Fortunately for Hermione and a pénitent and woebegone Harry, the bed in the First-year Girls' Dormitory was large and could be well-enclosed. Harry wouldn't have much to sleep in, just a ragged t-shirt and oversized boxers knotted to keep them from slipping off. Even more fortunately, a Hogwarts elf brought Harry pyjamas which had the symbols of House Granger on them. It turned out to be symbols in the plural, provocatively referencing all four of the other Houses.
House Granger was represented by a Raven, a Gryphon, a Wyvern, and a Wolverine. At various times, one or more of them had symbolised the other Houses, but the current configuration was all that anyone had living memory of. The elf who brought Harry his pyjamas said that all four Animals were still alive, with their life processes suspended, kept beneath Hogwarts below the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers, and the area where the Hufflepuff and Slytherin towers had once stood. After an attack had destroyed the towers, various headmasters had dawdled, slowly working on rebuilding them, until Headmaster Phineas Black declared that they were abandoning the project, since a generation of students had adapted to having two of the Houses reside in the dungeons.
The animals, the elf said, when Hermione said it seemed cruel to keep them in suspended animation forever, actually got to leave for the day and wander about outside the castle at the Solstices and Equinoxes. In this way, they could keep up with the world around them, but not die of old age.
Hermione expressed anxiety over the fact that her House was represented by a Gryphon and a Raven, but the elf said Hogwarts, as represented by the Hat, was just honouring Gryffindor and Ravenclaw's choices of a Lion and an Eagle, and they'd had centuries to change their minds by this point.
Harry had a bright idea, and asked the elf if there was an Eagle, Lion, Snake and Badger below the school. It turned out there was, but since the time of Phineas Black, no headmaster or even assistant headmaster had bothered to look in on them. He suggested to Hermione that meeting their representative animal with the help of her and him would offset some of the grief they might otherwise get from being a new, competing house and getting "special treatment" thereby.
The elf, surprisingly, didn't leave right away - well, it would have been surprising if either of the two young people had been more familiar with the school. It turned out it had pyjamas for Hermione as well. It pulled its head back out of Hermione's closed curtains, and Harry and Hermione turned away from each other and changed into their nightclothes quickly.
After a short wait, the elf popped its head in again and told them the Hat wanted to meet with them in a room where they could speak privately. Hermione got a bit upset, after all, the elf had basically pushed them into changing into pyjamas, then dropped that demand on them.
The Sorting Hat, the elf explained, would not be bothered by their pyjamas, since it was the Hat's idea. Furthermore, there would be cocoa for the two children, which would help them sleep after the excitement and strangeness of their Sorting Day.
If Harry and Hermione had been familiar with Hogwarts, they would have also been surprised by the no-nonsense, not overly respectful demeanour of the elf. Her face wasn't lined and care-worn as some of the elves who belonged to Dark families were, but there was a tightness at the corner of her mouth that never relaxed, and the same was true of her eyes.
After Hermione asked, she said her name was "Hokey, daughter of Hokey." Her story, it turned out, was quite sad. Before Hokey left home, and long before she came to Hogwarts, her mother had been framed for the murder of their mistress by a young man named Tom, and immediately executed. She fled before some stranger could try to take ownership of her, and carried on surviving with little magic until she was offered a place by the elves of Hogwarts.
Some of the evil man's allies, who had sometimes accompanied him when he was visiting Mistress Smith, had children or grandchildren in Hogwarts, and Hokey refused to have anything to do with them.
Consequently, she was only seen when Hogwarts itself wanted a courier. Like the Hat, Hokey was attuned to the castle and its magic, even more than the average Hogwarts elf. If a headmaster was especially sensitive to Hogwarts' magic, she said, then they could also convey a sense of what the castle required to the staff and students, but that hadn't been the case since ...
Here Harry embarrassed himself by interrupting and saying, "Phineas Black's time."
While correct, it broke the flow of Hokey's narration, and she gave him a disapproving frown.
Hermione took that opportunity to suggest that they go meet the Hat, as their conversation was probably keeping her roommates up - and that, she suggested, would hardly help Gryffindor/Granger relations. The elf gave her a pitying look and said she'd silenced Hermione's sleeping area for the space outside while they were all at the Welcoming Feast.
The elf was, all in all, a bit annoying, but at the same time, somehow endearing, they both thought (they confirmed that with each other later).
Hermione heard her roommates saying good night to her, and realising the situation, stuck her head out to say the same to them. She looked over at her nearest neighbour, Sally-Anne Perks, and whispered "Silenced," to her, pointing at her bed curtains. Sally-Anne made an "OK" gesture with her hand and smiled, before turning away and pulling a coverlet up over her shoulder.
So far, she mused, the girls hadn't had a single word of complaint about having a boy sleeping in their bedroom area.
Harry was grateful that, for the most part, Hermione had spoken for them. He was still overwhelmed, a little guilty over embarrassing Hermione with his weakness, and anxious about how the school would react once the reality had set in. But above all that, he was happy, deep down. After all, he'd be separated from his Angel even less than he had been when staying at her home!
With those thoughts in their heads, Harry and Hermione suddenly found themselves in a tiny room with a tiny table that had two mugs of cocoa atop it - and a Hat.