Hermione felt like a pauper, half-hidden in the doorway of the Great Hall, watching the Sorting Ceremony. Severus was insistent that she should not go, she should stay in their chambers instead, but she ignored him. It had been torture to not take her place at the Gryffindor table, to watch her friends sit clustered together, afraid. She leaned against the doorframe, watching the Sorting Hat fall into the eyes of one student, and then another. Were they always so little? They seemed so impossibly tiny—had she really been that small?