Sorting Error

Chapter 2

Snips and Snails

Hermione threw her book down on her bed and stared at the red rose wallpaper, furious. She didn't know why Ron and Harry were fighting, and this time she didn't care. They'd treated the history she'd found like some trashy romance novel, another book, meaningless, unworthy of their time. But this was important! It was a genuine injustice! Hogwarts had been segregated even in their grandparents' time, divided into girls' houses (Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff) and boys' houses (Gryffindor and Slytherin), yet nobody ever mentioned it, nobody even cared, nobody ever discussed the rampant sexism that made a girl in arithmancy-- not so long ago, a girl in Gryffindor-- just a fish out of water.

To be fair, Hermione hadn't wanted to believe the story, either. She'd wanted the wizarding world to be different, better and kinder than the ordinary one. But it obviously wasn't. Prejudice was rampant, against house-elves and werewolves and Squibs and everyone else. The Minister of Magic stayed human and male despite obvious incompetence. Why should she be surprised that the founders of Hogwarts were as blind? It all seemed so natural, now that she thought about it. Of course Godric Gryffindor had admitted brave fighting males, and Salazar Slytherin had wanted ambitious ones. It was the tenth century. Women weren't allowed to rule things. They were stuck remembering complicated embroidery patterns, and helping the servants clean up after the menfolk. Poor Helga Hufflepuff had probably done nothing else, her whole life long.

Hermione had done her own share of cleaning up after the menfolk. This time, though, Harry and Ron could solve their quarrel on their own. In the meantime Hermione would continue her research. She had questions about a great number of things: Voldemort's disappearance, Dumbledore's mysterious defeat, the way the Hat had bowed so charmingly to the staff table . . . She could investigate on her own. And study hard for her classes, and wait.

Hermione pulled out a sheet of parchment, sat down at her desk, and went to work. Suspicions, she wrote. One. Sibyll Trelawney cannot be qualified--

There was a loud crack! and Hermione whirled around, wand at the ready. She was met by two perfectly matching, brilliant smiles.

"Fred! George!" They had startled her again. Hermione was not at all pleased. "If you do that one more time, I'm going to curse you into the next end of tomorrow, and don't think I can't, you know there are laws against disturbing the peace that justify all sorts of self-defence and what in God's name are you doing in my bedroom?"

"Look," George said, "We wanted to talk to you quietly, right?"

"And if you think I'm going to talk to you at all, when I know perfectly well you wasted a very good income on speculation in Dark Lord brand candy, of all things, and your father's money too, and here all your brothers are walking on eggshells and fighting with their best friends in the whole world--"

"She can't have believed that?" said Fred.

"I think she did," said George.

"Hermione, stop!" cried Fred.

Hermione stopped. She sat uneasily at the edge of her desk chair.

"You can't honestly have believed we were that bad at maths?"

She didn't answer.

The twins looked at each other, uneasily. "Guess she did, mate."

"Right, then."

"So it's like this," George explained. "We made it up. Figured the business was getting dull: inventing is all well and good, but when you're scraping the sixth stolen candy out of the mouth of the sixteenth snot-nosed brat . . . We didn't go to all that trouble just to sit about in a shop."

"Sold the business for a tidy profit," Fred added. "Kept a few shares, of course."

"And then we called the Daily Prophet, pretended we were hard up for cash, sat back, and laughed. Not bad advertising, you know, being in the Prophet. And Dad didn't mind what we said about him, once we told him our plans."

"Some of our plans," Fred corrected.

Hermione sighed. "Why--"

"We're spying," said Fred.

"And this is Harry's last year," said George.

"So all the fun will be at Hogwarts," said Fred.

"Besides--" George began.

But Fred hushed him. "You'll forgive us, right? You'll help work out what's going on? You'll share that list of yours?"

Now it was George's turn for hushing. They both looked at Hermione, brown eyes open wide.

"All right, all right," she said. "I forgive you. But you have to hear about this book . . ."

Fred cleared his throat. "In a minute."

"What?"

"We have something else to tell you."

"What now?"

"Oh, just that we thought we'd take a couple of the NEWTs, while we were hanging about."

"You're actually going to take the exams? But that's wonderful. I had no idea! It's very prestigious, you know, and you'll have all sorts of experience now. I can help you revise, I've already started, I've made up a list of topics and then of course there's the practical side, though I'm sure you'll do wonders there. Which NEWTs will you take? When will you begin?" Hermione swept the twins into an excited hug. They were finally being serious!

Fred and George shifted in her embrace for a minute, perhaps slightly surprised, and then settled back. Fred had his arm around her shoulders; George winked at her, and slipped his arm around her waist. "We'll do Charms or something," said George. "We know all that stuff anyway. But that's not what Fred meant to say, really. Hermione, we've been thinking--"

"-- if you're not too smart for us--"

"-- and cute, and responsible--"

"-- Can we kiss you?"

"What?" They had to be joking again. Yes, they were flirting a little-- but the twins would flirt with fish if the fish winked back. Hermione had learned not to expect anything of them long ago.

"No, really, it's like this," said George. "We like you, a lot."

"But we thought that Viktor chap had first dibs."

"But Ginny said you only wanted to learn German and Bulgarian, and look at bookshops."

"So we thought we had a chance."

"You can't mean what you're saying," Hermione told them. After all, she thought a little sadly, they almost never did.

Both boys were quiet for a moment. They turned inward to face her, both staring into her eyes. Their lashes were all gold, Hermione noticed, with just a rim of shadow at the tips. If she wasn't careful she would start to believe them.

"Did you even mean it about the NEWTs?" Hermione asked, trying to distract herself.

"Oh, yeah, of course." Fred seemed surprised. "We wanted a loan, see? And Bill said we weren't getting one without either twenty years' experience, or some credentials."

"A loan? For what?"

"Told you one shop got dull, right?"

"Right . . ." Hermione said slowly.

"So we thought we'd start some more. Hire ourselves some decent employees. It's going to be Weasley, LLC, by the time we're done!" Fred did his best to bow importantly while maintaining an arm around her shoulders.

Hermione nodded to him and smiled a little. They seemed serious about this, anyway. Maybe . . . They were all silent for a while.

Finally George spoke. "Let us kiss you? Please?"

Hermione watched a rosebud bloom on her wall. This wasn't at all responsible. But she had to know what would happen next. "I guess you can," she said. "If you want."

The twins grinned so wide it was a wonder they had faces left. "Such passion!"

"True love!"

"Carry her to the bed, mate!"

They swept Hermione up in their arms, and were as good as their word. Fred concentrated on nibbling her ears, while George seemed intent on removing her left boot and examining her toes. Hermione just laughed. That was really all you could do with the twins most of the time, was laugh. But as Fred set a line of kisses down her neck, and as George carefully undid one article of clothing after another, her laughter grew more and more breathless, until at last she seized one boy or the other and did her very best to kiss him into submission . . .

It was several hours before they were all sufficiently vertical to begin discussing Hermione's discoveries and the Sorting Hat's behavior, and hours more before they were finished. Hermione drifted off to sleep as the birds sang outside her window, thinking drowsily that boys had their uses after all.

***

Harry slouched back in his chair and stared glumly at the class. Hermione and Ron were sitting together in the center of the room. Hermione seemed a little red around the eyes-- she had probably been awake all night, swotting up for their first day-- and Ron was staring grimly ahead. For a moment Harry wondered if he could throw something at Ron, and make him look round. A class with Trelawney just wouldn't be the same, without his best friend snickering beside him.

But they weren't best friends, any more. Ron liked Viktor better.

Harry's reverie was interrupting by a loud swishing sound. Trelawney was coming into the classroom, wearing enough red velvet for two or three women. It was hung all about with green tassels, which shivered and whispered against each other as she walked.

"Dear children," Trelawney said in a low voice--

Children! Harry thought angrily. Bet I'd seen more danger than even you could imagine before my third year was out!

--"My children, I have had a Revelation. Great evil lurks about this place, but it is hovering, hovering. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will return, but not until Yuletide. Thus, we will study the colors of Yule and the things of Christmas, so that we may be ready when he returns."

Hermione raised her hand immediately.

Trelawney continued, gaining volume as she went. "I will require watchfulness of you, my children. Bravery and watchfulness. Live as I do, with red and green ever before you, ever beside you. In the morning, at night, beside your pillow, until the last day dawns . . ."

"Huh, guess I should stay around here at Christmas and watch the fun," Dean Thomas whispered to Harry.

"And now, let us practice turning one into the other." A string of very green frogs hopped onto their desks.

Hermione's hand was still in the air. "Professor? Professor Trelawney, please?"

"Hermione? Is this relevant?"

"Professor, we need to study eighth-level transmutations for the NEWTs. That means imbuing-metals-with-refining-spirits, and a permanency charm. We did color changes for the OWLs."

"Young lady, this is important. The fate of the whole world may rest upon the way you know the things of Yule! By contradicting me you only feed the Powers of Darkness . . ." The tassels on her robes quivered like snails' eyes.

"But Professor-- "

"Silence, my child, and learn your lesson well."

Hermione picked up her wand hopelessly. She spent the rest of the class producing magenta frogs. They clashed horribly with Trelawney's clothing. Harry made his frog an even Gryffindor red, and wished it was poisonous. A poisonous tree-frog could get him out of Quidditch practice, and then he wouldn't have to talk to Ron.

***

Percy stood in front of his desk and did his best to smile. Fifty Hufflepuffs! They barely fit into the room-- most of them were squeezed three or four to a desk. What on earth was he going to do with them all? But he mustn't let himself be pessimistic. These were Hufflepuffs. They were bound to be cheerful, and work hard.

"All right, class," he said. "I am Professor Weasley, and I will be teaching you about potions."

"Weaselly!" someone whispered.

Percy stared straight ahead, and tried to go on smiling. "First thing we're going to do is discuss safety. Why don't you all get out your cauldrons . . ."

About a quarter of the class produced cauldrons. One child dumped his bag out on his desk, found nothing, and ran out of the room in a panic. The rest scuffled, muttered, and rustled papers.

"Cauldrons, class! Cauldrons!"

The skinny boy Percy had noticed last night grinned madly and set a teacup on his desk. Everyone else went on scuffling.

"Could you all be quiet, please?"

Something in the back row exploded. Percy recognized with horror the distinctive boom of one of Fred and George's creations.

"Class?"

The skinny boy poured something from a silver flask into its teacup. The fluid shot into the air, whistling "Wizard Wheezes, Wheezy Wizards!"

"Twenty points from Hufflepuff! Look, if you'll all just calm down . . ." Percy didn't understand. What was wrong with this class? Where was their sense of respect for authority? Percy wanted to be a well-loved teacher, the sort that he would have found admirable, inspiring, yet all he could do was squeak and complain. They were ruining his first day as a professor. It was not at all fair.

Someone was humming Pop Goes the Weasel! Percy felt his anger boil over. He put on his best prefectly look, and prepared to scream. "Class! You will now be silent, or you will spend the rest of the week in detention as toads!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," said a woman's voice, in a classic American twang. "Did I come at a bad time?"

Madame Beauregarde stood by the door, in impeccable green and silver. Percy glared at the silver bell at the point of her hat, and hoped the accent wasn't put on to mock him somehow. "Did you need something, Madame?" he asked.

"I just hoped to peek at the new students." She glanced across the rows. "All so black, like lines of crows! When I was at Hogwarts, the girls' robes were a lovely shade of blue. It matched my eyes so beautifully . . ."

"Thank you, Madame," said Percy. "Class, this is Madame Beauregarde. She teaches Divination, so you won't have any courses with her just yet. Now I'm sure Madame Beauregarde is very busy, so we'll all set to work." Percy turned his back, and wrote IMPORTANT SAFETY RULES on the board. The cauldrons had been a mistake; he would spend the rest of the period lecturing. Maybe the story of Ethelred the Extremely Careless would frighten them into submission.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Percy didn't have leisure to think until he was hanging his robes carefully in the wardrobe and stepping into bed; not even to wonder why the new Head of Slytherin had worn blue as a child.