Ophelia waits, patiently, and may possibly have cried as well, as the ballad wore on.

She refused to lose composure, however, dabbing at her eyes with a black handkerchief she produces from her blazer's pocket.

When it's Lily's turn to go, she whispers "good luck."

(Avery is a Slytherin, of course.)

Sirius is kind of expecting to have to argue with the Hat.

He doesn't, though.

Oh, this is going to be the interesting kind of war, isn't it. Terrible.

Far be it from me to stop you, little lion.

He gets exactly as many intensely concerned and suspicious frowns as he expected, though, which is all of them: as soon as he sits down at the Gryffindor table, there is no one within about six feet of him.

It's fine. He'll show them.

Lily is so ready. Magic hat magic hat what am I, huh.

Oh, come now.

You think I'm going to pick for you, like you don't already know?

I know what you thought of the song, dear.

She is aware that the point of the song was that Godric and Salazar breaking up was a tragedy and they were supposed to figure out how to reconcile their differences and live happily ever after teaching children to the end of their days or whatever.

She kind of thinks Salazar deserved to be threatened with a sword, though. So.

She's - sorry?

No, she's not sorry.

That's all right. I'm not offended. I'm just a hat, you know.

And I'm a Gryffindor.

Yes, you are.

She sits down right next to Sirius, in the wide empty space that's been cleared for it. If someone wants to explain to her why she shouldn't she's sure they'll get around to it.

Peter Pettigrew, who they met briefly on the boat ride over, sits under the hat for a full five minutes before scurrying, flushed with embarrassment, to the Gryffindor table. He sits on the other side from Sirius, close enough to listen in curiously but not close enough to be seen to definitely have taken a side just yet, until he figures out what's going on.

And then next: "Prince, Ophelia."

She strides up to the hat, then tenderly places it upon her head.

...After getting a bird out of her hair.

The Hat is used to that sort of thing. Students come up to it with frogs in their hair on a disturbingly regular basis.

Good heavens, the ambition on you. I could smell it from twenty paces.

But you are not the kind of student who is best served by a quick Sorting, even so, are you. Let's see, then, shall we. What else is there in this lovely deadly sharp maze of yours. Meticulous studiousness, a thirst for knowledge, quite so. Loyalty, narrow and deep as the northern pines. Unbending righteous fury, oh yes.

I think I must ask you this:

Do you want to be where you belong, little Prince, or where you will be best placed to win the war?

I think, I think, that I care not so much about winning the war, as I do being in a place where I can end it.

Leave the glory for those who need their ego.  If I find myself face to face with an angry dark wizard, something has already gone horribly wrong.

But to answer your question...

I hardly imagine there's a difference, now is there?

I cannot be myself, if I do not give my utmost try to this one cause, the cause of peace in the home that has welcomed me, the cause of fearlessness in the face of that which would oppress.

And a hat that wasn't reading my mind as I thought this might think I wish to be in Gryffindor...

But you and I both know that if I want to change the pattern this school's stuck in, I'll need to change it from...

From the outside perspective, there is a faint note of surprise upon Ophelia's face, not upon the moment the hat hits her head, no - but several seconds after.

Then, her head drifts a bit, looking up and to the right in a pose that certainly Lily would recognize as an Ophelia in more intense thought than usual.

And as her thought finishes, Ophelia fixes her gaze firmly down the center of the hall once more, despite her close-lidded eyes, and speaks the same word the Sorting Hat does:

"Slytherin."

The Hat doesn't quite answer Ophelia's thought, not enough to interrupt it once she's gotten started - wouldn't be what's best for her, right then, and that's it's job - but she'll find after she's been issued her ruling, and set it back on the stool, that she has an extra sentence lingering in memory, as though it had left a very polite mental sticky note for her to collect at her leisure.

Salazar would say, I think, that no war can be righteous enough that ending it does not constitute winning it.

I suspect you will win yours with his fondest blessing, little snake. Or hope, at least.

She murmurs a polite "Thank you; I hope so as well," to the hat, and gives it a surprisingly fond little smile-and-nod, before she finds her way to the Slytherin table.

Is there, perchance, a prefect not engaged in conversation with anyone?  She has a question to ask of them, you see.

Well, nobody is supposed to be having a conversation at all, the Sorting isn't over yet, but of the six Slytherin prefects currently extant, two (clearly sisters, they're nearly identical) are currently engaged in the loudest vicious argument that has ever been perfectly silent, two more are watching this with abject fascination, and a fifth is already nose-deep in a textbook, so that leaves her exactly one option, a squat and smiling girl who in complete contravention of the ongoing color-coding situation has her prefect badge pinned to a bright pink scarf.

"Excuse me," she murmurs, "but is it a requirement that we sit at House tables either tonight or in the general case?  I wouldn't want to end up neglecting friends and allies."

"Yes-it's-the-rules-sit-down-shhhhhh," hisses the prefect, glancing at the head table. She manages to do this without ceasing to smile but it's clearly an effort to do so.

That is honestly somewhat unnerving.

To Ophelia, who is generally not readily unnerved!

"I see."  She'll be checking that later.

Nonetheless, for now, she will find a seat with a good view of the hall, insofar as such a thing is possible - she wants the fewest possible threats at her back - and pull out her pocket notebook, a little spiral-bound pad with a golf pencil.  She's got a note to pass to Lily, she thinks.