The boats pulled up to a little cove beneath the castle. Aurora was the first child to step onto the gravelly beach. Whisper sat perched unobtrusively on her shoulder. Aurora had removed the black cylinder from her mouth, and taken off her harness, as soon as she had landed on her arm-warmer. Aurora had tactfully kept her arm casually resting on the side of the boat. The other children in her boat, none of which she knew, had been too busy staring at the castle, oohing and aahing, to notice the winged kitten.
Hagrid led them all to a small door in the rocky wall of the cavern, and told them to go inside. Only Aurora stopped to chat with him. She asked him if he was coming too. His answer made her grin. He was too big to fit through the little door, so he was getting back on a boat and going around to the main entrance. She quickly followed the others inside, as there were only a handful of children left outside.
Waiting for them in the room inside was Professor Longbottom. Aurora smiled and waved at him. She'd spoken with him many times in the last couple of years, he often came over to have dinner with her family. Many red-headed children waved at him too. He nodded kindly at each of them. He led them through a series of chambers, small and large, until they were standing on a wide staircase, facing another small door. When Neville heard his cue, the end of Headmistress McGonagall's short speech, he opened the door and led the children out. He was so tall that he had to duck slightly.
Once on the platform in front of the teachers' table, he paused, pulled out his wand, and conjured a stool. Filch had died a few years ago, from a long-term illness, but his successor could've been his clone. The pure-blood squib was just as bedraggled and grumpy as Filch had ever been. He shuffled over to the stool, opened the glass case he'd been carrying, and took the Sorting Hat out of it, before placing it on the stool. He closed the case then, and shuffled back to the side of the Great Hall.
Once they'd finished scanning the hall, and marvelling at the spelled roof, which imitated the sky above it, and the floating candles, the First Years all peered curiously at the Hat, wondering what would happen next, what the crowd seemed to be waiting for, for every other student in the hall had fallen silent, and was staring at the Hat expectantly. At first it looked no different from any other hat. Then, what they'd taken at first for an ordinary tear near the brim opened wide, and much to the surprise of many of the First Years, it burst into song.
"Ten centuries and a while ago,
Hogwarts was founded by the well-known four.
Helga Hufflepuff loved hard-workers so,
Whilst the smartest went to Rowena Ravenclaw.
Salazar Slytherin chose ambitious pure-bloods,
And the bravest were selected by Godric Gryffindor.
For many years it went on thus,
Until they all began to wonder.
Who would chose the students' houses,
When they were all just memories?
That's when Helga whipped me off her head,
And they put some brains in me.
Now, First Years, just put me on.
The rest of you, wait and see."
The hall erupted in clapping as the Hat finished its song, and fell silent once more. The First Years were called up alphabetically, by their surnames. One by one they came forward, put the Hat on, sat on the stool, and waited for it to shout out their house, starting with "Attwater, MacMillan", a "HUFFLEPUFF!" Before long, Professor Longbottom called out "Malfoy, Aries." Aries picked up the Hat, but it had only touched a single stray strand of his hair before it shouted "SLYTHERIN!" Smirking, Aries sauntered over to his cheering house table to sit next to Scorpius.
Legend said that Scorpius had barely even touched the Hat with the tip of a single finger when it had proclaimed him a Slytherin. Even as a First Year, his entire house had been wary of him, and the Gryffindors had been even more cautious of him. Next it was Pardus' turn. He was rather nervous. He picked up the Hat, quietly thanked the heavens that the Hat wasn't reacting the same way to him as it had to Scorpius, sat on the stool, then placed it on his head.
