Lupin sounds good! And I guess we could skip to the sorting ceremony, because I don't think there would be anything special in the whole going-in-the-boat thing.
The rest of the trip to Hogwarts was surprisingly uneventful. Luke had been terrified that something would go wrong on the boat ride over to the castle, but nothing had. He should have been taking comfort in that, but it just made him feel like something was going to go horribly wrong during the sorting.
The first years all lined up outside of the Great Hall. The explanation was given, as well as a stern warning not to cause any trouble, and the doors swung open.
The room fell quiet, save for a few whispers at the house tables.
Luke was near the front of the line. His heart was pounding in his chest as he surveyed the room. He could see Dante over at the Gryffindor table, ignoring the girl who was definitely trying to flirt with him. They made eye contact for the briefest of seconds - Dante giving a smile and a thumbs up - before Luke was scooted up in the line.
Then he saw Griffith. Griffith looked just as uncomfortable as Luke felt. Most of his table was busy reading, seeing that the sorting hadn't actually started yet. But Griffith didn't have any of his beloved books, and he definitely hadn't had a chance to swing by the library.
They made eye contact and gave nervous little smiles.
And then Luke was shifted again, pushed up by the girl impatiently waiting behind him.
Spoiler! :
I just realized we might have a little problem - Kate and Tallulah don't have last names. As of right now, the order is Luke, Ridge and then Audrey, going off of their last names in alphabetical order.
We talked about the order over on Discord, so I'm just putting it here for @Liberty and for posterity's sake:
Luke -> Kate -> Tallulah -> Ridge -> Audrey
Luke wasn't the very first person in line, but he was one of the first. It wasn't long before he was sitting on the stool in the front of the room - gaze focused down on the ground as he tried to ignore how badly his hands were shaking in his lap.
The hat was placed on his head.
Luke was usually good at blocking out intrusive magic, but he was so flustered that he forgot to. The best he could do was tuck away the memories of reading Harry Potter. It took the Sorting Hat almost stalled - not from struggling to put him in the right place, but from the sheer amount of memories swirling around in his head.
Almost five minutes after it had been put on his head, the Sorting Hat yelled, "Hufflepuff!"
The hat was removed.
Luke got to his feet. Dante and Griffith were both giving him smiles from their tables - Dante adding in a double thumbs up - and the other Hufflepuffs were welcoming him over to their table.
He somehow managed to find an empty seat without having to do much searching.
Ugh, he hated how his name sounded in that British accent. He hated how conspicuously it reverberated through the halls, and how every instinct in him wanted him to shrivel up and hide and lay low, goddammit. He hated how his hands were sweaty, how everyone was looking at him, and how worried he was.
But mostly he hated how all this was affecting him, because Slytherins. Don't. Get. Affected. By Shit.
Yet there he was, sat in a stool that was meant for an eleven year old who his body did not remember to be, and he was off-balance, and the ugly old hat was muttering things and musing in his sly grandfatherly voice, and it didn't help the fact that the centuries old sorting hat probably had lice in it.
"...and calculating, no doubt about that..." it was saying, "but,, how sweet! A coffee shop owner, good Hufflepuff! Not a bad mind either, and look at that! All that stubbornness - Godric knows he'd recognize you!
Oh yes, you have some hard choices ahead of you, boy, and it looks like you do have an honour quota - a lot of righteousness and outside calm in the face of a major reality crisis - yes, Godric would be proud, wouldn't he- "
And that's how far he got before Ridge realized where things were going and he whispered furiously, "Slytherin! Stoic and calm! Oh good lord, please don't, identity crisis is too much to deal with when i'm already an eleven year old in my twenty's - and anyway, choice matters, doesn't it? Harry Potter himself -"
Oh, pish-posh Harry Potter. His stubbornness to not be Slytherin was the very thing that convinced me to sort him into Gryffindor. And stubbornness you've got too! Loads of it! I better-"
"I swear, if I'm not slytherin -"
"Clam down, boy, I'm a hundred years old, all your sweat is not good for my folds - premature lines, you see-"
"You're more than a hundred years old, you wrinkled piece of cheap-quality cloth-"
"Ooh that's nasty, boy, so rude, guess you better be- SLYTHERIN!!!"
His table erupted into polite applause, and Ridge smiled shakily at them before remembering himself. He straightened and jut out his chin and gracefully climbed down his stool, trying not to trip up in this unfamiliar body.
Because damn, that hat never managed to find his marbles.
I was eleven years old and I'd lost my mother, and my soul. And the crucible gave me you.
"In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls -- with the great outside world." — Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
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