The Great Hall

Tessa entered the Great Hall, eyes shining as she took in the familiar sight before her. Hundreds of candles hung suspended above the rows of long tables, flickering and casting their warm light upon the stone floor. She made her way quickly towards the Ravenclaw table, taking a seat next to a sixth year with a grin. It was good to be back.

"Hey Tessa." Xander nodded in the girl's direction as he found himself a place a couple of seats down at the table. He was still smiling in the irritating yet somehow charming way he always managed to pull off but he couldn't help it, he loved the thrill of the first day back before slowly settling into a regular routine of Quidditch and classes. Never the other way around. He had missed the uniformity school had brought to his life as well as the much welcomed time away from home where he was free from the pressure that his parents exerted whenever they flat out told him to get his life sorted.

"But the sorting ceremony will be first. I think the first years are starting to line up, actually."

"What did the hat ever do to you?" Tessa asked, amused. Her stomach grumbled loudly and she folded her arms across it, slightly embarrassed. This must be how the older students felt when it was my sorting ceremony. Why couldn't it be after dinner?

Leo was seated at the Hufflepuff table, looking slightly lonely. He had never made many friends in his own house, and preferred to talk instead to his cousins and family friends, as he had been raised with them and introductions were long in the past.

"My sorting process was fairly ordinary," the Ravenclaw shrugged. "It considered me for Slytherin but said I valued my 'wit and knowledge of the affairs of others' above my own ambition, whatever that's supposed to mean."

Ricardo glanced at his brother with a sigh. He wished that he could sit with the kid, but there was an enchantment that prevented students of other houses to sit at House tables. Vaguely, he found himself wondering if he should tell Leo the truth. Would it change a lot? Would he think less of me? Leo's not that judgmental...

Giovanni slid into a seat next to Xander, carefully guiding a reluctant Nicolas to his left. The blind boy turned his face towards the source of the laughing noise. "Hey, what's-your-face. You sound nervous. What's wrong with you?"

Giovanni paused. "Well, when I was sorted, the Sorting Hat took only a few seconds to decide that I was a Ravenclaw. I told it to put me wherever it thought best, so... Here I am."

"Well, when I was sorted, I made it pretty clear to that hat what I wanted," Nicolas huffed. "Anything but Hufflepuff, because that it honestly the saddest excuse for 'we don't know what to do with you' I have heard to date. And I've been in that many blind clinics."

"I was surprised to be put in Ravenclaw," Tessa shrugged. "I don't enjoy reading, I'm not particularly intelligent... I just assumed it would be one of the other three houses." She remembered with a wince how insecure she had felt during her first exam week at Hogwarts, since everyone else in her house had been intent on revising weeks, even months before, and she had started hers last minute. Still, her grades had been perfectly acceptable, even if they weren't the O's she had been hoping for.

Vincent jerked awake when he heard Ricardo come in. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he sighed, "Oh, it's only you. Uh, thanks for the food. But don't you have friends you want to eat with?"