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The train smelled of pumpkin pastries and someone else's expectations, which Father always said was the most common smell at stations. He'd stood on the platform until I couldn't see him anymore, or perhaps until he couldn't see me. It was hard to know which. The train was very large. I wondered if it got hungry.
The compartment I chose had an old man in it. He was almost not there.
Most people, when they are very still and very quiet, become less. He had become something else entirely. I sat across from him and did not disturb whatever he was doing, which appeared to be existing very carefully. Very pleasantly.
The witch with the trolley came and went. I didn't buy anything. I brought my own pudding. Packed in the dented tin Father gave me. I offered it to the old man first. He looked at it for a long time, which I took as consideration. Eventually, I ate it all myself.
I read Father's latest issue. There was a promising article about how Azkaban is a great place to grow dirigible plums, which would explain a great deal about how Father has been behaving these days. There was another article in a language I could not understand. I realized I held it the right way up by mistake, then corrected myself.
Several people looked through the glass of the compartment. They always did a particular thing with their faces first. A sort of assessment, like a calculation being done very quickly. The old man and I failed it. My Spectrespecs too, probably. Though I was not sure what we were being tested on. I did not mind. The compartment was free of Wrackspurts.
The train stopped the way a serpent would, reluctantly, and all at once. The old man was gone. I wasn't sure when. The seat across from me held the shape of him still. I picked up my tin and my Spectrespecs and my Father's magazine and stepped off into the cold.
The seniors were leaving in carriages.
I stood very still on the platform and watched the horses pull them away. Black horses, thin as secrets, with white eyes that didn't blink. Their wings were folded flat against their sides like they'd forgotten them. Nobody else was looking at them. Nobody else was looking at anything except the carriages, which to everyone else appeared to be moving entirely on their own.
I had seen them before, in pictures. Father had a drawing of one above his desk. He'd looked at me very carefully when he showed it to me, and I had looked back, and neither of us had said the thing we were both saying.
I watched them go until they were gone.
A pleasant man with a large beard. He looked at the lake the way you look at something that doesn't belong to you but that you're glad exists. He said firs' years and we followed him to the lake.
The water was very black and very still. Our lanterns made small orange arguments with the dark. I sat in a boat with three other children who had decided not to speak to each other, which suited me. I was watching the squid.
It surfaced once, briefly, near the middle of the lake. Vast and pale and surrounded by the densest cloud of Wrackspurts I had ever seen. They clustered around it in a great humming swarm, which explained a great deal, I thought, about how a creature that large managed to live in a lake without doing anything in particular. It was very fuzzy-brained. I felt sorry for it in a comfortable sort of way.
The castle came toward us slowly, the way important things do.
The wind off the lake followed us in and touched the back of my neck once, just inside the doors, and then thought better of it.
Professor Sprout had soil on her robes in three places, which I thought was a good sign. She smiled at all of us at the same time, which is difficult to do. She said welcome, and told us the castle was ours now, and I believed her more than I expected to.
The Sorting Hat sang about the houses.
It took the ideas very seriously, which I respected. Most people don't take ideas seriously enough, or they take the wrong ones seriously and leave the right ones lying about. The Hat seemed to have considered the matter for a very long time and arrived at four answers, which seemed like the right number.
I listened carefully in case any of it was relevant.
A boy with red ears went very quickly. A girl with dark braids cried very quietly and then stopped and sat very straight. The Hat took different lengths of time with different people, which made sense. Some questions are faster than others.
They called my name, and I went up.
The hat came down on my head, and everything went dark.
Well, it said, the way people say well when they have found something unexpected in a drawer.
Hello, I said.
You're not frightened.
I had not thought about whether I was frightened. I considered it carefully. No, I said. Should I be?
Most of them are, a little at least.
That seemed reasonable. There was a lot of new information today.
Yes, said the Hat. There is. You've been collecting it.
I had. The old man. The horses. The squid and its Wrackspurts. The wind that changed its mind.
You see things, it said, and it wasn't a question.
I see some things, I said. Not everything. I don't think anyone sees everything.
Your mother, it said, very gently.
Yes, I said.
A silence that felt just enough.
Ravenclaw, it said, gentler than it had for anyone else.
I went and sat at the blue and bronze table and looked at my hands for a moment. They looked the same as before.
The old man at the center had very bright eyes that were also very careful. He said kind things the way you say kind things when you have said them many times and still mean them, which I thought must be quite difficult. He looked at all of us, and I had the impression he was also looking at something else. Something further away. I didn't know what. I thought perhaps he did.
The rest of the feast passed in the usual way. I ate two bread rolls and watched a ghost try to eat a pie, which was sad.
The prefect who walked us up was tall, moved quickly and seemed slightly surprised each time she remembered we were behind her. There was another one, shorter, who pointed out a portrait of a woman eating grapes who had been eating the same grapes since 1342, which he seemed to find funny.
The eagle knocker asked us a riddle. I answered it. It let me in without argument, which I think means I was right, though it didn't say so explicitly.
The dormitory had four beds. The other girls were talking. I sat on mine and looked out the window. The dark forest began where the grounds ended. Something very old was awake in it. Something large, and patient, and entirely unbothered by being looked at. I didn't know what it was. I thought about it for a while. It thought about nothing in particular.
I pulled the curtain slightly, but not all the way.
I had brought my mother's towel in the front pocket of my trunk, which always reminded me of her off-key singing. I didn't take it out. I knew where it was.
The castle made sounds at night, small adjustments, the way old things settle. It sounded like it was getting comfortable.
I thought that was a good sign.