"What do you need boy robes for?" inquires Madam Malkins.
"I'm sometimes a boy," the girl explains.
"What?"
"Look—"
"Because if muggles find out that pointy sticks are used by magic people then they will probably try to snap pointy sticks and also kidnap people in the night while they're sleeping," he responds. "Which was three hundred years ago so I'm not sure the statute has much of a place anymore but I'm pretty sure it did."
"Then I'm not rubbing the fact that magical people are crazy and don't want spaceships in their faces either," she retorts, grinning. "Besides, they gotta make up their minds, either Middle Ages muggles were a threat to them from whom they must hide or they can take twentieth-century muggle technology from their hands, can't have both."
"Thanks," he says, moving to do as such.
To Sadde: "You're a witch – wizard? – anyway that was point two as well, and a metamorphmagus, and what I said just now, people wouldn't usually say that, and you also care about the statute." Pause. "Add a sixth, the memories thing, I think you're a bit more – definite about that than most people."
Anthony pauses, thinking, then says, almost as if he has a checklist: "Dark. Having some weird link to snakes of some kind. Typically hate muggleborns, or anyone who isn't pureblood. Sort of – uncaring about what people feel. Use bribery and extortion to get what they want, and they want to rule the world for the sake of having power."
"No, but he had–" Anthony pauses, looks around, and then continues in a lower voice: "He had like thirty direct followers in his inner sanctum, they all had their families indoctrinated, pureblood Slytherin families have high numbers of Slytherins who then try to indoctrinate others, and there are large bits of the population who were sympathetic to his goal of killing off muggles and non-purebloods?"
He nods. "Mum's not usually too fussy about when guests come around, she keeps the house sort of tidy as a general principle, so I think it'll be okay? And she likes talking to people from different backgrounds, especially since she's not really used to talking to muggles?"
"It can be quite disorienting at first, but it's perfectly safe."
She shows them the way to the public floo system and explains about the steps involved in the mechanism – grab a handful of floo powder, throw it into the flames and wait for them to change colour, step into them, and then enunciate the name of your destination clearly.
She tells them the floo address for the house.
He shows her the clock! It has some fancy animation on the hour if you set it up to do that – which they usually don't, because it sounds like it could be distracting – but they were fashionable to get a few years ago in his mum's social circle – and then he shows her the hallway and what it looks like outside so she knows what the outside of the house looks like…
The stairs seem like they go quite a ways up, to quite a few different floors, if she looks up while they're in the hall.
"I don't think magic usually makes people, though. I'm not saying it's totally impossible – but I'm pretty sure if they were people, it'd be the sort of thing people know? They're not exactly badly treated, they're usually considered antiques and stuff, but I'd expect to know."
"… The person who produced the magic for the portrait, is what I was thinking…" Blink. "This is not actually, you know, what it is – I haven't asked, it hasn't made me ask this, I just treat them, uh, as I would treat a magical portrait? Try to be polite, they vary in personality, I'm related to a couple of them?"
"… Right, uh, they–" Pause. "It's– uh. The Killing Curse, Imperius Curse and Cruciatus Curse." He looks around, possibly checking that nobody's listening, and says, "First one is, I think, clear, second is – you can control people to do what you tell them to. Third is for torture."
"That was me trying to be ridiculous – they honestly think you have impure blood because you're from a muggle family, and muggles aren't magic so they don't have the 'right blood', but purebloods do, so they think you're not as good literally because your bloodline isn't magical."
In front of the staff table and behind a small podium is the witchiest witch to ever witch; someone who wouldn't look out of place cackling and cooking small lost children. The effect then proceeds to be completely ruined by her strong Scottish accent and firm polite tones.
"Good evening, students. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the Sorting Feast. It is customary for the Headmistress to deliver a speech before the actual Sorting, but I believe the Hat has a few words it would like to say before that."
Indeed, the Hat! For there is a hat on a small stool in front of the podium, there, and it starts... singing.
Faces staring up at me
Few and far between
People in this gathering
Not as many as I've seen
But after night, morning comes
After night, dawn shines
And bit by bit we will rebuild
And soon I'll write new lines
But what, I ask, does the future hold?
What will we yet see?
That, I know, depends on you
And what you wish to be
Gryffindor may be your path
Bold and bright and brave
Valor and people to serve
Is what your heart does crave
Or maybe loyal Hufflepuff
Through blood, sweat, but no tears
Will you build a whole new world
Where we will know no fear
Perhaps your way is Ravenclaw's
Hoard knowledge in your mind
And by the power of your words
The future be defined
Lest we forget Slytherin
I beg you, hear my words!
With noble goals and good friends
Tomorrow will be spurred
With this verse I close my song
My message has been sent
I may help push you along
But you choose where you end
"Now I will call you one by one by name, and you will wear the Sorting Hat. It will decide what House you'll fall in." She raises a list to her eyes and says, "Burberry, Matilda." A mousy-looking girl runs up to the hat and puts it on, shutting her eyes with force. After a few seconds, the Hat calls, "Gryffindor!" She grins, removes the hat, and runs to her assigned table to generalised applause.
Hmmmm... What a curious mind... A deep dissatisfaction with the world, and a sense of duty to set it right and lead by example. Your ambition is admirable... but its source is rather selfless. Yes, I know exactly where you'd fit best.
And without waiting for her input it declares, "Gryffindor!"
"Something up?" a cheerful third-year sitting with her asks, but before she can answer the Headmistress starts speaking.
"These past few years have been fraught with death and terror," she says. "And even before them, there were things going on behind the scenes that you were not told—because everyone was happy, because there was no way to prove them and no one could—would believe them.
"But though I see fewer people, new and old, here with us this year than any year before, I can say it's all over. The Dark Lord has been vanquished for good, and as the Hat wisely said, you will build us a new future. So be welcome to a new year in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Let's start it as we always have before: with cheer in our hearts and a delicious meal in our stomachs!"
She clinks a glass with a fork and the tables are suddenly filled with food of the most varied types, a feast worthy of kings and queens.
"Okay, so, the location of the kitchens is not a secret, but it's not, like, public knowledge, either," the prefect explains. "The location of each House's Common Rooms is, though. A secret. So don't go around telling people where ours is."
They reach a painting of a bowl of fruit, and the prefect tickles a pear. It giggles, and the painting opens to show a tunnel.
The tunnel leads into the kitchens, which has an extra room shaped just like the Great Hall, with identical tables where the food is presumably set up before being sent there. There are several House Elves busying themselves with cleaning everything up, and they barely look up from their tasks to greet the new Hufflepuffs.
The prefect walks to a pile of wine barrels. "Now, to enter our dorms you need to knock on the barrel in the right way." He sings the words "Helga Hufflepuff" and knocks on the wood while he does it, and one of the barrels opens up. "If you get it wrong, it'll spray you with vinegar." Then he unceremoniously drops to all fours and crawls into the barrel.
He will be greeted by what's possibly the coziest place on Earth.
There's a fireplace and a huge rug that feels like it hugs you when you walk on it and several sofas and a couple of bookstands and people, all of the Hufflepuffs are there, telling each other stories, playing cards or more arcane games, greeting the new firsties.