Minnie [#Wattys2017]

The Sorting Hat's Song

The Sorting Hat's Song

"FIRST YEARRRRRRS! OVER HERE, FIRST YEARRRRRRRS!" The voice was loud and booming and echoed over the sound of the hissing steam engine, shouting students, hooting owls, meowing cats, and ribbiting toads. Minerva looked about through the smoke and fog being released by the great scarlet engine, holding Mia Black's hand firmly in her own, protective of the smaller girl, and Pud's cage in her other, squinting to find the source of the voice.

"Yeh heard 'im... firs' years over here!" cried a second voice.

Minnie pulled Mia over the crowded platform until they'd found two men - one was a thick mountainous looking man - brawny was the only word Minnie could think of to describe his wide muscles and square, unshaven jaw. But beside him was what appeared to be a younger man, though much bigger, with wild hair that stuck out at all odd angles and a round, pudgy face. The younger man had dust-bin lid sized hands and a heavy accent.

"Righ' this'a way there, lit'le ones," said the younger one, waving several first years - including Florean Fortescue and Filius Flitwick - along toward a sloping path, "Righ' that'a way, there yeh go..." He looked and saw Minnie and Mia staring up at him and said, "Hello, then. 'Ow was yer trip?"

"Very good, thank you," Minnie answered politely, though she stared up at him with awe upon her face.

The man smiled brightly, "Me name's Rubeus, and this here's Ogg. He's the groundskeeper o' Hogwarts an' I'm his assistant. Our job's ter get you lot safely ter Hogwarts - ceremonially fer yeh first time, yeh see. Hope yeh ain't afraid of no boats."

Minnie shook her head. She loved the ferry boat that carried them to and from Orkney and Shetland back home. The Pentland Firth Ferry was one of her favorite things about visiting the isles north of Caithness County, which their family had done every year for as long as she could remember in the Spring so that Robert could attend some sort of annual meeting for the Reverends of northern Scotland. It was always wonderful, smelling the salty cold air and watching the harbor porpoises jump alongside the boat.

Mia shivered, though, nervous - she'd never been on a boat.

Boat? Puddy meowed from his cage, You said nothing of a boat when we spoke of Hogwarts!

But Minnie couldn't reply at the moment, surrounded as she was by everyone else on the platform.

Rubeus held out his hands, "Now yeh can't be bringin' yer cats on the boats, you'll be needin' to leave them here with yer luggage, but don't yeh be mindin' - they'll see to it that yer things is brought to yeh dormitories soon as the sortin's finished."

Minnie was very reluctant to let the giant man take Pud's cage, and Mia cried as she let go of Ebony's cage, but it had to be done and Rubeus promised to see to it that the cats were kept safe, which made Minnie feel much better. She led Mia down the walkway carefully, their saddle shoes slipping over pebbles until they reached a wide wooden pier along the edge of a dark black lake and there, gleaming across from them on a hilltop, with bright orange windows glowing, was the silhouette of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"Wow," Minnie breathed, staring up at it, completely breathless. The spires and towers stood against the inky sky - the moon hovering just beyond, clouds skimming past. It was everything that she'd dreamed by Isobel McGonagall's description - and so much more impressive than even her wildest imaginings had made it out to be.

Mia stared up at it, too, just as awestruck at Minnie, and she whispered, "We're going to get so lost in there."

"Perhaps there will be a map," suggested Florean, who was standing only a few steps away with Al, Fil, and Charlus Potter.