And at the center of it all, Dumbledore— a name with well over a dozen titles attached to him.
Grand Sorcerer.
Supreme Mugwump.
Chief Warlock.
The list went on.
Alchemy, Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts, all at a level most wizards spent their whole life chasing.
He’d fought two dark lords across his lifetime, by Aegeus’s reading— defeated one outright, decades back, and the second was rumored to avoid him entirely, unwilling to risk a direct confrontation.
Genuinely amazing, all of them.
Decades of study and practice stood behind each name.
If he could somehow see their numbers— Intelligence, Magic, laid out the way his own were, he suspected they’d be near the limit of what a human could reach.
Decades of study, experience, and precise control helped them achieve their current standing.
At the front of the hall, past the staff table, a plain wooden stool held a patched, ancient-looking hat.
The hall quieted as a seam near its brim split open, and the hat drew in a breath none of them could see and began, unmistakably, to sing.
“You may think I’m not pretty, but—”
The Sorting Hat finished its song to a round of enthusiastic applause from the four house tables.
As the echoes faded, Professor McGonagall stepped forward, unrolling a long scroll of parchment.
“When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” Professor McGonagall announced crisply.
She began reading down the list.
“Abbot, Amelia!” A pause, barely three seconds.
“RAVENCLAW!”
“Ashworth, Rosalind!” Rosalind strode up without a hint of nerves, sat, and had the hat barely settle before it called, “Gryffindor!” She shot Aegeus a quick, satisfied look on her way past.
“Bole, Lucian!” The stool creaked under a heavyset boy for nearly a full minute before, “SLYTHERIN!”
“Granger, Aegeus!”
At the sound of his name, a sudden lull washed over the hall.
As Aegeus stepped out from the line, conversations at the long tables flickered out.
Whispers spread like wildfire across the Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin tables alike.
“Is that him?”
“The guy who looks like a veela?”
“He’s not bad. A little worse than me, though.”
He glided up the stone steps, his dark robes swishing around his ankles, and took his seat on the wooden stool.
Professor McGonagall lowered the ancient hat onto his head.
The moment the inner brim touched him, the heavy fabric felt warm against his scalp.
My, my, my…
a small voice murmured, echoing directly behind his eyes.
Now this is interesting.
I don’t believe I’ve read a mind quite like yours in a long, long time.
Aegeus instinctively tried to construct a wall— to pull his thoughts inward, to treat the intrusion like a breach of his personal space— but the magic woven into the worn leather simply slid past his defenses, ignoring physical logic entirely.
Let’s see…
The voice drifted through his consciousness, calm and agonizingly unhurried.
Aegeus felt the distinct, deeply uncomfortable sensation of something sifting through years of structured memories, like fingers trailing across cataloged files.
A sharp mind.
Quiet, calculated.
A remarkable desire for order, and ambition…
And here— ah.
There it is.
The pressure in his mind sharpened, focused, like a hand closing around something small and bright.
You are cautious— but not for your own benefit.
You would hold a live fire in your bare hands rather than let it spread.
You put yourself between a threat and whoever happened to be standing behind you, without calculating the cost to yourself first.
Ah, how nostalgic.
You remind me so very much of him.
That foolish, noble boy…
“GRYFFINDOR!” the hat bellowed to the hall.
The Gryffindor table erupted into applause.
Aegeus slid off the stool, handed the hat back to McGonagall, and made his way toward the cheering table.
He sat next to Rosalind, several students already shifting aside to make room.
“Hale, Marcus!” Marcus swaggered up like he’d already decided the outcome, and the hat didn’t disagree for long.
“GRYFFINDOR!” He dropped into the other seat beside Aegeus a minute later, grinning.
A few more names passed in quick succession— Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Gryffindor again— the hall settling into the easy rhythm of applause and shuffling feet, until the list ran out of names.
Professor McGonagall rolled the scroll shut and carried the hat and stool away.
“I’m Charlie Weasley,” said a broad-shouldered boy across the table, offering a hand.
“Fifth-year prefect. Welcome to Gryffindor.”
“Aegeus Granger.” He shook it once, firm and brief.
At the front of the hall.
Dumbledore rose from the center of the staff table, and the last of the chatter died on its own.
He had a long silver beard, half-moon spectacles perched low on his nose.
“Welcome,” he said, spreading his arms as though he was greeting some long-unseen old friends, “to another year at Hogwarts.”
“That’s all I have,” Dumbledore said, settling back into his chair.
“Tuck in.”
The empty golden plates in front of them filled at once— roast chicken, potatoes, thick gravy, mountains of vegetables, followed by pies and puddings.
Aegeus took a bite of chicken and found it surprisingly excellent.
As for Marcus, he, without any hesitation, began building something that could generously be called a plate and less generously called a mountain of food.
As the start-of-term feast materialized in a grand display of roasted meats and golden potatoes, the older Gryffindors around Aegeus immediately engaged him in conversation.
‘Ah!’
Someone let out a scream.
So did the people around him.
A translucent figure just streamed through the back wall, followed shortly by another, then several more, gliding between the tables and greeting old acquaintances.
One of them— a cheerful-looking man in a ruff floated down toward the first-years.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said warmly.
“New blood, is it? I do love the first feast. Best seat in the house and no need to compete for the pudding.”
_________________________________________________________________________
TO BE CONTINUED
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