Fridays are usually quite hellish for me, as I have from 9am-12pm jammed full of seminars/workshops/lectures etc, followed by a short break of an hour, and then back into Daphne Du Maurier for another one-hour workshop. But this day was slightly easier, as my English workshop was cancelled, which gave me a longer break before my Geography workshop at 2pm. Also, this day was the day of the Sorting Ceremony, where I would finally find out what Hogwarts house I belonged in.
It started at about 6.30pm in one of the lecture rooms beside the library. Vast amounts of people lined the walls of the room, waiting to be sorted. Some were dressed creatively with the emblems and colours of their desired house and there was at least one person with a hat in the shape of a lion. As I saw these people dressed up in these cool costumes, I was just thinking that it would be slightly funny if a person obviously dressed up as a Slytherin ended up in Gryffindor instead.
Names were called out and, one by one, each person made their way up to the front of the room, sat on a single, isolated chair with a room full of people staring at them, waiting for the Sorting Hat – there was an actual Sorting Hat! – to tell them which house they’d go into (the voice was not a feature of the hat, but one of the committee members, just if you were wondering). When it was time for me to go up to the front, the hat had barely been placed upon my head before I was told that I had got into Gryffindor. I walked away ecstatically to the table of Gryffindors.
Shortly after, the “feast” began. The best thing about it was that someone had brought along “Butterbeer”, which was a very cool idea. I managed to offend one of my friends – who had been put into Slytherin – by saying how I had always thought they had had a sneaky look about them; probably not the best thing to have said to his face.
I had to leave quite early though, at about a quarter past seven, as I was going to the Helston Swimming pool with the Swimming Club. Swimming is one of the things which I love to do most, so it’s always good to get out for a couple of sessions a week. There is a large range of levels of swimmers there usually, with one guy specifically who’s unbelievably fast (personal best for 50m front-crawl is roughly 28 secs). He’s also respected for being able to do a length of butterfly (some lessons on butterfly were attempted for one of my friends at this session). I went on to the Stannary after swimming with these two people, and got into a conversation about American politics, of which I don’t really know anything about, apart from having learnt that the way in which Geography is taught in America is apparently dreadful (my Geography assignments coming in handy for once).
Anyway, that’s the story of my non-hellish Friday – for once – completed.
Louisa is one of the few English and Geography students at the University of Exeter Penryn Campus. She comes from South-East London and loves swiming, animals, music, writing and being outdoors.
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