Bruce is immediately surrounded by a softly rustling ocean of every color and texture of fabric he's ever seen or heard of, and several he hadn't. A matronly voice chirps brightly from the back, "Hogwarts, dear?"

Ooooh. He pets one of the softest-looking pieces of fabric and then remembers not to touch random things in a magic store and stops. 

"Yes ma'am."

The soft piece of fabric vibrates gently when touched, like a purring cat, then scurries away under a pile of tulle.

"Lovely! Up onto the stool then, dearie," encourages the seamswitch, bustling out from behind a mannequin in a cloud of measuring tapes.

He hops up on the stool and wonders if that's a lasting spell on the measuring tapes or if she's actively animating them right now or if that's even a meaningful question. Hagrid didn't want to talk about magic science but eventually he's going to get textbooks.

She does seem to be directing them, though the difference between a natural language interface with an enchanted item and the common human behavior of talking to objects while giving them explicit nonverbal instructions is probably opaque to Bruce at this time.

In any event, they set about measuring him!

Bruce is short and skinny and generally lacking in physical substance. Even his hair is super short, and looks suspiciously like it was cut with craft scissors by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

(Aunt Petunia had not approved. He would probably still have done it anyway if he had realised how much she wouldn't approve; it was touching his face and cutting it was more likely to work than asking to be taken to the barber.)

The measuring tapes do not judge him.

Madame Malkin, though, squints at him, with the air of someone who is trying to decide whether a Responsible Adult will spawn out of the nearest shrubbery fabric pile to be offended if she comments on the state of this child.

Before she can decide, another customer appears.

This one doesn't touch any of the fabric, or wait to be instructed; he strides right in and hops up onto the stool next to Bruce, completely ignores Madam Malkin, and says, "First year too?"

Oh gosh, social interaction. At least there's an obvious thing to talk about. "Yeah! I'm excited."

Nod, nod. "What House d'you think you'll be in?"

Aaaaaand zero to "looking like an idiot" in thirty seconds as usual. "I don't know what houses there are yet."

Draco's 'befriend classmate' script does not have a button for this answer. Mudbloods aren't supposed to just be allowed to wander around wherever, are they?

".............your family are wizards, right."

". . . my parents were but they're dead." Don't ask about it don't ask about it don't ask about it normal people don't ask why someone is dead right? 

Normal people often totally ask. Draco Malfoy, however, has never in his life been more interested in learning new facts than about talking about himself.

"Oh. Well good. They really oughtn't to let the other sort in, don't you think. Anyway, of course you never really know until you get there, do you, but I'm going to be in Slytherin, all our family have been. Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave." 

He's not sure who the "other sort" who shouldn't be let in is, unless it's magic kids with muggle parents which he hadn't been sure even happened. It would explain how he has a witch mother and a muggle aunt, though, if it's partially random. If there's anything wrong with those kids it's probably wrong with him too, it's not like he knows the first thing about magic, but he'd rather not find out right now. He can read about magic biology later.

"What's Hufflepuff like, besides awful? Or what's Slytherin like if you'd rather talk about that."

He's supposed to have a reason for this cached opinion? Yeah no he's going for item B. 

" ... well, Slytherin is the best, obviously. It's where all the best families usually end up. S'probably why we've won the Quidditch Cup for years. I'm going to be on the House team, of course, I don't see why first-years aren't supposed to have our own broomsticks... I'll probably drag Father off to look at racing brooms after this."

"Flying on broomsticks sounds really cool. I'm rubbish at sports, at least the kind where you're running around on the ground, but I'd like to fly."

Do the broomsticks have seats, he wonders to himself, or do you just kind of have all your weight on a stick via your crotch? Or maybe you're supposed to sit sidesaddle. Or stand on the broom like a skateboard, in which case he will be even worse at flying than at muggle phys ed.

The kind where what.

Is he from some kind of weird Welsh commune? Or... Australia?? He doesn't have an accent. 

(It's normal for wizard kids not to have flown for real before they go to Hogwarts, of course, Draco is special, but he cannot actually think of a sport that doesn't involve at least toy broomsticks...)

"Yeah, flying's great - what do you mean running around on the ground, where even are you from?"

Oh no, he didn't realize that "my parents are dead" plus "I don't know anything about Hogwarts" meant "I grew up with muggles who aren't my parents." So much for getting off the topic. 

He sighs. "I grew up with muggles. Their sports are awful." 

"Oh, eugh, how horrible."

He says this with a tone of voice that sounds kind of like it's trying to be sympathetic, if the speaker's only contact with the concept of sympathy had up to this point been that it is a kind of particularly rare pastry, and as a result lands somewhere around vaguely personally offended.

"How does that even happen. You ought to, to sue your grandparents' cousins or whoever -" 

"That's you done, my dear," says the seamswitch, tapping Draco on the elbow with her wand.

(Why Draco, who got here later than Bruce, is nevertheless done faster, is left as an exercise to the reader.)

He doesn't know how muggles sue people let alone how wizards do it and he isn't sure if "not having to live with the Dursleys anymore" is something you can sue for and the kid whose name he totally forgot to ask doesn't even know he dislikes them unless it was obvious from his face. 

Possibly he's taking longer than the other kid to get robes because he wasn't holding still enough. He'll pay more attention.

He hops down cheerfully, blissfully unaware that it is weird to get queue-jumped everywhere you go, and is confronted promptly with the sight of Hagrid looming outside the door, which interrupts his also finally realizing he, too, forgot the introductions step. "Anyway what's your - what's that?!"

"What's what?" asks Bruce, whose intuitive grasp of English grammar is massively better than his intuitive grasp of gaze tracking. He tries to peer past both the other kid and Hagrid to see what wild new magic phenomenon has appeared in the street.

It is quite difficult to peer past Hagrid, owing to his substantially outsizing the doorway despite not being yet quite within conversational distance. Draco sort of ... gesticulates wildly in the general direction of Hagrid's knees, and mutters something that might have been "too big to be allowed."

"You mean Hagrid? He works at Hogwarts. He's awesome; he's helping me get my school supplies." It's kind of cool knowing something Hogwarts-related that the kid raised with magic didn't. Also it's rude to visibly freak out over how tall people are. Bruce was freaked out by Hagrid at first too but in his opinion it doesn't count as rude if the other person just kicked your door in.

"Ohh, right, yeah, I've heard about him," Draco relaxes immediately. Nothing is scary so long as you have a cached mockery script for it on hand, right? Right.

"He's a sort of savage or something - lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed." 

Wow, what. "Do wizards actually call people savages? Anyway, he hasn't"--he remembers at the last second that Hagrid's ability to do magic is a secret--"done anything silly that I've seen. He's cool." Alright, giving Dudley a pig's tail was pretty silly, but still.

"What else would we call - oh, there's Father," grins Draco, thoughts of racing broomsticks promptly overwhelming any uninteresting discussion about racist nomenclature, and he exits the conversation at speed without a single look back.

"Mornin'!" booms Hagrid, failing to detect Draco scurrying away below his plane of view and sticking his enormous fuzzy head through the door to grin at Madam Malkin.

She looks up from her chart of inscrutable numbers and waves. "Hello! Hogwarts business, Hagrid?"

When Hagrid's chest puffs up proudly it causes him to bonk his head slightly on the doorframe. "Oof - yes! Taking young Mr. Potter to get all his things, o'course. Doin' all right, Bruce?"

"Yes mister Hagrid." Did the measuring tapes finish up with him yet? Is there anything else he's supposed to be doing right now?

The measuring tapes are now buzzing about in a cloud around Madam Malkin, and she is humming to herself and making notes, glancing in his direction occasionally. This probably means they're done?

There is, perhaps, a certain discomfiting ambient sense that Bruce is supposed to have figured out by himself whether he's supposed to do anything else, using the approximately zero (0) information available to him on the social cues channel.

The other kid didn't get any robes before he left; maybe they deliver? Does he need to tell someone his address? He didn't for the letters but that was a more complicated situation. 

"Uh, ma'am? Do I need to do anything else? Sorry, I've never done this before."

Madam Malkin looks up. "Oh! My apologies, dearie. You're quite done, the rest is your - ah -"

(she shuts her mouth very firmly around the shape of the phrase your parents)

" - Hagrid, will he be taking delivery now or by owl?"

"Hrm." Hagrid's face disappears out of the doorway for a moment as he straightens to his full height to stare contemplatively into the middle distance, considering with some dismay the prospect of the Dursleys receiving a package by owl delivery. Then he leans back down - he has to bend almost double at the waist to fit his head in the door - and says firmly, "ah, today. Time fer lunch while we wait, yeh think?"

Madam Malkin considers the small child before her, and her chart of numbers informing her firmly of his dire need for nutrition, and says, very enthusiastically, "oh, yes, you go right ahead, my dear. Come back in an hour."

"Okay, thank you!" Time to go find out what wizards eat for lunch!

If you are Hagrid, for lunch at the Leaky Cauldron you eat an entire casserole dish sized pot pie and drink a mug of beer the size of a lesser man's head. Bruce, on the other hand, is presented cheerfully with a reasonably normal-sized bowl of soup.

Apparently, it is the Leaky House Soup. Not to be confused with the House Leaky Soup, the House House Soup, the Leaky Soup House, et cetera.

As long as it goes from the bowl to his face without attempting to go anywhere else, it's good! He'll pay for his out of his school supply money unless Hagrid pays for both of them.

Can they get textbooks next after they pick up the robes?

Hagrid seems to have already paid.

He blinks a little bemusedly at this request - most eleven-year-olds are not excited about textbooks - and then, all at once, grins so broadly and warmly that it's tempting to consider the possibility that he may be literally glowing. "Ahh, just like yer mum."

Bruce grins back. Food and magic textbooks and responding well to being asked for something and acknowledging the existence of Bruce's mother? Truly Hagrid is the best adult and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

What a delightful small child. Hagrid absolutely cannot fathom how the Dursleys could manage to be Like That at him and live with themselves.

When they're done eating, he leads the way to Flourish & Blotts, which is an enormous wooden building whose door is actually large enough for Hagrid, though he has to squeeze his way somewhat carefully between several precariously stacked piles of the newest edition of Quidditch Through the Ages that are crowding the entranceway. "Here we are!" Hagrid says brightly, gesturing proudly about and narrowly avoiding smacking a fluttering Broom Maintenance Charms For The Quidditch Professional out of the air with his elbow. "I'm not much of a books person me'self, but I never needed one I couldn't find here or in the library."

Magic bookstore magic bookstore he's in a magic bookstore and he has money!

He will grab all of the textbooks on the list and three more books on magical theory and two on astronomy and another one by the author of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi and one on alchemy and why shouldn't he just get what looks like next year's transfiguration book now, and ohhhhhhh wow does "arithmancy" mean there's magic math, yes it does and now his pile of books is taller than he is and he needs to push it over to a corner and do some normal math about how many of these he can fit in his budget and his trunk. But first he needs to climb this shelf just a bit so he can get Principles of Spell Development. (He falls off, but he gets the book and doesn't bring anything else down with him, mission accomplished.)

Bruce will learn, then, that the shelves in this bookstore (which has had about four hundred years to optimize for regular influxes of excited eleven-year-olds) are enchanted so that if you fall off of them you fall down very slowly and gently.

Hagrid peers at the stack of books. He was emotionally prepared to have to gently discourage the purchase of the sort of thing James would have wanted when he was eleven and immediately injured himself with, but Bruce doesn't seem interested in curses. Extracurricular facts about plants and math seem fine. "Think yeh can prob'ly get the astronomy ones in the library?" he suggests, instead, while he's squinting suspiciously at the alchemy book. Hagrid does not really know enough about alchemy to be confident that it is not horribly dangerous, but then, Flamel seems to be experiencing the exact opposite of dying at eleven from unwise magical experimentation, doesn't he, so... it's probably fine...? 

Bruce is not at this time particularly constrainted by budget, but Hagrid will also remind him that he's got to fit robes and potions supplies into his trunk, and helpfully gesture the approximate dimensions of a standard-sized cauldron. 

What a good feature for shelves to have! He will put back the astronomy books, and also the ones that look like sequels to his current textbooks on the theory that the library might have copies abandoned by yet older students, and the most advanced arithmancy book, and then he can fit the rest and probably still have enough room for robes and potions supplies and his very own telescope.

When Bruce is done pruning, Hagrid will carry the selected books to the counter, since a quantity of books that make up a substantial fraction of Bruce's body weight are an easy handful for him. 

"Oh, Hagrid, hello!" says the manager as they approach. "I hear I owe you a drink? The kids who cleared the booklice out of my second floor last month said they got the idea for the freezing charms from you." 

Hagrid turns a warm shade of magenta. "Oh! Well goodness me, uh, no trouble at all, glad to help," he blusters delightedly. 

This is yet more evidence that Hagrid is the best adult. Bruce loads books into his trunk as they get rung up, except for Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling which he hangs onto to read first.

"What're booklice like? Are they like bookworms but lice-shaped? Are they magic or just regular bugs?"

Animal facts!! Hagrid loves animal facts. They are his favorite thing. He will answer that question at length on the way to the apothecary.

"Ooh! So see - yeh know how there's a lot of kinds'a dogs? - people'll call all sorts'f stuff bookworms, beetles and lice and even paper salamanders and things. Anything that'll eat a book, that's a bookworm, they'll tell yeh, but heck, a dragon'll eat a book if yeh put one in its face, won't it, I think really it only counts if they'll go hunting for 'em on purpose. Anyway a book louse is a lil tiny bugger," he pinches his thum and forefinger together illustratively, "oh, 'bout a breadcrumb? An' they like ter be warm, see, so, make 'em cold and off they trot, no poison sprays or anythin' that'd damage the books!"

He seems puzzled, though, by the question of whether they are magic.

"....I think most things're at least a bit magic?" he hazards.

"That's a really clever solution! But if every living thing's a bit magic why haven't scientists noticed? Is it just a really tiny bit?" Maybe most magic is like neutrinos and doesn't do anything and wizards and witches and dragons happen when it starts doing stuff.

Why haven't...

"Scien..tists?" repeats Hagrid, a little dubiously. "Those blokes who build the funny contraptions an' blow things up?"

"Yes, but also other things--maybe the magical world calls them something else? People who try to understand why things are the way they are by looking at everything really closely and trying stuff to see what happens." Oh no, what if the only muggle science magic people know about is the atomic bomb, that would be so embarrassing.

Well, you see, the thing is, the wizards who do that are called Unspeakables.

As an astute reader might be able to detect from the name, this has a certain result on the state of common knowledge, to whit:

" .... don' think we have those? What are they for?"

"Sometimes they cure diseases or help invent things but mostly they're for--well, lots of people want to know how things work and why, and scientists figure out parts of it and write books so everyone can know."

"Huh. Well that's very good of them then I s'pose."

The apothecary, it transpires as they approach it, is actually two adjacent apothecaries (Mr. Mulpepper's and Slug & Jigger's), undergoing what appears to be an ongoing signage competition. They are currently on whatever step of this slow-motion argument results in hand-painted signs reading OUR SAFETY MUSHROOMS EXPLODE PROPERLY (complete with animated, bright red dancing mushroom) and FRESH LIONFISH, RUMORS OF MANES GREATLY EXAGGERATED (complete with furry texture), respectively.

Their collective riot of colors and textures and smells is detectable at some yards from the front door.

Oh no that's going to be kind of overwhelming. But magic plants! He will forge ahead in search of readable labels, still clutching Magical Theory.

Mr. Mulpepper's handwriting is a little spidery, but he does meticulously label everything, even the individual branches of what appears to be a single large bush sprouting eight different kinds of nightshade. 

Slug & Jigger on the other hand seem to be going for a fundamentally vibes-based approach to inventory, but they do also have a prominently advertised pre-packaged First Year Potions Kit.

His letter doesn't actually list what ingredients he needs, so he shows the prepackaged kit to Hagrid and asks if it's got all the right things.

Hagrid peers at it. "I'd imagine so?"

Arsenius Jigger interjects from his counter, brightly, "Everything you need for the first five chapters of the text!", with all the practiced smoothness of an assurance that has been repeated verbatim at least twenty times this week and the absolute self-confidence of the man who personally wrote said textbook.

Yeah, fair enough. He'll grab that and the standard cauldron and start reading Magical Theory in the checkout line.

Welcome to the world of formal education, young wizard and/or witch! Up until now, you have likely experienced magic mostly in terms of enchanted household items, unexpected occurrences, and things you are not supposed to touch because your parents said so. Hopefully, by the time you reach your OWLs, you will be thoroughly prepared for the single most important wizarding skill: learning and casting new spells.

The aim of this text, which is typically used as a companion reference to introductory instruction in Charms and Transfiguration, is to provide a comprehensive overview of the basic principles upon which our world revolves. Chapters 1 through 3 will focus on the foundational theoretical skills you'll need for the remainder of your academic career, including notation and spell categorization. In chapters 4 and 5 we will delve into the nature of the magical core, why modern wizards use wands, and the necessary components of a spell. These first five chapters comprise Part 1.

In partnership with our dear friend Miranda Goshawk, this new revised edition of the text provides page number references to the fourteenth edition of the Standard Books of Spells, grades 1 through 5, wherever we mention a particular -

Someone clears their throat rather pointedly to alert Bruce to the fact that he has reached the front of the line.

"Sorry!" Here's his stuff here's his money he's getting out of the way now.

Then he may flee the Zone of Weird Overwhelming Smells and follow Hagrid toward their next scheduled destination: Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment, purveyor of compasses, crystal balls, etc., etc., and (most relevant to Bruce's interests) telescopes!

Awesome! He's pretty curious about the crystal balls too, actually! How do they work? Can he try one? Can he watch someone else try one if you have to know things? Do they show the future? 

"Don't touch anything!" snaps the elderly wizard at the counter, who has a permanently etched facial expression of Fuck You, Specifically.

A nearby customer, a witch draped in five shades of eye-searing yellow, waves a dismissive hand at him. "Oh, don't be such a mean old nundu, Wiseacre, children grow up to be customers you know! Here, I was about to buy this one anyway," and she picks up a crystal ball off the shelf. It's a transparent greenish orb about the size of a grapefruit, and when she touches it, the silver fog inside swirls about, almost as though magnetized. As she turns around to show it to Bruce, and catches sight of his face, she nearly drops it. "Oh! My goodness. Bruce Potter."

"Sorry. I mean, hello." Aaaaaaa he's so bad at this.

"Oh gosh. It's so exciting to meet you! Thank you so much, you're such a hero, I was in school at the time so I didn't really know much about the war but my parents said it was just awful, you should have seen the party we threw - erm, sorry, I said I was going to buy this, hang on." She flits over and pays Wiseacre, whose expression has not shifted a millimeter, and then bounces enthusiastically back with her shiny new purchase clutched carefully in both hands. She is going to explain a thing to the real life Bruce Potter this is so cool. "Right! So yeah crystall balls show the future!! I don't think you gotta know things exactly but people usually can't do it before they take the class? What d'you wanna see?"

That's a surprisingly big question! (He doesn't really know what to do with all the war stuff so he's just going to pretend she didn't say it.)

"Can I see tomorrow?" That way he'll know whether it worked really soon and also get some advance warning of how the Dursleys are going to react to him coming back with a pile of magic stuff.

"Like in general? Sure." She does a sort of shoulder-rolling motion, takes a deep breath, and then Contemplates the Orb (TM).

(Will Bruce Potter (oh my gosh, Bruce Potter!! no. focus. listen to your third eye, c'mon) have a good day tomorrow?)

As far as Bruce can tell, the fog continues to swirl about monochromatically. The aspiring Seer bites her lip thoughtfully. "I'm not nearly as good at this as my dad, that's why I was gonna get my own to practice, but I think I see like - well, I see a mouse drinking little brass letters out of a teacup the size of its head, actually, but I think probably it means you'll really like whatever book you're planning to read tomorrow?" She grins down at him. "This is just a normal person prediction not a Seer prediction but I bet you're a Ravenclaw." 

"A mouse drinking letters, wow. I bet you're right though! Thanks!" Maybe she just saw him reading in line but maybe telling the future really is that weird. Eventually he'll read books and take classes and learn to do it himself and then he'll know.

Yessss she has TOLD SOMEONE their FORTUNE and they DID NOT GET MAD and also were ✨BRUCE POTTER ✨ she's so good at being a Seer.

"You're welcome!!" she chirps, and skips off with her purchase, beaming.

Wiseacre squints balefully at Bruce in her wake. "Are you buying something or leaving."

"I'd like a telescope please! The kind that's standard for Hogwarts first years if there is one."

The standard kind of telescope for Hogwarts first years, it transpires, looks almost exactly like the sort of collapsible handheld spyglass one commonly sees people use on boats in movies, except that when unfolded it has spidery little legs which serve as a self-balancing tripod. (It is possible that Hogwarts first years may have, historically, struggled with a tendency for knocking their telescopes off of towers.) 

Also that way you don't need to have steady hands to aim it! And now he has a TELESCOPE!

Once he's paid up and on his way out he asks Hagrid, "What's a Ravenclaw? Is it one of the houses like Hufflepuff and Slytherin?"

"What? How have yeh managed to hear those three and not - ah, well, yes, and the fourth one is Gryffindor. Which is where all the best - erm, sorry, m'not s'posed to play favorites o'course, bein' a representative of the school. Yer parents were Gryffindors though."

"The kid in the robe shop made it sound like people are usually in the same house as their parents but I think he--wasn't trying very hard to only say correct things."

Hagrid chuckles. "Lotta people don't try very hard at that, I reckon. Not wrong, though -  plenty of people end up something different, too, mind, yeh never know till you get there, but families'll lean to one House or another."

"What determines which one you get, if it's not random?"

"Oh, no, it's not random, there's a Sorting! Which is, erm," he scratches apologetically at his beard. "It's a surprise? You're s'posed to get told somethin' silly so everybody has fun guessing beforehand, see. I'm no good at makin' stuff up though. When I was a wee lad - oh, goodness, it's been ages - if I remember right my da told me they'd throw us in the lake and see what color our hair turned, hah."

Surprise: noun. A problem it is especially hard to hide or run away from. 

"Okay." 

On a happier note, is their next stop the wand store?

It sure is!

Hagrid considers the tiny, tiny building that is Ollivander's, Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C., slightly nervously pats his umbrella, and suggests, "How about I nip back over to Madam Malkin's and get yer robes, and I'll meet you back here when you're done, eh?"

"Thanks! See you soon."

382 BC? He doesn't know if he hopes that's real or hopes it's made up. Magic existing makes it really hard to know what's made up and he's very much looking forward to learning enough about magic that that stops happening.

Anyway, he wants a ~*~magic wand~*~ as much as he's ever wanted anything that wasn't a book and this is where to get one! 

He is greeted upon entering the shop by a voice nearly as dusty as the shelves, floating out from underneath a pile of boxes. "Mr. Potter, I thought I'd be seeing you soon," it says, and is followed shortly by its owner, a fellow with unsettlingly unblinking silver eyes. "Ah, you have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Bruce is not unsettled by the man's eyes because he doesn't make eye contact by default. "Wands come in kinds? What kinds are there?"

"Indeed they do. Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers and the heartstrings of dragons. No two wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons or phoenixes are quite the same." He contemplates his pile of boxes, and hands Bruce a wand. "And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard’s wand. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Just take it and give it a wave."

Wow, unicorns and phoenixes are real too? He picks up the wand, very gently in case it's fragile, and attempts to make a vaguely graceful gesture with it.

Nothing happens. Ollivander snatches it back out of his hand at once and hands him another. "Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try."

Swish?

Still nothing.

"No, no – here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."

He tries it, wondering how many more attempts he gets before Ollivander decides he's too incompetent to use a wand and shouldn't be allowed to go to Hogwarts after all. 

Apparently at least four dozen, which is how many pile up on a rickety chair before Ollivander, with increasing delight and animation, starts rifling around under his desk again. "Tricky customer, eh?" he says, like this is a rare compliment. "Not to worry, we’ll find the perfect match here somewhere – I wonder now – yes, why not – unusual combination – " He surfaces from under the pile with a bright and curious light in his eyes. "Holly and phoenix feather, twelve inches, just a bit springy. Try."

He's happy to keep trying as long as he's allowed. Swoosh!

The wood of this wand, unlike the others, feels warm to the touch - as though it's been sitting out on a windowsill in the sunshine, despite the fact that Bruce definitely just watched Ollivander pull it out of a dusty box in the bottom of a desk drawer.

When he swooshes it, the warmth spreads gently up his forearm. Bruce can see his own skin glowing very faintly emerald-green, the exact shade he very occasionally catches a glimpse of in a mirror, as the wand emits a spray of golden sparks.

"Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good."

Ohhhhhh wow he did magic he did magic he's a real wizard with magic powers! He grins so big his face hurts and gently pets his wonderful new magic wand. 

"Thank you! Are there things I need to do to, to make sure it keeps working right?" His experience with appliance repair is mostly Uncle Vernon swearing at the television and also the one time the stove exploded, which now that he knows magic exists might have really been his fault for all he denied it at the time, but anyway he's aware that fancy expensive things need taking care of.

Ollivander was clearly prepared to pack the wand back into its box but he's not going to snatch Bruce's very own wand back out of his hand if he doesn't care to hand it back, especially not when he looks so earnestly fond of it already. "Curious," he murmurs, as he puts the box away. "How very curious. Ah - well! That's quite a question, isn't it. Holly is loyal, it shan't turn its back on you unless you are very unkind to it indeed, but a little wand polish now and again will not go amiss, yes? Oh, how curious, very curious..." the wandmaker repeats again, almost under his breath, as he begins to pack away the other incorrect wands.

"What's curious about it?" The wand is staying in his hand and only partially because his pockets are too small.

"I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather – just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother – why, its brother gave you that scar."

"Woah. Is that--the kind of thing that isn't a coincidence, with wands?" Does it mean he's going to turn evil.

"Very few things in our world are coincidences, Mr. Potter, whether they have to do with wands or no. I speak only on my area of expertise, however, when I say that this certainly is not. The wand chooses the wizard, remember, though it is not always clear why, and this one has waited fifty-three years for you, rejecting all others. I think we must expect great things from you." He smiles thinly, here, something on the razor's edge between pride and regret. "After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things also. Terrible, yes, but great."

He would really rather that neither great nor terrible things be expected of him actually! 

"I'll--try not to do anything bad?" he says, trying to sound like this has ever worked.

"Don't we all," nods Ollivander, quite as though he has ever in his life taken an action whose terminal goal isn't 'wands.' "Good day, Mr. Potter."

He pays for his wand and gets out and . . . doesn't tell Hagrid that he might be secretly evil. And now it's probably time to go back to his aunt and uncle, isn't it.

"Are there spells I'm supposed to know before I get to Hogwarts?"

Hagrid has one of his hands behind his back when he returns, and looks very pleased with himself. "Eh? Oh, no, some people do I s'pose but the professors all start figuring yeh don't know yer wand from a spoon."

He chuckles at the metaphor. "Okay." That's convenient; he doesn't want Dudley finding out he has a valuable breakable object. "Um, how do I get to Hogwarts?"

"Oh, it's all on yer ticket," says Hagrid, "First o’ September, King's Cross, I've got it here somewhere. Just a mo', though, got summat else for you first - happy birthday!"

It transpires that what he's been hiding behind his back is an entire, quite large, snowy owl.

"Oh wow! It's beautiful!" 

The owl flutters smugly in her cage and utters a soft, pleased hoot. why yes, I am the prettiest, it seems to say, thank you for noticing.

Hagrid beams. "Isn' she? Dead smart, too, owls, they'll hunt fer themselves and deliver yer mail and whatnot. She'll be able to find me, so write straightaway if yeh have any trouble with those Dursleys, yeah?"

Oh thank goodness, if she didn't hunt for herself he has no idea how he'd get her fed.

"That's really great, thank you! Do owls like delivering mail? Can I try to pet her?"

Hagrid will set the cage carefully down on a bench so that Bruce can if he so desires stick his hand into it.

"Go ahead, just go slow-like so she can see what you're doing," he advises. "Some owls like to go live in the forest instead, I've met some of those, but if you meet a post owl it's being a post owl on purpose, I'd say. They're a bit like cats, see, can't really get 'em to do the finding magic if they don't care to."

He nods, and gently holds out a hand for the owl to examine, and if she seems okay with that he'll stick a tiny finger between the bars and stroke her beautiful fluffy white feathers. "You're even more beautiful than the picture in the encyclopedia," he says solemnly.

If she understood any of those words, encyclopedia was probably not one of them, but the owl seems very pleased by this compliment regardless; she boops his fingertip carefully with her beak, in a politely investigatory manner, and then leans contentedly into the subsequent pets. 

(Hmm yes. No wonder everybody trusts the big fuzzy fellow: he has clearly given her the best child, who is hers now.) 

What a good and friendly and SOFT owl she is. Hmmm, who has a girl's name and is cool enough to have an owl named after them. "I'm gonna name her Curie. For Marie Curie. Unless she has a name already."

"Nah, yer her first wizard so yeh get to name her. Aww, lookit you two, friends already!" Hagrid does not attempt to pet the owl, whose entire head is not substantially larger than his thumbnail, but he beams proudly down at her like a very shaggy mother hen, sniffling a little with delight.

"Who's this Mary Curie then?"

"She's one of those Muggle scientists I mentioned. She discovered that atoms--really tiny particles people thought couldn't come apart at all--fall apart into different smaller atoms sometimes."

Beardy squint.

Really tiny... particles.

Which... fall apart. Sometimes. Do they ... get tired, or...

"...Huh," Hagrid settles on, bemused. "The clever things Muggles come up with, goodness me."

"I can try to explain it better if you want?" In his experience nobody wants him to explain anything in longer than one sentence but Hagrid is full of surprises. "It's not super important though."

"We've probably gotta get yeh home sooner'n later," says Hagrid apologetically, glancing at the setting sun. "But tell yeh what, I'd love to hear all about it over tea first week of term, eh?"

"Okay!" Maybe he even means it. Also that assumes he'll be able to talk about anything other than MAGIC after he starts taking classes in it but they'll see.

It also assumes he'll be able to talk at all while eating Hagrid's cooking, but Hagrid is blissfully unaware of this hazard.

Bruce and Hagrid will traverse the tube system back to Little Whinging, then! (The less spoken of this activity, frankly, the better.)

Upon arrival, Hagrid will evict a variety of newly purchased packages from his coat, to pile into Bruce's new school trunk. It may at this point become clear to Bruce that, even though each of those items individually definitely could have fit into Hagrid's immense pockets, and so it didn't look odd when he was putting them away shop by shop, they probably shouldn't all have.

"Are your pockets bigger on the inside?" What else from Doctor Who is real?

Hagrid peers in surprise between the pile of packages and his coat. "Guess so?"

"Was it not like that when you bought it??"

"Nah." Hagrid shrugs unconcernedly. "That sorta thing happens sometimes 'round lots of magic, and Hogwarts is one of the most magic places there is."

"Wow. Is it usually good things like extra pockets and not bad things like stuff catching fire?"

"Eh... " Thoughtful beard scratch. "Yeah, think so? Least at Hogwarts. S'pose I wouldn't bet things don' ever catch fire outta nowhere at Durmstrang."

"What's Durmstrang? Another magic school?" Is it where they send you if you set too many things on fire.

"One of the big ones on the continent, yeah. Terrible place, just terrible, Darker than anything. Least the Slytherins at Hogwarts gotta answer to Dumbledore."

"That sounds bad for magic kids who live on the continent."

Shrug. "'Course Hogwarts is the best there is. Think Beauxbatons is all right, though, 'sides bein' French an' all."

"I'm glad I get to go to Hogwarts. . . . I guess you probably need to go back there soon." The Dursleys seem to have decided that being on the other end of the house from Hagrid is the better part of valor, but he's blocking the stairs and it can't last forever. He got enough time to let Curie out the window, so she'll be alright at least. 

Hagrid is not thrilled to have to leave Bruce here either, but this is not false. He very carefully pats Bruce on the shoulder, as bracingly as it is possible to do without knocking him over, and takes his leave with a reasonably cheerful "See yeh soon!"

"See you soon."

The next month is one of the least directly unpleasant and the most anxiety-ridden ones he can remember. Dudley makes himself easier to avoid than usual; his friends follow his lead. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia argue about whether having him out of the house for nine months is worth the price of letting him "go to freak school to learn to be even more of a freak," but the trunk under his bed stays unmolested.

Curie proves remarkably good at avoiding their notice while sneaking in and out of the house; it helps that she's nocturnal, unlike what the library books say. Maybe magic post owls are bred for stealth and night flying.

Bruce does his chores and avoids notice and reads his textbooks in bed when everyone else is asleep, with a blanket shoved against the crack under his door so nobody can tell the light is on. September approaches the present like a fog bank approaching a boat, a blank wall of inevitable unpredictability.

Uncle Vernon does, ultimately, drive Bruce to King's Cross, with his ticket and his trunk and "that damn owl who had better not come back here" in her cage. 

"Well, there you are, boy," he says. "Platform nine--platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it yet, do they? Have a good term." And he leaves Bruce and his eye-catching array of cargo staring at the barrier.

Alright, Bruce thinks. Nobody would have done all that stuff with Diagon Alley just for a prank, so there's got to be a platform here somewhere and he's just forgotten the directions for it. Maybe it's like Diagon Alley, where you've got to tap a specific bit of wall. He pulls his trunk with Curie's cage on it up against the barrier between the platforms and starts doing what he hopes looks like idly drumming his fingers on the bricks.

Good (?) news: This is not a wall.

It is, on contact, the distinct absence of a wall. The precise opposite of a wall, perhaps.

!

Does that mean he can just grab his trunk and shut his eyes and--walk a couple steps that way?

Shutting his eyes will help a lot! 

At once, the sounds around him change. King's Cross proper, on a Sunday morning, had been full of the ambient noise of modern folk about their business: the beeping of someone or another's pager, dozens of trains arriving and leaving, the periodic tinny crackle of announcements over the loudspeaker. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, by sharp contrast, is characterized by the shouting of a great many excited children contained in a relatively small space, the hooting and fluttering of dozens of caged owls, and, of course, the singular and unfamiliar hum, overlaying it all, of a train that is not quite just a train.

Woooow!

He's gonna get on the train!

Nope, he's going to stand on the bottommost step leading up to one of the carriages, hauling on his trunk and failing to get it all the way off the ground.

In the moderate distance, a clamor rises just slightly above the ambient shuffle, as a boy with bright red hair arrives through the wall with his trunk on a cart, moving at a headlong sprint with two cackling probable-brothers not far behind. The lot of them very nearly end up in a pile on the ground. Their voices, bright and gleeful, are indistinctly audible in bits and pieces:

" - honestly, you call yoursel - "
" - ickle Ronniekins - "
" - a Hogwarts toilet seat -"

The younger boy heads for a carriage a little farther forward and the twins move towards the one Bruce is trying to get in.

Bruce tries harder to stop blocking the stairs, loses his grip on the handrail and falls out on top of the trunk.

"Sorry, sorry--I'll get out of the way--"

"Get out of the way, he says, and immediately gets more in the way," snorts a twin, and the other agrees, brightly, "Firsties! Gotta love 'em! You need a hand there mate?"

"Um. Yes please?"

They each grab one end and heave it onto the train with the ease of long practice and teenage muscles.

"Oof, mate, what've you got in here, a rock collection?"

"Books," he says guiltily.

"Next you'll tell us you did your summer homework." "Embarrassing."

"Wait, hang on a sec. George, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"On his forehead! Are you -"

"Bruce Potter?!"

Oh no, he didn't think to get a hat because the uniform has hats but of course he's not wearing his uniform yet. He turns bright pink.

"I--am, yeah."

"Wicked!"

"D'you remember what You-Know-Who looks like?"

"I don't remember anything, sorry."

"Oh." They deflate for about three microseconds, and then shrug and immediately tear off along the train corridor in search of somebody called Lee Jordan, who might possibly have a tarantula.

That's so reasonable; tarantulas are way more exciting than he is. He finds a seat and shoves his trunk under it and asks Curie if she promises to stay in the compartment and not cause any mischief if he lets her out of her cage for the trip.

Curie is perhaps not entirely clear on the technical definitions of the words "promise" or "mischief."

She understands "stay" and "out of cage," though, so she hoots encouragingly and shuffles her wings in a manner startlingly reminiscent of a human-shaped person politely holding their hands behind their back.

That was really all he was hoping for. She can come out and sit on one of the other empty seats. Bruce watches out the window for the moment the train starts moving; he didn't get any books on it but it's got to exit this cool magic platform space somehow and he bets it'll look super neat.

With the cage unlocked, she'll meander interestedly around the compartment for a little while and eventually settle right back into it, because it has the best perch.

When the whistle blows at 11 o'clock sharp, the outside doors all rush shut with an echoing click-click-click-click down the length of the train. The bone-deep bass rumble of the Hogwarts Express, smoother than any engine has any right to be, changes register sharply to a faster, almost electric hum, as though someone somewhere has toggled a very large switch from idle to go.

The train exits the platform in what appears, very briefly, to be a perfectly normal way, running adjacent to other tracks on their way out of the building. But these tracks only go a quite short distance away from the platform, where they dead-end abruptly into the brick wall that marks the edge of the extradimensional space (from this side, faintly shimmering); and as it gets up to speed, the Hogwarts Express, instead of going back through the wall like everyone on it did to get here, simply hops onto the Platform Nine track like a very long and graceful scarlet cat. From the inside, the motion doesn't feel any more dramatic than a car taking a gentle turn around a roundabout, and then they are on their way north.

He's on the train to HOGWARTS and it's the COOLEST train of ALL TIME. It feels so much more real all of a sudden. He takes a set of robes and a hat out of his trunk and puts them on, feeling about 30% like an awesome wizard and 70% like a stupid kid playing dressup, also grabs One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, and sits down for several hours of the most enjoyable imaginable activity.

Another child appears! It's the red-haired boy with the brothers he saw earlier.

"Hi! Mind if I sit here?"

"Sure. I mean, no I don't mind. Hi."

"I'm Ron Weasley. You first year too?"

"I'm Bruce. And yeah, first year. . . And I didn't know anything about magic until a month ago." There, now if he's going to decide Bruce shouldn't be here Bruce won't have time to get his hopes up first.

"You're in for a treat; magic's great. You know you don't need to read your books on the train, right? They'll assign you the first chapter of everything as homework the first week."

"It's interesting?"

Clearly in addition to never hearing about magic this kid has never heard of fun. This is a solvable problem.

"There's way more interesting things though. I bet you've never played exploding snap."

"I haven't, what's it like? . . . Does it actually explode?" Bruce would definitely like to make friends with this person but maybe not an exploding amount.

"Nah, only a bit. Worst it'll do is take your eyebrows off." He pulls a pack of cards out of a pocket and sets them on his trunk, where they set to shuffling themselves. "We'll do basic rules. You just slap the pile whenever you see two cards in a row with the same number, and whoever slaps first gets those cards. Goal is to get the most cards before it pops."

"Okay." Bruce gamely attempts to enjoy exploding snap.

He is absolute pants at it. He flinches when his hand slaps down on top of Ron's and flinches on the much rarer occasions when he's faster and Ron's hand slaps down on top of his, and when the deck goes off with a BANG like a cap pistol and puffs smoke everywhere he flinches so hard his hat falls off.

"Blimey! You didn't tell me you were Bruce Potter!"

Oh no, Ron's going to hate him for lying now.

"Sorry. It's just--I'm not interesting. I don't remember anything that's supposed to have happened, I didn't do anything."

Rob ponders this for a moment.

"But everyone's going to think you're cool. That's good, right?"

"I don't know how to be cool."

"I don't even know how to be normal."

". . . Well, I can definitely teach you that second thing."

Tiny smile. "Thanks."

"Anything off the trolley, dears?"

Oh huh, a giant trolley of sweets, this is interesting but clearly not intended for hi--wait a second. He has money. He has money and the only adult in earshot is the one offering to sell him the sweets. 

"How much for two of everything please?"

And in short order he has a giant pile of unidentified sugary objects and is divvying up half for him and half for Ron, grinning maniacally like he just pulled off a bank heist.

"You didn't need to--I mean, I've got sandwiches." He pulls a slightly squashed sandwich out of a different pocket. "Ah, Mum always forgets I don't like corned beef."

"I like corned beef. I mean, only if it's going to go to waste otherwise, if you want to save it I'm not trying to take it or anything."

Ron is pretty sure Bruce could not steal anything if he tried. "Nah, help yourself." He hands over the sandwich and opens his chocolate frog. "Hm, Dumbledore again, I've got a bunch of him. Want the card? They're fun."

Om nom nom time to stuff his face oooh a thing with words on it. "Thanks. The cards are all of people? Dumbledore is the headmaster, right? Oh, yeah, it says he is."

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS

Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and ten-pin bowling.

"Ooh, he does alchemy? I got a book on it but I couldn't make heads or tails of it; apparently you have to know a lot of potions first."

"I hear the Potions professor is a total git."

The door slides open. "Pardon me, but has either of you seen a toad? Neville here's lost one."

They both peer under their seats. 

"Nope."

"I haven't either."

He could go help look but you see he has this pile of food and it's too big to carry so he has to stay here actually.

An apparently genuine attempt to check is better than like 95% of the responses they've gotten so far, so she smiles reasonably sincerely when she says "oh. well thanks anyway, bye!" and disappears along the corridor again, tugging a round-faced and distressed-looking boy behind her.

"Good luck!"

He unwraps his licorice wand and bites a chunk off the end. "Do a lot of people have toads? Do the do stuff the way owls carry mail?"

"Nah, they're just supposed to sit on your shoulder and croak ominously. 's traditional. Hardly anyone has one nowadays. 'course, I can't talk. I've just got this old rat." He pulls a sleeping rat out of a pocket (not the one the sandwich was in) and drops it on the seat next to him. It rolls over but doesn't wake up.

"Are rats allowed? The letter didn't say they were but maybe it's supposed to be obvious."

Ron shrugs. "Percy had him until this year and he's never broken a rule in his life so it's probably fine."

"Is it nice, having a lot of siblings?" 

"Well, they're a lot of fun and I always had someone to play Quidditch with, but you never get anything new when you're the sixth out of seven. I've got Bill's old robes and Charlie's old wand as well as Percy's old rat."

Sympathetic nod. "Yeah, I always got my cousin's old clothes, 'cept he's a muggle so I got my own robes and wand and stuff. What's Quidditch?"

"Only the best sport of all time!" Ron can infodump excitedly about Quidditch for quite a while; his sheer joy in the topic seems to double his lung capacity.

A long ways into this process, their next visitor will be someone Bruce has seen before, this time flanked by two rather large fellows (at least on the scale of eleven-year-olds).

"Huh," he says, peering between the cards and the candy and the Weasley and the familiar face. "They're saying all up and down the train that Bruce Potter's on board. That's you, then?" 

Oh dear, it's bad opinions boy again. "Yes, that's me. I don't think I got your name last time either." That or he forgot it. Always a possibility.

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." Pause. "... Oh, and this is Crabbe, and Goyle."

Obviously, Potter will realize immediately upon learning this important fact that he is hanging out with the wrong person when Draco is an option, right? Right.

"Pleased to meet you all," he says, because he has been informed that this is what you're supposed to say and it's okay if it's false. "This is Ron Weasley." That bit's true.

Why would he want to know the Weasley's name.

... he's clearly going to need to explain this. Because Dumbledore stuck Potter with Muggles for ten years for some reason.

"Right. You'll soon find that some wizarding families are better than others, Potter. You don't wanna go making friends with the wrong sort," he shoots a pointed look at Ron, "and I can help you there."

Is he implying Ron isn't cool? Ron is definitely cool. If he says something that implies he thinks Draco is implying Ron isn't cool and he wasn't implying that that would be awkward. Crap he's just sitting here blinking instead of talking again. 

He attempts a smile. "Ron's great. What kind of people do you like?"

What. What does he mean what kind of people. Better ones, obviously.

Purebloods? No, if he is confused about the value of Weasleys it will be complicated to explain what a blood traitor is. Also Draco is personally not totally clear on that.

" ... like... the Notts," he attempts, "and the Greengrasses and - look, you hang around with riff-raff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid and it’ll rub off on you."

" . . . Why do you care so much who I make friends with anyway?"

Why does Potter keep asking him such weird dumb questions. Because.... The Boy-Who-Lived(TM) is important and powerful and should want to be friends with Draco so they can be important and powerful together?? He's not going to say that, it would be showing weakness. Also apparently Potter is terrible and so maybe he doesn't want to be friends anyway.

"If you want to make a fool of yourself, don't let me stop you," he settles on instead, haughtily.

Alright, he won't then. He's not going to say that out loud in a train with nowhere good to run. He shrugs.

"Potter is perfectly capable of making friends without your help, Malfoy."

"Oh, sure, friends whose whole family has nothing going for it but red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford." 

"Unlike you, who've got dark magic and your head up your arse."

See, when Ron tries to insult someone he comes up with stuff that's actually insulting.

Draco draws his wand. "Oh yeah?"

(He doesn't actually know any spells, but when his father does that, whatever acquaintance has said something rude to him usually backs down immediately, so...)

Ron draws his wand right back! He doesn't know any spells either but damned if he's going to admit that!

"Yeah."

Bruce draws his wand too! He knows several spells in theory and has never cast any of them and he would quite like to run away but they're still on a train!

The air in the compartment gets suddenly warmer.

Shoot. Heck. Uhhhh.

Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle have been taught one (1) skill other than "do exactly as you're told," and it is "detect when it is probably your job to Loom Threateningly."

They do this with enthusiasm, cracking their knuckles.

Why are the children doing this.

Curie, awoken from her cozy snooze by the commotion, exits her unlocked cage and flaps onto Bruce's shoulder. This hurts a little, because she is not yet experienced at the art of Do Not Perforate Soft Human, but it also causes her to be at a convenient vantage point for looming sternly right back at the Crabbe-and-Goyle.

Since everyone here is eleven, she is, like, solidly half their size.

Uhhhhhh.

Bruce twitches when perforated but having a solid warm friendly presence on his shoulder is pretty great right now! Best owl. These gits had better not do anything to her.

Curie emits a deeply unsettling screeching noise that echoes a bit in the confined space.

Go away, annoying little children. This is mine.

NOPE NO THANK YOU GOODBYE

Ha! That's what she thought.

Smug lean. She has earned pets now, yes? Yes.

Yes! So many pets for the best owl. And the last bit of corned beef out of the sandwich. 

"Blimey, Bruce. Your owl is scary," Ron says admiringly.

"Her name's Curie! Hagrid got her for me for my birthday! She's great." Who's the best little spiky predator? It's you! Yes you are!

Oooooh delicious meats. She has made good and correct choices.

Snuggle snuggle and then back to nap.

In the wake of the commotion, the girl from earlier shows up again. "Have you been fighting," she says, very disapprovingly.

"Not really. Draco Malfoy was in here being a prat, drew his wand on me, we drew ours back, then he got scared of the owl and ran off." He says this as if being scared of the owl is an act of laughable cowardice he would never have committed himself.

"Curie's nice really. She wouldn't hurt anyone unless they started it. Did you say your name earlier because if you did I forgot, sorry."

Hm. ...Probably it is not against the rules to have your owl exist intimidatingly nearby? She'll have to check.

" - oh! No, I didn't actually. Hi, I'm Hermione Granger, who are you?"

What a reasonable question he nonetheless expects nothing good from answering. "Bruce Potter. Hi. It's nice to meet you."

"Oh my goodness, are you really! I've heard all about you, you know - I only just found out about magic when I got my letter, ever so exciting, isn't it - so I got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."

Hiding under the seat will not solve any of his problems so he won't.

"I--haven't read any history stuff. I mostly got magic theory books. I don't know what they'd even write; I didn't do anything interesting. I didn't know about magic until I got my letter either, and it's really amazing!" Maybe they can talk about magic being awesome and not someone deciding to mention him in a book, what even.

Hermione was indeed about three seconds away from emitting a verbal ten-paragraph essay on exactly what the history books have to say, but she is fully derailed by the tantalizing phrase magic theory.

"Well, I think saving the world is very interesting even if you didn't do it on purpose but yeah. What books did you get? I didn't realize until I read my textbooks that they're not very comprehensive really and my parents said it was too long a trip to go back to Diagon Alley again and besides probably they'll be in the Hogwarts library," she says this last phrase with the sort of anticipatory glee that another eleven-year-old might say disney world, "but Waffling keeps putting references in his footnotes and I can't look any of them up and it's been driving me mad since October!"

"Oh wow you had your books since October? I only got mine a month ago. I got On the Nature of Charms and On the Nature of Transfiguration, and Fundamental Spell Structures which is the one Waffling is usually talking about when he cites Henbane, and Principles of Spell Development but that one assumes I've read a bunch of stuff I haven't and also that I know trigonometry so I haven't got very far with it. And some others but those are the theory-centric ones."

"Oh, yes, my birthday is in September and I must say I think I've never been so happy about that as right this very second. Last month, oh no, how have you had time to read hardly anything. Well I've brought my GCSE maths book, you're welcome to borrow it later especially if you'll let me see the spell structures book, I was so curious about the bit in chapter seven where Waffling mentions in passing that there's a fourth fundamental kind of structure after charms and transfigurations and hex - " She goes to plop herself excitedly next to Bruce while she's talking, and nearly trips over Ron. 

"Oi! I'm still here," says Ron as he pulls in his legs. "So are you two just going to recite books at each other all the way to Hogwarts?"

"Um. Yes? If that's okay? Hermione, I will definitely share the spell structures book and I'd love to borrow the maths book, I didn't bring any muggle books and that was probably a mistake."

"You really don't need to study any muggle maths, it's only useful for arithmancy and first years can't even take that."

"Sorry," she says, not sounding enormously sorry, and sits down, narrowly avoiding the pile of candy. "What do you mean only, arithmancy would be plenty of reason, we've got to be prepared in advance obviously. Oh and don't be silly, Bruce, if you had brought more non-magic books we would have strictly fewer unique books to read between us, wouldn't we." She glances back at Ron. "... who are you?"

"Ron Weasley. Hey, how do kids who grew up with muggles get to Diagon Alley anyway? My parents took me but yours wouldn't be able to get there. Do they send a teacher?"

"Supposedly they'll be able to get in fine with me next year now I've got a wand and can do the wall in the Leaky Cauldron. But yes, I met this lady called Professor Sprout, it was just bewildering having her turn up at our house out of the blue with her pointy hat and all but she made Dad's whole garden bloom in the most fantastic colors, it was marvelous. She wasn't much help picking out books but she was very nice. She said some of the professors volunteer for the job and they divide up the Muggle-borns every year to take school shopping, apparently there's not very many of us. Six this year, she told me. Which teacher'd you get, Bruce?"

"I got Hagrid. He was very nice and helpful and got me Curie." 

"Sprout's the herbology teacher, right? Hagrid's not a teacher but he takes care of the grounds and the building and stops people from going in the Forbidden Forest and stuff." Ron has mostly heard of him in the context of 'Fred and George complaining about how hard he is to sneak past'.

"I'm so excited for herbology. Magic plants sound awesome!"

"Why's there a Forbidden Forest. What's forbidden about it, has it got evil magic plants? ... Actually of course it obviously does, even the normal world has evil plants, I read once that the Royal Horticultural Society says there's over a hundred thirty different plants native to England that can be poisonous and they must only know about the ones that aren't magic, mustn't they. That is going to be a really interesting class, you're so right." Excited bounce.

"I heard it's forbidden 'cause there's werewolves in it, but I dunno if I believe that. I bet it's got evil plants too."

"You don't know if werewolves are real or you don't know if they live in the Forbidden Forest?"

"Second thing; they're definitely real."

"Huh. They wouldn't stay in the forest, would they, if they lived there? Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them says werewolves are one of the only magic creatures that hunts people on purpose and if it is forbidden for people to go there they would have to leave to do that." Considering nail-bite. "Maybe it is also against the rules for them to leave."

"I don't know how you'd stop them from leaving. . . .Is there magic for making it impossible to leave somewhere?"

"Nah. There's magic prisons but they have, you know, walls and stuff."

"Really! And that works, for them to just have walls?" Fascinated chin-finger-tap. "Can you only make walls that can be walked through and not walk through walls? I guess that second thing can't really be a charm, can it, you'd be casting it on yourself and also the wall."

(A Charm, the theory book explains, is formally so defined by its behavior of performing a single specific effect - never several in a row, like a Transfiguration - on either a person or an object, or a reasonably uniform group either thereof, but not a mixed group.)

"I don't see how you could walk through random walls and not fall through the floor, yeah. But imagine if you could, though--d'you think you'd get lost in Hogwarts more or less that way?"

"If nothing else it'd be easier to get un-lost, right, because you could just walk to the edge and look outside."

"Is that a problem a lot, getting lost in Hogwarts? Isn't there a map or anything?"

"Oh, yeah, everyone gets lost loads of times first year. It's too magic to map. I'm not even sure you could just walk to the edge even if you could walk through walls, come to think. If you weren't going down hallways like it expects you to . . . " he shrugs. "Most people have the hang of it by Halloween."

"Too magic to map? What happens if you try to map it anyway?"

"Then your map'll be wrong? All I know is no-one's ever done it even though they could make a fortune selling copies to first-years."

"Huh. Is that what Unplottable means, it says that in Hogwarts, A History but I think it just assumes you've heard the word before."

"I think Unplottable is something for making Muggles not be able to find somewhere but maybe it's related."

Thoughtful nodding. "Maybe the library will have a dictionary."

"Yeah. I'm hoping it has an encyclopedia. It's definitely going to be amazing." 

"Am I going to need to drag you two out of there and make sure you eat?"

That was pretty adjacent in content to rude comments classmates have made before (it is, apparently, embarrassing and uncool to prefer to sit in the library instead of the cafeteria at lunchtime, to be more interested in finishing a book than to run after the ice cream truck, etcetera), but he said it in a remarkably friendly tone. And smiled, even.

Are they ... friends now. How. Why. Did Bruce do this?? If so he is even more her new favorite person???

".........maybe?" she hedges.

Oh good the girl who seems to reliably know what to say said what he was considering saying. He nods. "Maybe."

Ron laughs, with apparently genuine mirth. "As long as you don't turn out like my brother Percy. He thinks he's better than everyone else because he's a prefect and gets the best marks."

This remark causes Bruce to get lost in thought. At Hogwarts nobody is going to be comparing his marks to Dudley's marks and getting angry if they're too much better. Getting the same marks as Dudley won't even be an option.  Given that, what kind of marks should he get? Indifferent is good for avoiding notice, but aiming for good marks might help him learn magic faster. And of course it's possible he'll have to try as hard as he can just to pass; maths and grammar and things are easy but magic is potentially much harder. He'll have to improvise.

But she is better than everyone else because she gets the best grades. That is what grades are for. Right? Dumbledore famously got very good grades and he is obviously the best person to aspire to be.

It is actually really difficult not to say that out loud, but she is not going to! Not when she has been so specifically and helpfully informed that she is not supposed to. Hermione has been presented a shiny new opportunity and she is going to get a good grade in friendship, a thing that is normal to want and possible to achieve.

She grins, a little manically, and instead says, "Guess I'd better prove him wrong by getting better grades than him."

Nailed it.

"Good luck!"

If Hermione wants to get good marks that's probably an argument in favor of aiming for them himself. Unless that was a joke.

Ron is torn between sibling rivalry and sibling loyalty and ends up on "As long as you still come to watch the Quidditch games."

Hermione has, of course, seen the word 'Quidditch' before, having read several history books, and has been able to detect from context that it is a sport played on brooms, but this is where her current level of knowledge ends.

She does not care about sports. At all. But she should... probably... know this? For cultural context?

Resigned internal sigh.

" ... what exactly is Quidditch, anyway?"

Quidditch monologue take two, now with 150% more broom performance metrics! 

Bruce takes this opportunity to put away more candy (in both his face and his pockets) while Hermione is hopefully distracted. It's definitely rude to share with Ron and not with her, but he had mentally tagged this half of the food as His and therefore voluntarily giving up any of it is Inconceivable, so.

Fortunately, Hermione, due to who she is as a person, has not actually noticed the presence of candy.

(She is blissfully and completely unaware of both (1) the concept that food might not be trivially available when you remember to want it and (2) the fact that, like all wizards, her body automatically burns magic for sustenance when it runs out of calories.)

Aside from a few totally irresistable countermonologue tangents (did you know! according to Hogwarts, A History, the House teams were formed during the pre-Statute wars because the teachers noticed that sanctioned pickup games were reducing the rate at which students tried to murder each other, which apparently in the 1600s was really high! can you imagine!), Hermione does not stop Ron monologuing until she notices the sun going down and realizes that he, unlike her and Bruce, is not wearing his robes yet, and the sun is going down. "Hey, shouldn't you put your uniform on? We're almost there I think."

"Yeah, it shouldn't be long now." He starts pulling his robes on over his muggle clothes; they don't fit him as well as the others' do. "Are you excited for the Sorting? Fred and George said you have to wrestle a troll but they were totally making that up. Probably. I mean, there must be dozens of us, right, how many trolls could they even have."

Oh no. Crisis.

Hermione, you see, knows exactly what the Sorting actually is: Hogwarts, A History explains both the Sorting Hat and the tradition about not telling kids what it is before they get there (the authors, evidently, confidently expecting that no eleven-year-old would read it cover-to-cover before even arriving, which to be fair is an accurate expectation in nearly all non-Hermione-Granger circumstances). Obviously, she is not supposed to spill.

However, following the rule would require that she not volunteer that she knows the answer.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

"Yes I am really excited!!!!" Hermione vibrates slightly in her seat and, possibly out of sheer inability to not volunteer any facts, adds, "Exactly forty of us this year which is three and a third dozens so definitely multiple dozens yes. ... They definitely made that up."

Bruce wonders if that's a smaller year than usual because of all the everything that was apparently going on the year they were born but no way is he bringing that up. 

"I think it would be cool if we all three ended up in the same house," he ventures.

"Yeah it would! My whole family's been Gryffindors and it's the best one."

"Oh, yes, by far," nodnod, "Headmaster Dumbledore was a Gryffindor too."

"Hagrid said my parents were both Gryffindors."

"Seems like it's settled then. Assuming it's something you can steer at all."

It doesn't take much longer after that for the train to come to a stop and blow a single long blast on its whistle. The sun is low in the sky and the trees around them are indistinct and gilded; there's no sign of a school building yet.

Bruce shuts the door of Curie's cage; she's too asleep to notice. "Are we supposed to bring our things someplace?" He peers out the window to see if there's a developing consensus on where to go next.

Oh good, that's not Traditionally A Secret. "We're supposed to leave them here, there's a spell that puts all our stuff in our dorms," volunteers Hermione. "Hogwarts, A History doesn't explain how it knows whose stuff is whose though, I can't wait to find out how that works."

As the students swarm off the train en masse, a familiar voice booms above the crowd: "FIRS' YEARS! FIRS' YEARS OVER HERE!"

"Thanks!" Bruce grins at Hermione, then exits the train to join the accumulating crowd and grin at Hagrid.

Onward! There's gonna be a castle and a feast and stuff! 

But first, there will be boats! 

As Hagrid leads the gaggle of first-years down the hill away from the open air Hogsmeade train platform and the rest of the student body, they come into view: little four-seat wooden things, devoid of oar or sail, bobbing like a flock of unusually chill geese at the edge of an enormous lake. In the moonlight, the water looks almost black.

Hagrid pauses briefly to beam back - "Alright there, Bruce!" - before chivvying them along, counting heads. "Here we are! Four to a boat, go on!" 

Ron grabs a boat and gestures to Bruce and Hermione to get in; they're joined a moment later by a round-faced boy who seems to have recognized Hermione.

Boat ride! It's pretty neat except for how it wobbles when any of the four of them move.

The boats carry them all - Hagrid takes up a whole one himself - across the water in uncanny silent synchrony, propelled by apparently nothing.

Soon, across the fields between the water and the next highland rise, they can soon see the looming shape of what can only be Hogwarts Castle, its great stone towers alight with the warm orange of torchfire. To the modern eye, it feels as though it is a structure displaced wildly out of its own time: It is not a palace but a fortress, of the kind history outgrew centuries ago - the design sensibilities of soldiers and blacksmiths ten centuries dead are stamped into every inch of its defensive stonework, it cannot be mistaken for anything but ancient - and yet it shines with the polished precision of something newly made, untouched and unworn by the passage of years. The sheer power of this master-craft, the work of the lifetimes together of more wizards than yet live today in England, hangs so warm and tangible around it that even a young wizard who knows nothing else yet of magic can, if they listen carefully to their senses, physically feel it in the air.

You get used to it, of course. Everyone does. But there is a reason that the boat ride is a tradition, too, and it is this: for a people that spends the whole rest of their lives hiding in the margins of a civilization that is not allowed to know they exist, this one place is sacred. You can only have it once, that very first touch on your skin of ancestral home and shared hearth. You are welcome here. You belong here. Elsewhere you must be careful always, but here, here you are safe, say the whisper of a thousand thousand first-footsteps on the shore. (War has come here, yes, but witch-hunts do not, and never have, and never will.)

It's amazing. It's just like they said it was going to be, except they were also right when they said no amount of excitement would make it disappointing. He's going to have an awesome time.

It's beautiful.

It isn't a dream or a prank or a mistake. He's here for real, to be a wizard. He has a home.

Soon enough, the moment is past - though like many who came before, they may find that it is only past, never quite gone - and the distant rumbling hubbub of the rest of the school is audible again in the distance, as they disembark, and are shepherded up to the front doors.

"Firs' years, Professor McGonagall!" announces Hagrid proudly.

The doors are opened by: a witch. You would know she was a witch if you saw her in the grocery store. You'd strongly suspect it even if she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, if it was physically possible for her to be wearing anything other than green-black robes and a pointy hat, which it isn't.

She looks them over with eyes that have seen everything. She has been here before them and she will be here after them; she is as inevitable as gravity; she has never been surprised and she will never be bored.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I'll take them from here." Hagrid holds the door as McGonagall glides away, leading them through a magnificent entrance hall that must be three stories high if it isn't higher. Across from them is a second, even grander set of wooden doors, bound in iron and carved with swirling vines. She turns aside from these, toward a smaller door, and leads them into a little annex off what must be a truly massive hall. Through the opposite door they can hear the low murmur of a hundred conversations.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," begins the speech, echoing softly off walls that have heard it so many times they could probably give it themselves. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.

The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours. 

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting. I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly."

She slips through the door into the Great Hall, leaving them all alone for a minute.

Merlin, what an intimidating teacher. She looks totally impossible to put anything over on. But! He's about to get Sorted and be a proper Hogwarts student like all of his brothers.

What a comforting teacher. She looks like the kind Dudley and his gang never dared to do anything in front of. But! He's about to get Sorted in front of the entire school. Aaaaaaaa.

Oh my gosh she's so cool Hermione wants to be like that when she grows up.

She pats herself down for dust, straightens her pointy hat, informs Neville that his cloak is askew, and is halfway through telling Ron somewhat imperiously that he's got dirt on his nose when the entire haunting of ghosts bursts dramatically through the wall.

They seemed to be engaged, as they arrived, in an argument. A pearly, rotund fellow in a monk's habit was saying, "Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance –"

"My dear Friar, haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he’s not really even a ghost – I say, what are you all doing here?" A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had suddenly noticed the first-years.

"New students!" said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. "About to be sorted, I suppose?"

"Are you a ghost? I mean, yes."

This--changes everything, maybe? Does everyone become ghosts? All wizards? Are there people from thousands of years ago hanging around being ghosts? Are his parents ghosts? Is Voldemort a ghost?

"Why yes! I am a ghost!" beams the Fat Friar. "Lovely to meet you, perhaps I will see you in Hufflepuff. My old house, you know!" Probably not, though. Most children, having never seen a ghost before, are not overwhelmingly curious enough to successfully say words at this stage of the welcome to Hogwarts pageantry - usually nobody answers at all - and this particular child is probably therefore either a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw. No skin off his back; Sir Nicholas likes that sort of thing more than he does, when he's not busy complaining about Peeves.

And then off they float again, as McGonagall returns.

?!?!?

Probably most people aren't ghosts or they would have come up when Hagrid was talking about the war. Definitely still something he needs to ask Hermione and/or the library about as soon as possible.

McGonagall leads them through the next door and into the Great Hall.

It is perhaps the greatest of all halls. The light of thousands of floating candles shimmers on golden dishes and dark wooden tables and hundreds of staring eyes. The ceiling--is there a ceiling? Or is the room simply open to the heavens? There are more stars over each table than Little Whinging showed in its entire sky.

In a place of honor before the high table, McGonagall sets a worn-out, ancient pointy hat upon a stool.

Woah.

Ron is staring just as much, though more at the grandeur of everything than at the sky--he can see stars like this on any clear evening, living far from the muggles and their lights. He smiles at his brothers at the Gryffindor table, gets three thumbs up from the twins and an encouraging nod from Percy.

The hat, on its stool, comes to life.

A tear along its edge opens up, and a beat of anticipatory silence falls upon the hall, and then it begins to sing.

"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!
You can keep your bowlers black, your top hats sleek and tall;
For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat and I can cap them all.
There's nothing hidden in your head the Sorting Hat can't see,
So try me on and I will tell you where you ought to be.
You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart:
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry, set Gryffindors apart.
You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal:
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true, and unafraid of toil.
Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind,
Where those of wit and learning will always find their kind.
Or perhaps in Slytherin you'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.
So put me on! Don't be afraid! And don't get in a flap!
You're in safe hands (though I have none)
For I'm a Thinking Cap!"

(She KNEW about this and she DID NOT TELL ANYONE even though it was REALLY HARD and she has gotten a GOOD GRADE in TRADITIONS.)

Oh nice, that doesn't sound dangerous at all. Or like it will take too long per person, which is good, because Feast.

Professor McGonagall starts calling their names in alphabetical order. "Abbot, Hannah" and "Bones, Susan" both go to Hufflepuff.

Oh noooooo the whole school is going to find out his name and face at once. At least he won't have to get everyone's reaction one at a time?

After the fifteenth of forty - "Goyle, Gregory" - goes to Slytherin, "Granger, Hermione" scurries excitedly up to the stool, nearly before she's called, and jams the Hat onto her head.

Hello! Hi! I want to be a Gryffindor like Dumbledore please I know I can do it I can do anything.

I'm sure you can, dear, but are you quite sure you wouldn't like to be a Ravenclaw instead?

The books and cleverness one? Well I mean yeah that does sound nice and everything but being smart is easy. Being brave is - impressive? important? terrifying but in a good way, glows bright like a sun she can't quite look directly at and has been reaching blindly toward her whole life all the same because she wants it, like burning - I dunno. Better.

Oh, sweetheart. Godric would have loved you so.

It doesn't suit you, though, you know. Gryffindors are not used to having children such as you among them; they will not know what to do with you. You will be lonely, until you learn to be one of them. Do you really want that? It will hurt.

I know, I know, it will, I get it, but - how to explain this. She has to. This is the most important conversation she has ever had and it can read her mind and she just needs to make herself understood, for once, to make it listen. Is there any point trying to hedge? Should she be trying not to think the thing she is always judged for saying aloud no matter how true they are, because it's rude to think yourself important - no, it can read her mind, it's too late. I'm already the smartest, she therefore thinks, earnestly, sincerely, it's not hubris it's just simply true. I don't need the Ravenclaw private library, I don't need other academically inclined classmates to encourage me, I'm going to get the best grades anyway, I need - I need the people who'll teach me something I don't already know.

Perhaps,

says the Hat, gently.

But I didn't ask what you need. That's not my job, not really. I asked what you want. I'm only a little bit divinatory, see, so I'm not in the business of forcing people into things they don't want for their own good. Tends to backfire, that sort of thing.

Is that different? Is she supposed to want things she doesn't need, that sounds very impractical and inefficient.

Will it give her what its divination feels would be best for her own good if she, like, signs a mental consent form -

Ravenclaws care about efficiency, dear. Gryffindors want things.

Okay. Fine. All right. She can do that. She can do anything.

What does she want?

I want - 

She wants to learn, she realizes with a puzzled start, what Ron Weasley knows.

Bruce, of course, is like her, and she loves him already, the missing left hand she never knew she didn't have. But Ron, this strange new friend she could never have expected until Bruce dropped him metaphorically in her lap, is not like them. Ron is gratingly ordinary, uninterested in books, ill-mannered and carelessly smudged with dirt and enthusiastic about the most boring sport imaginable. He's a Gryffindor, obviously, blindingly, unSorted though he yet remains. She can see it already, looming in the distance, how absolutely terrible she's going to be at being friends with him. She's going to be frustrated by every third word out of his mouth and a determination to get a good grade in friendship is not going to stop her from snapping at him eventually, no more than it stopped her from reading the riot act to her primary school science teacher about telling easily verified lies. And he's going to snap at her right back, smiling, because he is not afraid.

She wants that.

It's been several minutes. The crowd is starting to murmur. (Hatstall - McGonagall's record - )

In another world she might have had even less reason, less understanding of what she's reaching for, and it would still have said, resigned, fond:

Yes, yes, all right.

Rowena would have loved you, too, you know. In her way.

But you can do anything, can't you, little lioness, even be a -

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Damn straight.

She hands back the Hat, and goes among the applause to sit where she belongs, beaming fit to rival the sun.

Few dare ask anyone what the Sorting Hat said to them, and fewer choose to tell, but stories do accumulate. When it takes that long, a lot of the time, it's because someone has the seeds of the virtues of multiple houses, and their own choices count the most. McGonagall is proud of every child that comes to Gryffindor, but the ones who choose it over something else they could have been do warm her heart a little more.

She calls the next name, and the next, smiling encouragement at each of them. And then she gets to "Perks, Sally-Anne", and then--

"Potter, Bruce!"

"Potter, did she say?"

                   "The Bruce Potter?"

"It's the right year--"

He walks over to the stool and puts on the hat. It falls down over his eyes so he can't see the staring crowd; he is no less aware of them for that.

I want to go to Gryffindor, please. I know I'm not very brave yet but I'll try. 

He thinks about the confrontation with Malfoy on the train, how much he had wanted to run. Ron hadn't wanted to run. He wants to be someone like that, someone who can stand beside his friends no matter what, because now that he's tasted friendship he doesn't want to give it up. He wants Ron's smiles and his oddly harmless jokes and his love of sports. He wants to be where Hermione is, the sister he never had, to learn with her and grow with her and chase the vision that finally someone else can see.

He has spent ten years surviving. He wants to try living. If that isn't courage, at least it's hope.

Oh, my. Difficult, very difficult indeed.

Well.

I shan't let you leave my stool without hearing this, at least, first, Gryffindor or no. You are very brave, child. Has no one ever told you that? Courage comes in two kinds: when you do not run because you are not afraid, and when you do not run even though you are afraid.

He only didn't run because there was nowhere good to run to he doesn't know that. Maybe having one other person standing next to him would have been enough.

It is, at least, an easier goal to aim for than never being scared. 

Thank you. What did you mean by "difficult"? He is reminded suddenly of Ollivander.

You are very welcome! It is my job, and I wouldn't still be here after this long if I didn't like my job, eh?

Speaking of which - you are difficult to Sort, I mean. it's a compliment. From the way you remember his tone, I suspect the wandmaker meant it so as well.

You could be nearly anything, you see. Not just brave but also clever, so clever, with the kind of curiosity that cleverness is so much less useful without; and sitting here on my stool with your eyes set already above childish concerns, fixed on a vision; and ready at once at the slightest opportunity to open your heart to new friends, when many in your position would fear ever to reach out for human connection again. But Rowena and Salazar would have fought a duel over the right to invite you into their houses first and then both sat down without a word when Helga raised her hand, I think, and been right to, so I will not speak more of those choices now, though they are available to you if you want them.

This last, I suspect you must hear, before you choose. It will not be a fair choice, for you, if you do not know in detail what you are deciding, as your friend knew some of this already from her history books when she sat down and put me on. You should know that the children of Hufflepuff will love you very much, as Helga would have, if you choose to be one of their own. They love each other the way a family should, because that is what they are and have always been, the way that the fractious little army of Gryffindor's tower is not, loving each other so conditionally as they are wont to do. In Hufflepuff's keeping you may find that it is easier not to be afraid at all.

Godric would disagree, of course, that his children do not love as fiercely and loyally as Helga's. (I am not quite him, you see, though I am more him than I am anyone else.) He would say that you need not stop loving someone to make him your enemy if you must, and that peace is only ever temporary. Some people are destined to face greater foes than can be defeated with only Helga's kindness, and he would be right, I think, to say that you are among them.

But Helga would say in return that it can still be worth it, to have the peace first, anyway, for a time.

It's entirely your choice, you understand. I will not send you where you do not want to go, and you have good reasons. I only ask: are you sure?

It's tempting. It is. But it's not only the thought of Hermione and Ron that makes him hesitate.

He doesn't want to be loved just because he's a Hufflepuff, any more than he wants to be bowed to by Daedalus Diggle for being the boy who lived. He doesn't want (and he knows as he thinks it that this is unfair to the Hufflepuffs, but they can't hear him and he needs words for what he means) the kind of love Aunt Petunia has for Dudley. He wants to be liked for something he actually is. He wants friends here, not family, and wants to be someone who can earn friends.