Chapter 52: Shattered
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And on the farthest right, occupying the same space as three lesser witches was the mountainous entity who'd greeted them all after they'd disembarked from the train, Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds.
"Is the man standing on his chair the Head of Ravenclaw?" Harry whispered towards Hermione, who was sitting beside him, hoping he hadn't alienated what looked like the only person here who could give him some competition in the brain department.
For once Hermione didn't answer this instantly; she was shifting constantly from side to side, staring at the headmaster who was now giving out odd warnings about forests being forbidden and so on forth. Bah! As if any school rule would ever stop Harry Potter from exploring a magical forest full of training opportunities. Harry decided almost immediately that he'd be exploring the forest that very night.
Curious what Hermione was thinking of him after he rammed a figurative train into her ideologies in the train, Harry cast observe on her.
Hermione Granger
Lv-5
HP-250/250
MP-150/150
Race-Witch
Str-3
Vit-5
Dex-4
Int-12
Wis-5
Luc-2
Hermione Jean Granger is a Muggle-born witch and the daughter of two dentists in London. She grew up as a normal girl until, at age eleven, she learned that she was a witch and had been accepted into Hogwarts. She possesses a brilliant academic mind, and is a gifted student. She was very studious and bookish and can be very bossy and obnoxious.
She doesn't know what to think about Harry, and as such, is trying her best to avoid thinking about him.
Harry wondered what he was expecting. Maybe he'd expected an entire description worth of how she had secretly enjoyed it when Harry shattered her worldview and secretly had the hots for him. He shook his head.
Best avoid that line of thought. Puberty hadn't even come into his line of sight and he still wasn't sure he actually understood the appeal of sex, girls and courting just yet.
"Yes, he is," replied Prefect Clearwater, "That is the Charms Professor and the Head of Ravenclaw, Professor Filius Flitwick, the most knowledgeable Charms Master alive, and an ex-Duelling Champion."
"Why's he so short?" hissed a student whose name Harry didn't recall. "Is he a half-breed?"
A chilling glance was leveled at the boy from many directions. It seemed the good Professor was well liked in his house. "The Professor does indeed have goblin ancestry," Prefect Clearwater answered flatly.
'How did that even work out?' Harry wondered to himself.
"Hssh!" shushed another prefect, though the Ravenclaw witch had spoken quietly.
Harry looked down at his empty gold plate. He had only just realized how hungry he was after all that had happened to him. Looking up, he realized that Dumbledore had just finished his speech.
"Now before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"
A figment of a thought vaguely along the lines of 'what in the name of galloping gargoyles was that ?' did pass through Harry's head momentarily, but it promptly vanished as his mouth fell open.
The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.
The Dursleys had never exactly managed to starve Harry. He'd been way too resourceful to not sneak away a sandwich or two under his shirt, but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked.
Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if it made him sick to eat it all. For the first time in his life, Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything on the table and began to eat. It was incredible.
"That does look delicious." said the lady ghost in the dress sadly, before promptly disappearing with a poof of silvery mist.
One time, while almost inhaling a chicken leg, he'd thought he'd caught Dumbledore staring at him with not a twinkle in his eyes and a severe expression on his face, but when he looked again, the man was pleasantly conversing with Hagrid over the heads of two other teachers.
Dismissing it as his imagination, he went back to the food and spent the rest of the dinner deflecting questions about his curiously long sorting.
Being Harry Potter, and being at the center of a curious Sorting event, and then being sorted into Ravenclaw was closely akin to being transfigured into a piece of cake and tossed into a crowd of Dudleys to get gorged on. He was being pulled apart in so many directions it was making his head spin.
Just then, Professor Dumbledore came to the rescue, "And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" declared Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had become rather fixed. Wondering why Professor Quirrell was pulling his turban tightly over his ears, Harry looked back at Dumbledore.
The Headmaster gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.
"Everyone pick their favorite tune," said Dumbledore merrily, "and off we go!"
And the school bellowed:
"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald
Or young with scabby knees,
Our heads could do with filling
With some interesting stuff,
For now they're bare and full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff,
So teach us things worth knowing,
Bring back what we've forgot,
just do your best, we'll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot. "
'Oh dear lord!'
Tears streamed from Harry's eyes as the deafening cacophony of noise bled through his tightly clamped ears and shattered his canals, and by the time the slowly stopped with everybody finished the song at different times, Harry's ears were ringing. At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march.
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