[font=baskerville old face] At the question on whether or not he wanted a chocolate frog of his own, Thomas quickly shook his head; there was enough chaotic mess already with just one. Two would be exorbitant, bordering on insanity. Not that he didn't mind insanity every now and then, but he was used to madness within the constrains of normal, civil society; the kind of madness that could crop up now was intoxicatingly endless, allowing a feeling in Tom of both exhilaration, excitement, and downright horror. But, he supposed, he should probably get used to the feeling, as from here on out it was only expected that things would continue to deliquesce into an amalgam of weird situations and sightings. [/font]

[font=baskerville old face]So he tried, with a forced smile and a slight nod of his head, to take it all in stride while listening to Emma delineate the history of the character on the card, until the word Quidditch came into use and he frowned. [/font]

[font=baskerville old face]'Right...Quidditch...' He paused, before continuing. 'What's that again? A sports game, I presume.' [/font]

[font=baskerville old face]Tom imagined, at first, the game to perhaps have similar qualities to football or rugby, but she'd mentioned the game had gone on for the length of a week, which he supposed was possible if the participating players were attuned with magical attachments or spells of some kind, but why would a game with the characteristics he imagined have to go on for so long? Did each side keep continuing to tie in overtime?       [/font]

Tom politely declined the chocolate frog and listened with interest to what Emma was saying. 

Dinah had never heard of the Holyhead Harpies but she had definitely heard of Quidditch. After seeing the word on the sign for one of the shops in Diagon Alley, Dinah had been interested to know more about it. She had headed over to the second hand bookstore and found one that promised to give a good overview of the Wizarding sport called Quidditch. 

It had definitely confused her when she’d first read the rules. Four balls? On broomsticks? 
Despite this, Dinah had tried hard to remember the different types of players and what exactly each of their jobs were. 

While Dinah felt she could never be a Quidditch player herself (she had never really been the sporty type and she could only imagine how terrible she would be on a broomstick) she looked forward to seeing the game played herself. 

“Seven days?” She asked incredulously. “That’s allowed?”

Dinah leant back in the chair, looking out the window momentarily. Outside, a thick forest was speeding past as the train continued on its journey. Flicking back a chunk of her hair that had managed to escape her clip, Dinah wondered how much further of the journey was left. She was more than eager to get to Hogwarts, especially now that she was already learning so much about the Wizarding world. 

“I wonder if we’re nearing Hogwarts yet?” She pondered out loud. 

"Umm...Hello,"Lucia says looking into the compartment "Is there any room for me?"She asks.

Emma nodded kindly at Thomas, holding in all the words that wanted to spray out of her mouth. Was it possible he not know what Quidditch was? He was certainly no pureblood. After a while of gathering her thoughts, she decided not to say anything she was going to regret. He was making it a bit hard to become friends with him.

"Well, yes, Quidditch is a sport I guess you could say," Emma said, accumulating the correct words to say in order to persuade them both into thinking Quidditch wasn't that bad. "A very harsh game, ever heard of football? Well, think of it like that." She continued, not bothering about the retort of the other residents of the compartment. 

“Seven days?” She asked incredulously. “That’s allowed?”

Emma nodded in response. "I mean, I assume they took breaks." She pictured the team's Seeker looking for the Snitch that long. It shouldn't have taken that long, for all she knew most matches endured hours, at the most a day, but never as tedious as seven days. 

Leaning back in the silence Emma enjoyed, she heard the same echoing voice of Dinah speak. “I wonder if we’re nearing Hogwarts yet?”

Promptly, she looked out the window to miles and miles of mountains. The river beneath the tracks sparkled in the sunlight. "Hopefully, even the smell of chocolate can get annoying at some point." She looked down at her jeans, the frog slowly becoming less lively by the minute. "See," Emma let out an awkward laugh. "Definitely not real..."

Emma looked over at the closed compartment door, she heard footsteps clicking down the train's aisle. Sure enough, a girl poked her head into the compartment seeking shelter from the full, deserted, and even bully-filled train sections. She nodded with a slight smile and looked at Dinah with a look that said your turn. 

Lucia walked into the compartment. "Thanks for letting me sit here,"She said sitting down next to the girl that let her in.

[font= baskerville old face] Ah, another one, the boy mused, peeking at the girl entering the carriage, trying to keep an eye-roll contained, berating himself for holding onto the false hope that he might've had the actual chance of finding a compartment which wasn't filled with unceremoniously deplorable social dictations, the same such as he allowed himself to convey getting into this very spot. But, he supposed, besides all the commonalities of student exchange, it wasn't so horrible; the two girls, Dinah and Emma, didn't seem all too bad, although he was observant enough to notice the odd constrained look the one with the chocolate frog in her hand gave him whenever the fact of his oblivious tidings to all things Wizard came to play, as if she was upset at him or thought him inane. It took everything in him to not make the finding known, as she seemed alright when considering all else. Perhaps she wasn't used to people not knowing about the Magical world, and was simply annoyed at having to explain things all over again. He considered himself in her position, having to explain to a Wizard all the peculiarities of the Muggle system of thought and active everyday behaviors, and he could see himself going quite mad if put in such a situation. [/font]

[font= baskerville old face]So, in his delineation of the social circumstances at hand, Thomas decided, quite suitably, to talk about the one thing he did know about the school and Wizarding world, and that was the Sorting Ceremony that would initiate all the first years, of which he assumed all in the carriage to be, when regarding their looks and temperaments. [/font]

[font= baskerville old face]He started, 'So, does everyone here have an idea of what House they're going to be put in? Or any preference? They seem quite strictly character based, in terms of being demarcated by one's overall strength in certain aptitudes of personality. I guess I'm saying the whole thing sets us all in specific classes of persons of which will inevitably say a lot about our own specified behavior as has been seen during our relatively short lives.' Thomas realised he wasn't going a bit off-track. 'I suppose what I'm really saying is our preference of House kind of determines how we view ourselves as people. Might be a good ice-breaker then to find out each other's, I would assume.'         [/font]

"Well I think i'll be in Ravenclaw. I may look very relaxed but I was always at the top of my classes. I enjoy learning and learning should be so much more fun here,"Lucia responds with a smile. She then took out a sketch book and began to draw a detailed picture of a dragon. She liked dragons a lot so that was what most of her drawings were, but she did draw a landscape once and a while.

Emma watched as Thomas drifted into a chat about our future Houses, and despite being a half-blood, she hadn't given it any thought. The words 'preference' rung inside of her head over and over again. It was a hard choice, almost like deciding over her two favorite sweets. In her head, it was pointless, she'd much likely have both, but you can only have one in the Sorting Ceremony.

"Well, I really hadn't given it much thought..." She paused in an attempt to recollect her thoughts without starting a verbal quarrel, "maybe Slytherin or Ravenclaw?" 

Emma had left out the two houses for a reason, she didn't want to be like her father. In fact, she wanted to steer clear away from her path. Though protective, she was never brave like him. It was a different scenario, rather facing a fellow eleven-year-old than to face something that had most likely walked the planet before she had. She had never had a problem with Hufflepuff, in fact, she might have preferred that better than the other two houses she had mentioned. Those two houses were always getting into something, but she shook the feeling out of her head as soon as she figured she was prejudging the houses. 

"Have you given it any thought?" Emma asked curiously, slightly jealous that she knew the answer considering that he was the one to bring up the topic in the first place. She shifted in her seat slightly nervous, gazing out the window by the minute.

Does the ride really have to be this long? Emma thought to herself before returning her focus to Thomas.

Dinah shuffled over in her seat to allow the other girl, Lucia, to sit comfortably. It seemed their compartment had filled up rather quickly. 

“So, does everyone here have an idea of what house they’re going to be put in?” Tom asked the group. 

He continued speaking but Dinah didn’t hear the rest as she was racking her brain trying to remember what she’d read about the Hogwarts houses. She knew there was four of them...red, green, yellow and blue. But they had names Dinah just couldn’t for the life of her think what they were. She glanced round at the others, worried. They’d think her terribly stupid if she didn’t even know the names of the school houses. 

She kept quiet a moment longer and breathed a sigh of relief when the new arrival spoke first. 

“Well I think I’ll be in Ravenclaw...” Lucia announced confidently. 

Ravenclaw; yes that was the blue one. Apparently full of the smartest students. 

Emma seemed a little taken aback by the question and took a moment to answer. When she finally did tell them she thought she would most likely be in either Slytherin (the green one) or Ravenclaw, Dinah noticed her apprehension. 

She understood why as she had been notified by various helpful witches and wizards in Diagon Alley all about the rivalries and disputes between the four houses. 
A discussion like this could easily kick off a disagreement. 

Dinah continued her silence and rather than give away her answer just yet, she waited to hear what Thomas had to say.