Sorting Hat PV Detention Closed

Birdie began cleaning the filthy ballroom and felt a strong urge to glare at the idiot who stole the bloody sorting hat. But that would make her a jerk. It wasn't his fault she decided to chase after him. In fact, it was probably her fault they got caught. After all, she was the one who screamed for him to slow down, like a total doofus.
Birdie decided this was the worst possible outcome. Not only was she in detention on her first night instead of meeting her new house-mates, she never got her answer. Which gave her something to think about for the next few hours. She entertained herself by making up ridiculous, over the top theories about why the thief needed the hat, like for a dangerous spell that would cause ravenous butterflies to destroy the school, or to make a magic teddy bear out of the cloth.
Her thoughts, preoccupied with silly theories and tedious cleaning, didn't stop her from absentminded humming. It felt natural in the silence of the room, aside from the occasional shuffling of feet. It made her feel better about her awful situation. Even if it totally sucked, she was having a relatively good time.

Orange Text = Arabic
Red Text = English

There wasn't much expectation, but plenty of uncertainty behind the punishment. Hogwarts, or in general a school of magic, was a new concept to him. He was of age to begin his first year here, and the first one to be deemed 'fit' to travel and attend. Or rather the most unfit to remain behind during sensitive business dealings his parents were under, but wasn't that just the same concept in the end? Either way, he was the test dummy, and it gave him no expectation for how the school staff might handle... troublemakers.

The trek was made in silence, at least on his end. Occasional glances were made towards two he'd unwittingly dragged along for the ride, mostly questioning. They weren't even the same house, but in the Professors eyes they were all working together. He didn't bother trying to correct her either, because simply trying to would test the gymnastics of his concept of English and just risk causing a deeper mess. He was even less eager to fix it after he saw what they were supposed to do.

The speck and span ballroom was by no means small. Just seeing it was a little impressive, even by the standards of which he was used to. His eyes even shifted upward, trying to gauge just how impressive the ceiling height was. Not as amazing as the Great Hall, but still nothing to scoff at. The young Egyptian was just beginning to wonder how hard he'd have to throw a ball to hit it when the woman had begun to speak, drawing his attention.

He knew better than to avoid eye contact. Look away, and he was weak. Not listening. Some level of vulnerability would be portrayed that would make it worse. He kept his gaze even, unflinching, but now and then his jaw began to work, words ready to be exposed. Some kind of prank? He had better taste than that in 'pranks', and he didn't give a care for what house it had dumped him in. In fact, he was actually already starting to feel comfortable with the idea of being a 'lion'. There was no better animal than a cat in his culture, at least compared to badgers, birds, and snakes. Whatever his reasoning though, the woman had no care to hear any of it, and he just barely managed to bite his tongue for a second.

Then she waved her wand, and he forgot all about his silence long enough to mutter under his breath.

"Ya lahwy..."

There was so much dirt, more than he'd seen in a long, long time. He remembered once having to pass through the streets of the Dewika slums on their way to Cairo. The vehicle had been magicked to pass undetected, but that didn't stop him from seeing the dirty streets and the even dirtier people. Looking at the mess that had been made reminded him of those people, and how he'd never wanted to be close enough to touch them.

Now the dirt was touching him.

His face screwed up in disgust as he drew back, looking at the Professor with a sense of disbelief. He'd been on the end of a lot of different punishments, some cruel, some boring. This? Well, it was different for sure. Not as bad as some of the things he'd dealt with, but absolutely high on the tedious scale. He looked around, sighing through his nose. This was going to take a lot longer doing it alone. But after a glance towards the other two, one of which who'd already beaten him to the punch on cleaning, he'd decided.

"I did alone." An abrupt breaking of the extended silence he'd held as he lifted his head and met the Professors gaze with a single eyed one of his own. His lips pressed into a thin, but determined line. "Not know them. I take hat. I yell at stupid hat. I clean." His eyes dropped, only far enough to settle a glare on the hat as if to lay a personal level of blame on the piece of enchanted clothing. He'd never actually had to clean anything more complicated than his hands. It was too likely he'd end up at this for days on end. Did he stop to think about any of these consequences to admitting he'd acted alone?

Ahkar? Think ahead? Yeah right.

Squared shoulders were present as he snatched supplies and random, hopefully before anyone could raise much protest, and began to lug them towards some random end of the room away from the group. Water would be sloshed everywhere. On the floor. On him. On anyone that got a little bit too close to the struggling first year. He'd carry it the whole way without more than a few mutterings in Arabic though, before dumping the pile on the ground, the bucket tipping and sloshing water all over his feet.

Staring at the now sodden footwear, Ahkar would spare only a low, irritable grunt before kicking them off as far as they would fly and kneeling down into the mess. He'd seen a few of these before, with the house elves when they were cleaning. What was this weird squishy thing? A sponge right? There was something like a giant toothbrush here... he grabbed it, using the flat plastic to scrub the ground before realizing after a few embarrassing minutes that the bristled side was much better at moving the dirt around...

Keyword: moving it. It wasn't actually cleaning anything, he learned not-so-quickly. All it was really doing was pushing and loosening the big chunks, and making a bunch of brown muddy water that soaked his pants at the knees and smelled all earthy and moldy and such. Ahkar coughed, pulling the neck of his robes over his mouth and nose in disgust. This wasn't even normal amounts of dirt, this was like someone took a sandbox and turned it over. A really big sandbox.

Muttering some more choice words, he continued to experiment. He knew some tools from the bucket by sight, but not by function. Others he'd never seen in his life. Some strange version of the giant toothbrush but without the long handle. A bottle of strange liquid that smelled like lemons and chemical that made his eyes water. A ball of... wire? Weirdly soft for wire, was it alive? For a good five minutes he'd forgotten about cleaning just to squish it and stare at the object in an almost comedic level of confusion, before deciding it was useless and chucking it away somewhere.

There were some cloths in there too, and a big stick with a soft end. Two of them, one all flat and with thin hairs, the other flat to the ground with a big cloth around it. He grabbed the first one and got to his feet, slipping a little as he stood. At this rate he was making a bigger mess than he was cleaning, unknowingly pushing a broom through the water a few times before trying to 'scoop' the muddy liquid back into the bucket.

Needless to say, it didn't work, and now he had another very messy tool.

The broom was promptly chucked next to the wire brush and thus abandoned in his pursuit of cleanliness.

Birdie watched the boy attempt to clean the filthy room and sighed. The petite girl silently walked over and took the broom he had cast aside. She dragged its filthy bristles on the disgusting floor. A layer of dirt moved aside with the broom to reveal another layer of grime and broom residue that was plastered to the tiles. After a quick wince, she had formed a plan, or rather applied common sense to the situation.
She started sweeping the dust and dirt into a pile and left the grime alone. She decided that it was better left alone for now. By the end of cleaning a tiny fraction of the ballroom, the pile was already taller than her. Which was not very tall, but no normal dirt pile should be taller than a shoe, let alone a whole child, no matter what age. Birdie tried to ignore her growing anxiety that the pile would collapse at any time and just kept shoving the endless dust into it.
At one point, she looked up to see how much progress she had made. It looked exactly the same as before, only now there was a huge pile in the corner. She suppressed herself from groaning and kept doing tedious, annoying labor.

The other boy kept glancing over as they walked over to this mysterious detention destination. Piper smiled at him, trying to communicate that he was cool being here.

As it turned out, there was an immediate plus to the whole affair- they got to see the ballroom before any of the other first years! Piper easily tuned out the low-key anxiety that had stemmed in him from Getting In Trouble to admire the elegance of the hall. Elegance which was promptly ruined by the professor's spell.

At first, the nature of their punishment puzzled Piper. Cleaning? Sure, it was a little on the extreme side, but he'd had his fair share of cleaning back at home. It was only as the professor continued that he realised what the true punishment was- no talking. There went any chance of making friends. For now.

Piper got to work quickly, hefting the bucket over to a corner and cleaning with vigour. He heard the Ravenclaw girl start humming and felt a smile lift the corners of his lips. Perhaps they could have a good enough time after all.

He was surprised when the other boy suddenly spoke up, admitting to taking the hat by himself.

Oh, dang. That was super nice of him, but... well. He clearly didn't have a clue what he was doing. As the other girl moved over to help him, Piper decided to speak up. He couldn't, in good conscience, leave this kid to do the whole room by himself.

"No, wait, hang on. I also helped to take the, uh- the Sorting Hat, was it? Yeah, no, I was totally in on that. Me and. Me and, uh, my buddy here who I know and respect."

Piper tried to sneak a wink at the other boy. It wasn't very subtle. He was blissfully unaware of his own incompetence when it came to lying.

She honestly did not care who was the mastermind behind this prank, or even if the others weren't a part of it at all. In her opinion they were each partially responsible. Even if the Huffle and the Ravenclaw were not the ones who set their fingers on the hat, they each followed after the one who did, making them accomplices. And she told that exactly the children. "Gryffindor, I do not care if you say you were working alone, and Hufflepuff, I also do not care if you admit blame as well. You should follow in your friend's, the Ravenclaw's, footsteps, and start cleaning without making excuses."

She watched as each child began working. The Ravenclaw, smart as her House, seemed to know what she was doing, as least in the most effective way possible, compared to her fellw dentention goers. The Gryffindor perhaps couragous in his attempt at stealing something no one has ever stolen, was apparently lost when it came to cleaning. Was he a child whose parents never made him do chores? It seemed as if he was one of the spoiled rich students that thought they could do whatever they wanted, as shown by trying to take a priceless artifact. The Hufflepuff was also following in his House's ways by attempting to take blame in the situation, and as she watched him work, make light of the whole situation.

If she doubted the Sorting Hat's decision before, though she never did, it was obvious now that each was placed in the perfect House for them. Speaking of the Sorting Hat. "Ah yes, now that each of you is busy cleaning, I have another surprise. I told you before, and you experienced yourself, that the Sorting Hat is sentient. And, well, its got a few words for each of you, starting with the Gryffindor."

With that she held her wand and transferred the Hat from her arms to the top of the Gryffindor boy's head. Immediately the hat would start scolding the child, expressing how it hurts to be grabbed in such a way that he was by him, how he had missed several spots of grime on the floor, how he should really know what a push broom is and how has he never seen one before. The hat would not be outright mean, as it was not in its nature, but it would be very annying and rather quickly.

It would stay with the Gryffindor for a few minutes, then Adelaide would transfer the hat to the Hufflepuff, where it would again begin mocking the boy about a number of things such as, this is detention, stop smiling, how he must think he is so brave for admitting blame when really he's just getting himself into more trouble, how hes lucky he has those bread rolls because thats the only joy he'll have until bed many hours later tonight.

A few more minutes and the hat would go to the Ravenclaw girl. Stop humming, this is work! Those piles are just going to get bigger and bigger, you think you're cleaning but cant you see this floor will never be clean again! You will be here forever!

If any of them attempted to take the hat off, it would firmly stay as if stuck to their heads. They could feel free to talk to the hat, but they would receive no answer except more trash talk.

Orange = Still Arabic

Well, nobody could say he didn't try to get the other two out of it. A scoff under his breath at the comment about the Ravenclaw. So she was a butt-kissing boot-licker, so what? There wasn't any dignity in it. And the other guy, what was with that? Stepping up to get in trouble when he could have gotten out? Did he like cleaning or something? Crazy people, the both of them in his opinion. They weren't his friends, and he ignored the wink, responding with little more than a glare before he got to work.

On the plus side, at least the girl actually seemed to know what she was doing. Ravenclaw were supposed to be smart or something? Smart enough to know how to use the weird tool that looked like someone dried out a horses mane and shoved it on a stick. He noted its use out of the corner of his eye, but didn't say anything else as he stuck with just trying to loosen everything and then pick it up with the cloth, dumping dirt into the bucket. He was easily making less progress than the Ravenclaw, who'd already piled up so much dirt it looked ready to collapse on her.

Slowing down, Ahkar kept a close eye on the dirt pile, almost subconsciously looking out for any environmental risks. He didn't know a lick about cleaning, but he knew when there was danger around, and right now that dirt pile was pretty dangerous. Something he forgot all about a moment later when the hat slipped over his eyes, limiting his vision... and invading his head again.

Wait, what? She was sticking this- oh no. Oh no. His teeth grit as he stopped, trying to keep his cool. The stupid piece of cloth over his eyes was so quick and loud he couldn't figure out half of what it said, but he knew when he was being insulted. He only made it through about four or five insults before he started shouting back, his temper finally snapping.

It was thus the eleven year old, completely coated in dirt and soapy water, flung his hands up wildly as he stood surrounded by mucky water, bare foot, and shrieking in Arabic at a magic piece of clothing that refused to remove itself from his head. He even tried pulling it off to no avail, before grabbing the scrub brush, not caring about getting his hair dirty and soaked as he tried to pry the thing off his head, all while shouting back in furious Arabic.

"You stupid waste of leather! You didn't even give me a chance to say: HEY! I'm cool with this decision before going off! I'm the one that has to deal with father, not you, you worthless moth-eaten dusty old... trinket! Did they get you out of Khufu's garbage can?! I bet they gave you a dogs brain instead of the wizards with all your barking!"

And so on, and on he would shout at the thing until he was either silenced or freed of his torturer. In the former case, he would simply continue his efforts until he was too exhausted to think, leaving him to just sit there, heaving and glaring daggers at the leathery demon. In the former, though, he would be happy to flick soapy, muddy water at the thing while glaring all the same, his face red from shouting, and hair mussed in such a wild way that it could no longer hide the scarring over his right eye, leaving the skin there permanently shut.

Regardless, he would eventually reach up to fix his hair back in place and turn to kick the bucket across the room before grabbing a scrub brush to furiously continue attacking the dirt, this time with vigor, and a choice list of mutterings for the most annoying piece of clothing he'd ever had the privilege to share a conversation with.

Piper wasn't sure if his plan backfired or not. He was still here, so he reckoned that was a win, even if the girl was still stuck here too. He nodded at the professor once, an expression on his face that clearly said yeah, that's fair, before getting right back to the cleaning.

The trouble was, there was nowhere to put the dirt. It was just kind of getting wet and then being moved about. Piper decided the best thing to do would be to get it all in one place, and then maybe they could scoop it up in buckets and... maybe dump it out of one of those huge windows? They could deal with that at the time.

He mentally pressed play on the Hamilton album in his head and began nodding along to the songs he'd memorised (almost all of them) while he worked. It was a pleasant distraction until that professor spoke up once more.

He was confused when she told them that they'd be talking with the sorting hat. Honestly, he'd kind of wanted another chat with the thing. Ayers herself had told them that it was centuries old- surely there were all kinds of historical dilemmas that it could solve! Potentially, it even had funny stories about their own professors, although Piper wasn't getting his hopes up.

He was a little bummed when the hat flew over to the other boy first- man, he really needed to learn that kid's name. Piper had just resigned himself to waiting when he heard yelling from somewhere to his right, making him jump about three feet in the air. He didn't understand a word of it, but the expression on the boy's face spoke volumes.

Worry filled the pit of his gut- worry for this kid he'd just met, who was very visibly upset. Piper cast a reproachful glance at the professor. He hadn't expected her to be that harsh on first years.

Before he could move over to- well, he wasn't sure, maybe help the boy remove the hat or just comfort him, there was a blur of brown fabric flying in his direction. Piper was flooded with relief momentarily, glad that the other boy would be okay now, before he realised that he'd be next. He winced, expecting excruciating pain or maybe a reminder of his worst memories.

Instead, he was faced with... petty insults?

Huh. Piper had heard worse stuff than this at primary school. The Gryffindor must have been hit with something much more painful.

Oh, thanks for the reminder about the bread, man. Forgot about those bad boys. Piper thought back cheerfully, ignoring the string of insults that followed.

The other boy had tried to remove the hat to no avail, so Piper continued working and did his best to tune the rambling out. Sure, some of it stung, but then this was meant to be a punishment. He couldn't take it too seriously. He tried to shift the stray bucket closer to the Gryffindor when his back was turned. By the looks of it, he'd need all the help he could get.

She paused in her cleaning as the teacher spoke up. "What?" She thought. "Why would the sorting hat want anything to do with us now?"
She watched as Professor Ayers placed the hat on the Gryffindor boy, who almost immediately started shouting and swearing in a language Birdie had never heard before. She tensed up, getting the impression that this would suck. Or maybe the hat was especially rude with him. After all, he was the one who stole it. Still, she didn't think the hat would be kind to any of them.

“Stop humming, this is work! Those piles are just going to get bigger and bigger, you think you're cleaning, but can't you see? This floor will never be clean again! You will be here forever!”

Birdie's eyes went dull as the hat yelled at her, matching the dark bags under her eyes. "As you wish." She bleakly thought.
When the hat was finally pulled off of her, she started whistling. Her own form of rebellion to keep her sanity. She thought back to the moments of cold, empty grief she had experienced in the past year, and how music had helped her through that. Whenever she felt that her actions and life as a whole were pointless, she would always end up playing piano, or singing with her pet birds, or even just enjoying the noise of wilderness. So if cleaning was truly a pointless endeavor, and that she'd be trapped here forever, she decided that she would embrace empty eternity with happiness and joy instead of despair.