After a few minutes, Professor Suliman comes in and clears her throat, quieting the murmuring of forty eleven-year-olds instantly.

"Good evening," she says. "I am Deputy Headmistress Elizabeth Suliman, and I am here to welcome you to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In a few minutes, you will be Sorted into your Houses. Your House will be your home, and contain your closest friends for the next seven years. But it is important that you not simply isolate yourselves within your Houses. We must not become four factions pitted against each other; we are four parts of the same whole. Now."

She waves her wand, and the massive double doors open silently.

"Welcome to Hogwarts."

She walks through, followed by the crowd of kids.

Professor Suliman strides up to a stool which has been placed on a raised dais, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a tattered old pointed hat. She places it on the stool and stands off to one side. It begins singing a bizarre song welcoming the first years to Hogwarts and explaining the Houses, and the intentions of Hogwarts' Founders. Joey doesn't catch most of the song, because he's too busy wincing and clenching his teeth to make his ears rumble so he can't hear it, because it sets off his auditory problems really badly.

When the song is over, Professor Suliman starts calling names in alphabetical order. "Ahmad, Hakim" is sorted into Ravenclaw, as is "Carter, Liam," though his apparent twin "Carter, Sean" is sorted into Slytherin. Joey mostly tunes that out too, because after each kid is Sorted there's a bunch of loud cheering from the corresponding House's table, which is also not great for his auditory problems.

Eventually, though, Professor Suliman calls out "Reed, Joseph!" Joey scurries forward through the aisle to the hat stool, taking the hat from "O'Malley, Katherine" as she flees to Ravenclaw. Then he sits on the stool, takes a deep breath, and - well, first he takes off his own pointy hat, setting it on the floor next to the stool. Then he puts the Sorting Hat on his head.

Well, well, well, says the Hat silently. You're an interesting one. Potential, certainly, but... hmm. I don't suppose I could sell you on Slytherin?

I don't know if I'd like it there, Joey admits. They sound mean. He didn't mean to say "mean," that sounds like something a kid would say, but he's just thinking it and that doesn't let him pick his words carefully.

They're really... well, it's not my job to sell you on something that'd hurt you, the Hat sighs. Don't write them off, though. So it's Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff... You'd get a lot out of Ravenclaw, you know. You can do great things, if you've got the right motivation, and motivation they'd give you in spades.

I can motivate myself, Joey says.

When it's fun you can motivate yourself, the Hat counters. When it gets hard you give up and convince yourself you never wanted it in the first place. Ravenclaw's got plenty like that, them who need a trail of sweets to get them to the end. They've found ways of handling it.

Then I'll ask Ravenclaws for study help, Joey says. But for the people I'm around all the time, I want... I want people who'll like me. People who'll hug me. Not to replace my family, but maybe to give me something to lean on when I don't have them.

The Hat sighs again. Alright. I suppose if you're sure, you'd best go on to "HUFFLEPUFF!"

Joey hops off the stool, puts the Hat back on the seat, puts his own hat back on, and scampers over to the Hufflepuff table, which is cheering. It doesn't bother him quite so much now, though he's sure he'll reconsider when they're being loud and he's right there at the table. But right now, they're cheering for him, and that's kind of nice. He slides into a seat next to Aaron. "Hi! Hug me," he demands.

Aaron laughs and hugs him.

The rest of the Sorting progresses much as the first half did, though it turns out there are only six kids with names after "Reed" in the alphabet, so there's not much of it. Once they're all at their assorted tables, an elderly woman in a lavish green robe and hat stands up and clinks a spoon against her goblet. She introduces herself as Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and gives a brief speech about school rules and a few announcements, including that Filius Flitwick has left academia to rejoin the duelling circuit and that Professor Jenkins will therefore be moving from Transfiguration to Charms, which he is much better at (some laughter) and to replace him as Transfiguration professor please welcome Professor Safiya al-Fulani (Professor al-Fulani stands and bows with a smile) and that the Forbidden Forest continues to be very thoroughly forbidden.

"Now, I've talked enough; time to eat." She claps her hands together, and a feast appears on the tables.

"I know what, like, half of this stuff is," Joey says to Aaron. "Please help."

"Sure!" Aaron introduces Joey to the arrayed food, which is partly just English and partly wizarding (Yorkshire puddings appear to be Muggle in origin, whereas the fairy caviar to be spread over them is definitely not).

Joey ends up with a very eclectic plate, reasoning that he should try a bit of everything at least until he knows what he likes and what he hates. Yorkshire puddings turn out to be a hit. Fairy caviar is apparently closer in flavor to an oddly textured mixed berry jam than to traditional eggs. Shepherd's pie is nice, as is steak and kidney pie, as is mooncalf jelly, though it looks disconcertingly like a giant blue eyeball.

"Is it always this heavy on meat?" he asks, trying a sausage. "I have occasionally enjoyed a vegetable. In my time."

Aaron shakes his head. "There's a variation usually, it's just the start and end of term feasts are very traditionally British. But they do loads of different stuff normally, and some of it's got vegetables in."

"Good, good. Not that this stuff isn't great, but if we just had this every day I think I'd get rickets."

When they've finished the main course, dessert appears. Aaron once again leads Joey through disambiguation.

"This is easier, because I'll eat basically anything presented to me as a dessert," Joey comments, loading his plate with treacle tart and toffee pudding and rosemallow clouds.

Predictably, he eats until he feels slightly sick. "I have no regrets," he lies.

Aaron lets this falsehood slide. "Alright, Hufflepuff first-years, come over here," he says loudly. "You too, Ananda."

     Ananda turns out to be a sixth-year girl with the same pin on her robes as Aaron, and her hair done up in a complicated braid. She joins him and the first-years, as the rest of the table heads out the doors. "Alright, little ones - and that does include Aaron - we're going to introduce ourselves. You'll be doing a fair deal of that over the next few days, so it's best to start now. I'll start: My name's Ananda Luthra. I'm from London, I'm a pureblood, I want to be a Healer, and one fun fact about me is that my twin sister is a Gryffindor prefect. Everybody got the formula?"

"Well, in case you didn't," Aaron says smoothly, "I'll lay it out: Full name, where you're from, whether you're a pureblood or a halfblood or a newblood, what you want to be when you grow up, and a fun fact about yourself. I'm Aaron March, I'm from Aberdeen, I'm a halfblood, I want to be a musician, and my fun fact is that I have a half-kneazle named Solomon, who's back in the dormitory sniffing everything to make sure nowt's been tampered with, as is his duty and his right." He looks around the circle. "Ah, Joey, how's about you go next, us both having pets and all."

Joey nods. "So, I'm Joey Reed and this is Thalia, my Faegrecrawe. I'm from California, in the United States. I'm a - newblood? I guess?" He glances over at Aaron, who nods. "I'm a newblood. I don't know what I want to be yet, I used to want to be a writer and maybe I still will but magic changes stuff kind of a lot. And my fun fact - I've got two dads, and eight brothers and one sister and one of the brothers is my twin and I kind of miss him a lot."

Aaron pats him on the head. "Well, that'll get better with time."

     "I didn't know Muggles could make a baby from two men," says an olive-skinned boy sitting next to another, identical olive-skinned boy.

          "Is that one of the innovations we're going to learn about in Muggle Innovations?" his twin asks.

"No, um, Daddy Jordan was born with girl parts and Daddy Michael wasn't so they just made us the normal way," Joey says, blushing a bit. "A lot of people think we must be adopted but they've got pictures from the hospital and everything."

The first twin furrows his brow. "Is that another Muggle thing? Being born with the wrong parts?"

"It is not," says a slight boy, sitting crosslegged on his chair. "You just haven't heard about it because there's potions for it and people don't like talking about it."

"Makes sense," the twins say in unison without seeming to notice. "Sorry about your twin not being a wizard, that sounds awful," one says to Joey.

     Ananda nods. "Leonardo, why don't you introduce yourself next?"

Leo waves. "Leonardo Carlos Santana Vega del Monte de la Cruz, for the love of Morgana just call me Leo. I was born in Barcelona, but my family moved to Birmingham shortly after my birth for various reasons. I'm a pureblood, I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up except that I don't want to be a healer, and I had a pet fairy from the ages of six to eight."

"Don't fairies live for like sixteen years?" Joey asks.

"Not around my sister Marisol they don't."

Joey winces. "I will bear that in mind if I ever meet your sister Marisol."

"If you do, please hex her in the face."

"Okay!" Aaron claps his hands together. "Gavriil and Konstantin, which of you wants to go first?"

     "Alphabetically and by birth order it'd be Gav," says the second twin,

          "so let's introduce Kostas first," says the first seamlessly. "Konstantin Manos, call him Kostas. We're from Greece by way of Coventry, we're purebloods, his life's ambition is to become a famous singer, and when he was six he used to perform concerts for an audience of the family house elves and our pet Puffskeins."

     "Gavriil Manos," continues Kostas, "call him Gav. His life's ambition is to become a famous artist, and when we were seven he stole blackberries from the kitchen and rendered them down into paint, which he used to paint a really lovely mural on the wall that attracted a colony of ants into our room."

The rest of the Hufflepuff first-years introduce themselves, one more boy and three girls. Frederick Conway, a newblood from Cork with an older brother in Gryffindor, wants to be a Crup breeder and has a scar on his butt from a fireworks accident in which his trousers caught fire. Clair Delmonte, a pureblood from Cheddar (Joey's not sure he heard that right), wants to be a professional Quidditch player and her family land is chronically infested with fairies, which she doesn't mind nearly so much as her parents do because they're so pretty. Sally Paloma Martin, a newblood from London, wants to be a Healer and she has a friend in Gryffindor already and his name is Ari (Ananda has to tell her to speak up a couple of times). Katherine O'Malley, a halfblood from Bristol, wants to be a research witch and her mum has a Faegrecrawe like Joey's except he's wicked old and can't travel anymore.

                Ananda nods. "Well, it's grand to meet you all. Now that we all know each other and we've had a few minutes to digest, let's troop down to the dormitory and see the Common Room. Up we all get, come on."

Everybody rises, with a certain amount of groaning, and Ananda leads them out of the Great Hall, through a single hallway and down a flight of stairs. In the basement, Ananda takes a sudden turn into a seemingly disused corridor, and raps her wand on a large barrel in a certain pattern: tap, tap, taptaptap. The barrel's lid swings open, and Ananda climbs through, beckoning the children after her.

"Remember that pattern, and that barrel," Aaron warns. "Get the wrong one, or the wrong rhythm, and it'll douse you with vinegar."

                "Damned stupid of old Helga if you ask me," Ananda mutters. "Why let on that they're in the right place at all? If you want to defend the common room just make it act like there's nothing there. Lock the door if they get it wrong three times, if you must."

"Ananda has opinions," Aaron explains cheerfully. "Strong opinions."