"Welcome to Hogwarts. The start of term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the great hall you will be sorted into your houses. The sorting is a very important ceremony because while you are here your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory and spend time in your house common room. The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin." she paused to make sure we were all listening before continuing.-
"Each house has it's own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts your triumphs will earn your house points. Any rule breaking will result in a deduction of points and perhaps more if the offense is severe enough. At the end of the year the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I sincerely hope all of you will become a credit to whichever houses you are sorted into. The ceremony will begin in a few moments so I suggest you smarten up as best you can before I return for you." she said before leaving us to enter the great hall.-
A few of my peers took the advice and began trying to make themselves look presentable while others gossiped nervously about how the sorting was done. I myself instead turned to look behind the crowd since I knew that soon enough the ghosts of the castle would be making their appearance. The ghosts always interested me when reading the books because it was never truly explained how they came about other than the obvious that they died at some point.-
Like most magical phenomena that explanation left much unsaid but unfortunately the books nor movies ever gave more detail on the matter. One hope of mine was to possibly understand the state of existence that was a ghost fully as one who had passed through the veil of death himself. What made me different from these ghosts exactly? Why did I get a second chance and they instead get bound to the earth in a cold incorporeal state? Perhaps a lofty piece of information to seek but wizards seemed particularly capable to research the nature of the soul from the books so it shouldn't be an unattainable aspiration.-
Soon enough the ghosts did indeed appear just as the books said, from the walls behind the group. There were cries of shock and fear from those that noticed them first which drew the rest of my peers attention. Pearly white and slightly transparent about twenty ghosts glided across the area hardly paying any of us any attention as they argued about something.
"Forgive and forget I say. We ought to give him a second chance...." one particularly robust figure in an old friars robe went to say.
"My dear Friar haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know he's not even really a ghost.... I say what are you all doing here?" another ghost wearing a ruff and tights said only to pause as he noticed us first years.
Nobody answered.
"New students!" said the fat Friar smiling around at us all. "About to be sorted I suppose?" he asked and a few people nodded mutely.
"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff, my old house you know." he said brightly.
"Move along now. The sorting ceremony is about to start." Mcgonagall spoke up firmly as she returned.
The ghosts moved through the air before going through the wall nearby at this.
"Now, form a line and follow me." Mcgonagall said firmly before turning a walking away.
My peers and I all did as instructed with me taking up the rear of the line so I could have slightly more time to look over everything. From what I knew the order of the sorting went alphabetically based on ones last name so I was going to be one of the first people sorted and thus wanted to make up for this fact by entering the great hall itself last.-
When the doors to the great hall opened I wasted no time at all extending my observation haki to the widest extent I could to take in as much as possible. I keenly noticed that Harry potter himself seemed to stiffen slightly when I did as he might have felt my haki pass over him.
'Sharp instincts it seems.' I thought before ignoring that.
The walls of the great hall had a dull thrum of magic in them and up above magic flowed through the very air itself in my perception. The many lit candles floating up above our heads and ceiling that matched the sky outside the castle made the why of that obvious. -
What wasn't so obvious as far as I could tell from how everyone else was acting was that the entire hall was filled with wild intense magical energy. It was fairly easy to deduce the why of this as well, all the people here. One had to remember that it was common knowledge that the magic of wizards and witches was unstable during the time it awakens until around their seventeenth year of life.-
This hall was full of people in that exact unstable period and as it was the start of term their emotions must be quite turbulent causing some magic to radiate off them. Even if it was only a little with many people doing it all at once added up. I had to admit the founders were quite clever as I could pick up on the slow but steady absorption of this energy into the very walls of the great hall. Even an idiot could understand that this was likely a key part of how the castle had lasted so long.-
This energy likely went towards the maintenance of the castle itself via it's enchantments or perhaps even fueled the wards that covered the massive area. These were just theories of course as I couldn't prove any of it at the moment but I had seven full years here so it shouldn't be too hard.