𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐇/𝐃/𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐄 2008

Fear and Loathing at the Phoenix (2/4)

Chapter 2: thursday.may.1.2008

Chapter Text

thursday.may.1.2008

If yesterday's trip through registration was both tedious and irritating, it's cunningly clear that my induction to their ranks will be tenfold worse.

I'm forced to interact with the natives in their culture, subject to their archaic hazing rituals and tacky headwear if I'm to fit in. Every atom reviles, it's a fucking atrocity what they're doing here guised as induction, but it's made clear through a series of primitive gestures that failure to participate will have me shunned. Which, while attractive in its own right, is antithetical to any Journalism I have planned.

I don their ridiculous headwear.

On the advice of my attorney, I do not tell them what I think.

Fear and Loathing at the Phoenix, Regulus Black, p. 43

All right, now he feels ridiculous. The thin blonde witch shifts her clipboard, shuffles in place. The "Hat"—and Harry's loathe to call it such because he remembers the real thing and how it's worth a hundred of this charmed bit of felt—the Not-Hat mulls like there's some question.

Harry glares at the world. Draco flicks a wave, sips at that coffee he's clearly not brought for Harry. Arse.

"You'd do well in Gryffindor," Not-Hat says, awfully tinny for something made of felt, and Harry wonders if they've charmed it with a certain range of patter. This feels very familiar, this, and Merlin help them if it starts trying to analyze him in public, he's absolutely not having that.

"Oh, you think?" Harry snaps. Draco, who'd gotten up early enough for coffee and "thoughtfully" let Harry sleep, drains his cup and vanishes the evidence. The world is viciously unfair. "Fuck, spit it out already, the real thing didn't take this long and I'd bits of someone else in there."

He's pretty sure he says that aloud. Draco snorts. The line forming behind him shuffles impatience, he can practically feel them hurrying him on already, and he's really, really tempted to chuck this atrocity off his head and call it a day, only like Clipboard Witch explained, the Sorting's registration.

So no chucking, then.

"Hrm," the tinny Not-Hat says, wiggling about on his head like a bad Tesco's musical fish. "Hrm."

"Are you burrowing in? Just say Gryffindor already, Christ."

"Oi, there are children in this line, you want to watch your mouth?" a faux-Ron snaps. Harry wonders why the horrid ones are always Rons. Wants, yet again, a go at the witch who wrote those memoirs, because she's obviously got it all wrong, everyone thinking Ron nothing but a foul-tempered hothead addicted to the word, "Oi."

"We don't rush the Hat," Clipboard Witch says. "Sorting's important."

Muggle gods, that's singsong, that, Harry's compelled to grimace, really, there's been no coffee and a stupid hat and this is taking forever, he seriously regrets getting out of bed.

If Not-Hat sings, Harry won't be held responsible.

"Better be...Slytherin," Not-Hat says, and Clipboard Witch pulls it off his head, shoos him up and out and away to the desk where he'll pick up his "badge".

Draco's decidedly less animated, but when Harry approaches, he has grace enough to offer a previously invisible coffee. "Slytherin, is it?"

Imperative, the caffeine, honestly, he's had to go cold-turkey, that's not good, he's practically in detox here, but there's a flippant twist in Draco's voice Harry doesn't trust. Harry shrugs. Manages, "No reason to say no this time," before knocking back the rest of his drink, holding it out for a refill with nothing but pleading puppy eyes and a put-upon pout.