XI. Hoggy Warty Hogwarts

"So that's the story with Dudley," Harry finished.

Hermione scowled disapprovingly. "Really, what's Dumbledore playing at, bringing a juvenile delinquent to Hogwarts?"

"He lets Malfoy stay," Ron pointed out. "Besides, Dudley seemed...almost normal on the train."

Harry nodded, frowning. "He's certainly not acting the way he usually does. I reckon maybe he's scared everybody in sight is going to put animal tails on his bum. Or maybe—" He paused, then shook his head. "No, that's not possible."

"Maybe what?" Cho asked.

Harry shrugged. "I was just thinking about how Dudley asked so many questions on the train. Almost like he was..."

"Curious?" Ron supplied.

"Yeah."

Ron nodded. "I noticed too."

Hermione frowned thoughtfully. "It's possible he truly is. Those horrible parents of his have their minds made up about our kind, but...Dudley's still young, still growing up, just like us. He doesn't necessarily have to grow up to be just like your uncle, Harry. Maybe that's what Dumbledore has in mind."

"You mean bringing Dudley to Hogwarts to make a decent bloke of him?" Ron asked.

"Exactly."

Harry thought about this. "It makes as much sense as anything," he agreed.

Sakura picked nervously at her robes as she filed up the steps into an unadorned stone hall with the rest of the first years. Beside her, Dudley Dursley was looking around at all the smaller kids, some of whom were staring at him, a few sniggering. He frowned; Sakura felt a bit sorry for him. "Don't pay any attention," she whispered to him. "They're just nervous too."

Dudley scowled, but said nothing. Soon, the passage ended, and large double doors stood across from the two lines of young students that had formed. A stern-looking witch in emerald green robes appeared; Dudley recognised her immediately as the woman who had come with his old headmaster to Privet Drive.

"In a moment," Professor McGonagall said, "you will walk through these doors, and be Sorted into your houses..."

The Great Hall was full of chatter and an air of anticipation. The evening sky loomed overhead; the candlelight flickering beneath the enchanted ceiling gave the impression of a second sky of stars, much closer than the ones above.

"Hey," Ron said, nudging Harry. "I don't see Snape."

Harry scanned the head table. Indeed, the sour, greasy-haired Potions master was absent.

"Reckon he got sacked?" Ron asked.

Harry shook his head. "We're not that lucky."

"Welcome, one and all," Dumbledore spoke from the head table, silencing the many conversations throughout the hall. He smiled. "Well. Another year. I know that the effects of the tragedy which occurred here at the end of last year are still felt by many of us. But know that life must go on, and we should not let that which cannot be changed dampen our spirits.

"Before we begin the Sorting, I would like to announce that for the first time in many years, this year Hogwarts will be host to a Muggle exchange student." He paused to let the statement sink in. "It is rare, but not unheard of, for a Muggle to attend Hogwarts, as part of an effort to foster understanding and trust between our two worlds. This year, we have selected a candidate that I feel will find much to learn among our kind. I ask that you treat him courteously and make every effort to give him only the best impression of wizards." The side door which usually admitted the first years opened, and Professor McGonagall escorted a large blonde boy into the Great Hall. "I introduce to all of you our Muggle exchange student, Dudley Dursley. Mr. Dursley will not be Sorted; rather, it has been decided that he will be hosted by the Gryffindor fifth years." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled mischeviously, while Harry and Ron stared at one another. "Mr. Dursley, please have a seat at the Gryffindor table. Mr. Potter, kindly direct Mr. Dursley to your table please...thank you." Dumbledore paused as Dudley waddled across the hall to where Harry reluctantly signaled him. "Now...on to the matter of the Sorting."

Sakura stood nervously with the rest of the new Hogwarts students, listening to the applause fade as the strange hat finished its odd little song.

"When I call your name, come forward and place the Sorting Hat on your head. The Hat will tell you which house will be your home." Professor McGonagall unrolled a long scroll of names. Those who knew the stern witch best couldn't help but notice a slight smile as she read the first name; "Clannaugh, Minnie!"

"GRYFFINDOR!" shouted the Hat as Minnie Clannaugh placed the hat atop her straight, dark red hair. The Gryffindors applauded as she hurried to the table, sparing a brilliant smile for Professor McGonagall as she walked.

"Coleman, Ophelia!"

A pretty girl with short reddish-brown hair stepped up to the stool and placed the hat on her head. "RAVENCLAW!" One of the tables erupted into applause as the girl smiled, removing the hat and rushing to join the Ravenclaws. A few moments later, "Frye, Constance" joined her, curly blonde hair bobbing as she slunk to the table, making an odd wiggling motion with her hips. Several of the younger boys seemed to appreciate this.

Sakura felt nervous as she watched the other kids try on the hat, then head off to their tables to applause. She had been reassured by Keroberos that there was nothing to worry about, but...

"Kinomoto, Sakura!"

Sakura snapped to attention, blurting out "HAI!" instinctively as she scrambled toward the stool with the hat, eliciting a few snickers from the Slytherin table. Blushing, she sat and donned the patched old hat.

*Hmm,* a voice echoed inside her head. *There's a name rattling around in there I remember. Clow Reed. He was a bright one, yes. A natural born Ravenclaw. But you...no. You're bright, yes, but...my, you've been a busy little witch recently, haven't you? What with all you've been through, I daresay you belong in* "GRYFFINDOR!"

A loud cheer rose from the Gryffindors as Sakura blinked, stood, removed the Sorting Hat, and strode shakily to their table. Her cheeks flamed at the attention she was receiving, but she was smiling nevertheless.

"Told you so," Keroberos said from his perch on her shoulder.

Ginny moved over and made room for Sakura, smiling at the younger girl. "Glad you're joining us," she said.

"Yeah, welcome aboard," one of her older brothers—she wasn't sure of their names yet—said.

Sakura sat and watched the Sorting, cheering with her housemates. The bulk of the first-years seemed to be going to either Ravenclaw or Slytherin; aside from Minnie Clannaugh and herself, only a girl named Tabitha Stevens and two boys named Michael Long and Louis Valentine were Sorted into Gryffindor.

Once "Winthorp, William" had been declared a Hufflepuff, the Sorting Hat was taken away, and Professor Dumbledore stood.

"Now, before we begin the feast, a few start-of-term announcements. As usual, the Forbidden Forest is off limits at all times. Mister Filch has once again presented a new list of banned items; once again, I ask that you please see Misters Fred and George Weasley for the full list." A brief spate of laughter filled the hall as the two twins stood and took a bow. "We have a few students this year who may need a bit of help, as their native language is not English. Translation spells and talismans can only go so far, so please endeavour to help them if they should ask. Some of you may have noticed that Professor Snape is absent this evening; he is taking a brief personal leave, and a substitute Potions teacher will be covering his classes until he returns. Our new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor has not yet arrived, but I have received word that she will be here in time for classes first thing in the morning." He paused, glancing around. "That's enough from me. Tuck in!"

Sakura stared as the spotless plates suddenly filled with all kinds of food. "Hoe?!"

Ginny grinned. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Sakura."

The young Japanese girl blinked, then gave a wide, happy smile. "Itadakimasu!" she cried before reaching for the nearest serving dish.

Ginny blinked. "Eat a what?"

Keroberos chuckled. "That's just something you say before a meal in Japan. It's like saying grace. I dunno why the pin choked on it, though. ...oooh, I haven't had any of THAT in a long time!" Some of the others around the table were a bit taken aback as a flying plushie attacked the serving dishes.

Ginny just shook her head and kept eating. "Never dull around here, that's for certain."

Dudley's eyes had become very wide as the banquet appeared on the previously bare dishes. "Wh—wha—?"

Ron grinned and began heaping roast beef and mashed potatoes on his plate. "This should be magic you approve of, I wager. Who's got the gravy? Pass it this way, thank you..."

Dudley watched the wizards around him heaping food on their plates and filling their goblets with an unfamiliar juice for a long moment. He glanced at the serving dishes, brow furrowed with thought. Then—

"Well, so much for the diet," Harry chuckled as Dudley heaped a good three pounds of food onto his plate.

"What I don't understand," Hermione said as she slowly, neatly ate a modest portion of fried fish, "is how Dudley is able to see anything in here. Muggles can't see Hogwarts for what it really is."

"Oh yeah, you said something about that before," Ron said. "They just see a pile of rubbish that used to be a castle, right?"

Dudley stopped in the middle of taking a huge bite from a loaf of bread, and said, "I certainly don't see any rubbish." He glanced around. "I'm not sure WHAT I see, though. And why isn't there a ceiling?"

"There is," Harry said. "It's enchanted to look exactly like the sky outside."

"Like a skylight?"

"Something like that."

"Maybe the protection spells only work outside the castle," Hermione mused. "What did you see on the boat ride up, Dudley?"

The obese boy blinked. "I saw the lake, the castle, I reckon I saw the same thing everybody else saw. Why?"

"And it didn't look run-down to you?"

Dudley shook his head, stuffing a turkey leg into his mouth.

"That IS odd. Why would the protection spells—"

Ron rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Hermione. It's obvious. Dudley's supposed to be here, so he can see the place for what it is. Maybe Dumbledore put a spell on him to let him see it or something, I dunno."

Dudley looked a little frightened at the thought of having been ensorcelled. Hermione, for her part, looked miffed that Ron had thought of something she hadn't.

Ron was rather pleased with himself straight through to dessert.

Sakura stared as a large meatball disappeared into her fuzzy companion. "Honestly, Kero-chan! You're being a pig!"

Keroberos grinned broadly. "I can afford it. I don't have a figure to watch."

Several of the girls in earshot suddenly put down their forks and looked sheepish. Ginny just snorted and speared a roasted potato on her fork.

Sakura nibbled on a chip, then started laboriously cutting a steak. "I'm amazed they feed everyone like this here. It's an awful lot."

Ginny shrugged. "Wizards don't fatten up as easily as Muggles do. Especially ones our age. Magic burns up a lot of energy, even if you're not doing any. Weaker wizards can get fat in a blink—" she cast a glance down the table at Neville Longbottom— "and older wizards who sit around doing nothing all day go to seed, but you're not apt to see a great many fat wizards."

"Wow, really?" Sakura asked, taking a bite of steak.

"Yup. That's why we eat like pigs," Fred said as he tore into a fat ham sandwich.

"We actually eat pigs, too. Have a sausage, Sakura?"

"Ah...I think I'll be fine with this," Sakura blushed, gesturing to her plate, which was the least full at the table.

"That's not nearly enough," Ginny said.

"It's more than enough for me," Sakura said. "I'm not really used to this kind of food."

"And even back home, she doesn't eat much except when she's pigging out on sweets," Keroberos put in.

"Another Japanese thing?" Ginny asked.

"Sorta," Sakura replied. "Some people eat a lot, some people don't...most of the time most people are fine on just a little bit."

Keroberos nodded. "You should see their idea of a box lunch."

"And you eat lots of rice and fish and stuff, right?" George asked. "Raw, even. Dunno if I'd want to try that."

"Not everyone eats sashimi," Sakura said. "It's popular, but some people just don't care for it." At the confused looks, she clarified, "That's raw fish."

"I thought that was sushi," Fred said.

"Sushi's other stuff besides fish," Sakura replied. "There's lots of kinds of sushi. It's mostly all raw or cold, but it's not all fish."

A boy whose name Sakura didn't know piped up suddenly. "Don't you all eat weird things like octopus and stuff, too? And poison fish?"

Sakura grimaced. "Not all of us. I think people who eat puffer fish are really stupid. Octopus isn't too bad, it's just a matter of how you eat it."

"Takoyaki!" Keroberos said with a grin.

"Tacos are Mexican, aren't they?" Ginny asked.

"He means fried octopus," Sakura clarified. "Really popular in Osaka." She paused for a few bites, then continued, "There's lots of things people eat in Japan that are weird, stupid, or just plain gross. Like natto...yuck!"

"I guess it's not that different from here, then," George said. "Our lot come up with some pretty disgusting stuff too."

"Haggis," Fred muttered.

"I'm sorry, the prat who wolfs down my portion of black pudding on top of his own at breakfast if he can get away with it thinks haggis is disgusting?" Ginny asked with a disbelieving stare at Fred.

"Well yeah but black pudding's okay. Haggis is just..."

"What's haggis?" Sakura asked.

"Please, not while I'm eating," a girl sitting three seats down groaned.

"I'll tell you later," Keroberos said.

"What IS that thing?" the boy who had asked about octopus wondered.

"Kero-chan? He's my guardian," Sakura replied.

"Guardian? How can that puny thing guard anyone?"

"Like this," Keroberos said, his voice suddenly a throaty growl as he stood by the table in his full, armoured lion form. "Any other questions?"

"Err...no. No! Sorry, sorry!"

The lion vanished, replaced by the flying plushie, before his appearance caused too much commotion. "So when's dessert?"

* * * * *

"So what do they plan to have you do here, Dudley?" Ron asked shortly after dessert had appeared.

The large boy smacked his lips and shrugged. "I dunno. That Dumbledore fellow said something about potions and magical creatures and astrology. I couldn't really follow what he was talking about. I just know they gave me a couple of books about plants and herbs and things, and a book about fortune-telling, and one about rubbish-sounding animals..."

Hermione nodded. "You'll most likely be in all the classes that don't require wandwork—or at least, not much of it. You couldn't exactly do Transfiguration or Charms or Defence Against the Dark Arts without a wand, but most of the courses that don't require a wand..."

"Good thing Snape's off doing—other stuff," Ron said. "There's no telling how he'd react to Dudley."

Harry snorted. "By taking points off Gryffindor, what else?" He shrugged. "So, reckon we'll get a real Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher this year?"

"Probably not," Ron said. "If we do, she'll only last a year anyway, for one reason or another."

Dudley gulped. "Last a year...? What—?"

The others eyed him. "Not like that," Harry said. "Well, not always."

"Job's jinxed," Ron said, mouth full of treacle fudge. "Four years ago, it was Quirrel, possessed by You-Know-Who. Harry finished him off. The year after, it was Lockhart, who was a total fraud. Backfired a Memory Charm on himself with a broken wand and erased his own memory." He shook his head.

"Next one we had was the best," Harry picked up. "Professor Lupin. He was a friend of my dad's from school. Great teacher, but he's a werewolf. When people found out, they wrote a lot of threatening letters, and he resigned."

"A WEREWOLF?!" Dudley exclaimed.

Harry nodded. "Yeah. Then last year—" He paused.

"Last year we had a dark wizard disguised as the teacher we were supposed to have, and nobody knew until almost the end of the year," Hermione summarised, carefully avoiding mentioning the tournament and the events that followed.

"Wow," Dudley said. "So why would anyone want this job?"

Harry shrugged. "Someone's got to do it. Actually, Snape wants the job, but..."

"You know," Ron said suddenly, "maybe we should see about getting Snape that job next year! Then something'll happen to HIM, and—"

"Like I said, we're not that lucky," Harry interrupted.

"Honestly," Hermione muttered, shaking her head, although she was smiling.

* * * * *

The remains of the feast disappeared from the plates, once again leaving everything spotless and sparkling. Dumbledore stood, gesturing with his wand. "And now, we shall sing the school song, for nothing is so magical as music." Words formed in the air. "Pick your favourite tune, and off you go..."

Sakura, for her part, just stared in confusion, disbelief, and outright horror as the spectacle of the Hogwarts School Song unfolded. A few people, such as the Weasley twins, seemed to truly enjoy it, while most were just mumbling through and trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.

"Hoeee," Sakura uttered.

The twins finished last, having warbled the song as an Irish drinking tune while hanging about each others' shoulders. When they were done, Dumbledore smiled broadly. "And now, I bid you all goodnight. Prefects, if you will?"

Hermione came by at that moment to collect Sakura and the other two first-year Gryffindor girls. "Come along, then," Hermione told them, bustling up the stairs leading out of the hall. Nearby, Harry led the two first-year boys.

After many twists and turns, the group reached a dead-end, marked by a large portrait of an obese woman in a pink dress. "Password?" the painting inquired.

"Wisdom tooth," Hermione said. The Fat Lady smiled, and the painting swung away from the wall, revealing a hole leading to a well-furnished room with a merry hearth.

"Boys to the left, girls to the right," the prefects both instructed. Before she knew it, Sakura was standing with the other two first-year girls in the center of a room appointed with three large, draperied four-poster beds...and a pile of scarlet velvet pillows and thin blankets in one corner, apparently intended for Keroberos. "Ah, home sweet home!" the plush lion cried, floating over and disappearing in the soft pile.

Tabitha shook her head. "Strangest magical pet I've ever seen." Sakura could only giggle at that.

Minutes later, the three girls and the guardian beast were all settled in for the night. Sakura's last thought before sleep claimed her was that while she had no idea precisely what she'd gotten herself into, it was almost certainly going to be a lot of fun. And she'd made some new friends on her first day away from home. That thought alone was enough to give the young girl a night of happy dreams.

* * * * *

Six four-poster beds stood in the room at the top of the tower. Three of the occupants looked slightly put-out, and were shooting odd glances at the large boy who was apparently to be their dorm mate for a while.

"Over there, Dudley, that one's got your trunk by it. Best to turn in now, first day of classes is tomorrow."

"I should like to watch the telly before bed," Dudley complained.

"There's no telly here," Harry replied. "And before you ask, no computer either."

Dudley blinked. "Then what d'you do for fun?"

"Read, play chess or cards, that sort of thing," Harry replied.

Dudley sighed. "I reckon I'll need to ask Daddy to send me a telly."

Dean snorted. "I can see that. An owl, carrying a telly."

"Even if you did, and he sent it, it wouldn't work here," Harry said. "Stuff like that doesn't work at Hogwarts. There's no electricity here, and all the magic floating around makes it so those things don't work right."

"Oh," Dudley replied, sounding disappointed. "Well...goodnight, then."

"Goodnight," the others chorused.

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