Chapter 15: New faces

The door's hinges creaked in a mournful wail, though it was not the same cry as Herne's makeshift accommodation from the night before. No, it did not howl due to disuse or neglect but instead anticipation. It was welcoming the future students with its own eerie cacophony, for it did not possess a harmonic tone. The metal vines that sprouted up on the oak wood surface of the titanic structure appeared to move. Like snakes, they uncoiled themselves to create beautiful patterns that stretched across either side of the splitting monolith.

A tempest of lukewarm air rushed out of the void the door left in its wake, flooding the children's stuffy noses with its dissonant temperature creating a contrast their bodies wished not to deal with. From the doors parting, a fragment of golden light could be seen though it did not possess the same stability as the sun above but instead danced, with brief seconds of darkness followed by immense bursts of radiance. It was the light of a flame, though one whose source remained yet to be seen. With every second, more of the obscured space guarded by the grand door was revealed. The mystery surrounding the unique land was slowly being solved until, eventually, it had completed its journey, and its two separated planks lay distanced, their purpose accomplished.

The light of flame barraged the children's agape eyes, flooding the land around them with its brilliant golden hue. They could see they had been welcomed by the castle, accepted as one of its many guests. All they had to do now was walk towards the blinding torrent of golden radiance that assaulted their senses to become part of whatever world lay before them. A wave of children from the village rushed towards the heavenly space that still remained obscured courtesy of the flame's divine grace, their steps and attitude completely unbefitting of such a royal area, and within seconds only three figures remained, their entrance to the expanse seemingly barred by none other than themselves.

The first of these few figures belonged to the teen who had once belittled and bribed Herne with the idea of companionship. He lingered in the backdrop, his gaze fiery, almost defiant in nature. He was not enraptured by the castle's immaculate presence. In fact, he couldn't care less about the stone creation. Instead, his vengeful gaze fell upon the second character, the plump woman known as Helga Hufflepuff. Their eyes locked for but a second before the woman beckoned the boy over with the temptation of his very own wand.

They engaged in a chat that was not audible to the third visage, a child that stood in wait for the teen in order to apologise for his wrongdoings, Herne. He waited patiently for the teen to escape from his abrupt scoldings, watching in real-time as his vindictive expression shifted into one of self-assured pride the moment his hands found their place upon the wands lanky body before he turned away from the kindly Helga where his gaze fell atop the innocent Herne.

Immediately the dying wisps of spite that the teen harboured for the child found themselves reignited. His mouth, which was previously forced into an apologetic state of self-loathing, morphed into a sly hateful grin while his demeanour completely shifted, going from a form more comparable to that of an anxious, almost repenting mouse to that of a vicious wolf, the gait in his steps were haughty full of pride and unabashed ruthlessness as he rushed towards the waiting boy.

"I'm sorry I got your wand taken away from you. I really didn't mean for any of that to hap-" Herne started only to have his words cut short as the teen's rancorous body collided with his frail figure, forcing him into an abrupt state of recoil. The adolescent had barged past Herne pushing the naive ten-year-old aside without sparing him even a word of acceptance. He just moved, his visage growing ever distant from the still-smiling boy until he, too, was eventually consumed by the castle's holy golden light.

Left alone without even the presence of Helga, who had mysteriously vanished, Herne could do little more than lament his wrongdoings. He couldn't fathom why the teen treated him so harshly. In fact, Herne didn't even understand that he was being treated differently at all. Everything was so new to him that he just assumed this was how it was all meant to be, that he deserved such abstruse attacks.

"Does he not want to talk to me anymore?" Herne mournfully commented, his heart releasing a dull pain throughout his entire body, one he assumed was caused by the boy's neglectful attitude though, in reality, was but a byproduct of his former forceful use of magic. Still, the symptoms did not stop there, for with every step Herne took towards the golden bastion of light that was Hogwarts's open gate, they continued to worsen and spread throughout his petite body. His head became the first victim of his self-induced plague. It hurt. His mind felt as though it was trying to tear itself apart. Every thought the boy tried to create felt dull, as though observed through a murky lake, he could hardly understand the world around him.

Herne's feet felt heavy, as though weighed down by the entire weight of the castle that stood dauntingly before him. Every motion the boy performed was fatigued in nature, slow and exhausting, requiring twice the amount of effort for half the promised reward. Still, though, such weight could not stop the ever-jubilant child who continued his destined march even with such a cumbersome curse. He simply wouldn't stop, not when his goal was within his grasp.

With such determination set in the boy's heart, Herne's foot entrenched upon Hogwarts's fence of golden light, he had joined the likes of his peers and forced his way up on the same stage as them, and what greeted him could only be described as a sight to behold. Immediately a pungent warmth punched the boy in the face. No longer a willing victim to summer's chill early morning attacks, he found comfort in the homely heat the enclosed space provided. Still, though, it was not the sensation of warmth that enraptured the innocent boy but rather the entire plain that loomed before him. Dyed in the golden light of flame, the extensive area seemed to practically ooze an aura of utmost nobility.

Resplendent chandeliers shaped from egregious amounts of gold hung from the ark-like ceiling that loomed dauntingly above so far out of reach that one might consider the realm they stood to be heaven. Atop their many prongs shimmered dancing candles, their wax never melting while their flames did not fade under the harshest gusts. Their light glimmered atop the hardwood flooring upon which Herne tread, granting a view of the royal mahogany's polished burgundy glow.

The land before Herne was expansive enough to be called a ballroom, though the staff at Hogwarts deemed the land merely fit to be a waiting room. Sparse amounts of natural light seeped into the space, though their natural colour had been besmirched, replaced by the dyed hue from the stained glass windows that acted as their vessel. An imposing dark wood door stood before the child, its figure oozing an aura of dismay and foreboding even from the distance from which Herne spotted it. Little light seeped through the makeshift gate's cracks, only adding to the aura of apprehension the item possessed.

All in all, the space could be deemed a land fitting for a king, and yet it served little more purpose than an area to house the miscreants upon which the staff would later teach.

Littering the land upon which Herne dared tread stood a mass of children, many of whom he had seen before as they were occupants of the little town of Hogsmeade, though the vast majority of adolescents gathered possessed new faces that the child had yet to encounter. Already groups had formed in the makeshift entrance hall, with one corner of the entire plateau designated to the strangely silent children of Hogsmeade, even the teen who berated Herne did not glare at the boy who had only just made his tardy arrival. Instead, he merely spared the boy a passing glance that carried with it all the child's bottled-up anxiousness.

There must have been over fifty children cramped in the destitute place, loitering about in their own little worlds, socialising with only that of their kind and level. Children and teens draped in the most wondrous garments stood by the grandiose door, their uniform serving little more purpose than the jewels on their wrists as they slung the cloth atop their shoulders, not letting it embrace their bodies in the slightest. They wore dresses and tunics of the finest make, with golden threads and polished boots that did not match the items Herne had received courtesy of the great school. They were clearly of a higher status than the children of Hogsmeade, then most of the room in general, and they knew that their upturned noses seemed to disapprove of the stench their kind brought to such a place. At the same time, their gazes, few in nature, would immediately turn sour upon spotting the common wizards.

Their voices echoed through the land, though they were not unified in nature. The children spoke over one another in an apparent boasting competition, telling tales of their parent's heroic acts or their family's jobs, making a point of who served who and for how long. Still, it all sounded like a dissonant cacophony of arrogant voices to the common masses, including Herne, who, for some reason, felt a compelling urge to stay away from such haughty individuals until he could isolate them to introduce himself. The rest of the children gathered, however, did not speak. Instead, they lingered around the room, grouped into small bunches not related to social status or class but location. There were those from the south, north, east and west. All the cardinal directions of Britannia were covered by at least three people at Hogwarts.

Still, even then, a stray few stragglers appeared distant from a group with Herne being part of such a subset of students. And it was within such a classification that he saw the visage of someone he had previously seen before, an outline that looked all too uncanny to the young, naive child. With a head of raven black hair that fell neatly upon her back stood the picture of a small woman, her skin or what rare blotches of exposed flesh there were, revealed a hue of pale ivory, as though the girl's skin was carved from the tusk of the most beautiful creature.

Her visage wandered the room, never staying in one spot for too long with the most prideful of demeanours, as though she were the ruler of the very land she trekked. All these features led Herne to believe that the being who stood before him could only be one person. He was blinded by his own delusions, what he wished to see, an illusion that only became more realistic to the boy with the final garment the girl wore draped across her pale neck. A scarf of eagle feathers clambered to the girl's shoulders, not even shifting under the motions of her aristocratic gait. Herne had seen such a shawl only once before, and he imagined it not to be the most common of neckwear, still though he had only seen the back of the girl who meandered around the room, but to him, that was more than enough, he believed he could recognise the figure of his saviour anywhere, so, with a deep breath he made to call for the woman clad in an armour of his mind.

"Ro-" Herne started, only to freeze before he could even breathe his first syllable, for the girl he had spied absentmindedly turned to face him, revealing all the boy needed to know with her motion. Possessing twin voids for eyes that looked as though to consume the very sun with the depths of the colour, the girl who stood before him was, without a doubt, not the woman he sought. Despite possessing the same divine proportions and beauty that the woman named Rowena carried, her face did not sit right with the child. She was not her. They may bear similarities, an untold amount to be true, but without a doubt, the girl Herne eyed was not Rowena.

She was too small, too young, for she was but a child, the same age as the boy who stared inquisitively at her. No, she was something else, something the child would shortly come to uncover within minutes, though not just yet, as at the very moment Herne began to wander towards the haughty beauty, he would find his steps frozen and his attention captured by another child, one who seemingly appeared from thin air before Herne with a prying light glinting in their pale amethyst eyes.

"Your wand's made of English oak, isn't it? Can you show it to me?!" The child excitedly asked, their sudden stream of questions proving to be too much for the equally eager Herne, who had still yet to even identify the figure that practically jumped up and down not even centimetres in front of him, and yet, before he even knew what he was doing Herne had already placed one of his sparse possessions in the hand of the unknown stranger. A soft hand with skin as white as snow met the boy halfway, at which point their dainty fingers took the item as their own.

It was only after completing such an abrupt transaction that the boy finally managed to gaze upon the figure who now held complete power over him. Their constitution was veiled, sheathed under the shawl of the Hogwarts cloak. Few details could be wrestled from the shadows that consumed half the child's face. However, what Herne did manage to pry from the umbral guise the student wore would be enough to leave any functioning human speechless.

Strands of silken white hair were left to sprawl across the child's forehead as if in a vain attempt to distract one from the two crystalline gems that glittered softly underneath, their eyes, that which seemed like pale amethysts pushed into the sockets where bland brown should have been held power to attract all. Yet, their ability seemed to only partially work on the dazed child who had still yet to see the rest of the assumed beauty's form. A feat Herne would yet accomplish for the moment, his prying eyes locked with the human's beautiful gems. He would find them not focused on his practically average wand but rather on his hollow brown set of pupils; as if mirroring his actions, the child stared at Herne with bemused wonder for a brief second before eventually releasing a teasing smile that showcased all their pearly white teeth.

"Hehe, so I was right," The child stated, their gaze once again attracted to the stick that lay plastered within their grasp. "You see, I also have an English oak wand, though I have to say, mine's a bit more decorated than yours," The child continued their sprightly charmingly androgynous voice carrying with it a prodding tone.

"All right, you can have this back now. I'm done with my inspection," The androgynous child whispered, taking the conversation by the reigns and controlling the pace to an almost absolute degree to the point where Herne could do little more than blanky stare at the youth before him with an outstretched hand as he received his gift once again. Immediately upon receiving his wand, Herne quickly pocketed the item before his eyes started to glitter with the light of hope.

He had found someone he could possibly speak to, someone who had voluntarily gone out of their way to start a conversation with the young lost boy, albeit a one-sided one. Still, that was more than enough for Herne, yet, the moment he lifted his downtrodden head, he would find the figure distanced from himself though their face and gaze remained ever fixed upon his average form.

"My name's Merlin, by the way. What's yours?" The figure called, and yet, no one save for Herne heard the androgynous voice.

"Herne! My name's Herne!"And likewise, when Herne exploded into an answer, no one bar for the departing figure of Merlin detected his jubilant cry.

Herne watched the departing figure of Melin near the crowd of aristocrats, and yet when pressed against such a powerhouse of nobility, the human did not stop but kept walking, uncaring to the defiant calls that beckoned back the small child nor the pointed wands that glowed with the faint light of hostility. Still, if they continued at such a pace, surely they would find themselves trapped, pinned between the mob of heresy-crying wizards and the egregiously large dark oak wood door that fenced the children in.

Yet the moment Merlin's visage looked to meet the door in a head-on collision, the structure shot open in a manner similar to that of the now-closed monolith from which Herne had once made his entrance. It inverted in upon itself in a near-instantaneous motion, as though forcefully pushed open by a giant, and yet, when the door met its end, it did not attack the wall behind it but instead came to a quiet, ominous stop.

What lay behind the monolith, however, had still yet to be revealed, omitting one precarious figure that stood before the group of rowdy students with a complete look of apathy, a woman Herne would not mistake for someone else twice in the same day, it was Rowena. Her blue dress practically glowed a vibrant holy light under the chandelier's forced radiance, though such a glow failed to illuminate her hopelessly dreary eyes. She scanned the room for but a moment in a motion unperceivable to that of the children gathered before her. What she was looking for remained unknown, yet the moment she saw two students, a fleeting, barely noticeable smile crossed her lips.

'They're here,' The mother inwardly smiled before correcting her god-given mannerisms, returning to her usual apathetic state of being.

"You may now all enter. Though you may not sit or take your place among the set tables until the completion of the sorting ceremony." Rowena declared, much to the confusion of the masses, who had no idea what a sorting ceremony was, before taking her leave, granting the children the sole option of aimlessly following after the strange woman.