Hannah’s elbow brushed Tobias’s arm as the line shuffled forward.
The scent of roast meat and candle wax spilled through the widening gap.
He could see the edge of the ceiling now—stars swirling where there should have been beams—and then the first floating candle, drifting like a slow firefly.
The boy in front of him hesitated.
Tobias nearly stepped on his heel.
“Move *along*,” McGonagall said, not unkindly, from somewhere behind them.
Hufflepuff’s table came into view first, its occupants clapping as Hannah was steered toward them by the ghost of a monk.
Cedric Diggory, third-year, waved her over with a grin.
Tobias catalogued the distance between tables (wide enough for two professors walking abreast), the way the older students leaned back to watch (elbows on the wood, robes rumpled).
The Sorting Hat twitched on its stool.
Tobias’s fingers found the layered fabric over his chest.
The hole beneath it pulsed—not a beat, just pressure, like a seashell held to the ear.
“Bones, Susan,” McGonagall called.
A girl with round cheeks stepped up.
The Hat barely touched her head before shouting, “HUFFLEPUFF!” Tobias exhaled through his nose.
The doors swung shut behind them with a sound like a book closing.
The cold edge of the monk’s sleeve passed through Tobias’s shoulder as he turned—half-solid, like damp silk dragged across skin—and then the ceiling opened above them all, vast and impossible.
Stars prickled in patterns he didn’t recognize.
The moon hung low, waxing gibbous, its craters sharp as thumbprint bruises.
A hush settled over the hall.
The Sorting Hat twitched again, its folds shifting like a living thing taking breath, and then— “Another year,” it sang, voice rasping as old parchment, “another batch of heads to fill.
But listen close, for I’ve more than houses to reveal.” The brim stretched wider.
“I see cracks in the foundation—oh yes, cracks running deep.” Tobias’s fingers tightened on his robes.
The hole in his chest throbbed once, quietly, as if in reply.
“Boot, Terry!” McGonagall called.
A lanky boy stumbled forward.
The Hat swallowed his head whole.
Five seconds passed—ten—then, “RAVENCLAW!” Tobias exhaled.
The ghost monk drifted past again, trailing the scent of wet stone.
He stood near the back of the line and looked at the hat rather than the crowd.
Brocklehurst, Mandy was next—twelve seconds of silence before Ravenclaw claimed another.
Brown, Lavender took twenty-three, bouncing off the stool when Gryffindor was declared.
The Hat’s deliberation seemed arbitrary; Tobias noted the intervals like clockwork ticks, hands folded behind his back where no one could see his nails pressing half-moons into his palms.
A draft curled around his ankles.
Somewhere above, an owl hooted in the rafters.
The monk’s translucent sleeves billowed as he gestured another first-year toward the stool—Finch-Fletchley, Justin, Hufflepuff in seven seconds flat.
Tobias counted the stitches in the Hat’s frayed seam.
Three hundred and twelve.
He’d gotten to four hundred and seven last year during the Welcoming Feast broadcast on Wizarding Wireless, back when this was all just a story he’d half-remembered.
The real Hat smelled of dust and damp wool.
“Granger, Hermione!” The bushy-haired girl nearly tripped climbing the steps.
Four minutes and twelve seconds later—Tobias’s internal count unwavering—the Hat shouted Gryffindor.
Pressure built behind his ribs.
Not pain.
Not quite.
Like a stone sinking in molasses.
When McGonagall finally called, “Potter, Harry!” the hall held its breath.
The whispers came in waves—*the* Harry Potter, *the* Boy Who Lived—but Tobias watched only the Hat’s brim dip over those famous glasses.
Nearly five minutes.
“GRYFFINDOR!” The roar nearly shook the candles from the air.
Tobias inhaled through his teeth as the cheers echoed.
Three more names passed in a blur—Perks, Sally-Anne (Hufflepuff); Thomas, Dean (Gryffindor); then— “Vesper, Tobias.” His turn.
The walk to the stool took exactly fourteen steps.
The wood was warm from all the previous occupants.
The Hat descended over his eyes, plunging him into darkness that smelled of ink and old decisions.
*Well now,* murmured a voice right against his eardrums, *what have we here?* Tobias felt it the moment the Hat’s awareness brushed the hollow space behind his ribs—a recoil, then a slow, dreadful lean inward, like a man peering over a cliff.
*Oh,* said the Hat, very quietly.
*Oh my.* Silence pooled in the space between his lungs.
Not the absence of sound—no, this was something *listening*.
The Hat’s presence prickled along the edges of the hole in his chest like fingers testing ice for thin spots.
*You’re patient,* it observed at last.
*Not many children would wait this long without squirming.* Tobias kept his breathing even.
The Hat’s voice didn’t echo—it *pressed*, as if each word were being stamped into clay.
*And tired.
Not sleepy-tired.
The other kind.* A phantom weight settled over Tobias’s shoulders.
He imagined he could feel the Hat’s stitches straining against whatever it was sensing inside him.
*There’s a…
hollowness here,* it mused, *but not empty.
No, not empty at all.* The brim twitched against his forehead.
*Something underneath.
Sleeping, perhaps.
Or waiting.* Murmurs rippled through the hall.
Tobias counted three distinct whispers before McGonagall cleared her throat sharply.
*Ah.* The Hat’s tone shifted—something almost like recognition, but fractured.
*You don’t know what you are, do you?* Tobias swallowed.
His pulse tapped once against the cartilage rim of his hole.
*No matter.* The Hat sighed—an actual, audible sound that vibrated through Tobias’s skull.
*Patience suits you.
So does loyalty.
And that…
peculiar endurance.* It paused.
*You’ll need it.* The silence stretched.
Someone coughed.
A chair scraped.
*Better be…
HUFFLEPUFF!* The shout startled him.
The Hat lifted itself from his head with a flourish, revealing the Great Hall’s candlelight in staggered brightness.
Blinking, Tobias slid off the stool.
The Hufflepuff table broke into a warm round of applause for their new first-year.
Clapping sounded like rain on a tin roof.
Tobias walked toward the Hufflepuff table with his hands at his sides, fingertips brushing robe seams.
The ghost monk gestured him toward an empty space between Hannah Abbott and a round-faced girl who’d been sorted just before him—Susan Bones, if he remembered right.
Hannah shifted up to make room for him on the bench.
Her elbow bumped a goblet; pumpkin juice sloshed but didn’t spill.
“You took ages,” she whispered.
“Nearly four minutes.” Tobias blinked.
He hadn’t realized she’d been counting too.
Food appeared along the length of the table—roast chicken glistening under the floating candles, mashed potatoes peaked like little mountains, peas rolling against the rims of porcelain bowls.
He took a drumstick without thinking.
The first bite tasted like salt and summer, crisp skin giving way to juice that warmed his throat all the way down.
Sprout looked down the hall at him from the staff table.
Her nod was small enough to miss—just a dip of the chin, eyes crinkling at the corners—but Tobias saw it.
He returned it with a fractional tilt of his head before reaching for a bread roll.
At the front of the hall, the Sorting continued.
Names blurred into applause, houses into chatter.
Cedric Diggory, two seats down the bench in third-year robes, leaned around a tower of Yorkshire puddings.
His grin was the sort that made you want to smile back even if you didn’t know why.
“You ever flown?” Cedric asked, spearing a sausage with his fork.
The question landed lightly, like it didn’t matter either way.
Tobias swallowed a mouthful of potato.
“Not on a broom.” Cedric nodded as if this were a perfectly reasonable answer—which it was, objectively, for someone who’d grown up in a Muggle neighborhood with no Quidditch pitches in sight.
He didn’t press.
Didn’t widen his eyes or say *really?* like it was unthinkable.
Just took another bite of sausage and said, around the food, “We’ll fix that.” The plates cleared themselves when the feast ended.
Tobias watched the last gravy stain vanish from his knife with the same detached fascination he’d once reserved for museum exhibits behind glass.
Cedric Diggory two seats away asked him whether he flew.
Tobias shook his head.
“Not on a broom.” Cedric grinned, easy and unbothered.
“We’ll fix that,” he said again, and Tobias believed him.
The prefect—a stocky fifth-year with her hair in a tight braid—stood as Dumbledore dismissed them.
“First-years with me,” she called, beckoning with one hand while balancing a stack of parchment in the other.
They filed out through the kitchen corridors, the scent of treacle tart and cinnamon lingering in the air.
The stairs descended in uneven spirals, torchlight flickering across mossy stones.
“Here,” the prefect said, stopping before a stack of barrels.
She tapped a rhythm against the second one from the bottom—two quick, three slow, one sharp knock.
The barrel rolled aside with a groan.
Susan Bones giggled as they ducked through the opening.
The common room beyond was all rounded walls and low, plant-draped ceilings, the firelight casting dancing shadows across the honey-colored wood.
Tobias’s trunk waited at the foot of a four-poster bed in the boys’ dormitory, its brass fittings gleaming.
The curtains were thick wool, badger-striped at the hem.
He drew them shut with a whisper of fabric, then peeled off his robes layer by layer until only his nightshirt remained.
The hole in his chest stared back at him from the dimness, its edges smooth as polished bone.
He pressed two fingers to the rim—cool, unyielding—then pulled the nightshirt’s high collar tight.
The mattress creaked as he climbed in.
Across the room, someone muttered a sleepy goodnight.
He lay still in the narrow bed and listened to the dormitory settle around him.