What Cael Mourne first saw of Hogwarts was the bottom side of the Sorting Hat’s stool, and, looking back on it, this was probably appropriate.
He had fallen from about four feet up.
He did not have the decorum of someone coming in from elsewhere – no flashy burst of light, no loud thunderclap, no subtle effect of being whisked through the magical realm.
There had been the faintest sensation of change, something you get when you stand up too fast in a hot room, and then suddenly the floor had dropped out from beneath him into a stool with a dusty hat balanced atop it, and a hall full of people staring at him.
And, in fact, the stool dropped right over.
The hat slid off it while it was trying to call out something about belonging to some other house.
*J*something, or other, he thought, vaguely.
The boy sitting in the Sorting Hat was making an alarming noise that was definitely heading toward a scream.
Cael’s shoulder took the brunt of the impact, and it hurt, but he noticed it only briefly, in the way you can in the moment of impact.
He tried to sit up.
The silence had descended on the Great Hall – the thousand-voice silence of a hall full of unused magic.
He recognized the Great Hall despite this, strangely enough, although most things seemed a bit odd at the moment.
The candles hanging in the air, for example, had seemed to freeze in place.
Seven hundred pairs of eyes fixed on him, in varying degrees of shock and curiosity.
He stood up.
*That seemed to be the thing to do*, he thought.
His legs worked surprisingly well, considering.
He had his body back.
He brushed the dust off his sleeve.
He was wearing clothes he didn’t recognize, dark, shapeless trousers, and a grey shirt, apparently with no robe or uniform of any sort.
At least he knew he was still male, and he estimated he was somewhere around thirteen or fourteen.
How, he couldn’t say, precisely.
Just the general feeling, like recognizing the age of a child in a photograph.
A stern-faced woman in tartan robes – Deputy Headmistress, probably, judging by the severity – was moving across the floor toward him.
The tall man behind her with a long white beard and half-moon spectacles was watching Cael intently.
Curious, perhaps.
Like watching a flipped coin, still in mid-air.
“Mister Filch.” Her eyes stayed locked on Cael, but she addressed a shuffling figure with a broomstick in a doorway behind him.
“Stay put.
This boy is not…Argus!
Thank you!” The hunch-backed figure with the broomstick paused in its advance.
The broomstick remained pointed like a weapon.
“Up,” she told Cael.
Already up, but he understood the spirit.
“Are you injured?” “No,” he replied.
“Are you sure?” “Reasonably.” She assessed his answer with that special eye she would later come to use a lot, but she seemed satisfied.
“Hat,” she ordered over her shoulder.
“Stool.” A sandy-headed boy with prefect’s badge jumped up and set the stool back upright.
Another girl with very neat hair scooped up the hat from where it had rolled away into the shadows near the first-year table, and carefully delivered it to the Deputy Headmistress.
The woman placed the hat back on the stool, and turned to Cael.
“Sit,” she commanded.
He did so.
Now would have been a very good time for him to start panicking.
He was thirteen or so, he was somewhere he had never been before, he didn’t know how he had gotten there, he had nothing in his pockets, and he’d managed to crash a centuries-old ritual before the whole school.
*I really should be freaking out*, he thought, but found himself oddly calm, even as the girl in tartan turned back to him and repeated, “Are you injured?” “No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Don’t move,” she instructed, but now Cael had moved beyond panic.
Whatever part of him had said he was around fourteen, had evidently decided to take over, and had switched into analysis mode, and that helped him relax.
Panicking could wait until later, if necessary.
He thought he would mostly just panic in retrospect.
He was, he realized, going to be one of those people.
Calm in the moment, and prone to having a few anxious moments about three weeks after the event.
The Sorting Hat settled on his head, and Cael’s inner world instantly began speaking to him.
“Oh,” it said.
“Oh,” Cael waited.
*Oh,* it said again, with another, contemplative tone.
*This is…Yes.
All right.* “Hello,” he thought politely.
“Hello,” the Hat echoed.
*Not from around here, are you?* “Not exactly,” Cael thought.
*No, not exactly.
Your file is not in my library.* *Your library?* *I maintain a library of hundreds of years of sorting history.* It sounded like it was trying for dignity, somehow.
*I do not need to ask their names; each child comes to me already catalogued and filed.
You are not filed.* “Oh,” Cael thought, apologetically.
*Don’t apologize, it’s fascinating.* It ruffled its imaginary feathers, or shook its virtual brain cells, whatever method it used to think.
*Hold still now.* He obeyed.
The hall was beginning to emit small noises – coughing, a squeaking chair, whispering.
He felt something like being patted down by a librarian, but more thorough.
*Ravenclaw* came the announcement of his future, in the deep, echoing voice of the Sorting Hat, designed to reverberate in the Great Hall.
The applause began, and he started to get up.
*Wait!* the Hat told him.
He sat down obediently.
*No…no, that isn’t it.* It thought again.
*Not that, but you would be very happy there, you would read everything in the library and drive the portraits mad.
No…there’s a thing under the thing…hold on.* The hall’s applause stuttered out as the Hat tried to sort this problem out.
The blue-trimmed, eagle-bedecked table of Ravenclaws began cheering.
*Hufflepuff,* it called out.
They cheered too.
But the Hufflepuffs stopped when they saw the Ravenclaws stop.
*No,* the Hat told him privately.
*No, that’s not right either, but I had to check.
You are fiercely loyal.
Very much so, indeed, in spite of the fact that you don’t love anything enough to find out just yet.
But it’s not your floor.
Your floor is…* The Hat paused again.
Cael had realized it was actually working the problem out now, rather than just acting like it was.
*Your floor is where they get up.* It seemed to be talking to itself as much as him, now.
*Yes, that’s it.
Getting up.
You always get up.* *I don’t know what I’m doing,* Cael protested.
*I’ve just arrived.* *Indeed,* the Hat agreed.
*Indeed.
Gryffindor.* *Gryffindor*, it said again, but this time aloud, in the resonant tone designed for all to hear.
*GRYFFINDOR!* The hall erupted into stunned silence, but no applause followed it.
The Hufflepuff table looked shocked and insulted, but the red trimmed table stared straight ahead as if in a trance.
Only one boy had reacted, and he looked like he was staring into an enchanted mirror, wide-eyed and transfixed, his mouth slightly open.
To his left, bushy-haired girl – the one who’d recovered the hat, apparently – was doing that frown people do when they work out arithmetic problems in their heads.
The tartan-robed woman plucked the hat off his head.
She paused, holding it.
She and the old wizard at the high table exchanged a glance that lasted perhaps half a second and consisted of several separate conversations.
“To your House table, Mr.
— ” He looked at her.
She looked at him.
“Mourne,” he replied, which was, of course, true, though he did not quite realize he had known it until he said it.
“Cael Mourne.” “To your House table, Mr.
Mourne.
We shall speak after the feast.” He moved off.
The hall gradually reminded itself of the fact that it should have been having a feast, and noise began to reappear in bits and pieces like a newly kindled fire.
Someone at the Slytherin table laughed – a sharp bark of laughter that was not quite amicable.
A dark-haired girl with a neat bob was watching him from somewhere near the center of the table, with the calm concentration of a cat considering a potential meal.
He filed her away – like he had filed the knowledge that this was the Great Hall – for later.
There was space on the Gryffindor table as he approached.
The bushy-haired girl slid her plate aside with the same brisk competence she had applied to sorting hat.
The boy with glasses.
“Hi.” Attempting nonchalance; failing.
“Hi.” “Did you – ” “No.” “You don’t know what I was going to say.” “No,” he admitted.
“But I have spent the last ninety seconds working out what to say to each of the obvious possibilities, and I haven’t found an answer.” The boy grinned.
“Well.” The bushy-haired girl made the contemplative noise of a person revising a theory.
A ginger-haired boy at the far end of the bench, mouth full of food, gestured at him with a fork.
His mouth, Cael noted absently, appeared to be saying something like *welcome*, though he couldn’t hear it through the noise of the table.
Cael ate.
He discovered, rather to his surprise, that he was extremely hungry.
He ate potatoes, a chicken leg, and a slice of treacle tart, without looking up at the high table, where he could feel the old wizard with half-moon glasses regarding him very closely, as though watching a coin.
Nor did he look over at the Slytherin table.
The girl with the bob continued to watch him.
It was an instinctive feeling, not a conscious check.
*All right,* he thought.
*Variables.* His name was Cael.
So far as he was aware, he had a body as well.
He also had a house.
But he had no possessions, no wand, no money.
No way of knowing whether he was an orphan or had only lost track of his whole family.
He suspected that the Hat had needed to try three times to figure out which shelf to put him on because nobody had built it yet.
*Getting better,* he thought, without smiling.
— The dormitory, after the short discussion McGonagall had had with him in her office – which he was already forgetting – was dim.
Five bed curtains hung closed.
A sixth had been made ready for occupation – by an elf, she had briefly explained, passing the explanation along with the information about the dormitories – and on the bedside table rested a wand.
“It is a temporary wand,” she had explained to him in the office.
“From our reserves.
You are not meant to have it until you have attended Ollivander’s but, to be perfectly frank, a third-year arriving in the middle of sorting wandless was not a possibility the Statute covered, and I would sooner see you have this than nothing to help you find your way to the bathroom at night.” “Thank you,” he had said.
She had paused outside the door.
She had studied him, the same way she had at breakfast this morning.
Then she had said: “Sleep, Mr.
Mourne.
We will sort the rest in the morning.” And *sorted*, though it was clearly the word she intended, had made her blink.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The room smelled faintly of something unfamiliar – of magic wood smoke, perhaps, combined with the scent of soap that thirteen-year-old boys used in this universe.
On the bedside table, the wand looked thin and twisted, like something worn a hundred times before and not once enjoyed.
He picked it up.
It felt like a stick.
He looked down at his feet.
He could not see them.
The dormitory was dim and his eyes had not adjusted yet; something somewhere near the window was rustling like someone was sleeping.
“Lumos,” he whispered.
It grew dark.
Very dark.
Like someone had closed an opaque sphere around the whole dormitory.
Faint slivers of moonlight that had leaked in from the gaps between the curtains – extinguished.
The dim red glow from the embers of the common room fire, seeping under the door – gone.
The glowing tip of his wand – gone too, vanished inside its sphere.
It was about the size of a large beach ball.
It settled over his hand, absorbing everything else within range.
The five curtains flew apart simultaneously, and five wand tips illuminated the dormitory.
Five faces, roughly his age, dressed in various states of pajamas and terror, stared at him out of the darkness.
“What the – ” “Who – ” “Isn’t that the kid from – ” The darkness snapped off, suddenly, leaving behind nothing but a dim and unremarkable room.
His wand tip had become a simple wooden stick again.
The light of his bedmates’ wands became ordinary again.
Five bewildered faces and one extra bed.
Cael said, softly: “Huh.” Not *what was that*.
Or *I’m so sorry*.
Not *I don’t know what happened*.
Just *huh*.
A little thoughtful noise.
The noise of a mind absorbing some new data, filing it away under *this will need further investigation.* The messy-haired boy from dinner, whose bed turned out to be across from Cael’s, slowly lowered his wand.
“Are you okay?” “I think so.” “Did you – ” “Yes.” “Intentionally?” “No.” He rolled the thin wooden stick around his palm.
In the darkness, he could not see anything obviously wrong with it.
He did not suspect anything was wrong with it.
“Definitely not intentionally.
But – ” He hesitated.
The five third-years watched him patiently.
“But it was very precise,” he concluded finally.
No one knew what to make of that, for a while.
Finally, the ginger one who had waved his fork at Cael during dinner said: “Look, mate, I have *no idea* what you mean,” and laid himself back down.
The boy with glasses kept his wand up for another few moments.
Then, decisively, he lowered it.
“Well.
Welcome to Gryffindor, I suppose,” he announced, like a man who had been a member of Gryffindor for two years and had never come across anything quite so inadequate to say on the occasion.
And then he got back into bed.
Cael set the stick down on the bedside table.
He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, which was painted to resemble a sky.
For a long time.
*Lumos* should have illuminated the room.
Instead it had done exactly the opposite.
And done it precisely.
Not a failure of function.
*It wasn’t a wand problem.* Cael rolled onto his side.
His mind felt suddenly heavy.
He had nothing to write his thoughts down with.
This could wait, however.
First thing tomorrow morning, he would find writing implements – and he would start writing down spells and results.
And the second thing he would write – and this thought came very peacefully, now – was *it’s possible this happens with other things too.* He shut his eyes.
Far above the castle, the moon did what the moon does.
It had done this since before he was born, as far as he knew, and it would continue doing it for decades more, and it was none of his business.
Tomorrow he had a great deal of business to attend to.