By the next morning she has found - nothing.  If wizards do ever reincarnate into other wizards, they don't want first-years to know about it.

In fact over the next few weeks she continues to find nothing on the subject!  McGonagall takes her exploring in Diagon Alley and doles out a few galleons of gold to try snacks and restaurants or purchase knickknacks for herself every so often.  After many days of appearing earnest, responsible, polite, and obedient, McGonagall even lets her out of her sight for a day or two.

She's not sure whether, since McGonagall is in charge of her vault, Gringott's will tell McGonagall if Clover shows up there to make change for a sapphire; so she finds a promisingly seedy little side street off Diagon Alley and pawns it.  It's probably conspicuous for an eleven-year-old to be pawning off a sapphire, but at least the owner probably doesn't have a line on any of her legal guardians.

She gets two hundred and fifty galleons for it.  Probably less than she could've gotten at Gringott's, but it's still nice to have a rainy-day fund that she can get to on short notice without going through any grownups.  A little tension eases inside her, that she hadn't realized she'd been carrying.

Little by little, she's starting to feel more like whoever she used to be.

She purchases an extension-charmed drawstring pouch, that she can pull open wide enough to fit larger objects than coins and gems into, and she purchases a wizarding first-aid kit, to keep inside it along with the rest of her rainy-day fund, and she keeps the pouch itself hidden discreetly up her sleeve.  (Wizard robes often have pockets sewn into the insides of their long flowing sleeves, enchanted to keep small items in place for easy retrieval.)

There is little else to do in Diagon Alley, in the leadup to the start of term.  Clover purchases a few extracurricular modern-history books, aiming to learn about Maledict Gaunt to the extent she can.  (McGonagall somberly notes her interest, and makes herself available to talk, and Clover manages to hit a nice sad-but-accepting note: she just wants to understand what happened, and why, and the world that she's coming into.  This seems to satisfy McGonagall.)

September first, she and McGonagall meet with Petunia at King's Cross.

"Promise you'll write?" her mother says, and she promises.

"I got you a late birthday present," she says, and she hands over two journals and a pencil box full of Muggle pens and mechanical pencils.  "You can of course use either or both of the journals for whatever you like, as much or as little as you like.  I know the one with the lock on it is a bit childish, but I thought the lock may make it easier to magic it shut, if you learn to magic things shut.  And the pens are just - well, your mother took to it fine, but I can't imagine always writing with quill feathers and ink bottles."

"Thank you," she says.  McGonagall left the two of them alone, so she has her childsface off, and it's strange to talk to someone without wearing a face, but she doesn't mind so much with her mother as she would with anyone else.

Her mother smiles, warm and - understanding.  "You're welcome.  Have a good term.  I love you, Clover."

"I love you too."

She doesn't completely know how to mean it, but - it's not a lie in quite the same way it'd be a lie to anyone else.

She puts her face back on as McGonagall takes her through the brick wall between platforms nine and ten, into platform nine-and-three-quarters.  They got there early; McGonagall leaves via one of the floo-fireplaces set into the opposite wall, to get to Hogwarts and help set things up for the first day of term.  There are stalls set up on the platform, selling newspapers and snacks; it reminds her a bit of a Muggle airport.  She purchases a few snacks, secures herself a compartment on the train, and waits.

Train departs.

She managed to get a miniature compartment at one end of one car, and keeps her trunk on the other seat; so she's not disturbed by other students looking for their own seats.  She reads her history books, waves off the candy lady.

Sky darkens, train arrives.  The face she's going to be wearing for the foreseeable future wouldn't be unfriendly, so she makes light, brief conversation with the other kids as they're led away from the station, down to and across the lake, into the entrance hall of Hogwarts.

McGonagall addresses the group.  They're each going to have a private conversation with the Sorting Hat, then stand in the Great Hall in a line while it ceremoniously announces everyone's houses.

She's read up on the Hat in advance.  The Hat is very well known for never betraying any secrets it learns in the Sorting ceremony, up to and including knowledge of or participation in actual crimes, without the permission of the students whose head it learned them from. More than once, enterprising Hogwarts faculty have tried to apply mind-reading magic to it to extract those secrets from it, with no success.

So she's probably safe.

Still, she's ill-at-ease, behind her face.

She places the hat on her head.

Hello, Miss Evans-Potter.

Hello.  It's exactly like talking except that her mouth doesn't move and her throat makes no sound.  Can you only perceive things I say like this?

No, in fact, I can hear your thoughts as well, and see some of your memories, and I have a broad sense of who you are as a person, the hat says.

She represses a shiver.

You want to go to Slytherin, it says.

Yes.

Why?

You know why.

I think it will be instructive to treat this as a dialogue.

Because I don't think like other people, she says, and Slytherin sounds like how I do think.

A quarter of Hogwarts students wind up in Slytherin, the hat says.  But it doesn't sound to me like you think a quarter of the people you meet think the way you do.

Are you trying to turn me off Slytherin?

I'm trying to give you a better idea of what to expect, the hat says.  If you go to Slytherin expecting everyone there to effortlessly make themselves understood to you in precisely the terms you find most intuitive and appealing, you will be just as disappointed with it as you would be with any of the other Houses, and it would hinder you from learning everything you could learn from it.

I think you're being a little unfair.

I'm not.  I'm reading your mind.

She sets her jaw.