For science!

A lot of you might know about my latest story, that Harry Potter crossover titled The Gate...

Well, I've reached the part in the story where I'm writing the sorting. It's a couple chapters ahead of what's published, but I still got to writing it... and I wanted to be accurate. So I fired up the Harry Potter audiobook on my phone and played through the sorting ceremony, noting down who got sorted into what house as it went. There were a couple of explicit time gaps in the sorting, particularly before Neville and Malfoy, but there's a couple more that ought to be there as well- for Crabbe and Goyle, who would fall between other otherwise adjacent names on Professor McGonagall's list- and also aren't mentioned at all, save that they've already been sorted when Malfoy gets to the Slytherin table. The list goes as thus:

Abbot, Hannah --> Hufflepuff
Bones, Susan --> Hufflepuff
Boot, Terry --> Ravenclaw
Brocklehurst, Mandy --> Ravenclaw
Brown, Lavender --> Gryffindor
Bulstrode, Millicent --> Slytherin
Crabbe ?
Finch-Fletchley, Justin --> Hufflepuff
Finnigan, Shamus --> Gryffindor
Goyle ?
Granger, Hermione --> Gryffindor

Longbottom, Neville --> Gryffindor
McDougle, Morag

Malfoy, Draco --> Slytherin
Moon
Nott
Parkinson
Patil
Patil
Perks, Salian
Potter, Harry --> Gryffindor
(3 people left)
Thomas, Dean --> Gryffindor
Turpin, Lisa --> Ravenclaw
Weasley, Ron --> Gryffindor
Zabini, Blaze --> Slytherin

That's 7 Gryffindors, 3 Ravenclaws, 3 Hufflepuffs, 3 Slytherins, and 7 Unspecifieds (total 23 students), plus Crabbe and Goyle... and you might have noticed where I put (3 people left) on the list? Yeah. Right after Harry, the book stated explicitly that there were only three people left to be sorted, and promptly sorted four.

Interesting, huh?

But yeah... And with the number of new students, I wanted to get at least someone in at the very beginning of the list. Not very easy to compete with Abbot for that position, but I've managed that.

Now, I'm mildly curious how long the sorting is going to take, with the number of ponies I'm dumping into Hogwarts... Anyone want to take a gander, from the previously mentioned information in the story?

Comments

[Storm Vision]

Mu. A little less than halfway through the process, the ponies will decry the house system as woefully inefficient and abolish it, and the sorting will never actually finish. Luna will wear the Sorting Hat for the remainder of the term.

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

You'd think the staff would anticipate this, but wizards seem to lack common sense and do outrageous things as a solution, like give a Time Turner to a 3rd year to take more classes.

I'd suggest they use a time-turner to sort them all in a reasonable timeframe, but I can't see how that'd work without risking a paradox. I can't see them duplicating the sorting hat. Perhaps they sort the students into houses over several days, a number of them at each dinner, until they are all sorted? That, at least, would be reasonable to everyone waiting. though I don't know where the students would be housed temporarily until properly sorted.

[computerneek]

5048664
That would certainly be interesting, but it's a bit destructive to Hogwarts for this point in the story, so... sorry.

5048666
That is true. I actually considered doing the Time Turner thing, but as I recall, Hermione spent the entire summer going through the paperwork with the Ministry to make that possible- so they didn't have the time to do that if they wanted to. And yeah, duplicating the sorting hat isn't really an option, so they'll probably go for the normal method...

In the meantime, the Equestrians probably have the foresight to plan for it, especially after Twilight no doubt read every book in Flourish and Blotts and told the Equestrian Secret Service all about the sorting ceremony... (I mean, they've got a whole month!)

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

5048708

Keep in mind that Hermione, who read as much as she could, didn't know what the sorting entailed, as keeping that secret was apparently a tradition and it wasn't written down in Hogwarts, A History.

[computerneek]

5048711
True... but she didn't read every book in the store, either

Besides, the bookstore likely isn't the Equestrian's only source of info- that Secret Service is probably doing a lot more than just standing back to wait, and may have even located Hogwarts during that month...