Following Hagrid’s warning, “No more than four to a boat!” Will climbed into the same boat as Sylvia, Hermione, and Neville.
No matter how many times one has seen it in a film or read it in a book, nothing quite compares to seeing it in person.
Darkness pressed in on every side, the Black Lake below mirroring the stars overhead, and Hogwarts Castle rose up in the reflection too, its countless windows glowing bright against the night sky.
The whole scene made the castle look even more impossibly grand.
Twenty minutes later, at the foot of the massive oak doors, Hagrid handed the first-years over to Professor McGonagall, sharp and severe in her green robes.
“Welcome to Hogwarts.”
…
The Sorting Ceremony was about to begin.
That alone was enough to set the surrounding first-years on edge.
Hermione had already started muttering something from memory, before turning suddenly to fix her eyes on Will.
“Have you ever come across a description of the Sorting anywhere?
In any of your books?”
Sylvia and Neville turned too, both pressing him at once.
“You’ve clearly read everything else, surely you’ve come across it somewhere?”
The three of them wouldn’t let it go.
Will thought it over for a moment before answering.
“Actually, we each have to fight one of the four house animals in turn.
Whichever creature you resemble most closely by the end decides your house.”
He kept going.
“It’s strange, none of the modern books mention it anymore, but there’s a nineteenth-century text, The Hogwarts Danger Guide, that lays it all out in detail.
Worth tracking down, if you’re curious.”
Dead silence followed.
…
A few minutes later, the Sorting finally began.
As everyone knows, Hogwarts has four houses: Azkaban, Nurmengard…
Ahem.
As everyone knows, Hogwarts has four houses: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff, and each new student is sorted according to the traits the Sorting Hat sees in them.
Until that moment, none of the first-years had any real idea how the process actually worked.
It was one of the few things the wizarding world kept genuinely quiet, left out even of books like Hogwarts: A History.
Will found something almost thoughtful in that.
A last bit of mystery preserved on purpose.
The line began forming as Professor McGonagall prepared to call names.
Hermione and Neville both exhaled in relief, Neville even thumping his chest theatrically.
Sylvia, standing beside Will, shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass.
The other first-years around them ranged from visibly relaxed to openly annoyed, depending on how seriously they’d taken Will’s story.
“Hannah Abbott!”
Whatever else changes at Hogwarts, some things stay fixed.
Hannah Abbott always goes first.
“Hufflepuff!”
“Terry Boot!”
“Ravenclaw!”
Behrens starts with a B, and Hogwarts sorts alphabetically by surname, which put Will near the front of the line.
“Will Behrens!”
Will made his way up to the stool without hurrying.
He didn’t notice Professor Flitwick watching him closely from the staff table, or Dumbledore, his beard full and white, doing exactly the same. This chapter was taken from novelping dot com without permission.
Will lowered the frankly filthy Sorting Hat onto his head with obvious reluctance.
“Hm.
You think I’m not very clean, do you?” the Hat’s voice said inside his skull.
It’s not a matter of thinking.
You genuinely aren’t.
“Dumbledore’s never once cleaned me, you know.
It’s been years since anyone bothered.”
Will felt his eye twitch slightly.
“Anyway.
Let’s get to your Sorting.
Hm.
This is a hard one.
A very hard one…” The Hat seemed to drift into thought.
Hufflepuff would suit me fine, Will thought.
He genuinely preferred the idea of the badgers.
“Hufflepuff would suit plenty of people.
Loyal, steady, honest to a fault, patient besides.
But you?
No, you don’t belong there.”
Are you turning down a direct request?
“Turning it down?
Certainly not.
My job is finding where you actually fit best, not where you’d prefer to sit.
That’s precisely what Gryffindor built me for.”
“You’ve got talent, child.
Real talent.
That hunger for knowledge would do well in Ravenclaw…
no, wait.
That’s not simple curiosity, is it?
That’s something closer to a chase.
Careful with that, the ones who chase knowledge that hard have a habit of ending up somewhere unpleasant.
Slytherin might actually suit you better, your path forward looks like it starts there.
Hm.
No, Ravenclaw fits too.
No…
Slytherin.
Slytherin’s the better fit.”
Wait, I don’t want to, Will started, but the Hat had already made up its mind.
“SLYTHERIN!”
A thin scattering of applause rose from the Slytherin table.
Foul, filthy, stubborn hat.
“Are you insulting me?” The Hat, halfway lifted off Will’s head, seemed to catch something in his thoughts, but Will ignored it entirely and set it back down on the stool.
He walked to the Slytherin table without much expression, found a seat, and settled in to watch the rest of the Sorting.
Of the people he already knew, Hermione went first, and predictably landed in the house she’d clearly wanted all along: Gryffindor.
Neville went next, and this time the Hat lingered on his head far longer than usual, several long minutes at least. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Will guessed the Hat was stuck weighing Gryffindor against Hufflepuff for him.
Neville had courage buried in there somewhere, along with genuine steadiness, whatever his nerves suggested otherwise.
“Sylvia Lestrange!” She stepped up right after Neville, and the Hat barely needed a few seconds.
“SLYTHERIN!”
Sylvia walked over, raised an eyebrow at Will along the way, and finally sat down beside him, her expression somewhere between amused and accusing, as if to say, what exactly is a future Ravenclaw doing at this table?
Will only shrugged, doing his best to look helpless about the whole thing.
Once the Sorting wrapped up and the feast appeared across every table, Will turned his attention fully to the food.
His gaze drifted up toward the staff table, where the most famous wizard alive sat chatting easily with the professors beside him, white hair and beard catching the candlelight.
Professor Flitwick spotted him and gave a small wave.
Will returned it.
Professor McGonagall looked exactly as stern from a distance as she had up close.
Snape sat further along, pale and sharp-featured, looking something like a bat that had given up on being alive, his eyes drifting occasionally toward the Gryffindor table.
Professor Sprout, grey curls loose around her face, radiated an easy calm.
Of all the Heads of House, she stood out the least, not from any lack of presence, but simply because everyone else at that table was so memorable by comparison.
Will’s eyes kept moving down the row: Professor Quirrell in his purple turban, Hagrid seated at the far end, the Forbidden Forest’s unofficial keeper.
These were the professors he’d be spending the next several years around.
All except one position, apparently, which seemed to change hands every year without fail.
Just as Will settled into his food, his name came up further along the staff table.
“Professor Snape.
Professor Snape.”
“Hm?” Snape looked up only on the second try, pulling his attention away from the staff table’s centerpiece, glancing toward Flitwick with a faint frown, unsure what this was about.
“I’d like you to keep an eye on that boy, if you would.
Will Behrens.” Flitwick nodded toward him.
“That one there.”
“Behrens?” Snape looked mildly caught off guard, clearly trying to place why the name mattered, or why it concerned Flitwick specifically.
Reading the confusion on his face, Flitwick explained further.
“I’d simply like him watched closely.
He’s Muggle-born, and yet years ago, entirely without help, he found his own way to Diagon Alley and started buying books to teach himself magic.
Don’t look at me like that.
The boy has no parents left to look after him.
You understand as well as I do how dangerous the wizarding world can be for a child navigating it completely alone.
He’s read an enormous amount, and taught himself a fair bit of magic besides, with no supervision at all.
I assumed at first the file was simply wrong.
In all my years, I’ve never seen a Muggle-born child arrive at the wizarding world quite like this.
Without the right guidance, I worry where a child like that could end up.”
The weight of what Flitwick was saying landed on every professor at the table.
Even Dumbledore turned to look, the smile he’d worn all evening fading slightly at the edges.
“With that much nerve, I’m surprised he didn’t land in Gryffindor,” Professor McGonagall remarked, taking a sip of eggnog.
“That’s not even the whole of it.
His home is stacked floor to ceiling with books, hundreds of them.
Frankly I’m surprised a child that hungry to learn didn’t end up in Ravenclaw,” Flitwick said, a note of real regret creeping into his voice.
“You should understand, Headmaster, he already has a working grasp of spellwork, and he’s still going deeper by the day.”
Dumbledore’s smile had all but disappeared now.
He watched the boy across the hall, quietly cutting into a piece of steak, lost in some thought of his own.
“A hungry little orphan, then,” Dumbledore said quietly.