"So tell us more about yourself, Mark." Mr Andrews said to me over dinner. He wore khakis, a flanel tucked in under a tweed jacket - he was a professor at the nearby college and he taught ethics. 

"Er, what would you like to know sir?" I asked nervously while I ate my spicy rice cake. I highly suspected Mrs Andrews had specially prepared this because of my arrival, all the dishes she had prepared were either kimchi or black bean noodles; it was basically a full on Korean meal. 

"How about your folks?" 

"Well, my aunt just married a few weeks ago so I live with her and her husband, then I have a stepbrother too at home. That's about it." I answered.

"That's wonderful, send my congratulations to her and her husband." he said. 

Suddenly Mrs Andrews cleared , "Not being rude, Mark, but why aren't you staying with your mother?"

"Mom." Riley warned. 

If it weren't for Doc continuing to give me personal therapies and coaching, I would have been uncomfortable with that question. I swallowed, "Um, she passed away when I was a kid - and my aunt had custody over me, then she became my legal guardian."

"Oh, I'm so sorry Mark," she apologized immediately. "But how are you doing now?"

I smiled, "Everything's great, my folks are all great people." 

"So what do you like, Mark?" Mr Andrews forwarded. "What about your interests? How about reading?" 

"Mark's good at writing," Riley offered her comment, I glanced at her as she slipped a small smirk.

"Oh yes, he helped Riley with her poetry. Such a lovely boy, isn't he Stephen?" her mom praised, I was sure I was turning red. 

'Why don't you show us your work, Mark?" Mr Andrews suggested while we lounged in the living room. They insisted I stayed for some desert, when all I was thinking about was the amount of time I had spent there. "How would you evaluate his work, Riley?"

She shrugged, "I haven't read it yet, actually," and she took the piece of paper from her file. "Mark can read it here." 

"Oh no, I'm really not that good." I kept on saying, trying to avoid it.

"Nonsense, that's up to the audience to comment about that," Mrs Andrews returned to the living room, holding a tray of sliced fruits. "We don't mind either, Mark - rarely does Riley bring her friends home, especially boys."

"Ugh, mom please don't." Riley pleaded before handing me my written poem for her. "Blow us away, Mark."

Reluctantly, I took it. I recalled the video that I came across not too long ago about spoken word poetry, and how to deliver it in the right way. The amount of anxiety I was facing was at par with the time I had to recite my speech at Aunt Tiffany's wedding. Nervously, I channelled my confidence and took a deep breath.

"I believe in magic, as much as any other witch or wizard would. I believe boggarts will always be there to scare us, and I also believe a simple 'Riddikulus!' spell would vanquish them from our minds; and I also believe there to be both good and dark wizards, most possibly a blend of both in each and every person. And when someone walks up to me and says 'Sorry to burst your bubble.' I would lash out the wand from my pocket and say 'You filthy muggle!'"

They all seemed to get the joke, and they laughed. Especially Riley, she was beaming. 

I smiled, "It's called the Sorting Hat, enjoy." and I continued to reciting:

Spring, 2011 - the first years marched into the the Great Hall,
Two by two, some in customed and hand-me-down robes,
Came a woman, tall and fair - hat upright and pointed,
Professor Minerva Mcgonagall was her name,
One by one she called us to the stage,
Where we sat while she placed this hat onto our tiny heads.

The hat, I will tell you - looked centuries old and ruffled
Its hems a bit torn, its fabric losing its color
Before I could even comment...

I cleared my throat.

'Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,
But don't judge on what you see,
I'll eat myself if you can find,
A smarter hat than me.'

We knew what we wanted,
For we wanted it ever so much,
I closed my eyes and clasped my hands together, whispering,
'Not Slytherin, not Slytherin'
Then the Sorting Hat must have listened to my pleas and spoke at the side of my ear,
'Not Slytherin, eh? But you have so much potential in that house,
Think of the things you could become, you would be adored by them,
Tell me, why would you refuse the house that suits you so well?'
Because I am not a bad person, I answered.
It might have been my imagination, but the hat sighed.
'Very well.' It replied.

I hated the fact that I was a Slytherin,
I despised the thought of the serpent's blood flowing through my veins,
The walls of the common room reminded me of the Chamber of Secrets,
And the corpse of the Basilisk lurking in its dungeon made my skin crawl,
I had all the wrong questions to ask myself, for I had no answer to them myself,
Out of all the Houses I could have sorted, why Slytherin?

But in the final year of Hogwarts, after we took our O.W.L.S
Where we witnessed our last Quidditch game, Slytherin versus Gryffindor,
In which we thrived to win the House Cup, and we sang our last goodbyes to the mermaids,
Years after Hogwarts it occured to me all the lies and illusions I conjured,
A Ravenclaw can have the brightest of minds, and still bow down to foolishness,
A Gryffindor can wear the cloak of chivalry over a body of cowardice,
Not even a Hufflepuff will have the best intentions at heart with every finger they have crossed behind their backs,
A Slytherin will only be as dark as a hellion, when they choose to be one. 

The Sorting Hat was right after all,
Our choices do make us who we are,
And not who we are expected to be.

"Thank you." I said at the end. I looked around me, and I couldn't bear to read their expressions, and the reviews they were going to give me. 

Mrs Andrews proceeded to give me standing ovation, along with Mr Andrews, "That was spectacular, Mark!" she exclaimed. 

"You have a lot of talent, Mark," Mr Andrews added. "Are you interested in spoken word poetry?"

"I really just started reading up about it, it sounds cool," I answered nervously. 

"Keep up the good work, Mark," he patted my shoulder before looking at his watch. "Wow, look at the time - it's time Mark headed home, his folks might get worried."

Indeed it was almost half past nine, I had exceeded the amount of time I was supposed to be there. Riley escourted me out of the house and all the way to my car, I turned to glance back at her house one last time - and realized her parents were peering through the curtains. 

"Your parents are really fond of you, huh?" I remarked as we walked.

She sighed, "They won't keep their eyes off me, think I'd do something I'm not supposed to when they're not looking."

"Or they're just observant parents, I think they're really nice."

"You don't live under the same roof with them, that's why. Plus, they loved your poem."

"Nah, I'm just an amature," I told her, with my hands in my pockets. "Hopefully Miss Bennet would buy it, she wouldn't expect any less from you anyway."

"What about you? You haven't even started on it yet, right? I mean, the one for yourself." 

"Oh yeah!" I realized. "I have to get going, then. Miss Bennet's gonna kill me if I don't hand it in..."

I hurried to open the car door, and that was when Riley grabbed my arm. "Mark," she spoke, and I felt a million jolts of electricity rush into my brain. "I really like having you around, and my parents seem to enjoy your company. I was thinking, and my parents also told me to ask you - if you're fine with having this as a fixed routine, you know studying together and staying for dinner with us?"

I found it hard to process her words, since I couldn't believe it in the first place. I had so many mixed emotions, a fusion between utterly happy and completely terrified. "Um, well..." I stammered.

"It's fine if you don't want to-"

"Sure," I said quickly. "Why not? Of course I'd be happy to."

She beamed and clasped her hands together, "That's great, so every Saturday then." and as she walked back to her house, she suddenly turned around again. "And Mark?"

"Yes?" I said, maybe a bit too cheerful. 

"You know you can always give me a call if you need to, you don't have to text me all the time, right?" she said. 

"Uh, yeah sure." I grinned before getting in the car.

When I got back, Doc and Aunt Tiffany were on the couch and watching a movie. 

"You're back!" Aunt Tiffany said as soon as she spotted me. "So, how was the date?"

I rolled my eyes, "Again, it's not a date. But it was pretty good, too."

"Give me details."

"And her parents want me to have dinner with them every Saturday from now on."

Aunt Tiffany jumped off from the couch and cheered, "Better than I expected, then! We should invite Riley over too sometimes, how about that? I'd really like to get to know her-"

"Woah, this is a bit too far fetched," I warned her. "We're just friends, Aunt Tiffany - nothing else!"

"Not yet, but you will soon." she teased before slumping back onto the couch. 

I returned to my bedroom, where Donghyuck was at his side of the room and on his laptop. He didn't even bat an eyelash at me and was fixed on the screen. "Riley's mom made us cookies." I told him as I slumped on the bed and put the bag of chococlate cookies on our night stand. 

He looked up and narrowed his eyes, "Sorry, I'm allergic to chocolate."

"No, you're not," I looked lazily at him. Recently Donghyuck had developed a habit for giving downright absurd reasons for certains things, and sometimes would get on my nerve (Aunt Tiffany said it was all part of puberty and that she had to put up with the same cycle with me back in the day. I wasn't sure what she was talking about.) 

I pushed it closer to him, I knew he couldn't resist it. Begrudgingly, he fished one out and took a bit while still looking at his laptop. He wasn't stopping, and I smirked. "I thought you said you were allergic to chocolate?" I questioned.

"I'll give this recipe a five for effort." he grumbled.