes a snore.
Flora notices, and sends Al a truly hideous monster-face, complete with hands as horns.
Al shakes his head, appreciative. They’re such weird sprite-goblin sort of girls.
The Great Hall is even better than it looks in photographs. Glimmering with candles under an inky-blue sky-ceiling. Long tables of wriggling, murmuring teenagers, leading up to the Head Table, where sit the best educators in Magical Britain. The ghosts in benevolent array, the empty china all glinting. The grubby-looking Sorting Hat, with its snarky song and the creases across its front like it’s smirking.
Charlotte Fawcett is quite charmed.
She scans the Head Table while the first students are Sorted. There’s Headmaster Flitwick, whom her dad was always fond of at school. Both Merrythoughts — Heads of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, respectively — are drumming their wands with excitement. Professor Longbottom — Order of Merlin, First Class — is fixing his face to be professorly, but he looks proud as punch at the sight of his kids, the round-faced Longbottom girls, next to the Potter boy and the Weasley girl.
Charlotte thinks of her own dad and stifles a stab of homesickness. She’s only just gotten there, for goodness sake. She’ll write to him, first thing in the morning. Tell him what House she’s in, where Annamaria’s ended up, and everything about this glorious moment she can possibly sop up into quill and ink.
Sandra Entwhistle grins as she jogs towards Hufflepuff’s table, where her new housemates are whistling and stamping wildly. Professor Garrick Newbourne, Deputy Headmaster (as he had introduced himself in his illuminating welcome speech) clears his throat until the Hall is quiet enough to announce: “Fawcett, Charlotte.”
Charlotte steps up to the Hat with her nose in the air. It would be lovely if her new House gave her as warm a welcome as Sandra had received. How horrible would it be if they just shrugged and clapped politely?
“A thirst for recognition,” a weedy little voice says as her vision is obscured by the Hat’s dusty interior. “A desire for acceptance, for acclaim.”
Charlotte tries to modulate herself. Those don’t sound exactly like admirable traits. Nice girls don’t go around demanding attention, after all.
“Is it not admirable to seek what you deserve?” the Hat whispers. “To advocate for yourself, to know yourself enough to know exactly what you must do to succeed next?”
Put that way, it does sound nice. No, it sounds better than nice. Charlotte Fawcett is a nice girl, but she could be more than that in seven years within enchanted stone walls. Couldn’t she?
Sort me where I can do that, she prays.
“Certainly I can,” the Hat says slyly, proudly. It has, of course, centuries of experience in the field. Charlotte could someday be as much an expert on something as the Hat is on Sorting — and she would do it in less time, too. “You’ll do and be much more than a nice girl in RAVENCLAW!”
You’d think a hat of this much fantastically vital magical history would be less dodgy-looking.
“Hey,” the Hat says crossly into his ear. “Talk to me when you’ve reached several millennia of age. Now. Hmm. You don’t have a clue who you are yet, do you?”
Chris Finch-Fletchley twists his hands in his lap. That wasn’t very nice of you.
The Hat laughs drily. “They don’t pay me to be nice. No matter, I can tell you perfectly who you are —”
They pay you?!
“— you’re meant to be a GRYFFINDOR!”
Finch-Fletchley, Christopher (sweet Morgana, what a staggering amount of syllables to bestow on a child!) staggers off to Gryffindor, giving the Hat a combative last glance. The Hat chuckles under the roar of applause, and then stills as Newbourne calls out, “Greengrass, Ophelia!”
Ophelia squeezes Carmella’s hand in her left, and Emmeline’s hand in her right, and then lets go. Merlin willing, she will have them by her side still at the end of the night.
Let’s get this over with, she thinks as the hat is lowered on her head.
“Decisive, aren’t we?” says the Hat, its nasty little voice snaking around every corner of her mind. “How refreshing. SLYTHERIN!”
Thank you! she thinks to the Hat before it’s lifted off her head. Its voice wasn’t that nasty, in the end, was it? Relief is springing through her veins. She gives a quick look to Emmeline and Carmella in the sea of first-years, and strides towards the Slytherin table. One down, two to go.
Fauna Longbottom straightens her shoulders and strolls up to the Hat. She winks at good old Mister Garry, who’s now Professor Newbourne, prof of Transfig, rather than just one of her dad’s pal’s. Who knows — maybe he’ll end up being her Head of House, too!
“Bright as a tack,” the Hat comments. “And unyielding in loyalty — Hm.” It pauses, and Fauna does her best not to fidget. “I recognize you.”
Do you? My, how odd…
“You’ve put me on before!” it exclaims. “Yes, I remember — you spun that cockamamie story of being a summer transfer! That you’d spent three years trapped in a portrait, and that’s why it looked like you were only eight years old — you! ”
I’m sorry for lying, but my dad and old Flitwick had popped out of the Headmaster’s Office for a mo and — hang on, you can’t be cross with me for doing what any eight-year-old would’ve done!
“No, I can’t,” the Hat mutters, with something grating in its voice like affection. “But I can do this — and don’t you put me on ever again, missy, because you’re well and truly a GRYFFINDOR!”
The hat drops over Scorpius’s eyes and plunges him into darkness with all the finality of a funeral robe.
“Hm.”
Slytherin, please, he thinks, crossing all of his fingers under his sleeves.
“Hm? Slytherin, you say? So you already know where you belong, eh?”
Where else? No House wants a Malfoy, so might as well stick to where I’m expected.
The Hat hesitates, and when it speaks, its voice is very low. “You’ve been dealt a difficult card, boy, and you’re dealing with it like a true SLYTHERIN!”
Perched on the edge of the three-legged stool, Al flashes two thumbs up at the Hall in general — too many buggering cousins and mates to count at all tables, including the Head table! There’s his godfather, Uncle Nev, from the Head table next to Padma Patil, who might be the most beautiful person Al’s ever met. Cousin Lucy nodding from the Slytherin table and Dominique surrounded by friends and admirers at Hufflepuff. Lauren Harper, proud at the Slytherin table, and Lancelot LaFolle bewildered at Gryffindor. The Longbottom twins with Chris Finch-Fletchley, all three rosy with relief. And of course, Victoire and Molls and James and Freddie and Jodie and Ambrose and Deryn and Grace Nanako; and wow, he hasn’t seen Josie Bones in ages, but there she is waving from the Hufflepuff table —
Just before the Hat’s brim settles over his eyes, he sees Rose in the middle of the crowd of firsties, looking fiercely pale.
“Interesting.” The Hat has a niggling sort of voice that scrapes at the innards of his ear. It’s like when Dad took him to the paediatrician and she poked a silver Muggle tool up there to check for — whatever. Earwax. He tries not to squirm. “Interesting, interesting, interesting…”
You probably say that to everyone, Al thinks, focusing very hard. Dad had said he could put in his own word, hadn’t he?
“I don’t, in fact, say anything to everyone,” the Hat says. The digging sensation in his ear deepens. Rose might know what that ear instrument thing at the paediatric office was called. “I often don’t say much of anything to anyone at all. Something I see in you, as well. You’re a sharp edge. A bit of a smart mouth, hm, when you do bother to speak — but you hold your cards to the chest. Quite like a —”
I’m eleven. Al interrupts the Hat’s wheezy intake of breath before it can shout anything to the Hall. I don’t exactly have cards to hold anywhere yet.
“A great manner of things can be accomplished by eleven,” the Hat says, settling back into his eardrum. “As they say, age is just a number. Take it from a hat over several millennia old and still working like a dog to welcome students yearly into this tabernacle of learning — and in remarkable state of repair, despite claims to the contrary,” the Hat adds, sounding as peevish as Lily if someone teased her for unbrushed hair or sleep-crusted eyes.
Tabernacle of learning, yeesh. The Hat talks about Hogwarts like it’s some cloister house of Grave and Very Serious Studies, which doesn’t exactly jive with anything James has ever said. Or his aunts and uncles and parents, for that matter.
“Not too keen on spending hours with your head in the books, hmm?” the Hat says, as if it has unfolded some new corner of his brain. “That could change, you know; you have the brain for it, the persistence. Given the right motivator. Hmm, but I see… Never at the expense of connection, of your chosen people. You choose sparingly, but you choose for life.”
Rose’s pale face in the sea of firsties flashes in front of his eyes. Al wiggles his toes. He wishes he was tall enough to sit on the stool with his feet on the ground.
“What say you?” the Hat whispers, sounding strangely curious. “You could soar in emerald and silver, higher than any of your lineage has done before… It’s all here in your head, no doubt about it…”
That’s alright, actually, Al thinks, feeling very suddenly, a weird sense of calm. I think I can soar just fine as it is. Put me with my family.
“Family is no excuse for refusing a sense of self,” the Hat says sternly.
I’m not refusing anything. I’m choosing. I’m choosing my family. That’s not me falling in with the crowd, that’s me making a decision. I want family — and I want Rose. Rose is the most Gryffindor-est person to ever live, and Al would rather shit bricks than do Hogwarts — do anything — do life — without her by his side.
“I see,” the Hat mutters. It hems and haws to itself, as if Al had sent its notes flying all over the table, and it’s scrambling to pick them up and put them in the right order again. “A-ha.” Perhaps that’s the Hat finding the piece of parchment with Al’s family on it, all tidily ordered and placed on the tree, down to his mum’s ancient Pygmy Puff Arnold. From Potter and Evans and Black and Lupin and Weasley and Granger and all the way down to bloody Severus Snape. “I see, now. You’ve got a labyrinth of a mind, you. Good luck in GRYFFINDOR!”
Rose doesn’t mean to, truly she doesn’t — but she glances towards Gryffindor’s table and sees Al, looking queasy under James’s arm, before the hat drops over her eyes.
“Another Weasley,” the Hat drawls in her left ear. “Dear me, whatever will we do when we have run out?”
“Don’t worry your dusty little brim about that,” Rose says out loud. “My brother’s coming soon, and if you say anything like that to him, I’ll get out a seam ripper myself.”
“Ha!” the Hat says. “A firecracker. But I see something else: a hunger for knowledge, for excellence. What do you think of unravelling riddles for the next seven years, young lady?”
Rose thinks about it. She does love knowing things (it’s especially wonderful, and even rarer, to know something her mum doesn’t; and Rose thinks she could spend the rest of her life, never mind seven years, in pursuit of that end).
Al’s face at the Gryffindor table flashes before her eyes again, and she squeezes her eyes tightly until stars pop over his pointed little face. What’s the point of chasing anything if it isn’t with her brother-cousin running headlong at her side?
“Are you sure?” the Hat needles. “Family is no excuse for refusing a sense of self, you know?”
And suddenly, she’s sure. “My sense of self is with family, you nincompoop,” she mutters through her teeth. “Anyway, Al’s not family. He’s — well, he’s more than that.”
He’s her best friend and her morning star. Her worst enemy at times, but always her brother. They’re made of the same stuff. The same celestial bodies had smiled upon them at birth, and would continue to shine on them. Rose is dead sure of it.
“What conviction you have,” the Hat says, and it sounds like agreement. Like bolstering her. She’s right. She’s convinced it. How lovely. “Conviction, fire, and dogged loyalty. All will serve you well in GRYFFINDOR!”
Rose crashes onto the seat next to Al and promptly buries her face in her arms on the table. The Great Hall is vibrating with a rowdy chorus of “Weasley Is Our King” from all corners. Headmaster Flitwick is warbling from the Head table. Seventh-year Victoire and Molly burst into sobs of pride and affection.
“Weasley is our king… Weasley is our king…”
“Worst tradition ever,” Freddie calls sympathetically from the other end of the table.
“She’ll never let the Quaffle in, Weasley is our king…”
“Don’t let the song fool you!” Dominique shouts from the Hufflepuff table, where she’s banging together cutlery like percussion. “Rosie’ll always let the Quaffle in. Can’t even stay upright on a broomstick!”
“That’s why Gryffindors all sing…”
“Buck up, Rosie,” James says, leaning around Al. “It’s your birthright.”
So Rose lifts her head, tosses her braids, stands on the table, and waves her arms to conduct the school in the last, many-voiced chorus: “WEEEAS-LEEY IIIIS OUR KIIIIIIIIIIING.” She gives a sarcastic curtsey under the thunderous applause and laughter.
“It started at Dominique Weasley’s Sorting, a couple years back,” Flora explains to bewildered Chris and Lance. “First Weasley in centuries not in Gryffindor, people didn’t know what to think.”
“But the Hufflepuffs started singing that song, and Dominique did a little twirl for them — making fun, you see, at everyone’s expectations — and everyone loved it,” Fauna picks up. They’ve probably heard the story a thousand times from their dad, who uses any excuse he can to trot it out.
"When Freddie Weasley was sorted last year, he started a kickline, and then hurled something awful with the nerves, Flora says sympathetically.
“Cheers, Rosie!” Al says as Newbourne calls the next first-year up to the stool. “Gryffindor! We did it! Say — you don’t remember what it’s called, that Muggle tool that a paediatrician will use to look at the inside of your ear, do you?”
A rush of appreciation and relief threatens to unmoor Rose from the ground itself. She throws her arms around Al’s bony shoulders and squeezes as tight as a Venomous Tentacula. How could she have considered, even for a second, being parted from him?
“Oi — jeez, get off —”
Al smells like boy and Aunt Ginny’s linens, and a little bit like the boat ride across the Black Lake. She lets go. “I’m glad we’re friends,” she says, very solemnly.
Al blinks. “What are you talking about? Of course we’re friends. You’re my sister. I told mum and dad a thousand times, and they still went ahead and had Lilyloo.”
Despite the sarcasm, Al loops his arm through hers and leans his head against hers for the rest of the Sorting. It’s good to be home.
The Gryffindor Common Room is what Rose imagines the inside of Aunt Ginny’s heart is like, if one could crack open her rib cage and slip inside. Warm and red, positively overflowing with plump couches and leathery armchairs. A fire crackling, the smell of cinnamon and broom polish. Gold chandeliers, from which red and gold pennants stream down.
Rose whispers this to Al, who swallows, an inexpressible sort of homesickness clear across his face.
“S’pose so,” he manages. Rose rubs his arm to bolster him up, but then she thinks about her own mum, and the smell of her hair when she lets it down at night, and she feels homesick, too.
Luckily, the rest of Gryffindor Tower starts pouring in, Uncle Nev leading the way. He gives his daughters and Al and Rose a smile and a staying sort of gesture, like Just a second, play it cool. It’s comforting to see him up close — he’d looked so tall and distant and unfamiliar at the Head table.
“Incoming!” James announces, milliseconds before he flings himself across Al and Rose’s laps where they sit in front of the fire. “Miss me?”
“In the twenty minutes between leaving the Great Hall and you getting here?” Al retorts.
“I knew it.”
“Gather in, Gryffindor,” Uncle Nev calls. “We’ll make this quick.”
James leaves Al and Rose with ruffles of their hair to skulk in the back corner, where his fellow third-years are trying to look cool by separating themselves out from the youngsters. Freddie and Grace Nanako and — what was the name of his friend with the beaded braids? — are leaning against the wall where twin portraits of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are waving. Victoire is curled like a cat in the best armchair in the room. (Molly is nowhere to be seen, which Rose supposes could be due to Prefectly stuff.) A wave of affection rises tightly in her chest at the sea of faces, all turning to Uncle Nev at the fireplace like flowers to the sun. Her House. Gryffindors, all!
“Now, to anyone who hasn’t met me yet —” Uncle Nev smiles at the firsties in the front. “My name is Professor Longbottom. I am your Head of House, and I teach Herbology. My office is down in Greenhouse Six, and my office hours are posted on the bulletin. Come by for anything at all that troubles you.
“You are all Gryffindors, and I expect you to act like it. Be bold, take chances. Treat others with compassion, and trust your instincts. Hogwarts is as safe as we — as a student body and staff, together — can make it. I’m not talking about just within this House, mind. I mean our friends in Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. I mean our House Elves, our custodial staff, the creatures living on the grounds and in the forest. And of course, I’ll do my utmost to teach you in class how to regard our even botanical friends with respect. Every inch of this school has been built up in love and care, and we have a duty to maintain that tradition.
“Right.” Uncle Nev — or, rather, Professor Longbottom — claps his hands. "I think that’s about enough for one night. Go, go Gryffindor!”
“GO, GO, GRYFFINDOR!” the Common Room shouts back, and then dissolves into a rollicking kettle of students going this way and that, catching up on summer gossip, groaning about how lovely the apple-berry trifle was at supper. Professor Longbottom catches his daughters in a hug and plants a kiss on their cheeks. Al leaps up to give him a bear hug, and Rose accepts a high-five and a hair rustle.
The ten firsties fidget in their chairs around the fire and watch each other’s faces nervously as the Common Room starts to wind down to a cosy murmur. Board games are being broken out, and last minute summer revision scribbled. Professor Longbottom is chatting with the seventh-years about Quidditch before he leaves.
“D’you know something exciting?” Flora says suddenly, her light-brown curls bobbing. “It’s a Saturday. We’ve got a whole day until classes start!”
Al and Rose exchange a glance nervously. Fauna has a gleam in her eye that, historically, has led to such horrifying things as bonding activities.
Yawning and scrubbing at their eyes, the Gryffindor firsties trail down to the Great Hall the next morning like a flock of lost ducklings, the Longbottom twins at the head.
“They practically grew up at Hogwarts,” Al reassures Chris and Lance, who both look as if the castle might pop them into its great maw and chomp them into bits. Fauna shakes hands with the suit of armour on the fourth-floor landing, and Sir Cadogan is galloping from portrait to portrait to keep up a chat with Flora. “We’ll figure out how to get around, too.”
“They should make a map for this place,” Chris says despondently.
“I can’t believe we were up until three o’clock in the morning,” Faith Brocklehurst says proudly as they enter the Great Hall to see that — yes, blessedly, breakfast is still spread across the tables. Her eyes, glittering beads over a button nose, light up. “Mm, they have veggie bacon!”
“Are you vegetarian, too?” beams Jordan Dunbar, who had taken the bed in the dormitory next to Al. Al had been a bit disappointed by that, because he’d wanted to snag one next to Chris Finch-Fletchley, who’s starting to shovel down cornflakes opposite Rose. “Vegetarian wizards! Sounds like a cartoon show.”
“Three in the morning! I didn’t even know such a time existed,” Lance yawns, looking as if he’s been sleepwalking the whole way down.
“I didn’t know those still existed,” Rose snarks, pointing at his buckled shoes. Lance flushes until his face is all ashen eye bags and ruby cheeks. “Sorry,” Rose says, which is how Al knows she really is nervous about making friends. “That wasn’t nice.”
“Sweetie, you’re not very nice,” Fauna says kindly. “As a general rule, you all should know that Rose’s bark is worse than her bite.”
“But she’s got a point,” Flora clucks, slathering her bowl of porridge with honey. “We’ve got to do something about your wardrobe, Lance, and fast. Weekends are for casual dress, not reenactments of the third goblin war.”
Lance nods meekly. He seems relieved to be sitting with the offending shoes out of sight under the table.
“My brother’s an old-timey reenactor,” Anjali Kulkarni offers. She’s the fifth member of Rose’s dorm, and has taken “casual dress” to its natural extreme: plum-coloured sweatpants, a tee shirt three sizes too big. “For the proper British wars, though, not the wizardly ones.”
Faith Brocklehurst sets down her veggie bacon firmly. “Who are you calling improper? Wizards have proper wars. Terrible ones.”
Anjali’s smile slides off her face. “It’s not just waving wands and making pig noses? That’s what Professor Patil did to prove that magic was real when she gave me my letter.”
“It’s not,” Chris says. All the wizard-born firsties seem to be trying very hard not to look at Al or Rose. “My dad doesn’t say much about it all; my mum’s terribly Muggle and wasn’t there…”
“There?” echoes Nicholas Alexander, the third and final Muggle-born of their class. He’s wearing his school robes, which look very odd next to the cartoon mouse tee shirt Anjali’s donned. “How recently was this?”
“Nineteen years ago,” Rose says. “And technically, it wasn’t there so much as it was here.”
“Here?” Nicholas, Jordan, and Anjali chorus.
“The last battle was fought and won at Hogwarts, yes,” Fauna says, slathering butter on a piece of toast. She offers it to Nicholas, whose grey eyes are bugging out of his head.
“My auntie Mandy was killed right here in her last year,” Faith Brocklehurst says suddenly. “Well — not right here , I s’pose —” she amends, as Anjali and Lance both look horrified at the table as if expecting to see blood splatter. “But at Hogwarts. The You-Know-Whats were in charge of the school, and brought a big battle at the end of the year.”
“I dont know whats,” Jordan Dunbar says.
“Death Eaters,” Al says. “Led by Voldemort.”
Lance, Faith, and Chris wince. Rose and the Longbottom twins do not.
“I read something about that in Hogwarts, A History,” Jordan says. “Didn’t realise it was so recent. Sorry about your auntie, Faith.”
“A lot of people died,” Faith says quickly. “I never met her.”
“My dad died,” Al offers, because he hates to see Faith look so morose over her veggie bacon.
Everyone turns to look at him, and he shrivels down. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say, after all.
“I mean. He got better. So I s’pose it’s different.”
“Just a bit,” Faith says.
Dear Dad,
Please note first off I’m addressing this to YOU, and not to Mum and Lilyloo, because you are not to let them read, and can you please read it to them instead, because they’ll laugh at me for my bad handwriting and I know you are good at reading my writing. Rose says it’s not too bad, and if it was really as bad as Mum/Lils say, wouldn’t Rose have told me so?
I suppose Uncle Nev — Prof Longbottom, as I promised I would call him (Flor&Faun are gonna call him Dad they say, so I don’t see how that’s fair exactly) but anyway I suppose Prof LB has already sent word that Rose and me are in Gryffindor!
The Hat said some interesting stuff when it was on my head but I feel very good about being in Gryffindor. James is disappointed because he’s never been in the Slytherin Common Room and wanted to have an inside man, and I told him to stop annoying Cousin Lucy and she’d probably let him visit because she’s already sent me and Rose a note to bring any of our friends to play chess sometime.
Rose said last night that the Gryff Common Room looks like what the inside of Mum’s heart would be, and I reckon she’s right. Miss you all loads already but Hogwarts is grand even though I’m nervous for classes to start tomorrow.
Don’t work too hard and remember to come home and not fall asleep in your office. And make sure Mum takes her vitamin supplement after suppers! And write me back!!!
We won’t forget to visit Hagrid on Friday and we’ll owl over rock cakes so Lily can keep practising stone skipping on the pond. The portraits of Remus and Sirius say hello also and they probably won’t be back at Hazel Copse for a bit because they love the start of term.
Love,
Albus S. Potter
P.S. James sends love and says please send his Transfig textbook because he forgot it at home.
P.P.S. I suppose Rose is going to say this in her letter to Uncle R and Aunt H, but they should remember not to work by candlelight because that’s not good for eyesight and if they have to get specs too, you three will be in a right state.
Harry grins over Al’s letter, and sits back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head. The letter had come by way of a school owl around seven, and Harry had saved it to top off his work day. As expected, it was well worth the wait.
“Is that from Al?” Hermione asks. It’s past nine, and the two of them are wrapping up paperwork at his overstuffed desk in the Auror Office, as is their habit. “I haven’t heard from Rosie yet, though Neville said she was pleased to be in Gryffindor.”
“She probably sent a letter to Dwellutra,” Harry says, pushing Al’s letter across the desk. Ron and Hermione had inherited Dwellutra House, in a cosy corner of Devon, only a few years after the war, when an old Prewett uncle had died. “As my son has reminded me, our children don’t approve of us working late hours.”
Hermione skims the letter, snorting throughout.
“We’ve got the strangest kids in the world, haven’t we?” she says with fondness. “Don’t they know adults are supposed to take care of children, and not the other way around?”
She looks up, and they share a laugh. Not a great many adults had taken good care of them during their childhood.
“It sounds like Al’s perfectly happy; off to a strong start,” Hermione approves, handing the letter back over. “And you worried so.”
Harry tosses an old Snitch between his hands thoughtfully. He worries, still. Having kids is like having four extra hearts outside of his body. “He’s not like James.”
“No one is like James. James isn’t like James. He’s a different creature every hour of the day.” Hermione is James’s godmother, and she’s always regarded him with mingled devotion and horror. “Is it very close-minded and stupid of me to be glad Al and Rose are together?”
“Maybe,” Harry says. “But I’d be there with you, even stupider and more close-minded. Not that they’re in Gryffindor — though that is great — but that they’ve stuck together.”
“Maybe we should have sheltered them less,” Hermione says, fiddling with her old beaded bag. “I mean, they all went to Muggle primary and such — but I mean, other wizarding families.”
“They’ve met plenty,” Harry protests. “They’ve got a thousand cousins and the Longbottom twins, the Scamanders; and we always throw all the kids in a big room when the DA gets together…”
“That’s different, and you know it. I mean…” Hermione frowns. “The whole problem with the last two wars was that people couldn’t get over their us and them mentality. What if we’ve introduced a whole other breed of that, by sheltering them so carefully from the wider wizarding community?”
“Our kids are our kids, and that was always going to be a problem because of who we are — you, me, and Ron,” Harry says. “They were never going to be quite like the rest of the world. The way we did it, they didn’t spend their childhoods getting gawped at, and were able to lean on each other when the outside world did come crawling in.”
He thinks viciously of how Rita Skeeter had finagled her way into the Hospital Wing when Lily was born; how Ginny is constantly shouting down her Prophet editors for the blurry photographs in the gossip section: James in Ottery St. Catchpole with his friends, George and Angelina sitting with their kids and cones of ice cream in Diagon Alley.
“That’s true,” Hermione concedes. She sighs. “And it is rather late to be having misgivings now.” She starts assembling her papers to shove back into her beaded bag.
“Teddy and Victoire have turned out alright,” he reminds her. “Despite The Photo.”
The Photo lives in permanent capitals in Harry’s mind. Hermione’s eyes flicker to the wall of the Auror Office through Harry’s open door. The Photo — the most acclaimed photograph in recent magical history — hangs there. It’s impossible to forget, and Harry wishes it had never been taken.
Victoire and Teddy, aged two and four respectively, toddle by the war monument erected at Hogwarts in the foreground. The castle rises benevolently in the background. A flock mourners in the blurry midground. A dove fluttering past the left corner. The Photo had been sold for seven-hundred thousand Galleons. Hermione and Angelina’s best efforts in the legal office hadn’t been enough to stop The Photo from circulating the world as the final word on the Second British Wizarding War.
It was titled: “Orphan Son and Victory’s Child.”
“That damn photograph,” Hermione says. “I hate how beautiful it is. Victoire stumbling over on her chubby feet and Teddy pulling her up.”
“I can’t believe James thought it was news, the two of them at King’s Cross yesterday.” Harry changes the subject, and starts putting away his paperwork, too. He’s viciously glad that no similar photo has ever emerged of his three younger children. It had been hard enough with Teddy.
He imitates James’s voice: “'Our Teddy! Snogging our Victoire!’ Well, duh. I’ve caught Teddy and Victoire snogging. Wanted to bleach my own eyeballs.”
“Oh no,” Hermione says with real despair. “Our kids are old enough to go to Hogwarts. They’ll be snogging, soon enough.”
“I reckon we’ve got a few years, yet,” Harry says firmly. He curls his fingers over Al’s letter. He’ll read it to Ginny and Lily at the breakfast table in the morning. “Despite what they might think — we’re not that old.
Hermione pauses and flicks her eyes up to him with a flash of self-consciousness. “Do you really think Ron and I are going to need glasses soon?”
Harry laughs. He’d have to tell Al, when he wrote him back.