The trio did not, in fact, find Trevor the toad before the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station. Thankfully, Neville was reunited with him soon enough - on the very steps of the castle, no less. Professor McGonagall, the stern, non-nonsense woman who greeted them at the doors, watched as a tearful Neville scooped up his pet with a wet smile. It wasn't the strongest first impression, but Gabriel thought Neville considered it a fair trade.
The rest of the night was, in a word, magical. In the strangest of ways.
There was some sort of kerfuffle involving Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and a pale, sharp-faced blond boy - or at least what Gabriel thought was boy, the long silky hair left some room for interpretation. Then, out of nowhere, ghosts drifted through the walls, shrieking and joking and singing the praises of their Houses, before being hushed by McGonagall as the first years were shepherded to the Great Hall, every eye in the school fixed on them.
Gabriel hardly noticed the stares. He was too busy gawking at everything else - the intricate carvings along the walls, the watchful animal gargoyles, the banners fluttering high above, and the endless sea of floating candles. Overhead, the ceiling looked as if it simply wasn't there; Hermione leaned in to murmur that had been enchanted by a previous headmaster to reflect the night sky outside.
At the front, Professor McGonagall placed a rickety old stool and set a battered wizard's hat upon it. The hat croaked out a song he half-remembered afterward - something about the Houses, he thinks - and then the Sorting began.
He tried to follow who went where, but honestly, the spectacle of the place was more interesting than the names being called. It's not as if he was not used to charmed objects and magical buildings - really, it was part of his day-to-day life. But for the most time, back home, his mom made almost everything except for her laboratories look like normal technology. The glass ball she used to communicate with her friends was shaped like a TV, the cauldrons she used to brew potions were shaped like normal pans, their "magical library" was actually a bunch of bookstands spread through the house decorated with potted plants.
He did remember things being different when he was younger, but she changed it for some reason. Maybe she did it because she wanted to avoid the fine for breaking the Statute of Secrecy, or maybe she just liked the more casual design - he couldn't say. It was only now that they had come into England that his Mum had started to lose the… aesthetic.
But Hogwarts? Hogwarts was unabashedly fantastic. It was like stepping into a fairy tale, being transported back to an age of knights and kings and wizards in towers. Everywhere he looked was dotted with mystery and fantasy.
So yes, perhaps he was a little too distracted to notice when his name was called the first time. Or the third. But Hermione pinched his hand on the fourth, and he stumbled forward before the fifth. By his count, that was fine.
Gabriel was admittedly curious about the Sorting Hat. Some people took ages under it - whispering, arguing, who knew what. And he wondered what it would be like talking with a fellow nearly a millenia old. Unfortunately, the hat had other plans. The moment its brim touched his brow, a loud voice shouted: "Ravenclaw!"
And so the hat was yanked off again before he could even so much as say hello.
His new House applauded, a few students laughing at his startled expression, and he caught McGonagall muttering "obviously" under her breath.
Well, so much for ancient wisdom.
Still, Gabriel's disappointment was soothed by the satisfaction of knowing he could wear exclusively blue clothes for the next seven years without anyone giving him grief. Ravenclaw, in his mind, was already the superior House for that reason alone - and now that he was in it, it had become all the better.
Dinner followed: a feast so decadent it was almost sinful. Platters of roasted meats, dishes drowned in butter, mountains of puddings and pies, rivers of pumpkin juice. His brain was happily swimming in sugar and fat, though his mum would have tutted at the sight - she already claimed he was getting too chubby. He decided that was a problem for Future Gabriel. Present Gabriel felt duty-bound not to offend the cooks by leaving anything untouched.
At one point, he found himself attempting to eat what could only be described as a sweet pie-pizza looking thing - 'What even is a treacle?' - while chatting with another first-year, a soft-spoken girl of Indian descent. That was when he looked around and noticed that Hermione, Neville, Harry, and Ron had all been sorted into Gryffindor. For a moment, he felt a small pang of exclusion - then the pumpkin juice hit his tongue, and the pang disappeared.
Afterward, the Prefects herded the Ravenclaws up the endless spirals of Ravenclaw Tower. Gabriel quickly realized why Hogwarts students weren't all round balls of lard from feasting - the castle itself was a gauntlet of stairs and corridors. Sadistic, he thought, to let them gorge themselves before forcing them into a mountaineering expedition.
By the time he dragged himself up the final step, he was ready to collapse. The last straw was discovering that entry to their Common Room required solving a riddle spoken by a smug, eagle-shaped knocker. The Prefects, surely reveling in their cruelty, insisted the "Firsties" should try it for themselves.
"Glittering point that downward thrusts, sparkling spear that never rusts. What is it?" the knocker had asked.
Five minutes of chittering discussion later, Gabriel's patience snapped.
Gabriel threw up his hands and bellowed: "A pissing cock, porra - now let me in!"
The corridor froze. A beat of silence followed.
Then the eagle knocker inclined its head gravely. "Well reasoned."
The door swung open.
Perhaps, Gabriel thought, he hadn't made the best first impression either.
=======================================================
That had been two weeks ago, and honestly, Gabriel wasn't all that bothered by it anymore. Whatever sting of embarrassment lingered after his outburst had been quickly soothed by the comfort of his new bed and the quiet delight of finally having a room to himself. Another solid point in favor of Ravenclaw being the best House: apparently, Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were crammed together in shared dormitories. Gabriel offered them his deepest condolences, as one offers to those afflicted with long lasting and uncomfortable conditions.
Naturally, curiosity had gnawed at him. How, precisely, could a single tower provide private rooms for nearly two hundred students, all without looming over the Scottish highlands like a great stone skyscraper? The short answer was obvious: Magic. The long answer, however, was far more entertaining - Rowena Ravenclaw, both genius and perfectionist, had been obsessively concerned with privacy and had a tendency of over-engineering everything she touched - well, that and she had a competitive streak a kilometer wide.
The Prefect who explained it to him didn't put it quite that way, but Gabriel had caught the subtext. Later, when he repeated his own interpretation aloud, the Grey Lady herself actually snorted before vanishing quickly through a wall. She tried to mask it, but Gabriel knew a victory when he saw one.
Classes had begun the very next day, and their timetables arrived floating neatly down onto their breakfast plates, courtesy of Professor Flitwick. There were eight courses laid before them: Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, History of Magic, Astronomy, and Broom Flight.
Their schedule came mixed with other Houses in peculiar pairings: Gryffindor for Charms and Transfiguration, Hufflepuff for Potions and Defense, Slytherin for Herbology and History, and everyone thrown together for Astronomy and Broom Flight.
Of them all, Gabriel ended up gravitating most toward Charms - perhaps unsurprisingly, given his Head of House taught it. Professor Flitwick wasted no time with formality. Before a single word about theory or wandwork left his lips, he had them point their wands skyward and shout "Lumos!" all at once.
What followed was an explosion of light that blinded the lot of them, and Flitwick's delighted titters only confirmed Gabriel's growing suspicion that every single professor in Hogwarts was a sadist. Still - he couldn't deny it was a... dazzling start.
"Magic," Flitwick announced with a smile once their eyes stopped watering, "is imagination. It is art. It is desire and want and a thousand other things besides. Forgive the little prank, but I wanted you to see one truth before we go further. All of you can do magic. Each and every one of you lit that spark just now.
"There will be times - many times - when you do everything right: the words, the movements, the focus, and still nothing will manifest from it. When that happens, do not think, 'I can't do this,' or 'maybe I'm not good enough.' Think back to today, to this moment, when with no training and no knowledge you still made light."
He paused then, letting the silence swell, his white brows lifted high over bright eyes filled with tender joy. Gabriel, strangely, felt that the little man was not really talking about magic at all.
"My dear students," Flitwick said softly, "you can do anything."
It was a simple line, perhaps even a cliché, but in that moment it anchored itself firmly in Gabriel's mind - and in the hearts of most of the first years, judging by the glow on their faces. Whatever else Flitwick was, he had already secured himself as a favorite.
Transfiguration earned second place in Gabriel's unofficial ranking of subjects. Professor McGonagall - tall, slender, dark haired, sharp-eyed, and possessed of a composure that could silence a room without so much as a cough - was perhaps overly serious, but at least she was interesting. The class began with an amusing incident: Ron and Harry, the two already marking themselves as troublemakers, stumbled in late thinking they got away with it only to be confronted by her transforming cat form leaping gracefully from the desk.
After that brief comedy, however, McGonagall settled into a speech that could have doubled as a verbal bludgeon. She outlined in painstaking detail the dangers of Transfiguration, which, in her opinion, was not merely hazardous but downright catastrophic when practiced by "idiots and the careless" - terms she often used interchangeably. The message was clear: play stupid games, win disfigured prizes.
Only then did she allow them a taste of actual magic. With brisk efficiency, she introduced the foundations of Transformation - the branch of Transfiguration that focused on reshaping and reconstituting matter. Their first task was simple on paper: turn a matchstick into a needle.
Hermione, of all people, was the first to succeed. Gabriel was faintly surprised by this. Many of the students with magical parents could have been tutored at home long before Hogwarts, but none of them managed the spell before her. Either she was extraordinarily talented, or wizarding Britain had a collective terror of breaking the underage magic laws. Possibly both.
Gabriel, for his part, took longer - not necessarily because he couldn't manage, but because he was having far too much fun making his matchsticks metallic and then bending them into shapes. By the time he had fashioned a chain necklace of interlinked silver loops, McGonagall had docked five points for "distraction." His housemates' glares were sharp enough to pierce steel, and Gabriel was tempted between repeating this in the next classes to see their faces turn red again or avoid the certain drama that would arrive from it by playing it straight.
After a few moments of consideration, he decided in the end not to rouse more of their anger, there were more harmless things he could do if he wanted to get a reaction out of people.
Defense Against the Dark Arts, on the other hand, was a bitter disappointment. The very name promised excitement: shielding charms, hex-deflection, perhaps even an introduction to dueling. Instead, they were treated to a lecture on the habits of garden gnomes. Fascinating in its own way - if one expected Magizoology - but hardly "dark" and certainly not "defensive."
The real problem, however, was Professor Quirrell. He was the antithesis of everything the subject should embody: frail in body, feeble in magic, and utterly crippled in spirit. The man was pretty much a walking cautionary tale.
Word around the castle claimed he had once been a tad more competent, but an ill-fated trip to the Albanian forests had ruined him. Supposedly, he had encountered a vampire there. The experience left him with a pathological terror that now dictated every detail of his life. His classroom reeked of garlic; ropes dangled sharpened stakes from the ceiling; sacks of rice lined the walls; and every window was flung open, regardless of weather, to let in maximum sunlight. He even toted around a battered canteen that Gabriel was almost certain contained holy water.
The problem, of course, was that half of the measures he took were utterly useless against vampires. The garlic might annoy one, perhaps, but the rice? Gabriel could only assume Quirrell was banking on some obscure folkloric quirk. In the end, the professor's stutter was the least of his shortcomings. At least the smell of garlic made staying in the glass pleasant, even if the sun kept hurting his eyes.
Herbology was… pleasant, if not exactly thrilling. It was understandable, really. Most of the first years - including Gabriel - had never so much as planted a rosebush, let alone handled magical flora with their peculiar appetites and eccentric demands. Professor Sprout told them that until Christmas they would stick with mundane plants. Only in the new term would they graduate to the genuinely interesting ones. For now it was calming work, dead useful for the future, too. The best part, in Gabriel's opinion, was the grading system: no written exams. Instead, their marks would depend on the state of the plants under their care by year's end. It was, he decided, the most sensible academic policy he had ever encountered.
History of Magic, on the other hand, was another story - 'heh' - entirely. The sole redeeming feature was that the professor was a ghost. Unfortunately, the novelty ended there. Binns was less an instructor and more a magical phonograph, droning line by line through the course textbook in a voice as flat as parchment. At first, Gabriel entertained himself by wondering how the ghost had managed to turn the pages in order to memorize them, but horror dawned when he realized the awful truth: the book itself probably hadn't been updated since Binns had been alive. He decided not to check the publication date - ignorance was bliss in this case - and promptly designated the subject as "nap time." Self-study, he thought, would be more fruitful.
Potions should have been a highlight. Gabriel had been helping his mother with brewing since he was 'out of the womb', so to say. And it was the one subject he felt the most confident in. But Professor Snape managed to wring all the joy out of it. Dour, sharp-tongued, and perpetually disappointed in everyone, he favored letting students flounder while berating them for their mistakes. And yet - Gabriel had to admit, grudgingly - Snape was brilliant. His recipes bore subtle improvements over the textbooks, he could predict a potion's outcome halfway through the process, and his criticisms, as unnecessarily cruel as they were, revealed errors that Gabriel himself couldn't detect. There was, unfortunately, much to learn from him.
Still an arse, though.
'And speaking of arses-'
Astronomy had quickly clawed its way into the upper tier of his favorites. Yes, the class took place at a punishing hour of the night, and yes, the endless stairs up to the Astronomy Tower had Gabriel cursing the castle's lack of elevators. But the view at the top made it all worth it. Professor Sinestra had caught him more than once gazing at her instead of the stars - the dry snort she gave suggested she was used to it - but Gabriel didn't mind. A little embarrassment was a small price to pay for that kind of view.
And then there was Broom Flight. The first week had been nothing but learning maintenance: trimming bristles, polishing handles with the right oils, inspecting for hairline cracks or warping in the wood. Important skills, admittedly, but not exactly thrilling. That was going to change today. Two weeks into term, the first-years of Hogwarts were finally about to get their first taste of actual flight.
=======================================================
It was a clear, breezy day when the first-years gathered for their flying lesson. The lawn stretched smooth and green, far from the looming shadow of the Forbidden Forest. Gabriel caught himself staring at the tree line, unsettlingly curious. Rumors said there were werewolves in there. He wanted nothing more than to find out if that was true. What would happen if he was beaten? Would his innate magical defense - weak as it was - stop the curse? If not, would he perhaps turn into a giant werewolf?
He shook himself off from the thoughts, and focused on the class. His mom would kill him if she discovered he tried something like that.
The brooms lay in two neat rows on the grass, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs lined up opposite to the Gryffindors and Slytherins. Gabriel glanced down the line of faces and had little trouble picking out who'd flown before. The practiced grins, the casual stances - mostly purebloods, with a few odd exceptions. Neville Longbottom, for instance, the poor boy already looked ready to faint. He had good reason for it too, considering how clumsy he was, and Gabriel noted with some amusement that he had somehow managed to forget his robes entirely today.
Hermione, a few places down, was pale and sweating, gripping her broom as if it might bite. Gabriel almost went and teased her, but thought better of it. She hadn't been especially patient with him lately, and he doubted now was the time to test her temper.
"Stand by your broomsticks," Madam Hooch barked. She was brisk and sharp-eyed, her short, spiky hair gleaming silver in the sunlight. "Stick out your right hand over your broom, and say, 'Up!'"
The word rang across the field, and only a handful of brooms jumped neatly into waiting palms. Most wobbled uncertainly or rolled on the grass. A few didn't so much as twitch. Gabriel waited, watching who managed it first before trying himself. Then, instead of simply barking the command, he closed his eyes for a moment, pictured the broom rising into his hand, and spoke with as much intent as he could. It slapped smartly into his palm, like it should. There wasn't much mystery to it, just treat the broom like any other charmed object that requires input - half a measure of command, and another half of imagination. Easy.
Hooch stalked along the lines, correcting grips and postures. Even a few who clearly thought themselves experts were made to adjust. Gabriel himself earned a sharp word when he tried to step over the broom, skateboard-style. "You are not at the seaside, Mr. Moretti," she snapped, and he decided then and there that he would absolutely enchant a skateboard to fly one day.
Finally, Hooch demonstrated the takeoff. "Push off from the ground, hard, and come straight back down."
Simple enough - at least on paper.
What followed was chaos. Neville shot upward like a firework, arms pinwheeling, eyes wide with terror. His broom zigzagged madly, carrying him high over the lawn before tilting dangerously. With a scream, he tumbled off and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Gasps and winces rang out as Hooch hurried over. Neville clutched his wrist with a moan, tears in his eyes, the joint already swelling.
Madam Hooch ordered him up at once, supporting him with surprising gentleness. "The rest of you - stay grounded. You leave those brooms where they are , or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say Quidditch!"
As she half-guided, half-dragged Neville away, something small and glassy slipped from his pocket. Gabriel darted forward, snatching the Remembrall before it could crack against the stones. He jogged after them just long enough to press it into Neville's uninjured hand with what he hoped was a comforting smile. "Better luck next time."
Neville managed a watery grin before Madam Hooch swept him onward.
Behind them, Malfoy let out a sharp tsk of annoyance.
Gabriel turned back toward the waiting students, the Remembrall's faint glow still lingering in his mind. Malfoy had made some nasty comment which caused a discussion to brew up between Slytherin and Gryffindor, but Gabriel didn't much care for it. For a fleeting moment, he had the strangest sensation that something here had gone off-script, like events were unfolding differently than they ought to.
He shook it off. But the unease clung to him for the rest of the day.