Nick collected the obese niffler and the ingots that had been stolen from the workshop and bid the professor goodbye. Steve was quite unhappy at being tricked awake and then having his hard stolen loot confiscated but Nick was having none of it and silenced him with a spell. He calmed down though when he was dropped unceremoniously on his hoard in the workshop by Nick. After that Nick cranked out a few rings of protection as he waited for the rest of the students to start arriving. 'It's funny how I used to consider this challenging.' he thought as he expertly wove the enchantment into the rings with each swing of his hammer.-

Right before the sun started to go down Nick finished up and put on his school robes before heading to the great hall. He was the first one there of course and took a seat at the Gryffindor table leisurely while he waited for the rest of the students to arrive. The looks he got as they started to file into the room were priceless as you could see the confusion on their faces. "where were you?" Ron asked when he sat down at the table across from Nick.-

"I had my house elf bring me to Hogwarts rather than take the train so I have been here all day." Nick explained calmly. "You can do that!?" Ron exclaimed in disbelief. Nick scoffed "Of course you can , most people don't out of some sort of sense of tradition though. Besides the train was originally intended to be used by the muggleborn students who didn't have easy access to the floo network since their parents were muggles." he said honestly. "I had always wondered about that but I suppose it makes sense with how sensitive everyone is about the statute of secrecy." Hermione said calmly.-

"Oh yeah but what ever happened with that fellow that broke into your island during our visit?" Harry asked curiously. "He won't be a problem anymore , sorry about cutting the trip short like that but I was rather bothered that someone could just slip into the island like that." Nick said honestly. "It's fine Sirius said that learning you weren't as safe as you thought leaves a bad feeling in your guts." Harry said with a smile. "I suppose he would know from experience after all." Nick nodded as he said this.-

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"Did you ever figure out if he was actually your uncle or not?" Ron asked curiously. "He probably was. It doesn't matter though they abandoned me so I have nothing but spite for them." Nick said honestly. He wasn't going to explain about the order to them since it would not benefit them at all and might even be detrimental. Still he could make it clear that he didn't want to talk about the subject anymore. Soon enough though it was time for the sorting ceremony to begin and the hall got quiet to listen to the hat sing and sort.-

The song was alright like usual but the sorting was the really interesting part as there was always a betting pool about which house would get the most new students. Usually it was a close match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff so the other two houses rarely bet on themselves. Nick noticed Daphne's sister in the gaggle of little first years and paid attention to the curse actively working against her body. It was an interesting curse to be honest as despite Daphne having hints of it within herself they were dormant and suppressed by her magic while the same curse was feeding off of Astoria's magic.-

The really weird part was that the curse was not inherently malicious by itself from what he could tell. The easiest way to describe it for him was that it was like faulty software that failed to perform as it was intended to. 'It's almost like the curse was supposed to do something else but I can't quite figure out what.' Nick thought with a frown. Obviously whoever cast the curse on the Greengrass bloodline did so with malicious intent but the inventor of the curse was clearly after something else with it and Nick wanted to know what.-

There was one other first year student however that made Nick narrow his eyes after noticing. To be more specific it was the difference in their magic from everyone else that he noticed. In a way it was uncomfortably similar to Lucas's as it was split between their core and blood. Strangely though the student wasn't a vampire or anything like that as the magical signature of the condition was absent. Johnathon Burnham was the boys name according to the list Mcgonagall was reading off of which meant that the boy was either a muggleborn or had magical parents and didn't know it if the sheer wonder at everything around him was any indication.