Stay

Susan was right. In hindsight it made all too much sense, that a school built only for girls in a society made entirely of girls wouldn't have anything separate for a gender that wasn't present. After taking a moment to consider his options and a deep breath to calm himself, Harry answered her.

"It's definitely new, but I have a feeling there will be quite a few new things in my life in the next few days. So long as you aren't getting naked or anything I'm fine to stay in the compartment."

"No, no, I'm keeping my underwear on," she quickly replied. "You're also good with me staying in here while you change? I can step out if you'd like."

"It would be a little unfair of me to stay here while you changed and then ask you to give me more privacy than I gave you," Harry replied. As he did, he set his trunk on the table across from Susan's and opened it to take a set of his own robes out. He braced himself before looking up from his trunk, but nothing that he did could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him.

Harry was by no means a stranger to the female body. He had female friends in secondary school whom he would occasionally go to the gym with, and they had worn swimsuits during physical education that were certainly more revealing than normal clothing. Even though he'd never had a girlfriend or been in a physical relationship, he wasn't blind to half of the population.

Susan, however, was different from his high school friends. She was the first witch his age that he had ever known, and they had formed a friendship over the train ride that was as strong as nearly any other that he had in his life.

Also, as he looked up to see her finishing unbuttoning her blouse and taking it off, she probably had more volume of breast than every other female friend he had ever had combined. Her bra was barely straining, possibly due to some magical effect, and they moved in a way that he couldn't draw his eyes away from as her shoulders shook while taking the blouse off.

The robes in his hands were forgotten as he continued watching her change. Her pants were the next to go, and while the rest of her body was nowhere near as endowed as her chest was she was still a beautiful young woman. The process seemed to blur past as she unfolded her robes and secured them around her, a curtain of dark fabric bringing closure to the spectacle he had been watching.

In a rush, he realized what he had been doing and with an embarrassed blush on his face he began changing as well. He could feel her eyes on him as he did so, mostly focused on his upper body after he took his shirt off. He knew that he was fairly toned, both from the track and field events that he competed in during secondary school and his own time in the gym, but he supposed that it was also the first time that she had seen a boy changing as well.

He couldn't fault her, though. It wasn't like he hadn't been doing the same just a minute ago.

After fumbling with his shoes and taking the pair of jeans that he had been wearing off, Harry too pulled his robes around his shoulders and secured the clasp at the collar. The magic sewn into the robes then took effect, no less interesting this time than when he had first tried them on after getting home from Diagon Alley. Loose fabric attached with a mind of its own, turning an open robe into a closed one without even a visible seam.

It took him a moment to get his shoes back on and collect his clothes, but when he looked at Susan she was blushing more than it felt like he was. In hindsight, Harry could only thank whatever gods existed that he hadn't gotten an erection from watching Susan change, as that would have made everything so much more awkward.

"You... this may sound weird, but you've got a lot of muscle on you." Susan broke the uneasy silence this time as she folded up the clothes that she had taken off to put away in her trunk. "Are all boys like that?"

Harry shook his head. "Just like with girls, it's the result of a lot of exercise. I did sports in secondary school, and a few of my friends and I went to the gym on a pretty regular basis outside of that."

He busied himself with folding his shirt and pants up as well, tucking them into the trunk before him before closing it and putting it back in the overhead bin. Susan finished soon after him, and he took her proffered trunk and placed it in the overhead storage next to his. The two of them made small talk for the remainder of the train ride, both of them a little too distracted by what had just happened to have any meaningful conversation.

Eventually the train came to a halt, and Harry and Susan were waiting at the exit as it unlocked. Silver was perched on his shoulder, looking around as they stepped out onto the platform of Hogsmeade Station. It was well-lit, and as two of the first students to get out of the train they were able to get a good view before the platform became full of students. There were two exits to the platform, one opening into a group of old-fashioned horse drawn carriages that looked to be floating without any horses and the other occupied by a familiarly large figure.

"Hagard!" Harry called, waving at the giant woman who had helped him with his school shopping. She returned the gesture before bringing a hand to her mouth to make an announcement.

"Firs' years, over here! Firs' years!"

Harry and Susan quickly made their way over, able to make it before the main area became a flow of older students heading in a different direction. Hagard smiled upon seeing Harry, patting him on the back with slightly more force than one usually did. "Good to see you're doin' well, Harry. I see you've made yourself a friend."

Susan stepped forwards at that, almost offering her hand before looking at Hagard's massively larger ones and deciding that it would be an ineffective gesture. "My name is Susan, it's nice to meet you. Harry told me a bit about you, but you're definitely taller than I expected.

"Good to meet you too, Susan. I was talkin' about this cutie here, though." As she spoke, Hagard lifted a finger near to Silver's head. "Haven't seen anything like 'er before."

Silver considered Hagard's finger for a moment before leaving it, returning to looking at the sea of students slowly sorting themselves out.

"She's probably just a bit overwhelmed, happens to a lot of the young ones. Maybe bring 'er by some time or another and I'll take a better look." Hagard dropped her hand as she returned to her announcement voice. "Firs' years, over here!"

A few minutes of chaos and a quick boat ride across the lake later, the class of first year students was all grouped together following Hagard into the castle. Harry found himself the recipient of quite a few stares and the subject of a lot of whispered conversation around him, but for the moment nobody had approached him, all too busy keeping up with Hagard's pace. There were a few girls who were more obvious than others with their stares - a brown-haired girl who looked more confused than anything, a shorter girl who was almost drooling, and an extremely pale girl whose expression was too complicated for him to easily discern what was behind it.

Hagard led them into a massive room with far too much to look at - a ceiling that seemed to disappear into the night sky, four massive tables that were each about half full of older students, and one smaller one at the far end of the hall filled with older women who were probably the other teachers. Finally, far in front of them, was a stool with an extremely old-looking hat perched upon it.

Their journey to the back of the hall came to a stop just before the teacher's table and the stool with the hat. Hagard motioned for them to stay where they were and continued walking, making her way to the empty seat at the far end of the table to join her fellow teachers. At the same time, a woman seated near the center of the table stood up. She was wearing green robes and had greying hair, but had a gaze that seemed to pierce through him as it swept through the crowd of standing first-year students. At the same time, the low murmur of conversation that had been ongoing since they had walked into the hall died a silent death.

"Greetings to all of you and welcome to Hogwarts School of Magic. To our returning students, welcome back; to our new students, thank you for coming. As some of you know, my name is Minerva McGonagall and I am the professor of transfiguration and the deputy headmistress here. In a moment, I will call our first-year students one-by one to be sorted into one of the four houses established by the founders of the school."

She paused for a moment to clear her throat before continuing. "Our four houses represent the four ideals that each and every witch should strive to possess, but being sorted into one house does not preclude any of the other traits, rather displaying a natural affinity for one of them. Gryffindors represent bravery, risk-taking, and innovation; Hufflepuffs represent kindness, protectiveness, and stability; Ravenclaws represent studiousness, rigor, and determination; and Slytherins represent ambition, cunning, and patience. I hope that in your time at Hogwarts, each and every one of you comes to appreciate each of these qualities no matter where you are sorted."

With that, she pushed her chair back and walked around the back of the teacher's table, pulling a scroll out of the pocket of her robes as she did so. She made her way to a spot next to the stool with the hat before speaking again.

"When I call your name, you will come up here and sit on this stool and I will place the Sorting Hat on your head. The Sorting Hat will judge your personality and inclinations before sorting you into a house. The process varies greatly from student to student - those who are already heavily predisposed to a certain house's qualities will be faster than those who have more balanced characters. If you hear the hat talking to you, feel free to respond. It has been greatly enchanted for privacy, and on top of nobody being able to hear what you say or read your lips while wearing it, it will not be able to disclose anything about you to anybody else, even myself or Headmistress Dumbledore. When you have been sorted, you will go to the table of your house, denoted by the placard on the ends of the table.. Are there any questions?"

Seeing none, she waited about ten seconds before unrolling the top section of the scroll.

"Abbot, Hannah."

One of the girls standing towards the front of the group of first-years walked up to the stool and sat down. For a moment after the Sorting Hat was placed on her head there was a bit of a blur around her, but it quickly cleared up as the hat's brim parted and a woman's voice called "HUFFLEPUFF!" lord enough to echo through the hall. She stood up and looked around for a moment for the table before walking to the one with a yellow tablecloth. As soon as she was seated, the professor called out the next name on the list.

"Bones, Susan!"

"Wish me luck," she whispered before walking up to the stool and taking a seat. A few seconds later, the Sorting Hat cried out "HUFFLEPUFF!" once more, and she joined Hannah at the same table.

The sorting continued, with the variety that professor McGonagall had alluded to in her speech. Some students were sorted quickly, like the blonde-haired Lucia Malfoy who had barely taken a seat before the hat cried "SLYTHERIN!" to a wave of cheers from the table to the far left of the room. Others, like a nervous-looking girl named Hermione Granger, sat on the chair for several minutes before the Sorting Hat settled on a house, in her case Gryffindor.

Eventually, the moment that Harry had been waiting for arrived.

"Potter, Harry!"

Upon hearing his name and seeing him walk up to the stool, the formerly silent hall filled with whispers and conversation. Harry did his best to ignore it and took a seat on the stool, but the Sorting Hat wasn't placed on his head as he expected. Instead, he heard the professor's voice calling out from her position next to him, sharper than it had been before.

"Silence!"

Harry didn't know if she had used a spell or if she was just that intimidating, but the results left either one a real possibility. The hall immediately became silent but for the sounds of the hearth and the torches lining the walls, leaving room for the professor to speak.

"There is no excuse for any of you to disrupt this ceremony, no matter what you may think. I am aware of the unusual circumstances present, but you are all adult women and I expect you to act like it. Each of you will afford him the same respect and solemnity that you received when you were sorted at the beginning of your first years. If you cannot manage this, then we can make Hogwarts history by issuing detentions before the welcome feast even begins. Am I clear?"

In the silence that followed, Harry turned to look up at the woman standing next to him. Her expression was severe, slowly panning across the room as she judged their reception of her reprimand. Once she was finished, she turned to look at Harry and lightly smiled.

"I am sorry for the commotion, mister Potter. We will proceed with your sorting now."

Harry faced forwards, and a moment later the hat fell onto his head and he closed his eyes.

"Well, aren't you an interesting one?" The same female voice that had called out each house name now spoke in a conversational tone, as if speaking directly into his ear. "Male, for starters, but no person can be solely defined by their gender. Raised by your grandparents, well-adjusted for the new members of magical society. Not acclimated yet, but who could expect you to be. And on top of that, there's that interesting expression of your magic."

Harry remained quiet, getting a sense that the hat liked to listen to itself talk. It made some sense - probably it wasn't on anybody's head for most of the year, and if he were in its place he would want to talk with or at whoever he could when given the opportunity.

"That's kind of you, Harry, but right now we're not here to talk about me. You are, as I said, interesting. I could just as easily place you in any of the four houses, but I'm going to try saying some things and seeing how you react to determine my decision."

"My first inclination was to place you in Hufflepuff, where your new friend was sorted. It's good, in my experience, to keep friends together, and the rest of the house would treat you well. You would have many friends, but at the cost of the challenge that pushes one to grow."

"After that, I saw your 'wishing' and began leaning towards Slytherin. You didn't make any vast, sweeping changes other than some that would give you more time to understand the new world you were entering and gain a bit of safety on the way - classic Slytherin mindset. Patient, cunning, and it's hard to argue with your results. That house might not give you many friends, but it would push you in ways that Hufflepuff could never accomplish."

"Gryffindor, however, embodies half of my opinion on your character. Despite possessing such power, you have not used it to take advantage of anyone, maintaining an upright character that few people I've ever met could claim. It may not be the brave or innovative option, but is inherently taking a risk to enter a strange new world and have your first decision to be to create a dragon as a pet rather than to wish for knowledge about it or safety within it. Going there would give you an environment comfortable enough to not worry while still challenging you enough to cause growth."

"The other half, however, is solidly Ravenclaw. You planned your wishes out, thinking before acting, and did your best to ensure that your wishes were accomplishing your intent without potentially causing problems. Throughout your life you have been a studious and disciplined individual, and though you might not find many friends in Ravenclaw you would certainly find your peers."

With that, the Hat's voice became quiet as Harry turned over what it had told him in his mind. He was aware that it was watching his thoughts, and that it was probably aware that he was aware, and so on. Before he even knew which one of the houses he preferred, let alone which he was most suited for, the Sorting Hat spoke up once again.

"Well, I've made my decision. I hope that you'll enjoy it, and do feel free to visit me at any time. You'll find your place in..."