He felt choked by too many words again, all struggling to be said at once, too afraid to say any of them in case they all rushed out at once. He swallowed and lifted his narrow shoulders in a wordless shrug. "Not Gryffindor," he said with certainty in his soft hushed voice. "Gotta be brave for that one." Not<em>quite</em>why he was sure he'd not end up there, but it was better to be thought a coward. No, he was pretty sure where he'd end up going, a coin flip between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Not that his mother had told him much about the houses, but based on the few things she had disclosed, he was sure he'd not fit the canon of Gryffindor nor Hufflepuff. He repeated it to Maynard, in case he didn't know. "Gryffindors are brave and fierce. Ravenclaws are thinkers. Hufflepuffs are friendly and loyal. Slytherins are... smart." That was the most words he'd ever said to anyone in one go, who wasn't his mother. He worried his lower lip. He'd said<em>smart</em>with the mimicry of his mother's inflection, as if a different word had been on her tongue but she'd pulled it back, twisted it like a length of wire into a different shape that suited her needs better.<br/><br/>For all that he'd been kept out of society, Kai still knew enough to be able to guess at what she may have hesitated to say. The deeds of Lord Voldemort and his Deatheaters were still made mention of in the Daily Prophet, still gossiped about in the streets. They were Slytherins, or enough of them were that no one cared to be correct, and what they had done was Evil. Therefore, Slytherins were Evil. Kai didn't think he was evil, but there were other words that fit him. Sly, ambitious, cruel. But because he was those things, he could see why his mother had thought to plant the idea in his head that he needed to avoid the house of the snake. If you were Slytherin in this day and age, you were automatically guilty in some eyes. It would hinder him, so it would be better to get a different house... but she'd thought better of it. At the last moment, she'd changed her mind. For what purpose?<br/><br/>He couldn't tell.<br/><br/>Up towards the engine, a man cried out "All aboard! All aboard!" Kai thought the train would start moving at once, but it seemed to be a last chance fore any lingering students to get in. "Never been on a train," he admitted, hugging himself a little.