Kevin was utterly awed by this entire thing, a magic platform and a train ride into Scotland and a giant castle and gosh, how were those candles floating without anything holding them up?, but he was at least paying enough attention to hear his name called, and without too much stumbling made it to the stool to put on the (singing!) Hat. He didn't really address it or anything because he wasn't sure how to talk to it and wasn't sure whether it talked at all, and in any case he was busy wondering how the school found magic kids that didn't have magic parents, and how Exploding Snap cards worked (he'd been taught to play on the train, by a blonde girl whose name he did not at all remember), and what kind of genes made up magic, and whether all of the teachers were properly human, and whether dragons were real, and if it was common for hats to sing, and -