The torch light spilled like oil onto the flagstone floor, where suits of armour stood guarding the arched doorways on either side of the entrance. Matilda Adele Dem Mc’nuland (occasionally called MAD Mc’nuland) had immediately forgotten about her gruffness. She had stared wide-eyed at the marble staircase that lead to the upper floors. The ceiling was non-existent and Hogwarts was grand. Matilda had always imagined it as a rickety old castle on the verge of collapsing from the over-use of magic. It was something else entirely. The very sight of it was so magnificent that Matilda had been halfway across the hall before she was aware. She remembered feeling embarrassed and scurried back to the line of first years promptly being led to The Great Hall.

Matilda would have described that, too. But that could wait until another day, for the Sorting Hat only appeared at the top of the stool once in a year. It was a dusty thing, sitting on a dusty chair with a dusty fringe and covered in bad stitching. It sang in bad rhymes. She remembered being crippled by nervousness when the sorting ceremony started. The truth have been told, Matilda did not particularly care which house she would land in. She had been worried about her lacking height and wondered if she could climb the stupid stool without inviting laughter.

She remembered feeling rather doleful when she recalled her mother said the house of snakes looked down on half-bloods. It seemed the more she learned about the school, the less she liked it. She remembered dying of hunger and said pointedly and miserably that the staffs are devouring it like trolls before hibernation…

The food ought to come soon.

The Slytherin first year forgot to remember when the feast started at last. Food was conjured onto the silver and golden plates and Matilda crammed hers in the way that suggested it was swell and it was free. Perhaps MAD Mc'nuland did not dislike Hogwarts as much as she thought.