Terry Boot and the Masochist's Boulder

As the first years climbed out of the tiny, leaky, magically powered boats, they were greeted by a foreboding rocky shore line, and an even more foreboding castle.

"We're living in a dungeon?" Terry asked aloud, thinking he'd been tricked by his grandparents into living in squalor.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," Hagrid told them. "Best wizarding school in the world."

"I guess it's a real fixer upper," Lisa said, turning up her nose at the moss infested stone that was the castle.

"No wonder," Mandy muttered. "Dumbledore's in charge."

"Blasphemy!" Hagrid shouted, trying to smite them with his umbrella. "I don't take no guff from firs years like you. 'Specially when it involves puttin' down Dumbledore. That man saved me life, ya hear? He gave me a second chance here with ya kids, to nurture ya and stuff."

"Dumbledore's even crueler than we imagined," Lisa murmured.

"Dumbledore is the one who lost my leg!" Terry exclaimed.

"That's it, you," Hagrid said, advancing on poor Terry. "I don't like yer lies."

Terry tried to recoil, and fell in the lake. Satisfied, Hagrid led the children up toward the castle and in through the great, oak front doors.

When they got to the main castle proper, all the first years were gathered into the main hall, and were told to wait.

"I'm so excited!" Terry squealed, looking at Lisa and Mandy. "I've never had anything to really be excited about before!"

"I'll believe it," Lisa told Terry, gently patting him on the shoulder. "But you'll have to calm down for now. I don't want you falling over again or anything."

Suddenly a door was swung open, right into Terry's face. He was thrown against the stone wall, and vaguely heard Hagrid tell someone that they had arrived.

"Yay," moaned Terry. "I've made it to Hogwarts."

Mandy helped Terry straighten up, and they both hobbled back to the main group; one because of an absent leg, and the other because of the weight of a crippled boy on her shoulder. You guess who is who.

"Who's that?" Terry whispered to Lisa, sending sprays of Terry spit all over her Hogwarts robes.

"Professor McGonagall," Lisa answered, just as the woman was leaving. "She told us to wait here, while she goes back into the Great Hall. We're going to be sorted soon!"

"Sorted?" asked Terry, afraid that it was something only people with two legs could do.

"Yes," explained Lisa. "They're going to tell us which house we're going to be in."

"I'm going to be in Slytherin or Gryffindor," Terry told his new friends proudly. "My parents were in those houses."

"Uhm, sure Terry, reach for the stars," Mandy told him.

"I hope I studied enough," the buck toothed girl from the train mumbled next to them.

"Don't worry," Terry told her, smiling. "They won't quiz us or test us on anything."

"How do you know?" she asked him, curious.

"Because," Terry told her, drawing out the word. "They wanted me here, and I'm crippled and kind of dumb."

The girl smiled at Terry. "Why, you're absolutely right! Of course you're dumb and crippled. They wouldn't test me, because then they'd have to test you, too. Thanks!"

Terry smiled, and his expression quickly turned to one of shock. Floating in through the wall were about twenty ghosts, all of them making faces at the students, obviously attempting to frighten them.

"What the fuck?!" Harry Potter screamed, pulling out his wand. "Kill them again!"

The bucktoothed girl, who Mandy had gathered was named Hermione, said, "You can't kill ghosts twice. I read that in Hogwarts, A Blood Spattered History. Very interesting light reading material, if I do say so myself."

"And you do," Mandy quipped.

"Those are dead people?" Terry asked, clearly confused about the fact that these transparent people were communicating from beyond the grave.

"Hello there," a ghost said, smiling, as she floated up to Terry.

"No!" Terry shouted. "Stop trying to frighten and kill me!"

"Terry, that's the ghost of Matilda Dumbledore," Hermione explained, rolling her eyes in Terry's direction.

"Oh yeah! The woman who ruined Dumbledore," Terry blurted out.

"I didn't read that in any books about Hogwarts," Hermione pondered.

"That man only ruined himself," retorted Matilda.

Suddenly, the doors were opened again, and the first years were told to move on through into the Great Hall. When Terry looked up at the ceiling, he noticed that there was just a huge, gaping hole where the roof should have been.

"These people are more destitute than we thought," Lisa commented.

"Actually," Hermione explained, "it's enchanted to look like the sky outside. I read that in Buildings of Britain That Are Missing Ceilings, A History, Abridged."

Terry tried to absorb this, along with the fact that these people didn't have electricity. All of the floating candles were starting to make him nervous. He didn't want to offend someone and have them enchant a candle to set him on fire. Getting set on fire was something Terry had learned not to enjoy. He sympathized a little with Matilda, even though she had been burned at the stake, and Terry had only been burned with a hot, fireplace poker.

Terry started getting nervous. There were too many people around. What if he did something really stupid, and people finally noticed for once? Terry's knees would have been knocking together, if he had more than one.

The first years were gathered together at the front of the room. Terry felt the eyes of the rest of the students on his back. He was hoping that no one was staring openly at his missing leg. He hated when people gawked, laughed, burned, and threw things at him.

Professor McGonagall put a hat on a stool in front of the first years, and then stepped back. The hat cleared its throat, if that's possible, and started to sing in a throaty falsetto.

Welcome, you little shits

To your brand new life

I'll kill you in your sleep

With my rusty, metal knife

So you'd better watch your back

Don't step out of the lines

Cause Dumbledore's a madman

And he'll break open all your spines

You can't run from me

And you certainly can't hide

Cause everything you think

I can see it there, inside

You might belong to Gryffindor

And if you do, tough luck

Because if you're looking for sympathy

They don't give a fuck

Or maybe you're for Hufflepuff

Enjoy your stay in hell

They're really fat and boring

And that's all I'm going to tell

Or perhaps in Ravenclaw

Is where you'll find your keep

I'd tell you more about them

But then I'd fall asleep

Or yet stuck in Slytherin

Those snooty, stuck up, bores

They're a bunch of momma's boys

And the girls are all fucking whores

So buck it up! Shut your trap!

It's time to learn your fate

You're all a bunch of wankers

So what are you scared of, mate?

Of course, Terry has the attention span of a five year old, so he didn't hear all the words correctly, but when the hat was done, he applauded just as loudly as everyone else. Then McGonagall began reading names. Terry was excited. She was doing it in alphabetical order, and though Terry didn't really know his alphabet, he knew that "Boot" was somewhere near the beginning. Maybe even the first letter!

Well, Terry wasn't the first, obviously, but soon enough he was called up to the stool. Whispers and murmurs were shooting around the Great Hall.

"I don't believe it!" a third year said, mouth flying open. "He's crippled!"

"A crippled kid at Hogwarts?" a boy asked, scratching his head.

Terry got himself settled on the stool, and then the sorting hat was plopped unceremoniously on his head.

Immediately, he heard a voice from inside the hat speaking to him.

"Hmm...yes, I see," the sorting hat mumbled in a croaking, cracking voice. "Yes, yes, there's a lot of...zzzzzzz."

Terry wondered if the sorting hat fell asleep for everyone, but he got the sinking suspicion that this was its first time. "Ahem, sorting hat?" Terry asked it. "Can you wake up and sort me, please?"

"Whoa, did I fall asleep?" the hat asked, puzzled.

"Yeah," said Terry. "On my head."

"Hey, sorry kid," the sorting hat told Terry. "That's never happened before. You must be the heir to...RAVENCLAW!" it shouted to the Great Hall.

Terry tumbled off the stool, and went to sit at the Ravenclaw table, which would have broken into applause, if everyone hadn't been so shocked at Terry's deformity, and the fact that he was, actually, in their house. Shortly after he was sorted, his friends Mandy and Lisa were put into Ravenclaw as well.

After the ceremony was over, and everyone was done applauding for Zabini, Blaise, who strolled ambiguously down to the Slytherin table, Dumbledore got down to the business of telling everyone, while he was in a drunken stupor, what to do.

Terry wasn't exactly listening, because he was too busy watching Dumbledore weave all over the podium he was standing on. But he thought he heard Dumbledore say something very odd.

"Welcome," Dumbledore greeted, "to a new year at this cesspool. Before we begin our feast, I'd like to say a few words, and here they are: Take! Terry! Leg! I! Your! Will! Other! Try to figure that one out, jackasses!"

"Is he a bit touched in the head?" Lisa asked to no one in particular.

"No, he's just drunk and ruined," Terry said. "At least, that's what Professor Snape told me. I hope I have him for a teacher. He's a really nice guy, and he even saved my life!"

Terry tried to wave at Professor Snape, but his friendly greeting was returned with a fist shake and a mouthed, "Don't test me boy."

Just then their empty plates were suddenly filled with tons of steaming food. There were things on Terry's plate that he had never known existed, like corn and beef.

"Pass the gruel and rocks, please," Terry asked. And when no one replied, he asked, "What? What did I say?"

"Terry," Lisa began. "Eat what's on your plate. We'll worry about rocks and gruel later, okay?"

"All right!" Terry said, thinking he had compromised.

When dinner was over, Dumbledore stood up, and silenced the room with a wave of his hand.

"Ahem!" he coughed. "Shut up, you little ingrates! Now that you've eaten all of my food, I have a few things to tell you, so listen up, or else. First of all, stay the hell out of my forest. I keep a bootlegging business in there, and I don't want you kids looting my goods," Dumbledore glared at the Hufflepuff table. "Second, Filch wants you to keep your grubby hands off your wands when you're in the corridors. Third, we'll have tryouts for that broom game we all know and love and that shouldn't be named," he looked warily at the authors. "I advise none of you to try out, as the teams have already been picked by the Heads of Houses. Finally, the third floor corridor, on the right hand side, is out of bounds, and if anyone catches you even thinking about going in there, I'll kill you myself. And now, before we go to bed, let's sing the school song. I had better hear all of you," he finished, glaring at Slytherin.

Once again, Terry had failed to pay attention, so when everyone around him and at the surrounding tables began to sing, he was quite taken by surprise.

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, ridiculously named Hogwarts

That creates the bonds between wizards young and old

Don't go making friends in other houses, though

Listen, and do as you are told.

We're a bunch of stupid wizards

And to be political, witches, too

Hogwarts should have higher standards

But then it would have excluded you

This song is really just filler

Don't bother memorizing a word

Even though nothing in it makes sense

The original was far more absurd

After the singing of the school song, they were supposed to be lead to their dorms by a Ravenclaw prefect, but Peeves the, untrustworthy poltergeist, got to them first. The first years, not really knowing anything about how Hogwarts or its system worked, blindly followed Peeves into the castle.

As a result of this error by the Ravenclaw first years, and their scared prefects, the first years ended up in an underground catacomb where Peeves tried to convince Terry to hobble his way into an occupied tomb.

"I may not be the brightest wizard in the herd, but I don't think I should be laying on the scattered remains of this mummified corpse," Terry said warily, and then yelped in terror as his stump physically twitched, a searing shot of pain traveled through his entire body.

"Youch!" Terry clapped a hand to his stump, as the mummified corpse sat up and placed a cold, scaly hand on Terry's shoulder. The first years screamed in terror as the turban topped mummy stood.

"Oh, that's just Professor Quirrell," Mandy said, realizing the corpse was really just a hunched over man covered in his own feces. Quirrell attempted to look offended, but part of his turban fell off, and he had to run off to deal with that, moonwalking out of the room.

"Indeed it is," said a disembodied voice from the corner of the room. There was a long dramatic pause, and then Snape stepped forward, his arms outstretched in a manner that made him appear to be some sort of bat...man....boy.

"Hey, it's my good friend Professor Snape!" Terry bellowed, smiling broadly. Snape sneered back at him, whipping out a small Zippo lighter, and lighting it in a menacing manner. "He started me on fire!" Terry added proudly.

"I best lead you miscreants up to your dorms," Snape said coldly, glaring at the poltergeist, the flames of his lighter licking at his sleeves. "And you Peeves, I will deal with you later." Peeves cackled, and disappeared.

So, Snape led the scarred for life, rag tag group of Ravenclaws to the dorms, and then slithered off to glare suspiciously at Harry Potter.

It was right before Terry climbed the stairs to bed that he remembered something that had been pressing on his mind since he had put on the sorting hat. He thought that since Lisa was the smartest and one of the only people he knew, he'd ask her.

"Hey, Lisa," Terry called over to his slender comrade who was climbing the girl's staircase. "How can someone be an 'air'?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow, Terry," she told him, kind of confused as to how he couldn't have known what it was on his own.

Terry, satisfied with her answer, climbed the staircase to his own dormitory, and when he got up there, he gave a gasp of delight. His trunks were already unpacked, and lo and behold, there was an actual bed for Terry to sleep in.

"No more holes or showers for me," he said to himself, his roommates looking at him oddly. He would have asked them what their names were, but he was really tired, and it really didn't matter in the end.

Terry got ready for bed, and climbed in between the smooth, soft blankets. He laid his blond head on the pillow, and sighed in contentment. Hogwarts was full of surprises, and so far, Terry hadn't been hurt...at least too badly.