Brakes screeching, the train stopped, the surrounding darkness a balm on my soul. I strongly suspected that magic was involved, as I couldn’t see more than light from some lanterns illuminating the station.
Leaving the train, the students quickly pooled themselves into their age groups, and a bear of a man was walking towards the group of first-years, questioning if we were the first-years before telling us to follow him.
As we did, he led us through a small path down a steep hill on which a forest was growing, and once we were past the trees, we were in front of a massive lake, beyond which there was a massive castle propped up on a cliff.
It was white, stood against the black sky, and seemed impossibly bright. There was a glow about the castle that just looked magical, a beacon in the darkness, and I could not only see but also feel the magic of the castle on top of the cliff.
“Beautiful… it has so much space!”
“Hey, you can speak normally.”
I shrugged.
“Am I required to?”
“I guess not? Though, I am curious, why are you so surprised about the castle?”
“It’s… layered. There are a lot of spatial manipulation spells on it, and I can see them,” I responded whilst climbing into a boat where Tracey Davis and a boy I didn’t recognized were sitting. He had dark skin, but did not greet me when I did so. The boats started moving after a short command of the giant, and the boy turned to us when Daphne addressed him.
“Heir Zabini, we meet again.”
“Heir Greengrass. A pleasant surprise meeting you here,” he responded, causing me to sigh.
“And whom might you be?” he asked, a bit pointedly, probably because of the sigh.
“Nightshade Moon. Pardon me asking but – why does everyone here already knows everyone else, excluding myself, Malfoy and Potter?”
I could guess the answer why nobody knew Harry, but it was annoying that everyone else already knew each other.
“Oh, it’s just that we purebloods don’t have much opportunity to go out, and our parents mainly mingle with other purebloods,” Tracey explained, shrugging.
I see.
“Are you muggleborn?” she then asked, and I shrugged, guessing she meant ‘born to non-magicals’.
“By pure technicality, depending on how you specify that question, I would either be muggleborn, a magicborn, or a being just with a human form. I have been born from someone who was born without magic, and had transformed in a magical being.”
“I thought it was just a myth that you can give or take magic?”
“Well, it is purely voluntarily and basically killed m-others benefactor, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re about to die,” I responded, which made them freeze. And I froze as well – five minutes in, and I almost blew my disguise already. Things are going great!
“That’s… a steep price for just a bit of magic.”
I shrugged.
“It was the price to pay. Both knew what would happen.”
Getting a thoughtful look, I stared at the ceiling.
“I’m sure he’s still out there, somewhere. Maybe he even regained what she had lost… though I haven’t heard from him in a long time now.”
The sombre mood stayed like this, but eventually, the boats entered a tunnel, and an underground harbour below the castle from there, running onto the rough earth, and we jumped down, following the massive man to a big door.
He rapped three times on it, and it opened, giving way to an older witch clad in green robes.
“The firs’ years, professor,” the giant said, getting a small smile in response.
“Thank you, Hagrid. I’ll take them from here,” she said, and continued to lead us into the castle proper.
We were led through what I presumed an entrance hall, at whose end double doors led to the other students – we could hear them chatting. The professor led us into a room nearby, telling us to wait for the sorting, and telling us to freshen up a bit.
Someone was reciting spells, someone was mentioning trolls, and then someone shrieked.
I blinked, turned around, and stared at a ghost.
I tilted my head right, and it followed.
I tilted my head left, and it followed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be six feet under?”
A snort barely muffled the laughter Daphne was trying her hardest not to release.
“Why I never! Do you even know who I am?”
“Should I?”
“…you haven’t met a ghost before, have you?”
I shook my head.
“No, I have. My family holds a few fairly powerful exorcists. Spectres should be allowed to pass on, and most I know of choose to do so.”
“That is an interesting view on us, at least. Maybe we should introduce ourselves? My name is Richard Anthea. Who are you?”
“Nightshade Moon. It is nice to meet you,” I responded, shaking his hand. He blinked.
“You can touch me?”
“I told you my family’s got talent with exorcism,” I responded chuckling, and he shrugged, accepting that explanation.
“But in all seriousness, its just my magic. It twists a lot of things slightly, so for example ghosts become corporeal to me.”
“Move along now!” the voice of the professor resounded behind us, and I blinked, then turned around.
“The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start. Form a line, then follow me,” she said, and we quickly did as such. We were led back through the entrance hall, and then into the great hall with all the students sitting along four massive tables, and the teachers sitting at a head table.
Looking around, my gaze eventually moved up, and I couldn’t help but stare. The ceiling looked as if it wasn’t there, showing the nights sky instead. There were hundreds of stars, and I could even tell that this wasn’t just an image, but the actual sky as of that exact moment.
“It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read it in Hogwarts: A History,” a girl with brown bushy hair behind me whispered, probably having noticed the stare I had shot upwards.
Looking forwards again, I then watched the professor to place down a chair, and an old, pointed hat atop the same. For a moment, the entire hall fell silent, and then the hat began to move, a rim slowly opening atop the hat.
“Oh, you may not think I’m pretty,
But don’t judge on what you see,
I’ll eat myself if you can find
A smarter hat than me.”
The bloody thing started to sing about the virtues of the four houses of the school – the brave Gryffindors, the loyal Hufflepuffs, the wise Ravenclaw, and the ambitious Slytherins.
“So, we’ve just got to try on the hat! I’m going to kill Fred, he’s been going on about fighting a troll,” a boy with red hair complained, causing me to shrug. Either would’ve been fine for me at any rate.
“When I call your name, you will put on the Hat and sit on the stool to get sorted. Abbott, Hannah!”
A young girl stepped forwards and sat down. The hat was placed on her head, and a moment later…
“HUFFLEPUFF!”
“Bones, Susan!” became a Hufflepuff, “Boot, Terry!” the first Ravenclaw, and the nervousness bled out of the first-years, only leaving behind excitement.
Eventually, when the hat came to a nervous boy going by “Longbottom, Neville!”, it took a few minutes to decide, and once the hat shouted Gryffindor as his house, he nearly took the hat with him, but stopped after walking a few steps, remembering it wasn’t his hat on his head there.
The next unusual thing was when the in my opinion quite unpleasant “Malfoy, Draco” tried on the hat. It took but a moment to sort him Slytherin.
Then, however…
“Moon, Lily!”
“What?” came from Harry, and I shot him a look.
She became a Ravenclaw.
Then, it was time for me.
Sitting on the stool, the hat was put onto my head, and… nothing happened.
Trying to feel out the magic of the hat, I could find it trying to trace my magic back to my personality with an observation spell, interlaced with a secrecy spell. It could not recall or speak about what it found, so I decided to humour it.
Closing my eyes I focussed, finding the small amount of energy prodding on the utterly massive wall that my mental defences were. They had to hold up against an entire world of nightmares come worst for worst after all, and I guided the energy coming from the hat, reinforcing it so it wouldn’t break on it’s path through the walls.
A fraction of a second after I allowed the tickle of energy in, the hat screamed “SLYTHERIN!” in such volume, it caused everyone to jump, myself included. I shrugged, standing up and walking towards the green-silver table, noting my clothes shifting in colour whilst doing so.
Now it would get interesting. The Gringotts goblins said Harry’s surname was Moon-Potter. Would Hogwarts recognize that?
“Nott, Theodore!”
My jaw clenched. No, they would not. That wasn’t what I wanted to see.
(The twins from earlier got sorted into different houses, one Gryffindor and one Ravenclaw.)
Though the professor came soon enough to Harry.
“Potter, Har- wait a moment,” she said, looking down at the parchment.
“Potter-Moon, Harry!”
I could see the shock on the faces of the teachers and most of the students. Myself I found it curious how the order of the names could be different – Gringotts listed Moon before Potter for him. Maybe because he wasn’t of age?
“Potter-Moon? Where did he get a second surname?” someone a few years above me asked, wide-eyed.
“Some nine years and charge ago,” I absent-mindedly said, causing him to look at me, remembering my name.
“Oh, right, your surname was Moon, too, right? How are you three related?”
“Lily Moon isn’t part of our family, thought the name might suggest otherwise. As for Harry, Nightmare basically adopted him. I would presume his surname to come from that, though it might be for other reasons, too. It’s entirely possible that changing his name in the non-magical world caused his name recognized by the magical world to change,” I reasoned whilst shrugging, focusing on Harry.
…nothing.
Ah.
‘Harry, you need to let the hat through your shields, it takes a look at your mind and sorts you. Don’t worry, it cannot talk about what it sees,’ I sent, and he twitched slightly, having heard me.
I could see Harry’s face twist, different emotions showing up, and eventually the hat shouted out Gryffindor, much to my surprise.
“I – he – whaat? That hat charmed to put him there?” I questioned, looking at the hat. I could tell that it was enchanted in a few interesting ways, but there wasn’t any magic to influence the hats’ decisions.
That was also verified by the older student, saying that nobody would dare to mess with the hat. The last attempt ended with a goblin sword ramming itself through the malefactor and disappearing afterwards to who knows where.
I decided not to ask but made a note to investigate the smiths of the goblins. If wizards used goblin swords, maybe they were of extremely high quality? No matter where, humans tend to develop superiority complexes.
The sorting continued without any other surprises, though eventually, I was asked about why the hat took so long to sort me, and revealed about the protection on my mind.
“It’s because I and Harry both carry magic from Nightmare. Mind you, not much, but it is magic dealing with the mind. It’s a protection against mental attacks, something the – scratch that, our family Moon is especially prone to. I believe it started some one thousand eight hundred years ago.“
“Nobody can trace their lineage back that far, though?”
“It’s an assumption we made on the strength of the family magic,” I lied, shrugging.
“Mainly, how it is still slowly growing stronger at a steady rate – and how nothing, even an attack by the strongest mind-mage we know could not get past our defences. Mother said that strong magic attracts things you really don’t want in your head, so we both got a shield cast on us by mother, until we can learn ourselves.”
That part was true. Chrysalis could be a very scary individual, but her mind magic held no power over me. Unless I allowed her to. Fun week…
I was snapped out of my thoughts when the headmaster tapped his goblet with a spoon, the hall quieting. He stood up, smiling at both new and old students.
“Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words, and here they are! Horizon! Defenestration! Periapsis! Candela! Thank you!”
…all-right then. I decided to ignore the doubts about the old man (and his sanity), deciding to instead focus on the copious amounts of food that had now appeared in front of us.
While we were eating, the ghosts also started mingling with the students, but much to my surprise, the house ghost of Slytherin came over to me, giving me a bow. He then vanished.
Both I and the children around me stared at the ghost for a few moments, before returning to the food.
“Why’d he do that?”
“No idea.”
There was silence for a while longer, but then someone else finally spoke up.
“I think I should ask the question we all want answered – where’s your family from? We know almost everyone else in Slytherin.”
“Nobody believes us if we tell the truth, so we don’t,” I deadpanned in response, getting him to blink.
Before he could respond, I felt something touch my magic, with the intent to break through it. I threw back my spirit against the intrusion, causing a rippling sensation to flow through my mind. Whoever cast the spell touching me had to feel much worse right now, though.
Nobody was looking at me directly, so I just shrugged. They tried their best – but that wasn’t enough.
“What is the truth then?”
“Would you believe me when I told you we were taught by ponies?”
“Excuse me?”
“Thought so,” I deadpanned, before realizing two of the girls from the train were sitting near me, nodding.
“Yea, we do,” Daphne said, glancing at Tracey. I smirked at them, the rest of the Slytherins aware they were missing something but unaware what.
Eventually, the feast came to a close. The food vanished, and Dumbledore stood up again, addressing the students.
“Ahem – just a few more words, now that we have finished our dinner. I need to give you a few start-of-term notices. First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that fact,” he said, his gaze hardening a bit and staring at two third- or fourth-year Gryffindors. They were red-headed twins and grinned back.
“I’ve also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors. Quidditch trials will be held in the second week, those wishing to play for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.”
His next words were when his eyes gained an almost steel-like quality. I could feel a suggestion mixed into his words, which I couldn’t condone too much, considering what he was saying.
“Finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side of the castle is out of bounds for all students not wishing to sustain life-threatening injuries. In other words, it’s a restricted area, stay out of it.”
I’ll check that out later.
“And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!”
I’ll spare you all the following events. Whatever it was had no right to call itself music.