The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Sweets and Studies- Ch5

CHAPTER FIVE:

The staffroom was in a state of chaos, with Albus sitting at the head of the table as the other professors talked over each other, all of them up in arms about the Sorting. The Sorting Hat itself sat before Albus, ragged and silent, listening alongside the headmaster– it was quite amazing, really; Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was at Hogwarts at last, yet he wasn't even the main topic of conversation.

"Albus, surely you realise Hermione cannot stay in Slytherin!" Minerva was saying, sounding halfway between horrified and panicked.

"I-I-It g-g-g-goes against th-th-the tradition o-of Slytherin House," Quirinus agreed, his stutter even more pronounced than usual, and his pale features drawn tight, as if in pain.

"The enchantments the Founders made when they created the Sorting Hat simply don't take into account our current political situation!" Minerva exclaimed, fiercely protective as ever of the students. "Slytherin House just isn't safe for her! To leave her there is to condemn her to seven miserable years of isolation and bullying!"

Various members of the staff up and down the table murmured their agreement, nodding along with Minerva's words.

"Severus?" Albus said, turning to the dark-haired man. "You're the Head of Slytherin House, what is your opinion on this situation?"

"...I believe Minerva is correct," Severus admitted reluctantly. "I cannot guarantee the girl's safety, and her happiness even less so. She'll be ostracised within the House for being a muggleborn, and likely ostracised outside the House for being a Slytherin."

"Are you sure about that?"

Several of the professors jumped, startled, not having expected the Sorting Hat to speak. Albus was the one to address the Hat directly.

"Given the givens, do you stand by your decision to place Miss Granger in Slytherin?" he asked it gravely, and the Hat chuckled.

"Oh I most definitely do," it said, "she's an ambitious one, she is, and she's going to bring about great change within these old walls. You'll all see– Hermione Granger is exactly where she belongs."

"Then the matter is settled," Albus said, looking around at the unhappy professors. "She must stay in Slytherin."

::

Exhausted from her long day, after Professor Snape's speech– which seemed more like a warning then a welcome– Hermione was more than happy to retire to the girl's dormitories, where she was delighted to find Vashti waiting for her, perched on the headboard of the four-poster bed her trunk was standing at the foot of. Much like the common room, the Slytherin girl's dormitories were bedecked in green and silver, with twisting serpents carved into the dark, glossy wood of the headboards of their four-poster beds, which were hung with deep green, velvet curtains. The bedsheets, of course, were also green and silver.

Hermione wasted little time in changing into her night-dress, hesitating a moment before deciding to tuck a knife and her wand under her pillow, Váli and Hati's lessons a constant drumming at the back of her skull of 'be prepared, be prepared, be prepared'. She then set up her altar on her bedside table; she carefully arranged three candles, two small, capped glass jars, one filled with soil from the clearing where she performed her rituals and one from the ocean where Loki had first saved her, and a shallow stone bowl filled with sprigs of dandelion, birch and cinnamon, a small collection of the sweets she'd saved from the Hogwarts Express, and her altar stones, one for each of Loki's children, and of course one for Loki himself.

She lit the candles with a brief spark of magic, kneeling on her bed as she whispered her prayers, pricking her fingertips with her athame to drip blood on each of the altar stones. Her nightly ritual complete, she let Vashti blink healing tears over the small cuts, healing them like they were never there, before tucking herself into bed, listening to Vashti's soft song send her off to sleep.