Rising to power.

A heart to heart

The great hall grew silent as Neville Longbottom's name was called to be sorted. Unsurprisingly, however, the second the hat touched the confident boy's head, it boomed out the house of the Lions to the collection of staff and students listening with bated breath. There was a mere three seconds of silence following the proclamation until the hall erupted in cheers, mainly from the Gryffindor table who ,as a whole, were ecstatic that they had received 'Longbottom'.

During the sorting ceremony, Harry was barely paying attention to any of the names being called out, opting to reflect upon what happened back on the train and Archades's unusual behaviour following the Malfoy brat's taunt.

Archie had been taunted before, but never had there been a reaction like that. The boy would usually just shrug it off and continue on with his day which normally consisted with his face buried in a Quidditch or Potions text, joking around, or making passes at Stephanie. The thought that something also happened to his mother in the past that caused irreparable damage to the brown haired boy's psyche, disgustingly enough, brought a sense of happiness to the ebony haired youth. Not for the tragedy that must have befallen her, he would wish that on nobody, but this meant that the two of them shared something in common that not many people would and though the two of them were usually completely different people; it was nice to know they had the same problems...

He was snapped out of his thoughts when Blaise was sorted into Slytherin, much like his older sister, and the headmaster stood from his table.

"I know you must all be very hungry and wish to begin with the feast" he joked, eyes twinkling merrily as there was a collective groan in the hall "but announcements must be made when you are most attentive; first of all, as usual, the Forbidden Forest is strictly out of bounds to anyone not wishing to face the most severe punishments or death at the hands of those which lurk within" to the shock of Harry and Archie, they both could have sworn the aged headmaster's eyes flickered towards the two.

"Mister Filch, our caretaker, has also asked me to remind you that no spells or feats of magic are to be performed between classes in the corridors.

Also, those who wish to try out for their Quidditch House teams need to contact Madam Hooch before the second week of term to see about gaining permission to do so.

Finally, I must stress that the third floor corridor on the right-hand side is strictly out of bounds to those who do not wish to die a very horrible and painful death."

There were a few scattered laughs around the hall but the majority of the students had simply paled at the implications.

Harry zoned out when Dumbledore introduced their new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirrel, a man wearing a violet turban who looked to be scared of his own shadow, especially if the fact that he stuttered during every word was any sign of that.

One thing was for sure, Hogwarts promised to be interesting this year.

Classes, Quidditch practise and individual study resumed as normal for Harry and Archie, with the exception of their two new electives that they had taken up this year.

In his opinion, Ancient Runes was by far the most humorous yet interesting class he had at Hogwarts. He wasn't as adept at Runes like he was in Charms, Transfiguration and pretty much every other class to some extent, which served to give him some sort of challenge in his learning. Runes, taught by Professor Sinistra (the astronomy teacher), began in the early years with working on identifying ancient and difficult to translate Runic languages, some examples of this were ancient Egyptian, Celtic, Atlantian, Aztec and the list went on. Being quite the linguist himself, having mastered speaking in three non-English languages (French, Japanese and Parseltongue), he could appreciate and enjoy the effort involved in learning more.