The Gryffindor common room was warm and bright, though the abundance of scarlet and gold hangings, curtains, and upholstery made Klaus feel rather as though he were inside the stomach of a very squashy dragon. Although of course it would be dark inside a dragon.

After showing them the way to the portrait hole and telling them the password ("Cinnamon Whips"), the Gryffindor prefects gave the first-years a little speech about House points and the importance of the Quidditch Cup, and then showed them to their bedrooms. Klaus was pleased to note that his luggage had been brought up already and unpacked in the appropriate place, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep yet; he went back down to the common room to explore the contents of the bookshelf he thought he remembered seeing.

It was a round room, so there really wasn't much in the way of corners. But the placement of the furniture and the lights created a satisfactory amount of shadow in a few places; Klaus dragged a cushion over to one of them and sat down with his hex book, the common-room shelf having yielded a disappointing assortment of comic books, cheap novels, and battered reference works.

All of the first-years but Klaus were upstairs, but there were still a number of older students in the common room, talking and laughing. Klaus wondered if it were possible for a hat to lose its senses with age; he certainly didn't fit here. At least nobody was paying attention to him.

Two older girls, from the looks of them sixth or seventh years, settled down excitedly on the couch that Klaus was sitting behind. "And did you SEE that little firstie with the curls?" one of them was saying. "What a little love of a boy."

Klaus looked up from his book, interested. There was only one first-year that could possibly match that description.

"And Sorted into Slytherin! I don't know what the hat was thinking," the other said. "They'll eat him alive in that snake pit."

"I know! He's Muggleborn, isn't he? I didn't think you could even be in Slytherin if you were Muggleborn."

"I think he's a halfblood," the other replied, "but he was raised like a Muggle so it hardly makes a difference, does it? Marianne told me his mother was in Slytherin but the family lost all their money and she married a Muggle peer. They say that she used a love potion on him."

"I shouldn't be surprised. Everyone knows those Slytherin witches know their way around a cauldron," said the first. "I suppose the hat must have Sorted him there because of her."

Klaus remembered his own conversation with the hat, and wondered. He listened to the girls for some time, but they seemed to have finished discussing Dorian and had moved on to ladies' fashions. After a few minutes, he took his book and went back up to bed.