Application for Bean, Ender's Game/Ender's Shadow

[beantheory]

A tiny boy appears in the Sorting Room. He appears to be about five years old, and small for that age, with thin hair and dark eyes. In reality, he is seven. The lingering effects of early deprivation haven't been wiped out, despite looking lean and strong. And he's careworn, unusually so for a child so young

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[nemofound]

((Oh, brilliant! It's been too long since I read the series, but still, YAY!))

The house elf pulls the fish tank into the Sorting room, and the small orange clownfish inside takes a good look at the boy standing there looking a little bit lost.

"You're little too! Just like me!" he says. "I'm Nemo."

[beantheory]

Bean looked at the fish that was addressing him, and wondered if this was some 3D variant of the game.

But why would they persisting at attempts to get him to play the game now that Battle School was as good as finished?

A better explanation was that the pressure had finally got to him and he'd started going a bit wrong.

"Ho, Nemo," he said, cautiously. "I'm Bean." No point in denying that he's little, but the comparison to a clownfish is a new one.

[nemofound]

Nemo smiled.

"Hi, Bean!" he said. "Now that we know each other's names we aren't strangers so we can be friends. My dad says not to talk to strangers. But in the Sorting Room it's different, because everybody who shows up here is a stranger and we have to talk to them so we know how to sort them."

[beantheory]

It occurred to him, as the talking fish talked, that it might be a child. Bean had never known a child who'd really been a child.

Perhaps his subconscious had constructed an idea of what a normal child would be like based on what he'd seen of newly-arrived Launchies, and was offering him a chance to forget about xenocide and commanding starships and sending men to their deaths.

Well, maybe his subconscious knew best. Might as well play along for a bit.

"Your dad was probably right. There are lots of dangerous people out there. But what do you mean, 'sort them'?"

[nemofound]

Yes, Nemo was very much a child. If he were to comprehend Bean's past, he would be very shocked, but also very sympathetic. He knows what it is like to be taken away from your parents and sent to someplace scary.

"I mean we have to choose which House you should be in. There's four houses to choose from. I'm in Gryffindor 'cuz I'm brave. Ravenclaw is for smart people like my friend Dr. Grant. Slytherin is for sneaky nice people. There were some scary-gonna-eat-me people in Hufflepuff, but that's where Dr. Grant's friend Laura is, so everybody in it isn't bad I guess."

Nemo paused and looked at Bean. "Are you brave or smart or sneaky?"

[beantheory]

A hallucinatory avatar of his subconscious was asking him to classify himself.

Huh.

"Not particularly brave," Bean admits. "But I'm very smart and very sneaky. Are the Houses like armies at the Battle School?"

[nemofound]

Nemo ponders this.

"I dunno. What's armies at the Battle School? I go to school with Mr. Ray, but we didn't have armies there."

Hogwarts is a school, too, of course, but Nemo's course attendance is patchy at best, although he seldom misses a class of Care of Magical Creatures. Nemo waits for Bean to explain armies, all while thinking about how to sort someone who belongs in two houses.

[beantheory]

"Each was named after a different animal," Bean said. "We bunked together, eat meals together, had classes together - things like that." He didn't bother explaining about the battles and the rankings; he'd been told enough by other students to work out that this isn't that sort of place.

[nemofound]

((A-and, the mun suddenly sees with perfect clarity how Nemo will make his decision!))

Nemo grins. "Oh, yeah! Like that! We have animal pictures for the houses too. Gryffindor is my house, and we have a lion picture. When Aslan came he got to be in Gryffindor cuz he IS a Lion. He's really brave too of course. He's really nice and you can pat him. You should meet him. What animal was your house?"

[beantheory]

"I was commander of Rabbit army, but not for long. My first army was Dragon. Are the Houses here in competition with one another?"

Bean paused, and then let himself admit, "I've never seen a lion. Is he dangerous?"

Vote: Slytherin!

[nemofound]

Nemo thinks about Bean's first question