He wakes to sunlight bathing his face. Nice, in principle, but in practice, very bright. He sits up, rubbing his eyes, and looks around the room. His roommates seem to still be sleeping, except for Leo. Well, he's not getting back to sleep; he hops out of bed and goes to perform his morning ablutions, as he has been known to refer to them when he feels particularly inclined toward self-parody.

After that's all been taken care of, he heads back into the room and retrieves Thalia, who trills affectionately, and his typewriter, which does not, then goes out into the common room to see if anybody's awake out there.

Aaron's awake out there! He's talking with another older boy, and he looks up at the door as Joey enters. "Ah, an early bird!"

"Well, my bed gets all the sunlight," Joey says. "But yeah, I've got a history of beds that catch the sunrise, so I tend to get up pretty early."

Aaron nods. "It's good to get up early! Means you get to the Great Hall in time to have a good hearty breakfast. Personally I'm going to wait here and wake your yearmates before they're in danger of sleeping through their first breakfast."

"Well, have fun." Joey goes to get breakfast. Now that Aaron's mentioned it, he's kind of starving.

He remembers the way to the Great Hall (it's not a long walk), and he gets there in short order. It's almost empty, this early in the morning, though there are some students scattered around the room and the teachers' table is relatively full. The tables aren't as loaded down as they were last night; there's serving bowls of granola, fresh fruit, various cereals both hot and cold. There's rashers of bacon and sausage and platters of eggs, and toast with jam and butter and tureens of baked beans (what is with these people), and various breakfast pastries. Pitchers of milk and juice and pots of steaming coffee.

He gets himself a plate of pastries and an egg in a cup with some toast soldiers and a bowl of granola and a goblet(?!) of milk and sits down. He leaves the other people at the table their space, because they're all upper years and that's a bit scary. Instead he eats, incredibly quickly because that's how he always eats.

"They're called toast soldiers," a voice says over his shoulder, "but they're not actually going to make a tactical retreat if you don't eat them fast enough. Why don't we all take a moment to breathe."

Joey starts coughing, and has to take a long gulp of milk to clear his throat.

"It's - it's my way of showing appreciation," he says. "Compliments to the chef, and that kind of thing. Anything less would be an insult."

"I'm sure the elves will understand if you eat slowly enough to actually taste their food," Leo says, sitting down with his own plate (granola, buttered toast, oatmeal with an enormous amount of fruit, and a cup of coffee).

"What actually is an elf?" Joey asks. "Apparently they - cook and do the laundry and collect our things from the train?"

"In a nutshell," Leo says, taking a spoonful of oatmeal. "They're a kind of magical slave race, they were designed to love menial work and be terrified of freedom. Hogwarts collects free elves, both to take care of around-the-castle tasks and as a sort of humanitarian effort."

He sips his coffee. "Mother always says we should find whoever invented elves, reanimate his corpse, and nail it to a tree. Abuela Carla left her a breeding pair in her will and it pissed her off so badly she personally carved her a gravestone that just said Carla Isabella Arroyo del Monte, 1841-1998: Quemate en el infierno, zorra."

"Jesus. What'd she do with the elves?"

"She tried to convince them that their whole thing about freedom is a social construct and they should self-actualize and be their own people, and they just kept crying, so she let them stick around and clean the house. She did convince them not to reproduce, though, so they'll only be around another forty years or so. And Marisol isn't allowed near them."

"Eesh. I guess there's not a great solution."

     Thalia shivers. "Joey be nice to elves."

"Well, obviously I'll be nice to any I meet, but that's different than having a solution to the problem."

     She nods and accepts a blackberry from his granola.

"Like I said. Find corpse, dig up corpse, nail it to a tree. She's very emphatic."

Joey nods, and returns to his toast soldiers. Somehow, the egg remains runny and perfect despite the minutes of intervening conversation. Magic is so cool.

An hour and a half later (he spends most of this time back in the common room, reading his books), it's time for his first class. "Acclimation to Wizarding Culture," apparently. He and Frederick and Sally head up to the first floor and find the classroom, and file in.

There's a witch in her twenties sitting on the desk at the front of the room, chatting with a boy and three girls all wearing blue-trimmed robes. She waves when the Hufflepuffs walk in. "Hello Hufflepuffs!" she says cheerfully. "My old House, ah, the memories. I'm Professor Sally-Anne Perks. You're all newbloods, right, you haven't been cruelly misdirected to my lair?"

"Unless I've been very badly misinformed we're all newbloods, yes," Joey says. "Which is - the same thing as being a muggleborn? Unless I'm also very badly misinformed about that?"

"Well, that's getting into curriculum material," she says, "which I really would have expected from the Ravenclaws, here, that'll show me to stereotype. That's the first thing we'll cover, worry not."

     "Why not just tell us now?" asks the Ravenclaw boy, sounding rather frustrated.

"Because I don't like to repeat myself, and until 8 sharp I'm not on the clock. You will eventually learn that Hogwarts professors are tragically overworked, and will take any chance to be lazy."

Joey and his Hufflepuff compatriots sit. The desks of this classroom are arranged in a semicircle, indicating that Professor Perks thinks she's cool. "Well, if you won't teach us off the clock, will you tell us funny stories? That's very important in a teacher."

"Of course!" she grins. "-but not on the first day, because all of my stories require a great deal of context that I will be providing in today's class."

     "Boring," Thalia opines.

"Well, at least we'll get stories at some point," Joey says, petting her head with a finger. "That's worth something."

The Slytherin and Gryffindor newbloods file in within the next few minutes, Gryffindor arriving just before the belltower strikes eight. They're the largest contingent, five kids to Slytherin and Ravenclaw's four apiece and Hufflepuff's three.

Professor Perks claps her hands together. "We're all here on time! Lovely. Now, as I have now said three times, I am Professor Sally-Anne Perks, and it is my job to get you acclimated to wizarding culture. What do you already know about wizarding culture?"

Joey raises his hand, and when she points to him, he says "One of my housemates explained house elves to me? They're - pretty messed up."

She winces. "House-elves, yes. Not the best introduction to our culture, I'm afraid." She gives the rest of the class a condensed introduction to the concept of house-elves, with the added note that the wizarding government, as of the past few years, has been introducing stricter controls on how people can behave towards their elves.

"So there's a whole species of - fucking magic slaves - and your excuse for not doing anything about it is 'well, three years ago we started caring whether people physically abuse them'?" one of the Gryffindors growls.