Chapter 13 — The Hat Calls Me Strange

The Great Hall made it difficult to watch where I was walking. Four long tables stretched towards the staff table, with hundreds of candles floating above them and stars beyond the candles. I followed McGonagall while trying to inspect the ceiling, until Harry slowed in front of me and nearly caused a collision.

‘Is there a roof?’ he whispered. ‘Or are we outside?’

‘It’s enchanted to look like the sky,’ Hermione explained from behind us. ‘I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.’

Harry looked up once more and accepted the explanation. I had been wondering much the same thing, so I concentrated on finding the end of the line before offering an opinion. It seemed wise to begin my school career by arriving at the Sorting without falling over another student.

The House colours helped me make sense of the room. Red and gold, yellow and black, blue and bronze, green and silver: each table already had its place and the people who belonged there. Older students watched us approach, looking considerably more comfortable than I felt. In a little while I would have to cross that room towards one of them.

I recognised Hagrid at the staff table. A white-bearded man in elaborate robes was almost certainly Dumbledore, judging by the picture Harry had shown us on the train. Farther along sat a thin man with greasy black hair and an expression which suggested he had already found something disappointing about the evening. He tugged at my memory without bringing a useful name with him.

Near a wall stood an untidily dressed man with a thin cat at his feet. Ron identified him as Filch, the caretaker his brothers had warned him about. I looked from the man’s worn clothes to the magnificent room and wondered aloud whether the school spent its entire budget on the ceiling.

A boy near us laughed, then tried to conceal it as McGonagall turned. He whispered his name, Dean Thomas, when I looked over. I introduced myself and decided that beginning with one person who appreciated the remark was better than attracting the caretaker’s attention to it.

McGonagall placed a stool before the staff table. The Sorting Hat sat on it looking as though somebody had rescued it from an attic after several unsuccessful attempts to throw it away. Ron studied it for a moment, then muttered that Fred and George were dead to him. Harry asked what else they had told him, but Ron refused to improve our evening with the details.

The names began. Students went forward, sat on the stool and waited beneath the hat; sometimes it called a House almost immediately, while others made it consider for longer. When Hermione’s turn came, she drew in a sharp breath. Knowing how a procedure worked apparently didn’t prevent it from becoming alarming when your own name was read out.

‘Go on,’ I told her. ‘You’ve already done the reading. Now you get to find out what it thinks.’

She gave me a quick smile and walked forward. McGonagall lowered the hat onto her head, and before I had properly settled into watching, it called Gryffindor. Hermione’s relief was plain when she took it off. She joined the red-and-gold table to applause, finding a place among students who moved over to welcome her.

‘Gryffindor,’ Ron said. He sounded more surprised than pleased. ‘I thought she might go somewhere else.’

‘You’ll survive if you’re in the same House,’ I said. ‘At least somebody will remember what we’re supposed to be doing.’ He didn’t appear ready to appreciate that advantage, but McGonagall was already calling another name.

Malfoy reached the stool and was sent to Slytherin with hardly any delay. Ron gave me a look of satisfaction, as though we had disagreed about that specific prediction rather than what it meant. I reminded him that he had told us where Malfoy’s family went. The result wasn’t much of a surprise.

Dean joined Gryffindor, and Neville followed, almost taking the hat with him in his hurry to reach the table. With each familiar face finding a seat, the space around me felt less comfortable. Then McGonagall called Harry Potter, and the attention in the room changed all at once.

Harry had gone pale. He looked at me before stepping away, and I could think of very little that might help under the circumstances. ‘Try not to insult it,’ I said. His mouth twitched, which was enough to make me glad I’d spoken.

The hat covered his eyes. Several seconds passed while he sat beneath it, hands closing round the edge of the stool. I couldn’t hear anything of what was happening to him. Beside me, Ron muttered ‘Gryffindor’ under his breath, evidently unwilling to leave the entire decision to a magical object.

At last the hat called Gryffindor. The table erupted into cheers, and Harry removed the hat with visible relief before crossing to join them. Hermione made room for him. Ron let out a breath as though he had been the one sitting in front of the whole school.

‘You’re pleased,’ I observed. ‘I hadn’t realised Harry’s Sorting involved so much effort on your part.’

‘We’ll all be together,’ Ron said. ‘You will as well. I’m sure of it.’

‘You haven’t been up yet.’ He looked at me as if this were a deeply unfair objection. Fortunately for his confidence, his name came soon afterwards, and the hat agreed with the family tradition. He went to Gryffindor grinning, leaving me among the shrinking group of first-years.

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I had expected to care less about my House. Harry, Ron and Hermione sitting together across the room made that expectation difficult to maintain, but friendship wasn’t the only thing on my mind. Curiosity, loyalty, ambition and courage all sounded useful. I wasn’t sure which one Hogwarts would consider the most accurate description of me, or how much of my life the hat needed to inspect before deciding.

‘Oswald Mercer.’ McGonagall’s voice ended the speculation without resolving any of it.

I crossed to the stool. There was some whispering, much less than Harry had caused, and I couldn’t tell whether anybody recognised the family name or simply had something to say. I sat down, kept my hands still and waited while McGonagall lowered the hat. Its brim covered my eyes.

Well, said a voice directly into my head. That is unusual.

My stomach tightened. I had been prepared for a judgement about courage or a comment on my study habits, but unusual seemed a dangerous place to begin. I tried to form a question without moving my lips: what, precisely, had it noticed?

Old discipline and young impulses, it replied. Plenty of curiosity. Courage, though you don’t always stop to distinguish it from impatience. And your magic doesn’t sit quite where I expect to find it.

I wasn’t certain that improved the situation. The voice seemed interested in things I had spent nearly two years trying to make sense of myself, including memories I had no desire to explain to the school. I asked whether it intended to announce any of that after choosing a House.

I sort, it said. I do not gossip. There was amusement in the answer, or at least I hoped that was what I was hearing. A mind that has travelled farther than it should have still has choices to make here.

Images rose too quickly for me to control them. Fights from a life in which I had thought being difficult proved something, training which had eventually taught me otherwise, Emma keeping the family going when she ought to have had help. Then Harry in the pub, uncomfortable under a stranger’s attention, and my own equally awkward attempt to welcome him. I couldn’t tell how much the hat understood or how deliberately it was bringing these things forward.

Ravenclaw could offer you a great deal, it observed. And you are loyal once you decide where to give your loyalty. Ambition too, certainly. You don’t intend to remain helpless.

That description didn’t settle anything. I had spent months learning because I wanted to understand what my parents had left, because magic fascinated me and because being unable to do things frightened me. Several motives had been managing perfectly well in the same head without needing separate banners.

Most people have something of all four, the hat said. The question is what you reach for when choosing costs you something.

I tended to act. Sometimes I had thought enough beforehand, and sometimes the thinking arrived while I was dealing with the consequences. That wasn’t an entirely flattering quality to discover in front of several hundred people. Yet it belonged with things I wasn’t willing to give up: trying, intervening and taking responsibility when the result became mine to handle.

You could learn in any House, the hat said. But you know where you want to stand.

I remembered where Harry and Ron had sat down, with Hermione near them. Under the brim I couldn’t see the table now, but I didn’t need another look to know I wanted to join it. Whether that was courage or simply wanting familiar people beside me, it was an honest answer.

‘Gryffindor!’ the hat shouted.

Applause reached me as I took it off. I handed it to McGonagall and caught a brief, assessing look before turning towards the table. Perhaps she looked at everybody that way. For the moment I was much more interested in reaching the space Ron was making beside him.

‘Told you,’ he said, thumping my shoulder as I sat down. ‘I knew we’d all end up here.’

‘I’ll consult you before my next major decision,’ I promised. ‘It might save the hat some work.’

Harry wanted to know what it had said. I told him it considered me strange, which attracted Hermione’s attention as well. Explaining that it hadn’t said so aloud seemed the best way to protect the small amount of dignity I had brought to the table. Harry glanced back at the stool before answering.

‘It talked to me too,’ he said quietly. ‘It thought about putting me in Slytherin. I told it I didn’t want to go there.’

Ron reacted sharply enough that Harry tried to make the admission sound less important. I remembered the hands gripping the stool and understood rather more of the wait. ‘And now you’re here,’ I said. Harry looked along the table before agreeing, his shoulders easing as somebody farther down shifted a plate to make room for another new student.

Sitting down changed the Hall. From the line we had been watched by an audience; here there were elbows, voices, empty dishes and older students introducing themselves. A boy with a prefect badge leaned towards us, and Ron identified him as Percy with an expression suggesting this had become unavoidable.

‘Prefect Percy,’ said one of two identical red-haired boys farther along. His brother added that the distinction was very important.

Percy ignored the correction. ‘Fred and George,’ he told us. ‘You’ll learn to recognise the problem soon enough.’

Ron pointed at them. ‘They’re the ones who told me about the lake monster.’ The accusation made both twins look towards him with immediate interest.

‘A lake monster?’ one repeated. ‘Ronald, you’ve been listening to some very unreliable people.’

His brother agreed so solemnly that I found myself liking them despite having just heard a reason to be cautious. Percy continued the introductions through the interruption with practised patience. By the time the last student had been Sorted, the red-and-gold table felt considerably less like a destination chosen by a hat and more like a place where I could spend an evening.

McGonagall gathered the stool and parchment. At the staff table, Dumbledore stood, and conversation faded as people turned towards him. I knew his name from remembered fragments and my parents’ notes, but recognising that he was important didn’t tell me what sort of man I was looking at. I waited to hear what he would say.

He offered us four words: ‘Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak.’ Then he sat down, leaving the first-years to decide what had happened while the older students applauded.

‘Was that a spell?’ I asked Percy. ‘Or have we missed an instruction somewhere?’

‘That’s the Headmaster,’ Percy said, laughing. He seemed to think the answer settled the matter, which suggested I had more to learn about school traditions than the route across the lake.

Harry leant towards me. ‘You thought the hat was strange,’ he said. ‘At least it told us where to go.’

Before I could reply, the serving dishes filled. Roast beef, potatoes, vegetables and bread appeared along the table, followed by the smell of gravy and enough hot food to make the train lunch seem a distant undertaking. Ron reached for a plate. I looked once more at the impossible sky above us, then began helping myself to dinner, pleased to have found a question about magic which could wait until after I’d eaten.