2019-2020 First Year Entrance Finished

Interacting with @Madeline Doe, @Noelle Carmona, and @Moss Gray

As the duo on the boat conversed, and a third sat quietly in her own thoughts, Evelynn had been vaguely aware of the coming and going of other students making last second efforts to catch a boat before they all took off. It came to no surprise to her that they would be joined by a fourth student to fill the last of the seats of their little rowboat. Still, Evelynn hadn't quite expected anyone to cut into the conversation quite so casually.

Before Madeline could even reply, a redhead with vibrant blue eyes interjected with her own reply.
Evelynn's gray eyes snapped to the new comer, studying her as she struggled with her trunk. It was just in the nick of time that Evelynn pulled her feet in close to lean against the low wall on her side of the seat, otherwise the trunk may very well have crushed her toes. She stared at it for a moment, bemused. She had been quite certain that they were supposed to have left their belongings at the station to be taken up separately to the castle, but maybe there was some sort of special situation here.

"I uh… A pleasure to meet you, Moss," Evelynn replied, mildly exasperated as she winkled her nose with how cramped the already small space had now become. Moss. An unusual name. "I'm Evelynn Decipio. This is Madeline Doe," she continued, gesturing with an open palm to her previous conversation partner. She paused, eyes briefly roaming over the third as the girl stared out absently over the waters, debating as to whether to try to introduce her as well. But the girl hadn't told them her name. In fact, she hadn't said anything to Madeline and Evelynn at all. So she left her be, deciding it would have been a fruitless effort.

"I'm pretty excited to try flying as well," Evelynn smiled, picking up the conversation where it had left off. "I've heard all about it from Professor Berca.. Berceguay…Bercagee? Anyway…" Evelynn was clearly struggling to remember how to pronounce the name. "One of the professors. The flying professor here used to be a professional Quidditch player, and told be all about the sport and how she used to play as a beater. It sounds so fun! I can't wait to watch!"

Kara smiled gleefully as the train started to slow to a halt. In excitement, she practically plastered her face to the glass and stared at the castle with a feeling of relief.
The train whisled and she leaped out of her compartment with the other two girls behind her. She walked out with her head held high and stared at the lake as the moonlight glimmered against it, making it shine like the stars above her.
She couldn't hear anyone say what to do over all the chatter, so she instead followed the crowd. They all stopped at the shore of the lake and waited. She heard a faint gurgle come from the water as ripples drifted slowly towards them. She couldn't believe her eyes, boats were coming towards them with no drivers!
Kara hadn't seen much magic before, but now, it seemed like normal to her already, and she couldn't wait for her first class. She had talked with the girls on the train, one of them grew up with magic their whole life, the other was like her, knew nothing but was accepted.
She stepped on the boat and a girl and a boy followed her. She smiled at them, but she decided to ignore them, instead, she was going to do one of her favorite things. When it came to nature, she thought it was so beautiful and she just had to stare in awe.

The boats stopped at the other end of the lake and she looked around at the others and then at the castle, Hogwarts. She smiled at the thought. This was her first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!

Adriel clambered out of her train compartment and into the stream of students eager to exit the train. She was giddy almost jumping with excitement as a flood of students formed around three... lights maybe wisps? She assumed there were adults behind that inviting glow but could not make out their features over the sea of students. Her long braids twisted about as she looked around her. It was dark eerily dark...

"I feel like I'm in one of my fantasy books. A brave hero about to traverse through the endless darkness and find a worth wile treasure on the other side"

Adriel chuckled to herself. Her father Gregory had told her all about his boat ride. He was shaking so heavily it was a wonder he didn't topple right out of the boat. She couldn't help but imagine the scene. It always sent her into a fit of giggles thankfully she was snapped from her thoughts by a yell.

"First years this way!" The voice boomed out over the huddled crowd. At least her assumption was correct they weren't being led by wisps but people. Although the wisps would have made this endless darkness more like her books. She eagerly marched on with the others excited to settle in her boat and set sail for Hogwarts castle.

Thea hurried out of her compartment after Leanne had left and started heading towards an exit on the train. She walked off and looked around completely lost. Then she heard a young man call all the first years to follow him. She looked around at all the other faces in the crowd. Most of them were like her's excited but very nervous. She looked ahead again and looked a the young woman leading the way. She called out that there would only be 4 to a boat. "A BOAT!!!!!!" Thea hated water. she stopped in her tracks but was pushed forward by a kid a little taller than her. She fell hard into the mud and laid there for a few seconds. She then found her bearings and got up with her trunk. She followed a smaller girl than her into one of the boats and finally sat down in the boat. To her surprise she was actually looking forward to this. The other people in her boat did not talk to each other they just stared at the huge castle in front of them. Then the boats started moving and Thea was amazed. She heard many "oohs" and "aahs". She herself let one escape her own mouth, but just once. She looked over the edge of the boat and saw amazingly a different person staring back. " No this was no person this must be a merman." And it was. Also to Thea's surprise she saw the merman glide along with them through the entire trip. She felt safe with him their. But as soon as she had made it to the castle he looked at her nodded and swam away. Thea then turned her attention to the scary part of the journey.

Getting sorted.

After the long train ride, Cress was ready to get off. She got motion sickness rather easily in muggle vehicles, so she was more than happy when the train slowed and students began piling out. She stepped out of her compartment and began to look down the train's hallway, pushing through crowds of people to reach the fresh air.

Almost falling over one student as they stepped out of their compartment, she muttered a quick 'Sorry!' and reached the train's door. When Cress had made it outside, she looked around and took everything in. The amount of students all around her was incredible and she felt a little lost in the midst of them all. Seeing an adult who looked to be in charge of directing the first years to the boats, she followed.

They directed her into a boat with two other students in it. She smiled shyly and looked down into the black water. This was quite an adventure. For all the swimming she had done back home in Wales, she couldn't say she'd ever been on a boat. "A first time for everything, I guess," she thought.

The boat ride to the castle was amazing and she loved every moment of it, though after getting off a train and hopping right into a boat, her whole body was ready to be on solid land again.

Row boats were a familiar method of transportation to the intrepid explorer-child. Back home in Inverie he had on more than one occasion found himself atop the bench of the rocking and swaying chalk white vessel his parents had purchased on a whim. This one was different than that one. Not only did the craft not employ the use of oars, but a small lantern fixed at the bow clearly glowed without corporeal flame. Those observations had been made mere moments before entering the vessel. The customary thing to do would be to wait until after the other students had gotten on the boats, and then pick from them which he would ride. Sylvain spent so much time deciding which to ride, that he was left behind and forced to ride the ferry by his lonesome!

Not the slightest worried, Sylvain climbed into the remaining vessel. Sylvain could see his classmates ahead of him, but the forward congregation failed to upset or worry the self-reliant minor. The lad’s inner optimism told him that he would likely reach the shore at the same rate as the others and that lagging behind only meant he would have more time to observe than the others. Before he had a chance to use the majority of his time irresponsibly, the eccentric escapist took a brief moment to organize his thoughts. He then collected his belongings, accounted for his collected collections, and lost interest in the assembly. Curious, Sylvain looked into the water. The calmed surface belied that the lake could be shallow, and it sent chills down his frame to extrapolate that what he could not fathom, was also veiled by the lake’s depths.

“Look,” a student from one of the other rowboats called out, snapping the absent minded Sylvain to attention. The point of their finger outlined the source of the class’s collective bewilderment. It was Hogwarts, the school that would hopefully answer all of Sylvain’s questions. The concept would not match the results if Sylvain attempted to sketch, so instead he elected to use some of his school supplies to write down a few of the feelings he felt when he first saw the school, but only so that he would have a comparison for how it made him feel to see Hogwarts later.

Eager
Hopeful
Pensive

Reynolds had managed to find an empty portion of the train for the ride over. His older brother, Will, who was a sixth year Ravenclaw, had made it very clear on the platform that the two of them would not be sitting together on the train or coming into contact at all during the duration of their two year Hogwarts overlap. Not that Reynolds had minded such a rule, in fact, he would have insisted on it himself if Will hadn’t brought it up.

Now though it was apparently impossible for him to avoid his fellow first years as the teachers announced there was a requirement of student numbers in each boat. He wished he could attend this school without actually having to interact with others the way he didn’t have to interact with his brother. He wanted to slip by unnoticed for the next seven years, he was quiet and unassuming enough, maybe he could manage it.

Step one was to select the right boat. His first thought was to find a boat that didn’t have anyone in it yet, the idea being that maybe there would be an excess of boats and he could manage to ride over by himself after all. However, he quickly put that thought to rest. It was a pipe dream. Likely what would happen if he tried that strategy is that he would likely be joined by some random person and forced to make small talk.

Instead, Reynolds decided the best course of action was to find a boat that already had an occupant or two that was talking already. If he could slip into an already formed group then it was less likely they would try to talk to him. The only downside was that it was still possible for a fourth to join, his only hope would be that the fourth would be just as shy and quiet as he was or they would be put off by his quietness and talk to the other occupants first.

Luckily Reynolds was able to find a boat that met his requirements pretty quickly, two girls were already sitting down and chatting, they looked like they might be twins but he couldn’t be sure in the low lantern light. It seemed this would be one of those boats mentioned without a teacher. He didn’t have a problem with that, he didn’t tend to like teachers much anyway. Most of the boats were filling up now, not many students remained. The original occupants chatted away without seeming to notice him.

Feeling safe from social interaction, Reynolds finally allowed himself to enjoy the scenery properly. The dark lake that the boat bobbed on while they waited to get going made him think of a Longfellow poem he hadn’t thought of in a long time. His favorite part had been “Darkness settles on roofs and walls//But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls”. While it wasn’t the sea he was about to set upon, it still seemed fitting. Absently his lips formed the words as he lost himself in thought.

Aly was one of the last people to get off the train. Wrestling with her too-heavy trunk in order to try to fit the books she'd been reading on the Hogwarts Express made it difficult for her to get into the cramped corridor before it became full of jostling, bumbling, chattering students of all ages and sizes. Aly was short even for an 11-year-old, standing only at about 140 cm, and with her thin frame... I'll just wait, she had decided. But now she was one of the last few stragglers getting off the Express, she couldn't find the people from her train compartment anywhere (not that she remembered their names), and all of the boats were mostly full. Groaning her displeasure, she sprinted towards the closest one, in which a boy was just sitting down next to two chattering girls.

The girls looked as though they were having their own conversation in the pitch black of the night, and as talkative as Aly was, she didn't want to butt in. That would be the absolute wrong first impression to make on people who could potentially be her closest friends at Hogwarts over the years! (After all, who knew who she would end up befriending?) Instead, Aly noticed that the girls hadn't even bothered trying to include the boy in their conversation, so she turned to him as she sat down and stuck out one thin-fingered hand. She couldn't quite make out his exact features in the dark and the shadows from nearby lanterns that cast patterns over his face, but he was obviously about her age as an incoming first-year if he was sitting in the boat, and he looked nervous. Seemed quiet. If she introduced herself, Aly wondered, would he even care? Or was he one of those people who much disliked meeting people, or even- gasp- talking?

Still, her hand was already out to shake, so there was no turning back now. Plus, Aly's father Benjamin- a graduate himself of Hogwarts, an alumnus of Ravenclaw House, which Aly was desperately hoping to be placed in herself- had always said that his little girl could make friends with a brick wall if she tried. Not that Aly had met many brick walls in her life. The Salinger manor's walls were made of stone. But perhaps this boy would be her first real, live brick wall to overcome.

She grinned her brightest possible smile at him. A light breeze was picking up, whipping Aly's tight curls into her face, but she just brushed them away with her free hand and ignored them. "Hi!" she exclaimed, as cheerful and excited as ever, though butterflies were beginning to roil in her stomach at the thought of the imposing upcoming Sorting Ceremony. "I'm Alyssa Salinger, but you can call me Aly. Everyone does. What's your name?"

Reynolds had made a horrible miscalculation. He was torn from his thoughts and the lapping of the lake by one of his least favorite things. Small talk. A girl his age had seated herself in the small boat right next to him and had immediately started talking. Who did that? Who could just sit down, see a stranger, and just start talking? Hadn’t she thought this through at all?

Still, never one to be rude, Reynolds awkwardly took her hand and shook it, then let go as quickly as possible to return it to his side. “H-hello,” he said. “Nice to meet uhm meet you. I’m Reynolds.”

Not only was she just going up to strangers and telling them her name, she seemed excited to do so. How could she be so cheerful when everything around them was brand new? With the night hiding them in shadows on the lake and everything shrouded, even their own faces, how was she this giddy? Was she completely unaware of the atmosphere?

Reynolds opened his mouth to say something else, that was how conversation worked right? She had said something to him so he should say something back. Yet when he went to speak there were no words he could think of. Should he offer information about himself besides his name? That was all she had asked for though, would it be presumptuous to say something more? Would she care?

The longer he sat there with his mouth open the more he was aware of how stupid he must look. He had to say something quickly. He hated this.

“Your hair is big.”

Your hair is big? Had those words really just come out of his mouth? Was this a nightmare? Had he actually fallen into the lake and drowned? It seemed preferable at the moment.

He should say something better, something to recover, some kind of compliment. Like your hair is big, you must not brush it. No wait that wasn’t a compliment was it, he shouldn’t say that. He could tell her that it smelled nice. But he couldn’t really smell it, all he could smell was the lake, and it didn’t smell particularly good. And also that might be creepy. He didn’t want to be creepy.

Oh no, how could he end this? He needed to say something that didn’t sound creepy, that wasn’t insulting, that was nice enough but would stop her from talking to him. An imaginary lightbulb went off in his head.

“Your hair is big,” he repeated, mouth dry. “I’ve never seen - never seen hair quite like that, it’s cool, I’m sure other girls uhm other girls would want to know your secret.”

He tried to gesture in the dark with his eyes to the girls talking in the front part of the boat. Hopefully, she would take it as a compliment, not think he was creepy, and find a reason to talk to the other people in the boat that weren’t him and leave him alone. It was foolproof. It had to be, because as soon as he said it the boat started across the water, pulled by some invisible magic. It had to work because now there was no way out.