Olly laughed as both girls toppled in after him. He heard the firstie wondering about whether or not they were real just before they found out for themselves. They felt weird, like not completely fake but he could tell they weren't real either. He snatched up the one Hady had thrown at him and draped it over his shoulders just like she had done. He was a snake whisperer now.

"I'm pretty good," he said in response to Hady's question. "And you? Have a good summer?" The typical back-to-school questions and all that. They were fine, but not exactly the most exciting. Olly dove into the sea of snakes for a moment before resurfacing closer to the first year.

"Nice to meet you Altha," he said with a grin. "How was your sorting? Were you nervous? Did you have any expectations?"

-----
The ball pit was wriggling with fake snakes. Altha pushed through with her feet, listening to the other two speak. She could still feel a sly grin glued to her face, a result of the effects of the fake snakes, and Hady's comment on Slytherin being the best house. She was starting to feel better about her sorting already. Thinking of the sorting...

Oliver had now inched closer to Altha, posing more than one question about her sorting. The grin fell from her face slowly as she contemplated how to answer the questions. The Slytherins that she had met so far didn't seem like 'doubtful snakes'. It almost felt like all of them were so sure of their house, and yet here was Altha. A girl who'd been completely caught off guard by her sorting.

"Nervous?" she laughed. She could be totally honest with this question. "I can't say I was, no." Now the gears were turning, and she made the decision to continue her total honesty. "I didn't think I'd be sorted into Slytherin," her eyes fell to the ball pit, and she became immediately aware of it. Picking her eyes back up, she focused directly on Oliver's eyes. "I never thought about being sorted anywhere aside from Gryffindor, because my entire family comes from Gryffindor," she shrugged, trying her best to keep her usual calm manner.

With the desire to sway the topic from her sorting, Altha raised her voice a little to be sure Hady could hear her. "So you two clearly aren't first years. What years are you in?"

---------

Why had her smile fallen away? It might have just been a coincidence that it happened around the same time Olly asked about her sorting. Was she upset about being in Slytherin? Not that Olly was judging at all, remembering the tears over his own sorting just a year earlier. He scooted even closer to Altha, making sure he would be able to hear what she said next over the noise of the party. He was interested in what she was going to say.

"I didn't think I'd be a Slytherin either," he declared. "Well, not at the time of my sorting. Before then I had no idea where I would go, and I would be excited to go anywhere. But my sister went first, we're triplets, and she got sorted into Gryffindor. So I knew that's where I would go because we go everywhere together. But I didn't." He frowned. It still wasn't something he was completely okay with. Sure, he loved Slytherin and all, but he missed Ellery. He liked being with her all the time, that's just how they were. But this was a party, and he should be having fun and not mope around, so he moved on from the story of his own sorting and refocused onto Altha's.

"Do you have a big family?" He asked. "Any siblings here at Hogwarts?" He could definitely understand wanting to be in the same house as her family, but he knew that she would soon love Slytherin. "I'm a second year."