Silver Eyes

A voice rang down the length of the train.

'Hogwarts in five minutes. Luggage is to stay on board. It will be brought up to the school for you.'

Harry's stomach turned over, and Ron had gone white between his freckles. They stuffed what was left of the sweets into their pockets and squeezed out into the corridor, which was packed from end to end. Harry looked back once at Hedwig's cage on the rack. He hoped whoever came for the trunks would be gentle with her, and would remember that she liked her water changed.

The train crawled, shuddered, and stopped. There was a great deal of shoving, and then Harry found himself on a small, unlit platform with the night air biting at his ears. A lantern came swaying over the heads of the crowd, and behind it a voice he knew.

'Firs'-years! Firs'-years, this way! All right there, Harry?'

Hagrid's enormous hairy face was grinning down at him across a sea of pointed hats.

'C'mon, with me. Any more firs'-years? Watch yer feet, now! Firs'-years, follow me!'

A little way off, among the Slytherin-bound and the merely frightened, a head of white-blonde hair caught the lantern light. Dracina Malfoy was looking at him. Harry looked away, and when he looked again she was still at it. He knew that expression. It was the one Dudley wore whenever Uncle Vernon refused to buy him a new game for his Amiga: the lower lip, the narrowed eyes, the furious disbelief that something he wanted had not simply been handed over. Harry hated seeing it there. It had no business on a face like hers.

He was beginning to dislike her very much indeed. She was spoiled, that was plain, and she was a bully as well. She had sneered at Ron, who was the nicest person Harry had met since Hagrid, for no better reason than the colour of his hair and the size of his family. And still she kept on looking, which annoyed him most of all.

Slithering and tripping, they followed Hagrid down a steep and narrow path. The darkness pressed so close on either side that Harry supposed there must be thick trees. Hardly anybody spoke. Neville, the boy with the wandering toad, sniffed now and then.

'Yeh'll get yer firs' look at Hogwarts in a moment,' Hagrid called back. 'Jus' round this corner.'

'Oooooh!' said everybody at once.

The path had opened without warning on the shore of a vast black lake. High on a mountain on the far side stood a castle, enormous, bristling with towers and turrets, and every one of its windows glittered against the stars.

'Four to a boat an' no more!' shouted Hagrid, waving at a cluster of small boats bobbing at the water's edge. Harry and Ron climbed into one, and Neville and Hermione got in after them.

'Everyone settled?' bellowed Hagrid, who needed a boat all to himself. 'Right, then. FORWARD!'

The little fleet set off together, sliding over water as flat and dark as a mirror. Nobody said a word. They were all gazing up at the castle, which seemed to grow taller and taller as they drew near the cliff beneath it.

'Heads down!' Hagrid roared, as the leading boats reached the rock. They ducked, and the boats passed through a hanging curtain of ivy into a wide opening that it had concealed. A dark tunnel carried them on, apparently right under the castle itself, and let them out at last in a sort of underground harbour, where they scrambled ashore over pebbles and wet rock.

'Oi, you! This yer toad?' said Hagrid, who was looking over the boats as they emptied.

'Trevor!' cried Neville in rapture, and held out both hands.

They climbed a passage in the rock behind Hagrid's lantern and came out on smooth, dewy grass in the very shadow of the castle. A flight of stone steps led up to a huge oak door, and there they gathered.

'All here? You, still got that toad?'

Hagrid lifted a fist the size of a football and knocked three times.

The door opened immediately. A tall witch with black hair and robes of emerald green stood on the threshold. Her face was extremely stern, and Harry knew at a glance that here was somebody it would be most unwise to annoy.

'The firs'-years, Professor McGonagall,' said Hagrid.

'Thank you, Hagrid. I shall take them now.'

She drew the door wide. The Entrance Hall beyond could have swallowed the Dursleys' house whole. Torches burned along the stone walls as they had at Gringotts, the ceiling was lost in shadow, and a splendid marble staircase swept up ahead of them to the floors above.

Professor McGonagall led them over the flagstones. From a doorway on the right came a steady hum of hundreds of voices, so the rest of the school had evidently arrived already, but she steered the first-years into a small bare room off the hall. They shuffled in and stood a good deal closer together than they normally would have, glancing about them.

Malfoy shouldered past Harry to get in front of him. She tutted as she did it, and up went her nose again. Harry glared at the back of her head. Who did she think she was?

'Welcome to Hogwarts,' said Professor McGonagall. 'The start-of-term feast will begin shortly. Before you sit down to it, each of you will be sorted into a house. I ask you to take the Sorting seriously. For as long as you are here, your house will be your family. You will be taught alongside its members, you will sleep in its dormitory, and your free hours will be spent in its common room.

'There are four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Every one of them has a proud history, and every one has turned out witches and wizards of great distinction. Your successes here will win points for your house. Break the rules, and you will lose them. The house with the most points when the year ends receives the House Cup, which is a considerable honour. I trust that each of you will do credit to the house you join.

'The ceremony will take place before the whole school in a few minutes. You may wish to use the time to tidy yourselves.'

Her gaze rested briefly on Neville's cloak, which he had fastened beneath his left ear, and on the smudge on Ron's nose. Harry made a hopeless attempt to flatten his hair.

'I shall come back for you when we are ready,' said Professor McGonagall. 'Wait quietly, please.'

She went out. Harry swallowed.

'How do they sort us, exactly?' he asked Ron.

'A test of some kind, I think. Fred says it hurts like mad, but I expect he was joking.'

Harry's heart gave a nasty thump. A test? With the entire school watching? He didn't know a single spell. What could they possibly ask him to do? He had never imagined anything like this happening the moment they arrived. He looked round and saw that everyone else appeared just as frightened. Even Malfoy had forgotten to be haughty. She was chewing her lip and staring at the floor.

Nobody was saying much, apart from Hermione Granger, who was whispering at great speed about every spell she had learned and which of them was likeliest to be wanted. Harry did his best to shut her out. He had never been so nervous in his life, not even on the day he had carried home a note from school explaining that his teacher's wig had somehow turned blue. He fixed his eyes on the door. At any second Professor McGonagall would walk back through it and march him off to his doom.

Then something happened that made him jump a foot in the air. Several people behind him screamed, and Malfoy screamed loudest of all. She leapt backwards, collided hard with Harry, and for one second clutched at his arm. Then she seemed to realise whose arm it was. She huffed, shoved him away with both hands as though he had bumped into her, and brushed at her sleeve.

Harry scarcely noticed. He was gaping, and so was everyone round him. Some twenty ghosts had come pouring through the back wall. They were pearl-white and faintly see-through, and they drifted across the room deep in conversation, paying the first-years almost no attention. They appeared to be having an argument.

'I say let bygones be bygones,' a plump little monk was saying. 'He ought to have one more chance...'

'My dear Friar, how many chances has Peeves had already? He disgraces the lot of us, and he isn't even a proper ghost. Good gracious, what are all of you doing in here?'

A ghost in a ruff and tights had caught sight of them. No one replied.

'New students!' said the Fat Friar, beaming round at them. 'Waiting to be sorted, I expect?'

One or two heads nodded dumbly.

'I shall hope to see you in Hufflepuff!' said the Friar. 'I was there myself, you know.'

'Along you go,' said a crisp voice. 'The Sorting is about to begin.'

Professor McGonagall was back. The ghosts floated off one after another through the opposite wall.

'Form a line, please,' she told the first-years, 'and follow me.'

Harry's legs seemed to have been filled with lead. He fell in behind a sandy-haired boy, with Ron at his back, and they filed out of the room, across the hall and through a pair of double doors.

He had never dreamed that such a place could exist. Thousands upon thousands of candles hung in the air above four long tables, where the rest of the school sat among glittering golden plates and goblets. A fifth table stood at the top of the Hall for the teachers. Professor McGonagall led the first-years up to it and turned them about, so that they stood in a row facing the students with the staff behind them. Hundreds of faces stared at them, pale as lanterns in the wavering light. Here and there among them a ghost glowed like silver mist. To escape all those eyes, Harry looked up, and saw a ceiling of velvety black, scattered with stars.

'It's enchanted to look like the sky outside,' he heard Hermione whisper. 'I read about it in Hogwarts: A History.'

It was hard to believe there was any ceiling at all, and that the Hall did not simply lie open to the heavens.

Harry looked down again quickly. Professor McGonagall had set a four-legged stool in front of them without a word, and on the stool she placed a pointed wizard's hat. It was patched, frayed, and filthy. Aunt Petunia would have carried it to the dustbin with the fire tongs.

Perhaps they would have to pull a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly. Then he saw that the whole Hall was watching the hat, so he watched it too. For a few moments nothing stirred. The hat gave a twitch. A tear near the brim gaped open like a mouth, and the hat burst into song.

'I may be patched, I may be plain,

My brim be past its best,

But show me any cleverer hat

And I shall eat my crest.

'So sit you down and pull me on,

For there is nothing hid

In any head I've ever worn,

Whatever that head did.

'To Gryffindor I send the bold,

The daring and the true;

To Hufflepuff the fair of heart

Who see a hard task through.

'In Ravenclaw the quick of wit

Will find their kindred kind;

In Slytherin the cunning thrive,

Who leave no means behind.

'So try me, do, and never fear,

I've not been wrong to date.

I am the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,

And I shall set you straight!'

The Hall broke into applause. The hat bowed to each table in turn and went still.

'So all we do is put on a hat!' Ron whispered. 'I'm going to murder Fred. He kept on about wrestling a troll.'

Harry managed a feeble smile. A hat was certainly better than a spell, though he would have preferred to try it on without an audience. It seemed to want a great deal from people. Harry felt neither bold nor quick-witted nor anything else on its list at that moment. If the hat had mentioned a house for those who felt slightly sick, he would have known exactly where he belonged.

Professor McGonagall came forward with a long roll of parchment.

'When I read out your name, you will sit on the stool and put on the hat,' she said. 'Abbott, Hannah!'

A girl with a pink face and fair pigtails stumbled forward. The hat dropped straight down over her eyes. There was a pause.

'HUFFLEPUFF!' cried the hat.

The table on the right clapped and cheered as Hannah went to join it, and the Fat Friar gave her a jolly wave.

'Bones, Susan!'

'HUFFLEPUFF!' the hat called again, and Susan hurried away to sit by Hannah.

'Boot, Terry!'

'RAVENCLAW!'

This time the applause came from the second table on the left, and several Ravenclaws rose to shake Terry's hand.

Mandy Brocklehurst was made a Ravenclaw as well, but Lavender Brown became the first Gryffindor of the night, and the table at the far left erupted. Harry could see Ron's twin brothers whistling through their fingers.

Millicent Bulstrode went to Slytherin. Harry studied the table that received her. It might have been everything he had heard, but he thought they looked an unpleasant crowd. They had a well-fed, pleased-with-themselves air that he had lived with for ten years. They reminded him, every one, of Dudley.

He was feeling properly sick now. He remembered games lessons at his old school, and how he had always been picked last. He hadn't been bad at games. Nobody had wanted Dudley to think they liked him.

When Hagrid had told him he was a wizard, Harry had believed he was leaving all of that behind: the Dursleys, their spotless house, their careful, comfortable, spiteful little world. Yet here it was again in green and silver, sitting at its own table. The thought took some of the shine off the candles. And this was the house Dracina Malfoy was so keen to join?

'Finch-Fletchley, Justin!'

'HUFFLEPUFF!'

Harry noticed that the hat sometimes answered at once and sometimes took its time. Seamus Finnigan, the sandy-haired boy ahead of him, sat for very nearly a minute before he was declared a Gryffindor.

'Granger, Hermione!'

Hermione all but ran to the stool and rammed the hat on.

'GRYFFINDOR!' it shouted.

Ron groaned.

A dreadful idea came to Harry then, as dreadful ideas will when you are frightened enough. Suppose he wasn't chosen? Suppose he sat with the hat over his eyes for minute after minute, until Professor McGonagall whipped it off and told him there had clearly been a mistake, and he had better go back to the train?

Neville Longbottom fell over on his way to the stool. The hat considered him for a long time, and when it finally shouted 'GRYFFINDOR!' he ran off with it still on his head, and had to trot back through howls of laughter to hand it to Morag MacDougal.

'Malfoy, Dracina!'

She swaggered out of the line. As she passed Harry she gave him a mocking little look, lifted her nose, and trotted on. She had her wish in an instant. The hat had hardly brushed her white-blonde hair before it screamed, 'SLYTHERIN!'

Malfoy went to sit with Crabbe and Goyle, looking tremendously pleased with herself, and Harry saw her tell Crabbe off sharply for looking gormless.

There were not many left. Moon. Nott. Parkinson. A pair of twin girls called Patil. Sally-Anne Perks. And then, at last:

'Potter, Harry!'

As Harry stepped forward, whispers sprang up all over the Hall like small hissing fires.

'Did she say Potter?'

'The Harry Potter?'

The last thing he saw before the hat fell over his eyes was a Hall full of people craning their necks to look at him. Then there was only the black lining of the hat. He waited.

'Hmm,' said a small voice in his ear. 'Tricky. Very tricky. A good deal of courage, I see. A sound mind as well. Talent, my word, yes. And a healthy wish to prove yourself. And so much pain, too, for one so young... now, that is interesting. Where am I to put you?'

Harry gripped the edge of the stool. Not Slytherin, he thought. Not Slytherin.

'Not Slytherin, eh?' said the voice. 'Quite certain? You could be great, you know. It's all in here, and Slytherin would set you well on the road. No? Well, if your mind's made up, it had better be GRYFFINDOR!'

The last word was shouted to the whole Hall. Harry pulled off the hat and walked unsteadily to the Gryffindor table. He was so relieved to have been chosen at all, and to have escaped Slytherin, that he barely noticed he was getting the loudest cheer of the evening. Percy the Prefect leapt up and pumped his hand, and the Weasley twins were yelling, 'We got Potter! We got Potter!' Harry sat down opposite the ghost in the ruff, who patted his arm, and it felt exactly like plunging it into a bucket of icy water.

He could not have said why he looked across at the Slytherin table then. Malfoy was watching him. The smugness had gone from her face, and what was left looked oddly like disappointment. Then she saw that he had seen. Her nose went up, and she turned her back on him entirely.

What a strange girl, thought Harry.

He had a clear view of the High Table now. Hagrid sat at the nearest end, and caught his eye and gave him a thumbs-up. Harry grinned back. In the middle, in a tall golden chair, sat Albus Dumbledore. Harry knew him straight away from the Chocolate Frog card. His silver hair was the only thing in the Hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts. Professor Quirrell was there too, the jittery young man from the Leaky Cauldron, looking very odd in a large purple turban.

Only three remained to be sorted. Lisa Turpin went to Ravenclaw, and then it was Ron, who by this time was pale green. Harry crossed his fingers under the table, and a second later the hat had shouted, 'GRYFFINDOR!'

Harry clapped as hard as anyone as Ron dropped into the next chair.

'Well done, Ron, splendid,' said Percy Weasley grandly across Harry, while Blaise Zabini was sent to Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolled up her parchment and carried the hat away.

Harry looked at his empty golden plate and discovered that he was ravenous. The pumpkin pasties felt like a very long time ago.

Albus Dumbledore had risen. He was beaming down at them with his arms flung wide, as though nothing in the world could have delighted him more than the sight of them all.

'Welcome!' he said. 'Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before the feast, I have a few words to say to you. They are these: Flapdoodle! Gumboot! Nincompoop! Sprout!

'Thank you!'

He sat down again. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry wasn't sure whether he was meant to laugh.

'Is he a bit... mad?' he asked Percy doubtfully.

'Mad?' said Percy lightly. 'He's brilliant! The greatest wizard alive! But yes, he is a little mad. Potatoes, Harry?'

Harry's mouth fell open. The dishes along the table were heaped with food. He had never seen so many of his favourite things in one place: roast beef and roast chicken, chops, sausages, bacon and steak, potatoes boiled, roasted and chipped, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some reason he could not fathom, a bowl of mint humbugs.

The Dursleys had never quite starved him, but he had never once been allowed to eat until he was full. Dudley had always taken whatever Harry really wanted, even when it made him ill. Harry put a little of everything on his plate, humbugs excepted, and started. It was all delicious.

'That does look good,' said the ghost in the ruff wistfully, watching Harry cut into his steak.

'Can't you...?'

'I have not eaten in almost five hundred years,' said the ghost. 'There's no need, naturally, but one misses it. I don't believe I've introduced myself. Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower.'

'I know who you are!' said Ron suddenly. 'My brothers told me. You're Nearly Headless Nick!'

'I should much prefer Sir Nicholas de Mimsy...' the ghost began stiffly, but Seamus Finnigan cut in.

'Nearly Headless? How d'you manage to be nearly headless?'

Sir Nicholas looked exceedingly put out, as though the conversation were not going at all as he had planned.

'Like so,' he said testily. He took hold of his left ear and tugged. His whole head swung sideways off his neck and came to rest on his shoulder, as if on a hinge. Somebody had plainly tried to behead him and made a poor job of it. Pleased by their stunned faces, Nearly Headless Nick flipped his head back into place, coughed, and said, 'So! New Gryffindors! You'll help us win the House Championship this year, I hope? We have never gone so long without it. Slytherin have taken the Cup six years running! The Bloody Baron is becoming quite insufferable. He is the Slytherin ghost.'

Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and saw a horrible ghost with blank, staring eyes and a gaunt face, his robes stained with silver blood. He was seated right beside Malfoy, who, Harry was glad to see, did not care for the arrangement at all. She was sitting bolt upright with her chin raised, every inch the princess, while the Baron's ghostly blood dripped steadily on to the bench beside her, and she edged away from him an inch at a time.

'How did he get all bloody?' asked Seamus with keen interest.

'I have never asked,' said Nearly Headless Nick delicately.

When everyone had eaten all they could, the leftovers melted away and the plates gleamed clean again. A moment later the puddings arrived. There was ice-cream in every flavour imaginable, apple pie, treacle tart, chocolate éclairs, jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding...

Harry reached for the treacle tart. It was his favourite thing in the world, and at Privet Drive he had only ever been allowed to watch Dudley eat it. As he took a second slice, the talk turned to families.

'I'm half and half,' said Seamus. 'Me da's a Muggle. Mam never told him she was a witch till they were married. Gave him a fair old fright.'

The others laughed, and Harry laughed with them. Then he remembered some of the things Uncle Vernon liked to shout at the television about the Irish. He looked at Seamus, who was cheerfully passing Neville the custard, and decided that Uncle Vernon had been wrong about that as he was about most things.

'What about you, Neville?' said Ron.

'Well, my gran brought me up, and she's a witch,' said Neville. 'But for years the family thought I hadn't any magic. My great-uncle Algie was always trying to startle some out of me. He pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, and I nearly drowned. Nothing happened till I was eight. Great-uncle Algie had come to tea, and he was dangling me out of an upstairs window by my ankles when Great-auntie Enid offered him a meringue, and he let go by accident. But I bounced. Right down the garden and out into the road. They were all so pleased. Gran cried. You should have seen them when I got my letter. They'd thought I mightn't be magic enough to come. Great-uncle Algie bought me my toad, he was that happy.'

On Harry's other side, Percy and Hermione were discussing lessons. Hermione hoped they would begin at once, and was particularly looking forward to Transfiguration. Percy told her she would be starting with small things, matches into needles and so forth.

Harry was warm and drowsy. He looked up at the High Table again. Hagrid was drinking deeply from his goblet. Professor McGonagall was talking to Dumbledore. Professor Quirrell, in his ridiculous turban, was speaking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose and sallow skin.

It happened in an instant. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes, and a sharp, hot pain shot through the scar on Harry's forehead.

'Ouch!' Harry clapped a hand to his head.

'What's the matter?' asked Percy.

'N-nothing.'

The pain had gone as fast as it had come. The feeling Harry had got from that look was harder to shake off. He was sure the teacher did not like him at all.

'Who's that talking to Professor Quirrell?' he asked Percy.

'Oh, you know Quirrell already? No wonder he's so nervous. That's Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but everyone knows he's after Quirrell's job. He knows a frightful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.'

Harry watched Snape for some time, but Snape did not look at him again.

At length the puddings vanished too, and Professor Dumbledore stood up. The Hall fell quiet.

'A few more words, now that we are all fed and watered. First-years should note that the forest in the grounds is forbidden to every pupil. Some of our older students would do well to remember it too.'

His twinkling eyes flicked towards the Weasley twins.

'Mr Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to remind you that no magic is to be used in the corridors between lessons. Quidditch trials will take place in the second week of term. Anyone wishing to play for their house should speak to Madam Hooch. And lastly, I must tell you that this year the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to all who do not wish to die a most painful death.'

Harry laughed, but he was one of very few.

'He doesn't mean it?' he muttered to Percy.

'He must,' said Percy, frowning up at Dumbledore. 'Odd, though. He usually tells us why a place is forbidden. The forest is full of dangerous creatures, everybody knows that. I do think he might have told the Prefects, at any rate.'

'And now, before bed, the school song!' cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had gone rather stiff.

Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as though shaking a fly from the tip, and a long golden ribbon streamed out of it, rose above the tables and curled itself into words.

'Each to his own favourite tune,' said Dumbledore, 'and away we go!'

And the school sang. It was the most tremendous noise Harry had ever heard. Some sang it as a jig and some as a hymn, Seamus was bawling it to something that sounded like a football chant, and Hermione was singing every word very precisely to a tune of her own. Harry, who did not know the words, followed the golden ribbon as best he could and found that it hardly mattered.

Everybody finished at a different moment. In the end only the Weasley twins were left, singing to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their final lines with his wand, and when they stopped he clapped louder than anyone.

'Ah, music,' he said, dabbing at his eyes. 'A magic beyond anything we teach here! And now, bed. Off you trot!'

The Gryffindor first-years followed Percy through the chattering crowd, out of the Great Hall and up the marble staircase. Harry's legs were heavy again, though this time it was only weariness and far too much treacle tart. He was too sleepy to be surprised when the people in the portraits whispered and pointed as they went by, or when Percy twice took them through doorways hidden behind sliding panels and tapestries. They climbed staircase after staircase, yawning and dragging their feet, and Harry was just wondering how much further it could be when they stopped dead.

A bundle of walking sticks was hovering in mid-air in front of them. Percy took one step forward, and they began hurling themselves at him.

'Peeves,' Percy whispered. 'A poltergeist.' He raised his voice. 'Peeves, show yourself.'

He was answered by a loud, rude noise, like air escaping from a balloon.

'Shall I fetch the Bloody Baron?'

There was a pop, and a little man with wicked dark eyes and a wide mouth appeared, floating cross-legged and hugging the walking sticks.

'Oooooh!' he cackled. 'Ickle firsties! What a treat!'

He dived at them. They all ducked.

'Clear off, Peeves, or the Baron will hear of it, I mean it!' barked Percy.

Peeves stuck out his tongue and vanished, letting the walking sticks fall on Neville's head. They heard him whizzing away, rattling the suits of armour as he went.

'You want to be careful of Peeves,' said Percy as they moved on. 'The Bloody Baron is the only one who can manage him. He won't even listen to the Prefects. Here we are.'

At the very end of the corridor hung a portrait of an extremely fat lady in a pink silk dress.

'Password?' she said.

'Caput Draconis,' said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to show a round hole in the wall. They clambered through, Neville with a leg-up, and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a snug, circular room crowded with squashy armchairs.

Percy sent the girls through one door and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase, for they were evidently in one of the towers, they came at last to their beds: five four-posters hung with curtains of deep red velvet. Their trunks had been brought up already, and Hedwig's cage stood on Harry's, with fresh water in the dish. Too tired for much talk, they dragged on their pyjamas and tumbled into bed.

'Good food, eh?' Ron mumbled through the hangings. 'Get off, Scabbers! He's eating my sheets.'

Harry meant to ask whether Ron had tried the treacle tart, but he was asleep before he could.

Perhaps he had eaten rather too much, for he had a very peculiar dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, and it kept talking to him, telling him he must move to Slytherin at once, because that was his destiny. Harry told the turban he did not want to be in Slytherin. It grew heavier and heavier. He tried to drag it off, and it tightened until it hurt. And there was Malfoy, with her nose in the air, laughing at him as he struggled. Why should he care what she thought of him? Yet he found that he did, and that made him angrier than ever. Then Malfoy became the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, and Snape's laugh turned high and cold. There was a burst of green light, and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.

He rolled over and slept again. When he woke next morning the dream had gone, all except a pair of cruel silver eyes that would not let him go.