"...Hmm-mmm.  I think that's actually a different thing and it's Hufflepuff.  But I also - think that the people who made the original choice to tie themselves to the Malfoys were actually Slytherin-ing, because - before that they either had other minions or no minions and becoming someone's minion takes effort that I think merits recognition!  But, nowadays?  The people who - aren't thinking about whether being a minion of the Malfoys is what they want, that's bad Slytherin-ing.  The point is that - you have to actually know what you, yourself want, and pursue it full-heartedly.  At least, if I'm - right, at all.  Which isn't sure!

"Being content with the lot set before you, loyal and industrious in fulfilling it is still - profoundly Hufflepuff, though; I have no idea how the Crabbe-and-Goyles still Sort here, given that.  Because I'm sure they do if I have any idea of the shape of this school.  Maybe I'm missing some weird mind-trick, which is always possible.  Or it's just that their ambition is to continue rendering themselves indispensable; that might work..."

"They do, very consistently, Sort into Slytherin," Karina confirms, "and frankly I don't think they're smart enough to do mind-tricks. I think it's that their ambition is to continue to be indispensable, yeah - and I think that's a valid ambition, not just a Hufflepuff loyalty, is my point. There's this funny joke my dad tells, sometimes, about how there's no such thing as Muggle old money because whenever they get any money ninety percent of the time it's gone again within three generations, and it's because they haven't got Slytherins. Maintaining a legacy isn't actually less hard than building one."

"Mmmm.  You sure aren't wrong about that part.  I do still think there's got to be - you do have to understand what you're doing, and moreso why you're doing it, to be properly Slytherin about it.  Otherwise that's just...some sort of cult, I think?  Blind adherence can't be Slytherin."

Nod. "I think - one of the Slytherin virtues, a thing we're better at than Gryffindors, is recognizing when it actually is a good idea to stick to something that's worked for generations instead of tearing it all down without a good plan for what to replace it with?"

(Thoughts on whether the Death Eaters have a good plan for what to replace the status quo with left as an exercise to the reader.)

"But yeah, you do have to know how to tell or you're just making the same mistake they're making in the opposite direction."

"That makes a lot of sense, and - in a healthier environment...

"...I wonder what would happen if the dorms were cross-House; a Gryffindor, a Ravenclaw, a Hufflepuff, and a Slytherin each in a four-bed...well, bedroom.  But we're not in that universe.

"The universe we're in is the one where there's - neither Slytherin nor Gryffindor actually checking eachother.  Not like they should be."

She sighs.

"Does everyone agree with me that - the way Hogwarts looks at Slytherins, the way it treats them - that's just...toxic and harmful to everyone involved?  Fueling the vices every House has?  Blind self-righteousness, thinking everyone else is idiots, keeping their heads down when something actually needs to be done...twisting our ambition into a desire for vengeance.  Because - that's what I think, and it's - part of why I chose to join this House.  I wasn't - forced here, I'm here because - I want to fix it."

This gets her some more dubious frowning.

"Noble goal," says Karina, in a tone of voice suggesting that noble is not necessarily a compliment in her dialect, "but I don't think you yet know much of anything about the way Hogwarts treats Slytherins. You've been here for three hours and by your own admission know nothing about wizard culture except what your incompetent mother failed to teach you. Ask again in a month and I'll tell you whether I agree with what you think, yeah?"

"Spent several hours getting the gist of it from Sirius Black on the train, actually, plus I did get some advice from a Professor I tagged along to Diagon with while she was escorting a friend of mine, though I can understand why you wouldn't take my word for either.  But -" she exhales, almost explosively, and visibly lets go of the energy she's been holding herself tense with - "you're right, that I should - step back.  Calm down.  Orient myself, before, well, charging off to wreck something like a reckless Gryffindor.  Thank you.  I got a bit...caught up in the momentum of the past few hours, of - feeling the dire state of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and understanding the War in a way I'm probably going to have nightmares about, Hogwarts' welcome I've never felt before I arrived here, the ballad, the Sorting, Andromeda, Narcissa - and I needed that reminder that - Rome wasn't built in a day and I'm not in the mode where I desperately cram textbooks into my head to distract from the shouting.  Or the hitting, though that was - much rarer. 

"...The reminder that I have time.

"...So, yeah, thanks, Karina.  If - I can call you that."

Karina would kind of rather she didn't, at this early stage of their relationship, but they're going to be roommates for better part of the next seven years, so realistically she might as well just skip to the part where she gets used to that.

"Mm. Nice to meet you, I think, Ophelia. See you in the morning." 

Ophelia nods.  "It's nice to meet you as well."

In the process of getting her pockets empty and her trunk unpacked, Ophelia slips Andromeda's letter into one of the books she'd need tomorrow if she had not in fact memorized them already.  She'll read it in the library between classes.

On the other side of the school, new Gryffindors are getting a rather tonally different welcome speech from Gideon Prewett. Lily and her new roommates are already friends; Sirius and his new roommates are mostly squinting nervously at each other, but Lily is optimistic that this is just first-day jitters.

It mostly is just first-day jitters, until they get upstairs, and the door swings shut behind them into a room with three beds, and Sirius finds, suddenly, that he has crumpled to the floor, dizzy and swaying on his knees.

Something is wrong something is wrong something is missing why are there only three -

"Are, uh, are you okay?" asks his new roommate Remus Lupin, which is the largest number of words he's strung together tonight since very quietly introducing himself. "What's wrong?"

no no no nothing is okay everything is wrong why is everything wrong

Sirius makes kind of a vague high-pitched noise, all vowels, and then manages, shakily, "I don't? Know??"

"You don't know if you're okay or you don't know what's wrong?"

He's scraping absently at the skin of his chest, under the collar of his shirt, like his subconscious thinks whatever's missing from this room might be living in his ribs. "Y...es? Sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know."

Remus stares at him for a second, concerned and weighing the risks given what Alice Fortescue had to say about Sirius' family. Concern wins; he grabs Sirius' wrist. "You're going to hurt yourself."

Sirius did not know he was doing that. "What? Oh. Um. I'm sorry."

On the bright side, this little drama serves well enough as a way to get them talking to each other without a single ounce of self-confidence between the three of them. On the less bright side, well... this.

Sirius is probably imagining that, right? There's nobody else who should be here.

Right?

Right or not, at 8am sharp the bells ring -

(GOOD MORNING. I LOVE YOU. IT IS TIME TO BE AWAKE NOW)

- and there are still only three, and so the three of them stumble their way down to breakfast.

Ophelia is --

-- being enthusiastically warked at by so many birds --

-- and generally occupied by the attentions of more than a baker's dozen of teenager-equivalent corvids, but that doesn't stop her from waving at Sirius, then looking vaguely concerned when she actually processes how poorly he looks, because at least she knows why she had nightmares.

She's not the sort to disturb her roommates' sleep with them, at least; she'll call that a bright side.

Reasonably enthusiastic, if indeed slightly tired-shadow-eyed, wave! 

Prefect Umbridge, who is disgustingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at this hour, has fetched a pile of schedules from a squat, genial-looking fellow up at the head table and is handing them out to her variously grumbling, half-asleep compatriots. She'll get over to the first-years in a few. 

Sirius gets a note:

...So did the ghost possessing you give you really bad nightmares or something?  You look like you slept as poorly as I did, and I had a whole bunch of killdeathmurderthreat aggressively shoving into my brain yesterday morning that you didn't.  Unless you did, I guess.

Ophelia is surprisingly awake, though not particularly filled with verve about interacting with the poisonous toadstool that is Umbridge.

Delivering notes to the Gryffindor table is extremely suspect behavior, even if it is Sirius Black. Her roommates both give her very dubious, curious looks.