There also, speaking of things that might or might not be rules, continues to be a corvid near or on Ophelia!

Due to the fundamental nature of Gryffindors and Slytherins, those are the tables that have been placed nearest the walls, so Ophelia can indeed sit such that no one is behind her.

Nobody has commented on the corvid yet, although she's getting some curious glances. It may be clear why, once she sits: it fits right in. There are a few owls about, although the majority of the ones that were about at King's Cross don't seem to have followed their respective persons all the way here and are instead in the owlery. At least a dozen cats are ambiently underfoot, and Ophelia may catch a glimpse of a fox curled around someone's ankle. Various people are ornamented with frogs, toads, lizards, and in several cases at the Slytherin table in particular, snakes. 

If Ophelia's particular creature would normally have an opinion about this, it is likely to instead find that it mysteriously doesn't: Hogwarts, which plays host to an annual average of a hundred or so miscellaneous student familiars at any given time plus resident and visiting owls, gently discourages all such creatures from inconvenient behaviors such as "yelling" and "trying to eat each other" and so forth, in order that literally anything ever gets done on its grounds.

Hogwarts kind of wishes it could do this with the students too, but alas,

Such a thing might or might not be vaguely disorienting, honestly, but - flockmate is here.  Flockmate may be a bit too cavalier about danger to self, but not about danger to flock.

And those cats do not look like stalking cats, anyway.

Ooh, a fox, they're pretty!  Would the fox like scritches, if they're close enough to have an opinion on this New Human?

(She's very careful, gently offering her hand to sniff first, if this seems at all in the offing.)

...If Ophelia knew what Hogwarts was thinking, she'd second it.  (Not, to be clear, that she endorses nonconsensual mind control - but that she wishes that everyone would stop fighting.)

The fox does not desire to make new friends at this time but its owner, a girl a couple years Ophelia's senior, seems mildly charmed. She doesn't say anything, since they aren't supposed to be talking yet, but raises her eyebrows in a sort of sorry, maybe another time way while the fox hides behind her leg.

Ophelia returns a small, but real, smile.  Maybe this won't suck as badly as she thinks it might.

And she does need allies, she thinks, to - fix this - so the first step is to gather friends.

Soon enough the Sorting is over, and Professor Shafiq puts the Hat away and sits down in her place at the high table next to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore stands from his enormous oak chair. "I am sure you are all very hungry," he says, "and so I will save most of my remarks for later. Welcome to Hogwarts," and then sits back down. 

Abruptly, the tables are no longer empty, but laden with a magnificent feast the likes of which only the very wealthiest of the students present will have seen before anywhere but here. Served in quantities arguably somewhat excessive for the number of students actually present, it is very much the classic cuisine of the Isles: centered primarily around savory roasted meats, pastries, and root vegetables. (Notably including pumpkins, which apparently wizards consider to be just as much a Core Root Vegetable as a potato or a carrot or a parsnip.) And also peppermints, for some reason.

As soon as Dumbledore sits down, conversations start up everywhere at once like a roaring social engine.

Ophelia, on the other hand, goes immediately for the food like a child who's growing up with chronic food insecurity.

Ah, bloody hell, the food's native.  Well, at least it knows spices exist.  Good food should be an experience.

"Who cooked this?  Or is it just - Hogwarts?", she asks of the girl with the pretty fox.

The corvid on her shoulder warks at Ophelia inquiringly,

, and she sets about preparing it a little plate with some food she knows is bird-safe, before she asks a favor.  "Can you take this to Lily?", she says, proffering a folded-up pieced of lined paper.

...Sure, in exchange for the food you're giving me, the bird doesn't say.

Lily gets a note delivered by post-corvid!

Slytherin's a rotten House, it seems, and the Hat agrees, but - I don't want you thinking to immediately rescue me.  Someone needs to be here to change it.  And - I'm more resilient to pressure, as much as I regret how I developed that skill.

Keep in touch, though, please.  I will need you help with this.

 

Missing you already,

--Ophelia

Aww, postal corvid.

She doesn't attempt to write a note back, because she is currently enthusiastically engaged in like three conversations at the same time, but she carefully folds up and pockets the note, shares some bacon off her plate with the bird if it stays put long enough to be offered any, and in its wake shoots a bright, supportive smile in Ophelia's general direction before going back to having a surprisingly friendly argument with a very concerned Alice Fortescue about (judging from how they keep gesturing at him) whether Sirius Black should be presumed to be evil.

The fox-owning third year shrugs unconcernedly. "I dunno, elves, probably?"

Mmm, bacon.

"...'Elves, probably'?  I don't recall any particular mention of elves when I was doing my reading..."

This comment gets her the immediate attention of several nearby people, all of them frowning. "Surely," says the pink-scarfed prefect, with wide-eyed sugary disbelief, "you cannot possibly mean to imply that your parents never taught you what a house-elf is?"

Ophelia probably has the social acumen to detect that this question actually means 'convince us immediately that you have wizard parents or you're about to have several problems.'

"My mother, the only parent I have that's worth the title, was inattentive enough to her own heritage that I currently hold the wand Ollivander gave her," she rejoins.  "I trust you can see why I wouldn't know what I couldn't find in her books."

(Or, in translation, "My mother was (an idiot/neglectful/oblivious/unambitious) enough, and I cunning enough, that her wand is now my wand; do you want me to show you what I've learned with it?")

There's a brief awkward silence while they process this and glance at each other, hoping for someone to manifest a relevant genealogical fact.

"That'll be Eileen Prince," volunteers Narcissa Black, helpfully. She apparently got out about two and a half actual words at Andromeda before the latter erected some sort of shimmering barrier of floating knives around herself and began grumpily eating her dinner and ignoring everyone, leaving the other prefects to pay attention to the rest of the universe again. "My uncle Alphard was in her class, nothing nice to say. It's not like she'd be in any history books for someone to pull the name out of." Implied: so probably Ophelia is not lying.

Everyone relaxes considerably. 

(Ophelia is 100% going to find Andromeda later, having seen this.)

"That is she, yes.

"I find myself curious why it is the house of personal ambition that cares this much who one's parents are."

It is a statement as carefully devoid of suggestion that she does or does not care about blood heritage as she can possibly make it.

" ... s'that what you were talking to Dumbledore about," wonders Philip Avery, wrinkling his nose.

The answer to the question of why the identity of your parents matters so much is so obvious as to not need stating for most people here, and a number of them look at her like she's grown several new heads amidst various other introductory chatter, but eventually one of Ophelia's soon to be new roommates, a severe-looking dark-haired girl who has just introduced herself on request as Karina Dolohov, suggests, frowning, "Well, first of all it's a useful predictor of future performance but it's not just the house of personal ambition. Legacy matters."

So Slytherin manages to dislike even the man that theoretically is involved in keeping them safe from dark wizards deciding to kill them.

On the one hand, she's almost certain that the people holding that opinion are nigh-universally relatives of those wizards themselves.

On the other hand...they're idiots.

"I spoke to him because I abhor the tragedy that is death, and wished that a bit of wisdom regarding the utility of learning Healing, especially when there is a war on, be thusly put forward to the gentlemen in charge of the curriculum, in the hopes that it might result in Hogwarts teaching any, perhaps as a later-year intensive.  Unfortunately, whoever that may be, it is not Albus Dumbledore - and what a fool I was for thinking so - so I shall have to find the correct person or persons to pitch."

This sounds like a chore, when she says it.  Something routine.  It isn't, and won't be, but it sounds like it, nonetheless.  Perhaps it will get her introductions, though she dares not hope.

Karina Dolohov gets a considering noise.  "Interesting.  I suppose it would tend to measure the probability that you've had opportunities to excel in the past.  Isn't there an adage in investment, though, that past performance is not indicative of future results?  One must always consider the market, or so I've heard."

"Pitch Malfoy," suggests Avery, tossing his head in the general direction of the tall blond Head Boy, "his dad's the head of the board."

Next to him, a second-year by the name of Travers snorts. "Get at least a term of good grades first or Malfoy won't hear a word you say." 

Dolohov shrugs, unconvinced. "Pretty sure it's that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. 'Not a guarantee' isn't at all the same thing as 'not at all predictive'."