Chapter 17: The sorting ceremony part 2

An electrifying silence befell the grand landscape for reasons unknown at the time. The children couldn't speak. Their voices could only pool in the pits of their throat like bubbles waiting to burst, their eyelids felt as though frozen open, ever fixed upon the slowly meandering form of a veiled child whose mere motions possessed enough charm to enrapture their entire being.

The name Merlin sounded like an oddity to them, a strange label that had yet to make its presence known throughout the world though one that had many achievements already attached to it. It rang in their ears with almost deafening clarity, playing on repeat in their mind until they became sick of hearing the odd alias, yet no matter how jaded they were, they still continued to observe the encroaching figure with an eerie sense of foreboding streaming through their veins.

When the shrouded individual reached the wooden throne, the world seemed to stop turning. The sky above, an oddly cloudy summer day, appeared to clear as a radiant beam of heavenly light illuminated one spot in particular, the domain upon which the being lay. It was as though the heavens had opened up to perform a choir for the child bearing the name of Merlin, like God had ordered his best men to protect the youth from all possible ailments, to make them shine the brightest in this very moment. Even Rowena faltered for but a second before she reached to place the stringent leather atop the veiled form's head, a feat she couldn't accomplish before the child raised the veil that shielded their form from the outside world.

For a second, Herne could spy the familiar locks of white he associated with the unknown child; the same could be said for the beautiful amethyst eyes he once exchanged gazes with, though when the child's hood fell gracefully against their shoulders, what greeted him was not the picturesque scene he had imagined, but something different, something strange, for the child no longer possessed a head of unimaginably beautiful silken white hair but rather a long waterfall of blonde that fell gracefully against their still cloaked back. Their once radiant pale amethyst eyes now shimmered in a cool blue sharing the same hue as a frozen lake.

The child that sat before Herne was, without a doubt, the same figure he had once seen, and yet, their appearance was entirely different. Still, one trait remained plastered to the figure's form despite the apparent transformation, that being the overwhelmingly teasing smile that the girl flashed the utterly ordinary Herne for but a second before closing her eyes to await the sorting hat's delivery. Merlin was a girl, a fact made frightfully clear by her captivating appearance. Her face looked as though modelled by the very god who gave way to the sky above, as though he had learnt and improved upon his initial creation that was Adam and Eve for this mere human, yet despite possessing such overwhelming beauty, she still oozed a sense of repression, as though this too was but a facade, but a seal to hide what lay beneath.

Her height eclipsed that of Herne, a notion the boy came to understand upon their first meeting, as he stood not even up to the jaw of the beauty many had already come to both envy and desire. With time Rowena finally placed the demanding creation upon Merlin's scalp, a notion the child appeared to take great delight in as a broad pearly white smile crossed her face. The sorting hat's motions fell still for a second as though forced into a state of eternal slumber, only to be promptly woken by a jarring jolt of electricity. With every scowl it made, every sound it mimed yet never uttered, Merlin's expression of delight only furthered to grow to the point where both the hat and she could be described as polar opposites. Minutes passed this way, with the internal conversation being spat between both monologuing parties until, eventually, the hat came to a forced resolution, one that it voiced in a tired, fatigued tone.

"Slytherin," The hat groaned, its expression dire, as though drained of life. Its once shadowed mimicked manifestations fell oddly dull, an antagonistic motion when compared to the radiant all-knowing smile that crossed the face of the departing girl who walked to her pit of fellow snakes to deafening dumbstruck applause. Yet the moment she took her seat, all fell quiet, and not even the bravest among the pack willingly spoke to her.

The sensation of forced quiet filled the room, permeating through not only everyone's head but also their stomach, which released a unanimous gut-wrenching churn. It was as though static momentarily filled the minds of everyone but Herne, who strangely looked at the seated Merlin with a curious gaze while he lay in wait for his name to be called. A notion that would not come to pass anytime soon for another backlog of unknown names filled the child's mind until there came one that panged his brain with recognition.

"Helena?" Rowena called, beckoning yet another youth to take to the stand, though this time, unnoticeable to the mass, her voice carried a gentle kindness that could only be produced by a loving mother. At the woman's call, the girl with long waist-fallen strands of raven black hair strode to the front, her attitude haughty despite her apparent lack of familial accomplishments, a notion that did not sit right with a vast majority of the occupants that lingered by the Slytherin tables.

Yet the moment Herne bore witness to the sight of the resting youth perched atop the wooden mantle, everything seemed to click within his naive mind. He had heard the name Helena once before, when he had ventured with Rowena to Ollivanders, it had been there where the man labelled after his storefront had made express mention of his saviour's daughter, even leaving her name for Herne to absentmindedly remember. However, his words had incited the rage of Rowena, a reaction Herne still couldn't fully understand but one that was not needed for the conclusion he had already drawn. 'She's Rowena's daughter?' Herne inwardly questioned, still unfamiliar with the concept of parents and family as a whole.

'But why doesn't she share her last name? Everyone who talks about their family always brings up their name, so why does she not share the same title of Ravenclaw?' Herne inwardly questioned, familiar with the concept only through his stray hearings of the aristocrats' haughty introductions. Still, his question would ultimately go unanswered for the moment he raised his gaze to meet with the twin versions of Rowena separated by time. He would come face to face with little more than a shushing motion only he could detect. Rowena had pieced together that the boy knew something, and she was telling him to keep quiet, a demand Herne delightfully obliged as, with little more than a gentle nod, he shifted his focus to the anxiously waiting form of Helena, whose head had yet to occupy the land underneath the leather hat.

With a shaky grasp, Rowena placed the item atop her daughter's head of silky raven hair. Anxiousness plagued her mind as she lay in wait for the hat's decision, a decision the entity would come to in but a matter of seconds, for, with a loud bellow, it denounced its conviction for the world to hear.

"RAVENCLAW!" The hat all but screamed, its appearance now filled with the life it sorely lacked when dealing with the once white-haired figure of Merlin. Immediately a wave of relief rushed over not only Rowena but also Helena, who breathed a deep breath of what appeared to be thankful alleviation towards the now still hat. Her cloak and tunic combo instantaneously morphed into a cobalt blue colouring, the rest of the beasts swept away by a ferocious gust of wind brought about by the flutter of the eagle's broad wings. The belt she wore poignantly across her chest, too, morphed in design as though the realm was flooded by water, blue stained the once silver surface, with the solitary creature able to survive such a flood being that of the lone eagle whose pointed face appeared to stare out through the metallic buckle and intimidate those who dared leer at their master.

The head of Ravenclaw neared her daughter to congratulate her, yet the moment she entered within an arm's radius of the child, she would find her outstretched hand met with nought but air as a look of feigned anger crossed the beauty's reddened face. She was stunned, horrified by her child's stern rejection, yet before she could even offer a word of seldom advice or even inquire as to what was wrong, Helena had already left the scene, her steps now weighted by the anger that flowed through both her body and mind.

A sparse amount of congratulatory claps embraced Helena at such a performance. However, she did not care for her peer's pity but instead placed her form atop the Ravenclaw table with as much reluctance as she could feasibly muster, as though making a deliberate show of her unwillingness to be there.

Herne, after spying on such a scene, could only look at the pair of mother and daughter with abstruse curiosity. He couldn't understand why the girl named Helena would go so far out of her way to neglect the name she rightfully bore nor why her face that once breathed such a relaxed sigh of thankfulness now glimmered in a resentful shade of red. He would have liked to ask both parties what was going on, though before he could even utter a syllable in the expansive hall, Herne was interrupted by yet another call to the stand by a name he did not know nor care for.

Such a scene would repeat itself almost deafeningly in the eagerly awaiting child's mind, name after name was called, and house after house was appointed, and yet, no matter how much he prayed to be next, Herne was never selected. The crowd around him had thinned. No longer a mass of nameless faces, he stood alone, destitute upon the great hall's once-welcoming flooring that now nipped at him with a frigid chill.

Herne loomed there, ever in wait for his name to leave the enchanting cherry red lips of his saviour, an action that would soon come to pass, for, with a soothing tone of voice, she beckoned the boy forth to an object that would soon decide his fate.

"Herne," Rowena uttered the child's name with a warmth comparable to that of which she spoke her own daughters and yet, in that heat, was a strange distance, a weird sense of forced alienation that came with the unknown. Still, Herne remained ignorant of such subtle sentiments and instead, with a broad smile, began his march to the ever-scowling hat, whose shadowed eyes seemed to peer through the naive boy's soul.

His steps echoed upon the grand hall's hard flooring with an ear-piercing clarity. It reverberated upon every item that dared stand in its path until, eventually, the boy's subconscious will to be noticed found its place in the mind of every wizard present. From the corner of his wandering gaze, Herne could perceive the subtle motions of the teen named William. He watched as the boy leaned against one of his fellow Gryffindors, his smile and lips stretched into a broad mocking grin to speak a line that would dictate his life from this point forth, a comment that the child couldn't even hear yet one he could sense, for the moment William finished spouting his truth, the once inquisitive gaze the child held for the final student to be appointed, turned condescending almost scrutinising in nature, as though unsure of the words his peer had spoken yet interested in if they were true.

Like daggers, they pierced the side of the fatigued Herne, analysing his every step for weakness, for clarification, for an answer to his peer's open-ended gesture, a statement he appeared to receive confirmation of from the very way Herne acted. And with such verification, his eyes that once watched the child with interest morphed into a glare of ruthlessness. At the same time, his body leaned into the child at his side, where like the plague, another set of knives found themselves skewered upon the boy's anaemic flesh.

Still, despite such apparent repugnance towards Herne's mere existence, Herne still released a heartfelt smile in the direction of the teen, as though grateful for having him protect him on the journey, for being his partner, and for seeing his sorting. A notion that was not returned by the boy, who merely chuckled at Herne's antics.

With every step, more eyes found themselves latched upon Herne's extremely average figure, to the point where by the time he found himself sat upon the discomforting seat of the wooden stool, he had collected the eyes of all those in the room, including the four spectators who leered at the child with apparent interest, for they knew who he was, the nameless boy, the child who sporadically appeared out of thin air in the middle of what people deemed to be a forbidden forest. They observed with utmost intrigue as Rowena placed the acrimonious leather hat upon the child's head, at which point silence filled the room.

Herne's gaze was obscured by a lake of darkened brown, cloaked by the all-encompassing sense of leather that plagued his entire cranium. It was dark, he didn't like it, and yet, he found solace in the umbral cloak, in the fact that in mere moments he too would find his place amongst one of the four houses Hogwarts possessed.

And it was in such darkness that Herne heard a voice, one sour, almost grating in tone, that rattled in his empty mind with negligible remorse for his well-being. It bypassed the filter his ears offered and went straight to his mind, infiltrating the space and becoming like a thought to the boy, one he could solely perceive thanks to the differing voice though one he would not notice if the item tried to be stealthy.

'Let's see what we have here then,' The voice spoke, though its mumbling appeared more like a split personality to the naive Herne than a distinct foreigner, a segment he couldn't control, one he could only offer to engage in conversation in hopes of distracting it for long enough to rid itself from the chamber that was his brain. Yet the moment the child tried to form a string of words to utter to the hat, nothing was bellowed. His thoughts didn't gain a body in his own mind. He couldn't combat the leather prince who peered through his every memory, forcing him to recount what should have been left as a pleasant experience.

Herne saw flashes of his time at the Three broomsticks, the mutterings he exchanged with Hengist and the Siberian cold that filled both the room and his body with a slothful sense of fatigue. It would have been fine if it stopped there, yet the hat was not satiated. It had not seen enough to form even the slightest gander as to what house the boy belonged.

Time appeared to reverse from that point. Brief snippets of his venture at Ollivanders were told from the child's perspective, from his naive view, as he appreciated and took care of every wand and every item the distraught figure of the aged Ollivander provided him with, all the way to his very first encounter with Rowena, and the wolves that threatened to take his life. Yet, no matter what the hat saw, nothing provided it with the answer it oh so hunted. It needed more. It needed to know the child's past, the suffering he assumed Herne went through, what brought him to the forest he awoke in, a mentality that would ultimately be the item's downfall, for what surfaced in the child's mind was not a picturesque scene of grotesque treatment from the hands of an abusing parent but instead, nothing.

A blank void of white befell the item's consciousness, yet one Herne didn't appear to share. It had met a dead end, a wall it couldn't penetrate with its current enchantments, a secret it had yet to solve.

'Interesting, very interesting. Now, let's see what you hide behind such a bulwark of white.' The hat inwardly grumbled, for although it could not read the boy's mind any further, it had been enchanted with a gift that would likely never be replicated by that of such common wizards for the foreseeable future, the ability to read one's soul, a damned magic, a cursed enchantment it had been warned against using, yet one its creators had still blessed it with.

Immediately a soothing sensation plagued the boy's form. As though embraced by a pool of water that he sunk eternally deeper into, Herne gave way to the hat to perform its every wile, to enact whatever it wished upon his spectral form, and yet, when the hat managed to gaze upon the boy's soul it froze.

Its once taut umbral smile fell ragged, its eyes that were once carved out of two pieces of the night gave way to snippets of dawn. All the while, its pointed head collapsed in upon itself in a slumbering display of unconsciousness, muffled voices dyed in the colour of curiosity resounded around the room with endless volume, amplified by one another until the hall was filled with a catastrophic choir of interest.

The hat had fallen limp, a scene they had yet to see. One they would likely never witness again, for although theories as to its state of unconsciousness had already been spun, no one knew at the time that the amortal item blessed with life, with wisdom that surpassed that of the collective group present in the hall… had died, that they were staring at little more than a decrepit piece of leather.

Its greed had gotten the better of it. It had explored a region that should not have been disturbed, the soul of the being known as Herne.

What it saw in its final moments was a scene that petrified it to its very core, for what greeted its view when it pried into the boy's spectral form was not the sight of an agonising child left to wait for its family but a realm of infinite darkness, one that stretched beyond both the scales of time and space, the hat had only skimmed the surface, used the minimum amount of power it could have and yet, it had already been trapped, it could no longer return no matter how much it tried to free itself from the umbral plain that occupied Herne's soul.

And it would be there that it died, having bore witness to a scene of unspeakable dread.