September 1988
The previous year felt almost like a gap year to Integra. She'd never really been on a proper gap year before, of course. But from what she was able to glean from the staff whispering stories about their children's experiences, Integra thought that it wasn't so different after all. Hadn't she just spent a year learning about a brand new culture? Did she not spend a year making new friends from odd backgrounds, homestaying (well, it was close, wasn't it?), generally learning about seemingly important things that meant absolutely nothing in the long run?
But that was the old year gone by. Any little hope she harboured of returning to her daily grind before Hogwarts was dashed, for she found herself sitting in the Great Hall once more, witnessing the Sorting ceremony (which she missed last year and which she vowed to miss again next year and until which time she would be allowed to leave Hogwarts).
"Isn't this the most boring thing ever organized?" Penelope Clearwater asked. She, like most of the Ravenclaws wished they were somewhere else where their time could be better spent. Like in the library. Or one of those study carrels. The Hufflepuffs, Integra noted, were good-naturedly bored, as they smiled quite sincerely even though their eyes looked glazed over. The one thing that gladdened Integra's heart was Winny's sunny demeanor, quite a change from the dark sullenness she sported following Christmas hols. She must've made up with her family over the summer. Integra made a mental note to ask. Quentin looked happy, too. But then again, the boy couldn't be anything but.
At the end of the day, a Ravenclaw swot would finally announce how The Sorting of 1988 was, statistically, the longest in 150 years. But for now, the Slytherins hissed to make their disdain known, and the Gryffindors were groaning like a pack of underfed lions.
"You don't seem to like it here," Augusta said in the middle of rushing through a chapter of homework. The prefects will be by soon, checking up on them and turning off the lights.
"It's not that I don't like it here," Integra replied as she climbed onto her bed. "It's just..." For a while, Integra lost her train of thought as she watched Penelope's charmed hair brush went about its daily 100 strokes, even as the owner was catching up on her reading. "Weird, I suppose," Integra settled.
"Do you think there will be another muggle like you this year?" Penelope asked, as she cast a bookmarking charm on her heavy tome.
"I honestly don't know. It would be nice, though."
"Wouldn't it just?" a voice floated over from the door, belonging to Lea Fairfield. Her "time for lights out, little chicks" was greeted by groans, not so much for being called 'little', but more for their being deprived of last-minute swotting.
In the dark (with only a small lumos ball as reprieve) they settled on telling stories of their summer adventures. Augusta was keen on learning about muggles, as she was thinking of taking Muggle Studies by third year. She regaled them on stories about growing up in a bourgeois household, with an aspiration to be more.
"You mean, like netting a Malfoy?" Penelope asked, her distaste clear even in the darkness.
"I haven't thought about that," Augusta replied defensively. "I want to make a name for myself first, though."
"That will definitely scare away all members of nobility," Penelope scoffed. "They don't want some headstrong chit, I'm sure. Someone more of a trophy wife would be much preferable, won't it?"
"All this talk about marrying sounds rather surreal, don't you think?" Integra piped up, sensing an ad hominem debate looming in the not-so-distant horizon, as was wont to happen when these two started to bicker.
"Don't you?"
"For that, you'd need a member of the opposite sex," Integra pointed out. "And not an imaginary one either, noble or otherwise."
"Pah!" Penelope scoffed. "Easy for you to say. You must have a million suitors lining up already. Seeing that you're of a noble house yourself."
"A baronetcy isn't nobility. It isn't a peerage of any sort," Integra corrected.
"Well, didn't change the fact that you'd be titled," Penelope replied.
"Doesn't mean one jot in the grand scheme of the wizarding world, though, does it?" Integra parried. Penelope had this knack of finding reasons to be dissatisfied about most things she could think of. She often lamented about being a half-blood but living an entirely pedestrian muggle lifestyle, she was often mistaken as a muggleborn. Then, she would lament about her mother being the most ordinary kind of witch, neither titled, influential, nor emerging from any family with an illustrious history (either famous or infamous).
Integra had heard someone said once (rather contemptuously, too, in fact), that it was only Penelope's phenomenal brain and academic brilliance that clouded her Slytherin-like ambition from the Hat.
As she turned to her other side, trying to find the right spot to doze off for the night, she couldn't help but wonder what's so bad about Slytherin anyway.