I'd scoured through a dozen of books on the inner workings of Hogwarts and although there were many interesting things to find in them, none of them had any information about how the Sorting was conducted. From what I could tell the majority of the British wizards and witches were Hogwarts alumni and yet none of them had bothered to mention anything about what it was actually like to their children, junior siblings or nieces and nephews judging from the reactions of the crowd I was a part of.

  It was an open secret, why I wasn't sure. I didn't think there were laws in place forbidding it's mention or anything like that. Maybe the parents unknowingly agreed with each other that they wanted their kids to be unprepared and so "unbiased," for the lack of a better word, for the Sorting, which was basically dividing the kids into groups for no reason other than... I didn't know. Culture? I didn't believe people could be so neatly put into boxes according to their personalities, especially kids, for them to develop identities and emotions around the particular houses. To me, it looked like this system did little good; encouraging healthy rivalry, forming of friendships and so on but the negatives it could bring seemed far worse. I hadn't been in the magical world for long and I could see the problems the adults of it who had too much attachment to their high school cliques caused.

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  I was getting distracted, probably because I was bothered. I didn't want to put the hat on my head. What was the implication of a talking headewear choosing which dorm you'd be in by sitting on your head?

  I was powerless to act though. The entire student body, the teachers, the ghosts and my fellow first years were here. I was but a muggleborn, unfamiliar with the magical world no matter how much I'd read up on it. It was best to put up with this ritual.

  Small mercy was the hat seemed to take little time in announcing where most of the students would sleep, a matter of a heartbeat with some.

  "Hebert, Taylor!" I was called out. Harry squeezed my shoulder and off I went. A flurry of whispers rose from the four long tables, a missing arm wasn't the most common thing back in the muggle world, and it was even rarer with the magical treatments they had available. Most kids would assume I simply couldn't access St Mungo due to me being a muggleborn and leave it at that. If only they were right.

  I walked up the stool and sat. McGonagall put the hat on my head.

  Oh, the hat intoned inside my brain in a voice I could tell was trouble, what has dropped into my lap?