"This is a disaster and everything will go wrong."
"Shhh, honey, don't say that! Emil will be fine! He'll be learning lots, and he might even get the, ah... fire problem under control."
Torbjörn beamed at Emil. Siv smiled uncertainly.
"Besides," Torbjörn added encouragingly, "Hogwarts can't be worse than that military school."
"The military school wasn't so bad, it was better than public school," Emil tried to say, but the whistle of a train drowned out his words. "What time does the Hogwarts Express leave?" he asked anxiously.
"Eleven o'clock," Siv said.
"What time is it now?"
Siv looked at her watch. "10:59."
"You should run!" Torbjörn said, shoving him forward.
Emil jogged towards the train as the doors began to close. There was no way he would make it in time. Then a silvery blur shot past him, standing in the doorway and materializing into a human being.
"Thanks... Lalli," someone behind him panted. A short, stocky girl stumbled into view, lugging a large trunk behind her. "Whew! I'm tired!"
"Not... me!" Emil panted. "I could... run for... hours!"
She turned around. Her eyes lit up. "Oh, hi! Would you like to go find a compartment?"
"Sure," Emil said.
"Great! I love meeting new first years. My name's Tuuri, by the way. What's yours?"
"Emil." He looked around. The person who had held the door for them had followed them silently, like a shadow. Light, wide eyes peered back at him from behind Tuuri.
"Oh, this is Lalli, my cousin. Don't mind him if he doesn't talk, he's not good with people and he doesn't speak much English. Oh, this looks good!" Tuuri leapt sideways into a compartment and glued her face to the window.
"Enough," Lalli said quietly.
"Hmm?" Tuuri asked, still looking out the window.
"I speak enough English," Lalli said. He stared at Emil, refusing to say another word.
"What's so interesting out there?" Emil asked, hoping to break the growing silence.
"Hmm? Oh, the last time I rode on this train, I saw a troll! But you'll learn all about trolls with Professor Eide. I mean Sigrun. She doesn't like us to call her Professor Eide, it sounds too stuffy and old-fashioned."
"Ah," Emil said, feeling very overwhelmed. He had barely understood half of what Tuuri had said.
"Oh, I'm sorry! I'm being rude!" Tuuri exclaimed suddenly. "I haven't asked you anything about yourself! Which house do you think you'll be in? I'm a Slytherin third year."
"What are you talking about?" Emil asked helplessly.
Tuuri's expression changed rapidly. "Oh, are you Muggle-born? Why didn't you say so? You must be so confused! I'm sorry if I've been babbling, I should probably stop now."
"No, it's okay," Emil said. "My uncle Torbjörn is a wizard, but my parents are Muggles. I just don't know much about Hogwarts."
"Okay! So, everyone at Hogwarts is divided into four houses: Griffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The brave go to Griffindor, the helpful, hard workers go to Hufflepuff, the people with a sneaky side who don't always follow rules go to Slytherin, and the nerds go to Ravenclaw. They say Hufflepuff is a bunch of dorks, but don’t worry, that’s probably not true."
"How do they choose who goes to what house?" Emil asked apprehensively.
"Oh, they have a hat," Tuuri said cheerfully. "I’m in Slytherin, and my brother Onni is in Hufflepuff. He’s a seventh year, and he’s really good at magic! He's the first student Animagus since the days of Sirius Black, you know. He can turn into an owl, and he's a prefect."
"He cries a lot, though," Lalli said quietly. He had placed his hands over his ears to block out the torrent of enthusiastic exposition.
Emil reflected that this might be the weirdest conversation he had ever had in his life. It was even weirder than the time he had tried to explain why his professor's toupee kept mysteriously catching fire every time he got near it. Or the time he had to explain why his math test had exploded into a miniature fireball on his desk.
"You know about Sirius Black and Voldemort and Harry Potter and the War 90 years ago, right?" Tuuri asked, ignoring her cousin.
"Yeah," Emil replied, recalling the bizarre bedtime stories Torbjörn used to tell him.
"Okay, good," Tuuri said. “So… which house do you think you’ll be in?”
Emil could feel his face turning bright red for absolutely no reason. “Uhhh…”
“It’s okay if you don’t know. I’m pretty sure Lalli’s going to be in Slytherin, though. Right, Lal?”
“Mrrh,” Lalli said. Emil couldn’t tell if that meant he agreed or not.
“Most of our family has been in Slytherin. Slytherin’s not actually that bad. It used to be really anti-Muggle born, but there was this big reform 80 years ago and now it’s not so bad!”
A blur of red and blue crashed into their compartment, interrupting Tuuri’s enthusiastic explanation. It was an older student, one with a magnificently long red braid.
“Oh, hello Reynir,” Tuuri said pleasantly. “Emil, this is Reynir Árnason, a Hufflepuff second year.”
“D-d-dementors!” Reynir squeaked.
“What? Not again?” Tuuri cursed under her breath. “I knew we should have waited another year before we sent Lalli to Hogwarts! He’s only eleven!”
“I’m only eleven!” Emil yelped, staring at their panicked faces. “I don’t understand what’s happening!”
As he said that, every light on the train vanished. Everything was black, and cold seeped in around the door.
“I have to get a teacher! Surely there’s one on the train!” Tuuri said breathlessly. “Reynir! Can you—“
“Ex—Expecto—“ Reynir’s teeth were chattering, he couldn’t speak. It was too cold.
Then they heard it. The deathly rattle of inhuman breath. There was something searching, trying to suck the last bits of light from the darkness. Emil was drowning in cold, clammy fog. He couldn’t see.
Then there were voices. “We have to face it. He’s a pyromaniac. He’s so fascinated with fire.”
“What can we do?”
“Our son is a freak. What can we do?”
“What should we do with him?”
They were his parents, and they were talking about him. He couldn’t get them out of his head. He was drowning in the cold and the dark and the past.
“Expecto Patronum!”
Light blazed like white fire. Gleaming white paws tore at the shadows surrounding them. The chilly darkness hissed and vanished like smoke on the breeze.
Emil realized he was curled up on the floor. The lights flickered on, giving him an excellent view of the reddish carpet pressing up against his nose. He looked up, expecting to see Tuuri the confident third year, standing tall with her wand out. Instead, he saw Lalli, who could not stop glaring at the door with a suspicious expression.
Tuuri stood up shakily. Silver tears streaked her face. “It’s okay, Lal, they’re gone now. Thank you for getting rid of them.”
Lalli slowly lowered his wand, still staring at the door. The huge, glowing creature standing next to him vanished before Emil could see what sort of animal it was.
“What were those things?” Emil gasped.
The thin gray light from the window illuminated Tuuri’s hair as she gazed toward the front of the train. “I can’t believe the train was attacked by dementors again,” she said, “they really need to do something about this.”
“I had no idea your little brother could do that, Tuuri!” Reynir chattered, apparently fully recovered. Then, to Emil, “Dementors are creatures that feed on happiness. If they get too close, they suck out your soul. They’re pretty nasty.”
“He’s actually my cousin,” Tuuri said to Reynir. “He does know a lot of magic already.”
Lalli sighed and collapsed onto his seat. Emil felt like doing the same. Soul-sucking shadows were a little more than he had expected.
The rest of the train ride passed uneventfully. Night had fallen by the time they reached the school. Emil was the first to hop off the train, desperately trying to smooth his golden hair so that it looked more or less presentable. He gave up as he stepped into the thick mist around the train.
Lalli reached up and smoothed it for him. Golden sparks flew up into the night.
“Sorry,” Emil muttered, trying to wave the sparks away. His odd hair sparkles were only one of the things that had gotten him into trouble at his old school.
“LISTEN UP, NEWBIES!” A voice like a foghorn blasted Emil’s eardrums. “FIRST YEARS OVER HERE!”
This voice was accompanied by a swinging lantern and a truly impressive braided beard. Reynir waved enthusiastically, and he and Tuuri disappeared. Emil and Lalli wandered over to the shouting man with the beard.
“THIS WAY!” he yelled, swinging his lantern. They followed him down a dark, foggy path. “YOU’LL GET YOUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF HOGWARTS IN A SECOND!”
The mist cleared a little, and Emil could see light glimmering in a hundred windows, then reflected on the surface of a wide lake. The night was too cloudy for stars, but the twinkling golden lights seemed determined to make up for the absence of their celestial relatives.
“Whoa,” someone breathed.
“I KNOW, IT’S AN UTTER EMBARRASSMENT! A SHELL OF ITS OLD SELF!” their guide roared suddenly, startling Emil so much that he nearly stumbled into the lake. “THE OLD CASTLE IS NOTHING LIKE THE GLORY DAYS BEFORE THE RISE OF VOLDEMORT!”
Emil thought that the castle looked very impressive indeed. Not that he was going to admit that out loud.
The man with the braided beard herded them into boats, and they glided across the smooth, dark water to the castle.
Once they got there, he led them through passages filled with candles, then finally to a pair of huge doors.
“YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE SORTED INTO HOUSES! NOW’S THE TIME TO MAKE YOURSELVES LOOK PRESENTABLE!”
Emil patted his hair. Sparks flew everywhere. “What happens now?” he asked anxiously.
Lalli shrugged slightly. He did not seem concerned.
“What’s going on here?”
“First years, of course!”
Emil jumped. A group of transparent, milky-white beings had just floated through the walls. They were… ghosts?
“Ah! About to be Sorted, I suppose?” one asked, smiling benevolently. “I hope to see you in Hufflepuff! My own house, you know.”
“Must you say that to every group of first years, Friar?” a long-haired ghost in a gray dress asked.
“MOVE ALONG!” The doors swung open, and the line of first years moved forward into a huge hall, already packed with chattering students. In the middle was a stool, and on the stool there was a hat.
It was not a very impressive hat. In fact, it was filthy, ragged, frayed, and even charred slightly at the edges. A rip like a mouth opened near the brim, and to Emil’s great surprise, the hat began to sing.
It sang about the war 90 years ago, and the merits of the four houses. None of this gave Emil any insight as to which house he would actually be in.
Then the bearded man began to yell out names. When a person’s name was called, they would run up to the stool and try on the hat, which would call out the name of a House.
“HONDERBY, EMILIA!” he bellowed.
“RAVENCLAW!” the hat replied instantly.
“HOTAKAINEN, LALLI!”
Lalli walked up to the hat and placed it firmly on top of his head. Tuuri waved from the audience, her fingers crossed.
Emil could see Lalli shiver slightly as the hat seemed to frown in concentration. It was taking an awfully long time to decide.
Suddenly, the hat opened its mouth wide enough for Emil to see the glint of Lalli’s silvery hair underneath it and shouted, “GRIFFINDOR!”
Tuuri looked astonished. “What?” she mouthed, staring across the room at Reynir, who managed to shrug and clap at the same time.
Lalli wandered over to the Griffindor table, looking pleased with himself. A teacher with fiery red hair cheered and pounder him on the back. Lalli seemed very alarmed.
The line of frightened first-years became shorter and shorter. Emil wondered whether he really belonged in any of the four houses. Maybe he didn’t even belong at Hogwarts. What if he put on the hat and it told him to go right back home?
“VÄSTERSTRÖM, EMIL!”
Emil jumped, tripped over the hem of his robes, and staggered to the front of the room. Several people laughed. I’ll show them, he thought angrily, jamming the hat on his head in a shower of sparkles. Once I’m a famous hero they’ll all regret doubting my excellence. All of them.
“Well now,” a little voice rasped, somewhere behind his left ear. “Someone’s got ambition. Slytherin might well be the place for you.”
Emil froze, trying not to think. If he had known the hat could read his mind, he never would have put it on in the first place.
“Hmm, that’s strange. There’s definitely more than that. Tricky, tricky. A good bit of compassion—oh yes, Hufflepuff is definitely an option.”
Not Hufflepuff! Emil did not want to look like a dork. Anywhere but there.
“Not Hufflepuff? Well, you don’t belong in Ravenclaw, that’s for sure.”
Emil had been right; he didn’t belong anywhere. He supposed this was the part where the hat told him to take the first train back home.
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions! Yes, you’re a hard one to place but I think you belong in—GRIFFINDOR!”
Emil ripped the hat off his head and stumbled over to the Griffindor table, sighing with relief. The Griffindors cheered, the red-haired professor yelling loudest of all. He collapsed in a chair next to Lalli, who appeared to have fallen asleep.
“Excuse me, who’s that red-haired teacher?” he asked, tapping an older student on the shoulder.
“Oh, her?” the student said, chuckling. “That’s Sigrun. You’ll have her class tomorrow morning, if you’re lucky. Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
“Ah,” Emil said, watching Sigrun laugh loudly.
As the other student turned away, Emil heard her say, “Just wait ‘til the newbies get Professor Sigrun’s class. They’re so doomed.”
Emil was about to tap her on the shoulder again and ask her just what she meant, but then it was time for the headmaster, the legendary Trond, to give a speech, and after that it was time to dig into the heaps of delicious food, and by the time the feast was over, he had forgotten all about it.
A prefect led him upstairs, through the portrait of the fat lady in pink silk (the password was Devil’s Snare), into the common room, up the stairs. He ended up sharing a room with Lalli and two other boys. The last thing he saw before falling asleep was Lalli sitting on the windowsill, staring at the stars.
