To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 1 - First Year

"I'm half and half. Me dad's a Muggle. Mam didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him."

The table erupted into laughter and the sandy-haired boy who had spoken in a thick Irish accent broke into a grin at the chorus of amusement he'd elicited. Dean found himself smiling from the seat beside him, scooping another spoonful of pudding and cream into his mouth. He had to pause just for a moment to savour the taste; he didn't know who did the cooking at this school but they were fantastic.

Dean wasn't the only one to appreciate it – even the sandy-haired boy who seemed to be a bit of a chatterbox had paused after his contribution. The dinner with its appearing and disappearing platters, the hall itself with the suspended candles and the night-sky scene overhead, the sea of bubbling students and the table of stately professors at the far end of the room dressed in robes that should have looked out of place and utterly ridiculous except that they didn't. All of it. All of it was captivating.

There was so much to see and so many people to watch that Dean was torn between his dinner and dragging his gaze around himself without pause. The boy on one his other side with vivid red hair who looked like the younger brother of one Gryffindor's self-proclaimed prefects was tucking into his meal with such gusto that Dean thought he might choke himself, but he was grinning throughout it and staring about himself with similarly wide eyes. Two girls from his year who had been appointed Gryffindors just before him were ooh-ing and ahh-ing, their heads tucked together and giggling as though they'd already become fast friends.

Stretching down the length of the table, the rest of his house garbed in the black robes of their uniform with red and gold ties were chattering uproariously amidst their bites so loudly that Dean could hardly hear himself think. A pair of redheaded twins a little way from him in particular were cackling manically and inducing some sort of hysteria in those around them for some joke or other that had their fellow students slapping the table and banging their goblets. They were actualgoblets, Dean had realised with jaw-dropping surprise when he'd first seen them, of what appeared to be actual gold. It was so old-fashioned and expensive and cool that Dean had simply held the stem of his own for a long moment before drinking, fascinated and not entirely sure he should be touching what his fellow students handled so carelessly.

The redheaded prefect was engaged in what appeared to be a serious discussion with the bushy-haired girl from Dean year whose name he couldn't remember and he caught words of "magic" and "read in a textbook" that immediately made Dean regret that he hadn't looked more closely at his own books. Smiles spread across every face as though those around him were actually happy to be back at school. And why wouldn't they be? It was a magic school for magic people, magic people that learned magic. Even the fellow first year across from Dean, a round faced boy with a perpetual crease of worry in his brow that had earlier mumbled a relieved something of, "Thank Merlin I'm in Gryffindor otherwise my gran would have..." seemed to be enjoying himself.

Merlin. The boy invoked Merlin. Dean still couldn't believe that and yet...

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The thought still made Dean shake his head, even after months of knowing that magic was really real. Getting his letter, meeting the Deputy Headmistress Professor McGonagall, visiting the Muggle marketplace of Diagon Alley and everything that followed – he would have thought it all some rather elaborate dream if only it hadn't lasted for so long. Dean considered himself a little but of a sceptic if anything. He'd never been taken with any sort of fantasy and his mother was as much of the embodiment of an atheist as could possibly exist. He'd never believed in such things.

Things certainly had taken a turn when he'd been told he was a wizard. An actual wizard.

The sorting ceremony, as Dean had learned it was called, had flowed with practiced efficiency as though it had been conducted many times before. Which it probably had, Dean thought. He hadn't taken the time to do more than flick briefly through most of his textbooks – it had all been rather daunting to behold, and what little he'd read had barely stuck – but he had gleaned the fact that Hogwarts itself was apparently over a thousand years old. A thousand years... Dean didn't think that any school in the entire world could possibly be that old. And this one taught magic.