第一章入学

“Could I have a Chocolate Frog and a pumpkin pasty, please?”

“I'm Wen Zheng. Wen is my family name.”

“It's Chinese,”

“I've studied the first two years,But I've never done magic with a wand before June. So I suppose we'll find out.”

English: Fred and George exchanged another look. This time Wen Zheng caught it: George's eyebrow lifted slightly, and Fred's mouth shifted to one side.

Fred said, stepping back to clear the doorway.

Fred said, and the two of them were already walking away down the corridor.

Their voices floated back from the other end of the corridor, mixed with the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks. Wen Zheng pulled the sliding door shut again and sat back down. The pumpkin pasty was still warm, and the pastry made a soft crackling sound between her fingers. She took a bite. The filling was sweet and thick, with cinnamon and some spice she could not identify.

Outside the window, the fields spread out under the September sun, so green that they almost looked gentle. She thought of a sentence at the end of Professor McGonagall's letter, written in dark green ink on the parchment: "Hogwarts will not lower its standards because you started late, Miss Wen. But it will give you the chance to catch up."

Catch up." Wen Zheng said the word softly to herself. In her last year at Muggle school, she had been the kind of student who least needed to catch up. She was not used to the weight of that word.

But she was not afraid either. Fear and alertness were two different things. She sat alertly on a train heading to a strange world, ate a rather good pumpkin pasty, and met a pair of twins she could not tell apart. She closed her eyes and, to the sound of the wheels, went over the wand movement for the Levitation Charm from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 once more in her mind.

When the Hogwarts Express slowed in the dusk, the view outside the window had turned into rolling hills and a lake sunk in dark blue light. Wen Zheng put her book back into her trunk and changed into her school robes. The robes had come with Professor McGonagall's letter. They were dark gray, made of thicker material than she had expected, and had no house badge on the chest—that would be pinned on only after the Sorting.

A huge figure holding a lamp shouted at the end of the platform, his voice rough like stone rolling over stone. From a distance, Wen Zheng saw a group of small students being led by that figure toward the boats by the lake. The students from the other years headed in another direction, where a row of carriages without horses stood waiting. The carriage door opened by itself.

a voice came from the carriage beside her. George leaned half his face out of the window.

Wen Zheng stood in front of the carriage for a second. She did seriously consider whether the boats or the carriage would draw less attention, and then gave up. She climbed into the carriage and sat down by the window. Fred and two Ravenclaw girls were already inside. One of them was reading a book with a chart of ancient runes on the cover and did not even look up.

The carriage started moving without a driver, the wheels making a muffled sound on the gravel road. Through the window, Wen Zheng saw the castle in the distance rising bit by bit in the dusk—first the towers, then the connected roofs and windows. Lights spread across the stone walls, as if someone had scattered a handful of gold dust over the dark hillside.

Wen Zheng did not answer. She was not sure whether Fred Weasley's "kindness" was the same kind of kindness she was used to dealing with. She pulled her gaze back from the window and nodded.

A bit

The carriage stopped in front of the castle's main door. Students poured into the entrance hall. The torches on the stone walls had been lit, and the flames leaned to one side in the draft. Wen Zheng followed the crowd toward the Great Hall. They passed a corridor hung with a huge tapestry, and the figures on it turned their heads to look at her as she went by. One medieval wizard in armor raised his goblet to her.

The doors of the Great Hall were open. Wen Zheng paused for half a step at the threshold. Four long tables stretched from the door all the way to the raised platform at the front. Thousands of candles floated above the tables, and their flames filled the whole space with a warm honey-colored light. The ceiling—Wen Zheng looked up and spent three whole seconds convincing herself that it was not the open night sky. The velvet-like darkness was full of stars, and a few were so bright that they almost seemed to blink.

“Enchanted ceiling,” 走在她旁边的那个拉文克劳女生终于从书上抬起了眼睛，语气很平，“It reflects the sky outside. It's in Hogwarts: A History.”

The first-years stood in the open space between the long tables and went one by one to the three-legged stool in front of the raised platform. The Sorting Hat was much older than Wen Zheng had imagined—its brim was worn fuzzy, its tip leaned to one side, but the face on it was clear: a mouth made of wrinkles and two deep cracks for eyes. It was singing. The song was about the four founders and the qualities each of them valued. When Wen Zheng heard "Ravenclaw," she heard the song say "the cleverest minds."

The line of new students grew shorter and shorter. Wen Zheng's name was not in the alphabetical line—Professor McGonagall came out of a small door at the side of the raised platform, holding a roll of parchment, and stood at the edge of the platform.

“We have one transfer student joining the third year this term,” 麦格教授的声音在礼堂里清晰地传开，没有提高，但每一个字都落得很稳。“She will be sorted now, before the feast.”

Wen Zheng stepped out of the line. She felt hundreds of eyes fall on her at once, like a layer of fine stitches sewn from her shoulders to her back. She climbed the stone steps and sat down on the stool. Professor McGonagall lifted the Sorting Hat and lowered its brim to just above Wen Zheng's eyebrows. It was dark inside the hat, and it smelled of old wool and dust. Then a very small voice sounded by her ear, so close that it seemed to come from inside her own skull.