Chapter Text
Harry
I step under the hat with complete calm, I have to admit the hat has gotten much more worn since I last saw it.
~ Ah, young Harry! We met a long time ago! What's up? ~ I hear his voice in my mind.
~ There's a lot of things, but I'll tell you everything when we have a little more time. Over a hearty bath! When was the last time you were washed? During the founders' time? ~ I ask back mockingly.
~ Only two hundred years ago! ~ He gets angry.
~ Calm down! And tell me where I'm going, because they'll start to get suspicious in the end! ~ I growl at him when I hear the background noise getting louder.
"SLYTHERIN!" The hat roars and the room falls silent, then suddenly the Slytherin house starts clapping and I hear clapping from the teachers' table, then someone slaps the table heavily. I immediately turn around and make a scared face, even though I'm not surprised at all. James looks at me with blazing eyes when our eyes meet.
"My son won't be a Slytherin!"
"But, but the great Merlin was a Slytherin too! Why, why is it bad?" I play and try not to give my lunch back. I hope Emrys hasn't reincarnated and heard me say this, because then I'll drown in shame.
"Not even then!" The man's face turns red, but the black-haired man sitting on the edge of the teacher's table interrupts.
"Potter! That's enough! The boy belongs in my house now, I'd appreciate it if you didn't yell at him. Mr. Potter!" He turns to me. "Sit down next to your housemates." I nod and immediately rush over to the already familiar table. Luckily, dinner passed in complete peace, although it was strange to walk through the corridors of Hogwarts pretending not to know where I was.
What was a pleasant surprise was that our Head of House, who I learned was also our Potions teacher and whose name was Severus Snape, the greatest genius of our time when it came to Potions, greeted the first years with the same words and laid down the same rules as Salazar did every year.
However, even this pleasant discovery was not enough to suppress the horrors of the past month. That's why as soon as everyone in my dormitory fell asleep, I jump up and run down to the Potions laboratory. I needed a little distraction right now.
"What the! It's been rearranged quite much!" I shake my head as I open the door and everything is in a different place than it should be. It takes me a long time to gather the necessary things and finally start making the potion. In the meantime, I think about what happened in this month.
First, I gave Dumbledore a heart attack when he started saying that I should move in with the muggles, and I broke all the glass windows, not just in my room, but in the whole house. Well, he couldn't call me a squib any more. Of course, in return for my action, I got beaten up again.
"Damn Potters!"
Then there was the Diagon Alley affair. I almost thought that James had some kind of paternal instinct when he took me shopping with them, but of course, as soon as we entered the merchant's road, he just pressed a bag of money into my hand and sent me on my way. Saying that I shouldn't let Christ be seen with me.
"Damn Potters!"
Not to mention that there wasn't even enough money in that small purse to do half of my shopping, so I needed to begin my shopping spree at Gringotts. Poor goblin, I could see in his eyes that he was about to have a heart attack when I spoke in his own language, saying that "I'm Hadrian Slytherin and I want to take money out of my safe!" Of course, he hid his surprise and snapped at me that he wanted the key, to which I laughed out loud and said that the Slytherin safe didn't need a key because it worked with blood magic.
Well, somewhere around here he gave up on his objections and took me down to the safe, where the door opened for me, and I took with me as much money as I needed and a few books on potions and a couple of books on magic. I need to brush up on my knowledge a bit, the world has improved over the millennia. Finally, I set off on my shopping spree and tried to avoid my relatives.
"Damn Potters!"
I was absolutely sure that I would be a Slytherin, so I had already ordered a robe that I had surprised the head tailor with, but the small bag of gold on her table had an effect. I also got myself a traveling suitcase, into which I neatly packed everything I had acquired. Then I set off for my last stop to get my wand. I left that for last because I really didn't want a new wand for myself.
I was so used to the old one, that pleasant vibrating snakewood wand, for which I had procured the branch and the thestral fur core myself. After a huge breath, I turned the handle and entered the wand shop. The salesman looked at me with fear, then asked my name, and I introduced myself as Hadrian Slytherin again. There is no money for which I will use the name of those wizards' shame.
"Damn Potters!'
Poor old man turned dead pale at the sound of my name, then he brought out two cases from the back of the shop. One was a nice brown case and the other a worn old black case, but one that I would recognize among a thousand. I carved that one. The salesman placed them on the table in front of me and pushed them towards me, saying, "These are both yours, Mr. Slytherin! You know which one this is!" He pointed to my homemade wand. "And for your own safety, I recommend that you use this one at school! It's a good wand. Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, pleasantly flexible. It will do you good service!" I thanked him politely and for some reason felt it was better to listen to the gentleman.
No one should notice that my wand didn't have that special child protection charm that the Ministry put on all wands. It was just my luck that I wasn't left on Diagon Alley, because James and Chris were walking towards the fireplaces just as I entered the Leaky Cauldron.
"Damn Potters!"
And if that wasn't enough, I had to endure the fact that you can't even brew potions in that damn house, I couldn't do anything but sit in the empty room all day. It's a good thing my minde is fine now, so at least I could retreat into my mind and spend my time there. Which was much better than the place where I was doomed to suffer.
"Damn Potters!"
I couldn't wait to get back to Hogwarts. I thought I'd be free of James and Lily, but I wasn't so lucky. The headmaster said that if the ministry allowed a Black and a werewolf to be in the school, they should at least give them Aurors so that the students would be protected, and of course our parents were chosen.
"Damn Potters!"
The school still evokes the same pleasant feeling in me as every time Emrys and I returned from Camelot, only now my mentors and comrade are not here, my parents and friend are not here. But I quickly overcame my sadness when I entered the great hall. My gaze immediately swept over the teachers. I spotted the headmaster and my parents.
On the opposite side from them was the couple I knew from the newspaper, the head of the Black family, Sirius, and the werewolf, Remus Lupin. I was also intrigued by the man who sat next to the black-haired man sitting next to my mother, with a huge turban on his head.
But before I could even start thinking about who the teachers were, Chris of course started talking to his friend, a red-haired boy named Ron, and their pair was joined by a brown-haired girl, judging by her behavior, a mudblood. And of course, my dear brother chose this opportunity to start making fun of me in front of his friends, and then he got into Gryffindor. Godric's house, if their founder were alive he would definitely regulate the house. Instead, my brother is peacocking there like some kind of king.
"Damn Potters!" I mutter to myself, then my eyes widen. "Damn, damn! Where the hell is it?! It's not true that there isn't a single hippogriff feather in this lab! Then we'll improvise!" I'm about to turn around to save the potion, when an unknown hand holds a feather in front of my eyes.
"Here it is!" The voice comes, and I snap the feather and quickly dip it into the potion, saving the concoction.
"Thanks Circe!" I sigh heavily, forgetting that I'm not alone.
"Mr. Potter, would you tell me what a first year student does on his first night in the potions lab?" My eyes widen at this and I turn in surprise towards the voice, which belongs to my new Head of House.