"Borrowing" The Sorting Hat PV Finished

As Birdie quietly ate her food at the Ravenclaw table, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A shifting of robes, accompanied by a frantic shout of something unintelligible and the thunder of running steps. She curiously looked over and noticed that the figure was gone. And so was the sorting hat.
She jerked her head towards the exit of the hall and quietly got up and chased after the idiot who had the half-baked idea to steal the sorting hat without even setting up a distraction first. Heck, they didn't even try to make it quiet or subtle at all, with the yelling and the running. She had to see why stupidity? Birdie decided on that answer.
But it would be better than sitting down and feeling more lonely than ever, so... down the rabbit hole, they needed the sorting hat so desperately that they wouldn't even form a plan beforehand. Perhaps it was just for the novelty of stealing the sorting hat.
"Wait up!" She called, trying not to alert any teachers. It was more of a loud, ineffective whisper. "Perhaps I'm the idiot here but..." She muttered to herself, still scrambling after the kid. "HOLD ONNNNN!" She yelled, assuming it'd be fine since 1, they were now quite a bit away from the Great Hall and 2, if people didn't notice the kid booking it and yelling in the DENSELY POPULATED AREA, then there was a virtually non-existant chance of them noticing it now.

Staring at other people was bad. Piper knew that, objectively. Staring was rude and it made people uncomfortable, but in this case, he couldn't stop himself. It was just- okay, some Gryffindor kid had been glaring into nothingness with impressive intensity for at least the past thirty seconds now, and he was intrigued. Piper tried to focus on his food, and on the conversation around him- conversation which he normally would have found impossible to not contribute to, if only his gaze didn't keep slipping over to the guy at the Gryffindor table.

He wasn't going to look. Looking over one more time would make this weird. He was not going to-

Piper looked over.

Hm. It looked like he wasn't noticing that the meal was coming to an end. Piper shoved a few bread rolls into one pocket- ignoring the weird looks from his fellow Hufflepuffs- and started to approach the other boy when the food disappeared.

People were getting up, so Piper lost sight of the kid for a moment. When his view cleared, the boy was gone.

Well darn. Now he had a cluster of bread rolls and nothing to do with them.

Piper had just given up on finding the Gryffindor again when he heard a shout from the front of the hall. He turned to see the same guy he was looking for- awesome- snatching up the Sorting Hat and sprinting off. He didn't even stop to consider the theft- Piper was determined that these bread rolls get delivered. Without a moment's hesitation, Piper took off after the boy.

"HOLD ONNNNN!"

Piper shot a surprised smile at the Ravenclaw girl running a few paces next to him.

"Hey," he said conversationally as they tore across the corridor, "I think we're chasing the same guy. You got food too?"

This was Adelaide's first sorting ceremony at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was an interesting sight to see the magical hat sort all the students into the four different Houses. She wasn't too interested, in general, though. She was not a Head of House looking for her new House members, she wasn't even a first year core subject teacher eyeing out promising students. But this was a required ceremony and she didn't mind attending the unique event.

It had gone on just like Adelaide assumed every sorting hat ceremony went each year, and soon the students were chowing down on their food at their new house tables. Adelaide herself was enjoying the feast, and it seemed to wrap up in just a fraction of the time she would have thought. Soon the food disappeared from the tables and the plates before her and she sighed, ready to get up and go to her room, sleep a bit before she had to greet her new third years in her classroom in the morning.

She stood, along with the rest of the teachers at the very long head table, and waited for the students to be lead out by their prefects to their common rooms for the night. Commotion was large and loud as they all shuffled through the Great Hall doorway, everyone heading in the same direction at once. Students were yelling over each other, saying goodbye to friends from other houses or calling over those who managed to get lucky and be placed in the same houses. Adelaide watched, bored with the ordeal, ready to retire for the night.

Thats when she saw something strange out of the corner of her eye. A young boy was heading in the opposite direction than the entirety of the student body. He was fairly easy to pick out due to his course of movement as well as his speed of running. She wasn't sure at first what his intentions were, so she watched him, slightly confused. She was sure most, if not all, of the staff had eyes on the boy. Did he not notice?

It seemed not as he beelined straight up the stage and grabbed the Sorting Hat that was just chilling on its chair. The hat, obviously shocked, let out a cry of surprise, and Adelaide froze for just a moment. She was completely bewildered by this action. Did the child really not understand the gratuity of this attempt? Again, it seemed not.

She managed to hesitate just enough to notice the other staff members had turned to look at her. Ah, this was some sort of test to see if she can handle these little rugrats. She smiled a sly little grin and turned back to the boy. Game on, then. Wipping out her wand she pointed and muttered, accio hat. Extremely suddenly the hat would go flying out of the boys hand and into the gentle fingers of the Runes Professor. The boy wouldn't even notice for a good few strides that his prize had been returned. As she did this she noticed two other had joined in on the boys fleeing. Were they perhaps accomplices in this attempt? Did not matter, she muttered once again towards the three students.

They had not been able to make it out of the Great Hall, despite their attempts, as moving through the mass of students by the door quickly was nearly impossible. In this midst of their pushing through, they would suddenly freeze, their bodies feeling abruptly weightless and they each realized they had both been frozen in place as well as begun hovering above the ground. They each would be lifted above the heads of their peers making a clear path for the children to float backwards towards the head table.

Adelaide watched the three student follow her wand where she placed them at the foot of the table in front of her. She maneuvered their bodies so they could stand still in front of her, but kept their frozen state in check, she didn't want them running off quite yet. She looked at all three for a moment. Each from different Houses, each first year students. She wondered how they all knew each other and how they devised this silly plan.

"Well," She began, "That was stupid." She didn't quite have any more words for that. She felt as if they should have realized it too. "Short of simply expelling you, because they weight of that action certainly merits such a thing, I will assume you are just immature children with silly ideas who will not ever be attempting to do such a thing again."

She paused for a moment to look at them once again, a stern but bored look on her face. "This room is full of literally every staff member that works on the grounds of the school. I am astonished that you thought you had even the slimmest chance of getting away with this. "

"No matter, I will be serving each of you with detention. And instead of spending your very first night at Hogwarts in your Common Rooms unpacking and settling in and finding new friends, you will be spending it doing some menial and unfortunate task that I have yet to devise."

"Until then, enjoy not moving your bodies." She concluded, attempting to think of what these students deserved. She would wait until the rest of the student population had exited the Great Hall and returned to their House Common Rooms before freeing the children of the freeze. Then they will immediately go to detention with Professor Ayers.

He didn't even make it five steps, five bloody steps, before everything went south. One minute the hat was there, in his hands, all ready for a good talking to about why it was rude to just... cut off people or something stupid like that, he wasn't sure what he was going to say. Then the next, it was yanked out of his arms so hard that he actually lost his balance and hit the ground. That would be a nice bruise for later, but for now, he had bigger problems.

Like questioning where these other students came from and why they were chasing after him. Did that one kid have bread rolls in his pockets?? Why was that girl shouting at him? What, were they planning to use the rolls as weapons to stop his escape? Fat chance. Though now he was short his target and- oh Ra there was a teacher after him now.

Ahkar bolted. He didn't think, he just ran. Sure, he may not have the hat anymore, but he wasn't out of trouble, and right now he just needed to sit somewhere quiet and think his way out. He was pretty bad at thinking his way out of anything, granted, never really the 'plan guy' in his old groups. He was the guy that ran in like an idiot when things went south to make sure nobody else got left behind, and everything somehow pulled through.

This time, that wasn't going to be the case. He didn't even get out the door before he froze over completely. The only reason he didn't panic? This wasn't the first time he'd been subject to some manner of spell of this nature. It spoke loud what sort of life he led when his expression was stubborn and fierce when he was frozen and dragged back, his eyes giving away only a small flicker of the panic he felt.

Well. Day one, got sorted into his families least favorite house, picked a fight with a talking hat, got frozen and floated in front of the entire school, dragged two people (unintentionally) down with him, and got detention for trying to steal a school... mascot? Something stupid like that. Nobody could say he led a boring life at least.

It wasn't like he could speak as the woman addressed his current situation. If he could, he probably wouldn't say much. Not in English at least, but he had a few choice words in Arabic for his current situation, and how stupid what he'd just tried to do had been. Getting expelled on his first day wasn't what he wanted, nobody wanted that. Especially a boy who would have to face some severe penalties back home that made anything the school threw at him pale in comparison. Thus, he was a bit relieved he was getting... detention? It wasn't a word he knew, but it didn't take a genius to guess it was some kind of punishment.

Like being frozen and stuck watching everyone leave, pointing and whispering. It wouldn't be long before they came up with some choice nicknames for his stunt today. Much as that burned, it wasn't anything he wasn't used to, and wasn't anything he could deal with at the moment. Only when he was finally unfrozen would he have the freedom to pick up some of his bruised and shattered pride by getting to his feet and shoving his hands in his pockets, waiting for his punishment in silence.

There was something defiant in the way he stood and stared at the teacher, even and equally. An easy to misunderstand situation as his silence was merely a result of his lack of skill with the English language. Besides, the less he spoke, the less he could say to get himself into any deeper trouble, as far as he'd always understood. He only gave the other two students a passing glance that was part glare and part confusion before, in an oddly passive and almost agreeing lack of fight, following off to wherever the Professor deemed his detention to begin.

"Uh... unless you're chasing the idiot who stole the... thing, no, I don't think we're chasing after the same student." She huffed. "I think I'm going to go into cardiac arrest if I have to run much longer..." That's when she felt her body seize up and found herself in an awkward mid-run position as the teacher calmly started moving them

She groaned and cursed her curiosity as she stood in the Great Hall, unable to move her limbs. "At least I don't have to run anymore..." She thought, bitter as ever. She diverted her attention to what she should have been doing at this point. Probably meeting the other Ravenclaws, playing games, singing, playing piano. And then, because of her blasted 'Winterwell Curiosity', that was all thrown out the window. "Good job, me." She thought. "At least I'm probably going to get my owl. Or a howler. I don't really care, as long as I get to see Marion or Snowfall again." To pass the time, Birdie decided to try practicing her spells mentally. Like a loser. But then again, she had nothing to lose but her own low self-worth, so screw it. More practice for later, she guessed.

Piper could only manage a breathless smile at the Ravenclaw girl, in spite of his confusion. He hadn't seen anyone else running out of the great hall. And someone stealing something?

Hang on, come to think of it, that guy had stolen the sorting hat. That... didn't seem like the best idea, but Piper trusted he had his reasons. He didn't, as it turned out, have long to contemplate anyway, as a moment later all three of them were frozen to the spot.

For a while, as they gently bobbed above the students who hadn't left yet, all Piper could think about was how cool it was that they were floating. His parents were both magical, but they were also very busy, so he hadn't seen a whole lot of magic growing up- let alone being levitated! It was a surprisingly fun feeling.

It was as he was considering when they might learn a similar spell in class that Piper's feelings plummeted. This meant they were in trouble, didn't it? Ah beans, he hadn't realised taking food from the table was against the rules- honestly he hadn't; in fact, no one had explicitly told them not to and oh wait this was not about the bread rolls this was about the Sorting Hat.

Piper knew there would be no point in protesting his innocence. Running out of the hall would have looked guilty as heck. Plus- who knew? Maybe detention would be a good way to make friends. He'd been looking forward to talking to people in his dorm, but this would have to make do.

When they were unfrozen, he risked a glance at the Professor before he looked at the other two with a sheepish smile. The other boy was glaring at him. Probably still hungry.

Piper shoved the rolls into his hands with an awkward smile. "Here! Cause, uh, I don't think you got anything to eat."