LIGHTNOVELONLINE Sorting
Tanya Degurechaff
It was dark by the time we arrived at the station and shuffled our way out of the train. As we were beginning to try to figure out where to go, a loud voice called out for first year students. A loud voice belonging to what looked like a large bear dressed in human clothes. One of the acquaintances I had made on the train ride, a nice young boy named Harry, apparently knew the half bear man.
Following him, we were lead down a dark and slightly slippery path to boats that would take us to Hogwarts. I could not see what was propelling the boats, but chose not to concern myself overly much with the detail. This was supposedly a prestigious learning institute, there was no way they would put the students in unnecessary danger, especially untrained first years.
When the castle we would be learning and living in came to view, I felt my confidence in our safety was validated. While evaluating the security of the castle would be difficult in the dark of the night, I could see it had large walls that would be difficult for a grounded force to scale and the construction appeared to be out of sturdy, thick stone. I could better evaluate the defensibility at a later time when the light was better, but castles were a standard military structure for hundreds of years. While the reasons for their phasing out were still valid concerns, for a learning institute it would be perfectly adequate for a non-militarized defense against local fauna and perhaps the occasional drunken fool.
Passing into a grotto we arrived at what I assumed to be some form of servant's entrance as it was clearly not the primary entrance. Likely it was the entrance that shipments were taken to, or that was its primary function when this castle was used for actual military purposes.
Regardless, the humanoid bear gave the door a knock that was swiftly answered by an older woman in green. A Professor McGonagall going by what our guide here said. This was supposedly our Deputy Headmistress according to the acceptance letter I was given. She had an appropriately stern expression on her face and carried her age with dignity befitting our superior.
She lead us down a short path to a large set of doors that had a lot of chattering coming from it. The primary hall if I was to make a guess where all the students were gathered for opening ceremonies.
"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses."
Taking care of formalities before eating was reasonable. Hopefully it was not overly involved and would go swiftly.
"The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room."
Build a camaraderie among the students and a sense of unit cohesion. It almost took me back to my time in office school.
"The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rulebreaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours."
Ah, group punishment. Potentially effective method of using peer pressure to keep the more troublesome students in line. Elegant method of encouraging the students in each house to work together. And if each individual student's triumph earns house points, that is excellent motivation for the best students to help the ones in their house who are struggling the most.
"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."
It was a reasonable request considering the state a few of my fellow first years were in.
"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."
As soon as the professor was through the door, my fellow students showed how they were all still immature children that I would need to help by beginning to chatter and speculate what the sorting was going to be like.
Tests? Challenges? How foolish. The staff would obviously want the students divided evenly between the houses and would clearly use some form of lottery system. Random chance would be the deciding factor of where everyone went. Considering Ron's earlier statement that his whole family was sorted into Gryffindor, the random chance might be rigged slightly, but that was the purview of the faculty.
A gasp broke me from my thoughts as several silver figures came through the wall above our heads. Illusion? Projection? One mentioned something about an annoyance not be a ghost. Was that what these were? Spirits of the dead trapped here?
Professor McGonagall returning and shooing the spectres away and the ghosts obeying readily was suspicious. This was theater and a lesson. The castle was haunted, but we were not to be concerned about the spirits wandering the halls and not everything we would be taught would be in the classroom.
Lining up in the manner of the Professor's instructions and following her out of the waiting area into the Great Hall, a large space with several long tables the older students were at and a table the staff was sitting at that was easily visible to and had good line of sight over all the students. The floating candles above the tables was a lovely touch that added to the magical charm of the room, but the real star of the decor was the ceiling, decorated to look like the night sky. I suspected some form of illusion work as I could see a few clouds moving across and the constellations appeared right for this time of year.
My mind began trying to crunch the numbers on how I would recreate such an effect, but the sticking point was how to keep it going. One of the limiting factors of my previous life's magic was the need for active casting for any effect. I had made rooms appear a different size, hiding behind an illusionary wall, in my last life tricking people into believing I was not there, but to keep the illusion going required me to be in the room the entire time casting the spell. While it was conceivable that one of the staff members, or someone hidden from view, was casting the sky illusion, the practicality of doing some seemed wasteful. No, it would seem that in addition to using a form of magic my last life has dropped as inefficient and illogical, they had ways to create permanent effects.
If I was to make an analogy, I might compare my previous life's computation orb based system to the early mechanical computers, able to calculate and produce results quickly and far more robust and sturdy. This wand waving spell speaking method might be more equivalent to transistor based, digital computing, able to achieve a wider arrange of effects with increased longevity at the cost of being slower initially to get the spells going. Or perhaps the computation orb is the digital analogue. The analogy is not perfect, but the point was that they were two methods to the same end result with pros and cons and this world chose to stick with the more traditional magic system for reasons they found valid.
A hat beginning to sing brought me out of my thoughts. A ratty old pointed hat was singing. Singing about the virtues of the different houses. So not entirely random, but based upon vague personality values then. That would explain Ron's family as values are often taught down generations, so a family tradition of teaching their sons to be chivalrous would result in the sons tending to go to the same house. His parents must be excellent in their parental role to instill values across so many children so consistently.
Each of the personality values listed for each house were admirable in their own ways and none of them would be particularly distasteful to me should I need to signal to my fellows that I fit in appropriately. Though I was curious how our personalities would be judged. We have not been here long enough for any of the faculty to get an understanding of who we are.
The first to be sorted was up, a Hannah Abbot. Looking like we will be sorted alphabetically by last name. The hat was placed on Ms Abbot's head and after a moment the hat called out that she was to be sorted to Hufflepuff.
So the hat was some sort of personality test or gave one when placed on the head. Would it ask the questions? Was it going to invade the privacy of my mind? It looked really old, how do we know it was still functioning as intended and didn't need replacing?
Ms Abbot a was apparently the only A name as we went straight into B names. After five students were sorted, C was skipped and it was suddenly my turn. Sitting onto a stool and having the hat placed onto my head, I could almost feel the way the magic of the hat tried entering my mind.
'I am Tanya von Degurechaff. My mind is my own and my privacy will not be violated.' I thought as I instinctively attempted to stop the incursion. Being X violating the privacy of my mind was bad enough, I refused to let that happen again if I could avoid it.
"Oh, a secretive one?" The hat muttered into my ear. "Relax, I'm just going to take a quick peak into your head and sort you. I am bound to not share anything I find. Though whatever it is that makes you reluctant to show, you should probably tell someone about."
The hat is not an enemy. I can loosen my hold. It is not Being X and it is bound not to share. I just needed to relax.
'I find out you did share anything, I will burn you and piss on your ashes.'
"Sheesh. No need to get violent, I can't even if I wanted to. Now open up."
I relaxed myself and felt the haze of magic come into my head. Subtle even with me expecting something it felt like the buzz after a few sips of hard liquor beginning to settle in.
"Well, well, an old one I see. Not too often someone who has lived a full life, make that a life and a half, puts me on to get sorted. Normally I would just look at potential personality traits and place you somewhere appropriate, but you have a lot of experience to judge who are with. Now let's see. Well read, with a willingness to follow your scholarly passions. A bit of practicality in what you choose to learn about, but still a good head for learning. A very good work ethic and while you might lie to yourself, you do care about the men you had under your command. A good mind for politics and you know how to navigate situations to gain favor with others in an attempt to reach a goal. But no, I believe there is one house that fits you best. You may lie to yourself about why you kept going back, tried to pass out off as someone else's fault, but your bravery and warrior spirit truly makes you a GRYFFINDOR!*"
The hat didn't have to yell in my ear. Placing the hat back on the stool, I went to the table giving me polite applause for being sorted into their house. Sitting down at an empty place I watched the sorting go on, clapping politely along with the rest of the table wherever someone was sorted into Gryffindor. Along with Ms Brown who was already sorted, all the Gryffindor first years were grouped together near the middle of the table, the older students scooting over to make room as each new Gryffindor was sorted.
A hush came across the Great Hall when Harry was called to be sorted. Did everyone here really believe he somehow defeated a powerful dark wizard as a babe? How foolish to think an unarmed, unprepared baby could defeat an adult that could have easily smothered the child to death with no fuss. It was obvious that his parents were the real heroes and he is little more than one of many war orphans that have been produced throughout history. After a while of him sitting under the hat he was finally sorted into Gryffindor where the table exploded in loud cheers. I gave a polite applaud and scooted over to make room for him.
"Seems our new house is happy to have you," I greeted him as he took the place next to me.
"Thanks. I'm just glad I'm in a house with a friendly face I already know."
With the pleasantries out of the way and trying to ignore the silly celebration going on, I went back to watching the sorting. It was a good way to learn my fellow first years' names, especially those in my house where we would be spending a lot of time together. Eventually Ron joined Harry and myself at the table to the celebration of his family and the rest of the house before the last student was sorted into Slytherin.
With Professor McGonagall putting away the hat, the archetypal wise old wizard that was our Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore stood up to give a speech.
"Welcome," he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you."
I joined the polite clapping as the food appeared on the table. I heard Harry question the sanity of our Headmaster as I was reaching for some of the chicken.
"Isn't it obvious?" I found myself asking. "He is taking this moment to give us a lesson to think on while we eat. We are at a school after all and our days are suppose to be filled with education."
Ron's prefect brother gave me a smile, clearly having seen the lesson as well, and asked me to explain what the lesson was.
Leaning back a bit, I gave it some thought as I chewed on the piece of chicken I had grabbed. "Nitwit is obviously him calling us all fools, Fir we are here to learn and are this not the knowledgeable scholar our teachers are yet. A reminder that there is still more, even for the older students, to learn. Blubber is likely referring to someone blubbering and not whale fat. Oddment is an odd term for scraps. So he probably is telling us to talk about the odd scraps we learn with each other, the other nitwits."
"And Tweak?" Percy asked.
"That is the most obvious one. Take what we learn from each other and improve and modify on it. He is basically telling us that we have much to learn from each other, even outside what we learn in and for our classes."
"You sure you shouldn't be in Ravenclaw?" Ron asked me, a few of the other students around me nodding their agreement with his question.
I suppose I needed to prove myself as belonging to the house now that my personality has been questioned.
Giving Ron a playful smile, I told him, "I am very sure that the hat placed me appropriately, but I can always show you what I got later." That bit of bravado played well with those sitting nearby and I could return to my food, engaging in the conversation when asked a question. Most of the conversations were getting to know each other, family life, interests, the standard fair. I mentioned I was an orphan and that when given a chance I enjoyed reading, but the selection at the Orphanage was not great. I filed away what I learned about my house mates as best as I could. We would be living in close proximity for years, it would be best to be in good terms with all of them.
After dinner, dessert was laid out leading to a second round of excited eating before that too was magically cleared up and the Headmaster again stood to speak. A few rules and warnings were given along with several other notices. While the warning about the third floor corridor on the right hand side was dramatic, it was reasonable. The castle was old and repair work was dangerous. Renovating that area would likely take time and we would be informed when it was safe to use that section of the castle.
The singing of the school song was a chaotic mess, but following the lyrics as they appeared was easy enough. The somber way Ron's twin brothers sang the last few lines was rather touching and showed the pair to be a rather serious duo.
With the school song done, Ron's Prefect brother lead the first year Gryffindors away from the Great Hall to where we would be sleeping for the next seven years.
* As mentioned by the hat, Tanya would, in my opinion, fit into any of the houses and without any other influences on her choice she would find all of them reasonably acceptable. Depending on a few factors she might slightly prefer one over another, but I as an author needed her in Gryffindor so I made her completely neutral and have the hat be influenced by how Tanya is actually a battle junkie to place her in Gryffindor.