Despite your prefects demonstrating how to use the term's password, 'Aurea Orrery', the Fat Lady forces you to sit through her spirited rendition of the Hogwarts school song before she swings her portrait open and reveals the entrance to your home away from home. The hearth has a few low burning embers just enough to give it a homely warm feeling in the Scottish highlands, and its low light illuminates the comfy armchairs before it.

Those returning students will be pleased to find that there is not a single trace of cobwebs to be had anywhere in the common room. While you all must surely be full from the feast, the alluring aroma of chocolate frogs, cauldron cakes, pumpkin pasties, and buttered popcorn may change your mind. Large white mugs filled with hot cocoa or tea set out on a long table near the fireplace. A few roasting sticks, along with all the fixings (including an assortment of gourmet marshmallows in various flavors) to make delicious hot schmoes smores can be found on the opposite side of the fireplace.

You seem to cross some sort of magical barrier as you make your way to the opposite end of the common room towards what appear to be miniature versions, standing approximately eight feet tall, of quidditch goal hoops. An invisible bubble has been cast upon this area, making whoever enters to become weightless and with the ability to "fly" on their own accord - just make sure you flap your arms and kick your legs nice and firmly to give yourself some momentum to float towards the stuffed beach ball sized golden snitches floating about.

The real dragon in the room is a large crimson box situated on a table right smack in the middle of the common room. Is this another one of Professor Flamsteed's tricks? An extension of his final lesson from last term? Or is it something else entirely? You'll just have to wait and see to find out.

For those who are returning, this is an excellent opportunity to catch up with friends and for those that are newly sorted, this is an opportunity to make friends. Unless your bed is beckoning you, sit, relax, have some snacks and chat. Your Head of House wishes you a pleasant start to the new school term.

OOC: This is the common room thread for after the start of term feast - our first night home! The general common room thread will open in 3-4 days for regular RP depending on how much fun and chaos you all cause in here. Welcome to, or welcome back to, Gryffindor!