"Anoni, Karissa!"

Pause.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Ginny was growing increasingly anxious at the first years' table, which was slowly but surely shrinking, as one student after another was Sorted. She wasn't certain whether she wanted to go to Ravenclaw or Slytherin, and she was discussing this dichotomy with Luna, who could not care less.

"And then," said Ginny, "he even put in a good word for Gryffindor and Hufflepuff! What do you think?"

"I think I'm probably going to Ravenclaw," said Luna. "That's where I wanted to go before I'd heard Harry's opinion on anything. Where did you want to go, before Harry was Sorted?" Luna was at least a little dismayed that her new friend's decision hinged on the feelings of a boy.

"Well..." said Ginny. It was a tough question, and one she hadn't fully thought out. Her family had of course always wanted her to go to Gryffindor, and somewhere in the back of her mind she had always wanted to go to Slytherin, just to spite them. But that was a terrible reason to select a House – and, speaking of reason, Ravenclaw was the House of reason. Or was it? Slytherin's secondary attribute, after ambition, was cunning, after all. Not to undersell the value of ambition – any time someone treated ambition as evil, it hurt the logical part of Ginny immensely, because how could anyone get anything important done if they didn't plan to get anything important done? You couldn't leave the important things in life to accident. "Probably Slytherin."

"Then go to Slytherin," said Luna. "I'm going to Ravenclaw." Ginny wanted to tell Luna that it wasn't that simple, that you didn't just pick a House and go there. But she didn't say anything; they had already been talking too much. Students were supposed to be completely quiet during the Sorting ceremony. But, then again, the first years' table was far from the loudest; the Ravenclaws could scarcely contain themselves in their excitement to see Hermione Granger, for obvious reasons.

"Creevey, Colin!"

Colin proved to be quite the hatstall, proving the point Ginny had not said out loud. The decision was complicated and really came down to whatever it was that happened under the Sorting Hat. Harry Potter had been one of history's greatest hatstalls, last year, but it was still not uncommon for a student's Sorting to take a full minute. It was seen as a sign of intelligence, that one was a Deep and Interesting and possibly Dark person. Ginny was certain that she would be a considerable hatstall herself.

"SLYTHERIN!"

Colin Creevey was far from the Slytherin stereotype, but Ginny had a feeling that, with the fall of Voldemort, that stereotype would be fast dissolving. There was a loud and unnatural scream when Colin was Sorted, and, come to think of it, there had been a similar scream each time a student was Sorted into Slytherin. At first Ginny had assumed it was simply the Slytherin students cheering for their new classmates, but that couldn't be it, not at all; it didn't sound quite like a human scream, and it wasn't coming from the Slytherin table's direction. It seemed to be coming from the Sorting Hat itself, or perhaps from the stool on which the students being Sorted sat.

At this point, Ginny Weasley became hedonically aware: was someone, perhaps, trying to convince her not to go to Slytherin, sabotaging the Sorting by forcing her to associate that House with unnatural screaming? Well, it wouldn't work, now that she was aware of it. She would make her decision entirely on her own terms, ignoring whatever this mysterious screaming agent wanted her to do. Perhaps it was her mother – that was who she generally associated with screaming punishments. But that wouldn't make any sense.

"Lovegood, Luna!"

One of the shortest pauses in recent memory.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Poor thing, Ginny felt sorry for her. Ginny had known that she was rather dim, but to have it made obvious to the world like that with such a swift Sorting? A better-designed Sorting Hat might have pretended to deliberate for a few more seconds. Of course, the correlation between hatstalls and prodigies wasn't perfect. General personal confidence could considerably shorten Sorting, and that was of course not necessarily a sign of low intelligence. It was a very Gryffindor trait, though, which Ginny found generally distasteful.

"Weasley, Ginevra!"

Ginny got up from the first years' table for the first and last time in her life, and proceeded directly to the stool, facing her peers. She could see Luna at the Ravenclaw table, being accidentally harassed by the Grey Lady and appearing the most distressed Ginny had thus far seen her; it looked odd on a person who so defaulted to cheer. But Ginny was taken away from her observation of the Great Hall when the hat was placed on her head and the telepathic process began.

Can you put me in Slytherin – Just kidding! - Ravenclaw, like Harry Potter?

"No," said the hat, beaming it directly into Ginny's brain. "Never again. That was a particularly unpleasant occasion for me, and I do not wish to repeat it."

Oh, thought Ginny. Well, then. I'd prefer to go to Ravenclaw, but I'd also be willing to accept Slytherin, if you saw fit.

"Well," said the hat. "That was simple. SLYTHERIN!"

Something screamed directly into Ginny's ears, at her head from all angles, and she gasped and fainted.

Ginny was revived within minutes, in a small room just besides the Great Hall. There were three others in the room, and as her consciousness returned to her, she made out their forms, one by one. First, Professor Flitwick, the Head of Ravenclaw House, who happened to be of goblin descent.

"Oh, dear," said Professor Flitwick. "I am so sorry. This is all my fault."

"What happened?" said Ginny.

"You were knocked out," said the second figure, who Ginny quickly came to recognize as Madam Pomfrey, the school's Healer, "by an extreme magical stimulus. You haven't gone blind and your eardrums weren't ruptured, but something sensory overloaded your brain. A noise." She glared at Professor Flitwick.

"I, ah, placed a Charm on the Sorting Hat, for security purposes, and it malfunctioned," said Professor Flitwick, in his typically high voice. "Can I disclose more information?"

"I believe so," said the third figure, who – oh my God. The third figure was Harry Potter. Ginny Weasley had woken up from a fainting spell to discover that Harry Potter was standing over her, trying to be reassuring. This was the best day of her life. Hogwarts would be great.

Something unintelligible came out of Ginny's mouth, although the final words were certainly "Harry Potter".

"Centuries ago," Professor Flitwick began, "Salazar Slytherin had a falling-out with the other Founders of our school. He was still highly respected, of course, or else his House and his good standing in our memory would not have been preserved, but legend has it – and it has been recently confirmed – that before he parted ways with the Founders, he built a back-door into the wards of Hogwarts, some mechanism of sabotage for his heirs to use for unknown purposes."

"The Chamber of Secrets," muttered Ginny.

"Precisely," said Professor Flitwick. "We do not know what the Chamber of Secrets is for, exactly. It's a secret, after all. Perhaps it contains a weapon, or perhaps it contains some magic that could be used for good or ill. Legend has it that it contains Slytherin's Monster, an immortal or at least long-lived being consistently described as particularly dangerous and intelligent, and in any case it is not in the interest of the school to permit students to use the Chamber for whatever purpose it might have."

"Alright," said Ginny, still confused.

"It was discovered the prior year," said Professor Flitwick, "that instructions on how to locate the Chamber had been built into the Sorting Hat, in Parseltongue. It seems Slytherin had placed a Charm on the Hat, so that whenever a student was Sorted into Slytherin House, a hint was whispered to them, on how to locate the Chamber. If the student was a Parselmouth, they would be able to understand it. For all others, mere hissing, which would seem to them thematically appropriate and therefore not worth noting. I located the precise Charm he used; it was a particularly simple and clever Charm of his own invention. Unfortunately, it may only be removed by the caster; however, I overrode it with my own version of the Charm. I am not a Parselmouth and therefore cannot speak Parseltongue, but I am still quite able to create white noise in that language. So I Charmed the hat, and the stool, and the stage, and the air around the hat, all to make white noise in Parseltongue whenever a student was Sorted into Slytherin, to drown out the instructions for locating the Chamber."

"At first everyone just assumed that you'd fainted because you were surprised or upset to be sorted into Slytherin," said Harry, "but I immediately deduced what happened." So Harry had been her savior. "Because I'm a Parselmouth, myself, because of how Voldemort marked me when I was a baby. So I heard everything the same way you heard it."

"It hadn't occurred to me that people capable of understanding Parseltongue would hear it in a louder register," said Professor Flitwick. "It must have been absolutely deafening for you, and I'm very sorry for that. I'll remove my Charm and we'll find an alternate solution at once." Ginny struggled to comprehend this.

"Are you saying that I'm a Parselmouth?" said Ginny. Her family would be very displeased by this, but if she cared what her family thought, she wouldn't have gotten herself Sorted into Slytherin.

"Can you hear thiss?" said Harry.

"Yess?" said Ginny.

"Then you hear ssnake wordss." said Harry.

"Oh," said Ginny, and she continued to sit there, taking this all in.

"Are you alright?" said Professor Flitwick. "I know this might all be a bit much. I was very surprised to hear you Sorted into Slytherin; everyone took it for granted that you would be a Gryffindor, and I wouldn't be surprised if that included yourself."

"I'm fine," said Ginny. "I was Sorted where I wanted to go, more or less. And I'm getting my bearings."

"Glad to hear it," said Professor Flitwick. "Then I only have one more question for you. Did my Charm succeed in preventing you from hearing the clue? Do you remember any kind of speech at all in the moment between your Sorting and fainting?" Ginny struggled to remember, but couldn't. It had almost certainly been drowned out by the other, louder hissing noises, and if it hadn't, she would have been too distracted to pay attention to it.

"No, I don't," said Ginny. Madam Pomfrey grabbed her and stared into her eyes, and she could feel her mind being invaded.

"She's probably telling the truth," said Madam Pomfrey.

"Then unless there's any other way we can help you," said Professor Flitwick, "let us return to the feast." Harry helped Ginny get up on her feet, an experience she loved, and all four returned to the Great Hall.

"Goodbye," said Harry, as he made his way to the Ravenclaw table and parted with Ginny, who went to the Slytherin table. Ginny was hoping for a "see you around", but "goodbye" would have to do. Ginny sat down between Colin Creevey and Tracey Davis, and very quietly, as Gilderoy Lockhart, the Defense Professor, was speaking.

"Now, can anyone tell me what foreshadowing is?" said Professor Lockhart, finishing up. A few students heartily laughed. "I'm just teasing! Have a great year!" Lockhart sat down, and the Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, stood up. The room fell completely silent.

"There are several other replacements in the faculty this year," said the Headmistress, "as I am sad to report. As you all know, this is my first year as Headmistress, after Headmaster Dumbledore's loss to Time at the end of the last term. I cannot very well go on serving as Headmistress and Hogwarts' Professor of Transfiguration simultaneously. It was difficult to find a suitable candidate for my replacement, and ultimately I have been forced to select one of the youngest Hogwarts Professors in history. Please welcome Nymphadora Tonks, your new Transfiguration Professor." Tonks stood up, and there was a round of applause. "Many of you know Professor Tonks, as she attended school here only last year. She is very young and will need to be supervised, by myself and by others, for some time. But I know Tonks personally and I have no doubt that in time she will stand with all of the great Transfiguration Professors Hogwarts has employed."

"Thank you, Headmistress," said Tonks, who then sat down.

"Professor Kettleburn, of Care Of Magical Creatures, will serve as the new Head of Gryffindor House," said Headmistress McGonagall. "Rejoining our staff this year is Professor Slughorn, who will serve both as Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House in the wake of Professor Snape's unexpected retirement." The new Potions Master, a timid but apparently bright man who looked something like a turtle, stood up and waved. "And, finally, we would like to welcome Professor Columbus, who will be teaching History Of Magic this year, owing to Professor Binns' mysterious and unfortunate disappearance over the summer. Now, in the memory of the late Professor Binns, the feast may begin!" Food appeared before all of the students, and it was far more than Ginny had ever seen in one place.