Chapter Text
A lanky boy with red hair and freckles poked his head into Harry's empty train compartment. “Can I sit here? Everywhere else is full.”
“Course.”
The boy dragged his trunk into the compartment. Harry helped him lift it into the luggage rack.
“I'm Ron, by the way. Ron Weasley.”
“Im Harry-”
“Harry Potter?” Ron interrupted. Harry nodded. “Blimey! Were you really raised by Sirius Black?”
“He's my godfather.”
“Who was that man who was with him? On the platform, I mean.”
“My, er, other godfather. His name's Remus.”
Sirius had told Harry it was okay to tell his friends he'd been raised by both of them, as long as he didn't go screaming it from the top of Gryffindor tower. Ron seemed nice, so Harry decided he could tell him the truth.
“You have two godfathers? How does that work?”
“How many parents do you have?” Harry asked.
“Two. My mum and dad.” Ron looked mystified.
“Same thing, c'ept both of my parents are dads. Well, only Sirius is legally my dad cause for some reason Remus wasn't allowed to adopt me too. Something about gross double standards. When I went to muggle school I had to pretend I only had one dad but Sirius says wizards are more tolerant or something.”
“Oh. Hang on, you were raised by wizards but you went to muggle school?”
“Yeah. They wanted me socialized before I came here and they thought the muggle world was safer or whatever. Where did you go to primary school?”
“Mum taught all my siblings at home before we started at Hogwarts. I'm second youngest, though, so after Fred and George started school it was only me and Ginny.”
They compared their childhoods and debated the merits of having siblings. Harry had always wanted one, while Ron was of the opinion that he had far too many and offered to lend him Percy or Ginny to cure him of the notion. The debate took them until lunchtime, at which point Ron forlornly took out corned beef sandwiches he looked like he didn't want.
Harry had a bit of a dilemma. Remus packed him a decent-looking lunch, but Sirius had been telling him about the trolley full of sweets since he could remember and he had quite a bit of pocket money on him at the moment. He had been taught never to waste food, but he knew that if he ate his lunch from Remus he wouldn't have room for as many sweets.
Ron solved it for him by half-jokingly asking to trade sandwiches. Harry bought all the candy he wanted and then the two of them split the candy and Harry's lunch. After all, he reasoned, it wasn't wasting food since Ron didn't consider the corned beef sandwiches edible. Sirius would be proud of his ingenuity and Remus would be proud that he was sharing.
A few minutes past two, two scared looking boys and a girl with bushy brown hair and a mission stepped into the compartment.
“Neville's lost his toad,” she announced.
“His name's Trevor,” the smaller of the boys added.
“We haven't, sorry. Spot would have noticed right away if he'd been in here,” Harry gestured at Spot's travel basket.
“What kind of animal is Spot?” the girl asked.
“She's a milk snake.” Harry removed the lid to show them his sleeping pet. Neville hung back while the other three leaned in for a closer look. “She's five years old and her favorite food is mice.”
“What about rats?” Ron seemed suddenly frightened.
“She could probably eat a small rat, but big ones would probably be too much for her. Why?”
Ron produced a squirming grey rat. “I don't want her to eat Scabbers.”
Before Harry could reply that Scabbers should be safe, the other boy bolted from the compartment. Everyone looked at each other as if to ask what they should do. Harry replaced the lid on Spot's basket and followed him.
“Hey,” Harry said when he found him cowering by a window. “You okay?”
“Scared of rats,” the boy squeaked. He glanced up at Harry, probably checking to see if Harry would laugh at him. Harry gave him a kind smile.
“Not too fond of them either. I'm Harry by the way.” He stuck out his hand.
“Harry Potter?” Harry nodded. The boy took the offered hand and used it to pull himself up.
“Dudley Anderson. I'm your cousin.”
“Sirius and Remus told me about you. I thought your last name was Dursley, though.”
“Used to be.”
On the walk back to the compartment Dudley told him how they'd been moved to a squib's house after he and his mother were released from St. Mungo's. His mother fell in love with their host, and eventually they got married. Then they changed Dudley’s last name his stepdad's to erase his last tie to Vernon Dursley.
“Mum was afraid to send me here when we found out I'm magic, but dad convinced her I'd be safer at Hogwarts than as an untrained wizard living in the muggle world.”
Dudley waited outside the compartment while Harry fetched the girl, whose name turned out to be Hermione Granger, and Neville. Then the three of them continued their search for Trevor while Harry returned to his seat.
“What was all that about?” Ron asked.
“He's afraid of rats.”
Harry let Spot out of his basket to bask in the sun. The snake hissed in Scabbers’ direction before going to sleep. Harry thought he heard something about 'not right’. He would have to ask Spot about it later. Scabbers looked like a typical rat to Harry.
The rest of the afternoon passed without further incident. Despite all the candy, Harry was famished by the time the train pulled into the station. He and Ron stuck close together as they made their way over to the abnormally tall man calling “First years, this way!” When they reached him, Harry realized he was the man Sirius and Remus had talked to the day before in Diagon Alley. If Harry remembered correctly, his name was Hagrid.
Hagrid helped the first years get into a small fleet of rowboats at the edge of a lake. Harry and Ron ended up in a boat with him and Neville, who had apparently found his toad.
“Hullo Harry,” Hagrid said as the boats made their way across the water. “Sorry if I caused any trouble yesterday, I was just excited to meet ya at last. Sirius and Remus aren't too mad at me, are they?”
“I don't think so,” Harry reassured him. They hadn't mentioned the incident again so it was probably true.
A collective gasp rose from the first years as they passed a rocky outcrop and Hogwarts came into view. Harry gazed up at the castle. Remus and Sirius hadn't done it justice in their stories; it was the most beautiful building Harry had ever seen.
The boats docked close to the castle and Hagrid led the first years inside. He told them to wait in the entrance hall and continued on through a set of ornate double doors. Harry took in his surroundings while he waited.
“Can't believe we're finally here! Can you Harry?” Ron practically vibrated with excitement.
A ripple of whispers passed through the students closest to them. Before Harry could answer, a blond boy swaggered up to Harry and stuck his hand out.
“Draco Malfoy. I hear we are family, since mother's cousin adopted you. We ought to stick together. I can teach you how to find the right kind of friends.” He gave Ron a nasty look.
Harry glanced at the boy’s hand, which was still outstretched. “I don't think you can teach me anything about making friends. But maybe you could stand to learn something about being nice to people.”
Draco Malfoy withdrew his hand. He might have had time to construct a snarky retort, but at that moment Professor McGonagall appeared.
“The sorting ceremony is about to begin. Please form an orderly line.” Harry waved at her, but she didn't acknowledge him. He supposed she didn't want to be accused of playing favourites.
Harry and the other first years filed into the great hall. Even though Remus and Sirius had described it to him many times, he was completely unprepared for the splendor of the enchanted ceiling. At the moment, it showed the peaceful black sky splattered with stars.
Potter fell more than halfway through the alphabet, so Harry had to wait a while for his turn. He watched his cousin, Dudley, get sorted into Hufflepuff, and Hermione and Neville into Gryffindor. He noticed that Draco Malfoy went into Slytherin. Finally, McGonagall read out “Potter, Harry!” and he made his way to the low stool to be sorted.
A thousand whispers flooded the hall as the other students processed his name. Harry tried not to pay them any attention as he sat and let McGonagall place the hat on his head.
“Am I allowed to ask for Gryffindor?” he asked the hat with his thoughts.
“There's no harm in asking. Though I must say, you would do well in Slytherin too.”
“No thanks. Anything but Slytherin.”
“Ah, your guardians have prejudiced you against Slytherin, haven't they?”
“Sirius tried to. Remus told me I shouldn't let house divisions stop me from making friends. But mostly I just want to be in the same house as the friends I've already made.”
“Such fierce loyalty to one's friends is a Slytherin trait, you know. But I suppose arguing with a thousand year old authority on the subject is undeniably Gryffindor.” The hat opened its mouth and yelled “GRYFFINDOR!” and the great hall exploded in applause.
Harry found an empty seat next to Neville at the Gryffindor table. He couldn't wait to write a letter to Sirius and Remus! And to eat; boy was he starving. He watched the remaining students get sorted more or less evenly into the four houses. Ron joined him in Gryffindor, which confirmed he’d been right to make the hat put him there.
The welcoming feast was better than Harry could ever dream of. Sirius was a decent cook, but the decadent meal that appeared on the gold plates completely outshone him. Harry decided not to include that part in his letter. Remus would probably think it was funny, but Sirius would get sulky. Full to bursting, Harry and the other first years stumbled after Ron’s older brother up to Gryffindor tower once Dumbledore sent everyone to bed.
Harry, Ron, and Neville were delighted to discover that they would be roommates, along with two of the other first year boys--Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan. That first night in the dormitory felt rather like a sleepover, or at least what Harry imagined a sleepover would be like. For his own safety, he’d never been to one before. He was so busy having fun that he forgot to write to Sirius and Remus, and he didn’t get the chance to ask Spot what she meant about Ron’s rat.
It was much later than it should have been by the time all five boys settled down to sleep, for which all of them paid dearly the next morning when they had to wake up for their first day of classes. Only Harry’s excitement about finally getting to learn how to do magic carried him through the long day. That night he barely had the energy to finally write to Sirius and Remus before collapsing into bed.
Professor Snape hated Harry. It was immediately obvious from the moment Harry entered the dark classroom on Friday morning that this was one adult he would not get along with. He targeted Harry with questions that seemed wholly unfair, considering it was the first class. He was only able to answer one of the questions--“What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”--because Sirius had recently begun looking into brewing wolfsbane potion for Remus. Giving the right answer, however, seemed to further irritate Snape.
By the end of class, Harry and the other Gryffindor students had somehow managed to lose five points while the Slytherins, who performed no better overall, had gained ten. Harry complained at length about this injustice in his second letter home. Remus wrote back the following morning to say that Snape had been at school with him and Sirius, that he had always been a bit of a bully, and that Harry still had to behave in his classes. Harry could tell from the ink splotches accompanying Sirius’s rather aggressive signature that it had taken some convincing for him to endorse Remus’s stance on the matter. He guessed that their history with Snape was more fraught than Remus was willing to let on.