However Hermione hadn't almost immediately fallen down into the star struck attitude that most people seemed to get around Iris. Iris knew that was part of the reason that the Potter family tended to be viewed as reclusive and kept to themselves in recent years. Personally she found the entire thing silly. She was famous for something she couldn't control and couldn't remember and people practically deified her for it.
During the Sorting Ceremony, they had both been sorted into Ravenclaw. While Hermione's sorting was relatively quick, Iris' sorting had taken awhile. She was later told by her mother that she had broken the record for longest sorting in history, at 7 minutes and 23 seconds. (Incidentally breaking Dumbledore's record of 6 minute and 56 seconds.)
Iris had explained to her mother that the Sorting Hat had a hard time choosing between three of the houses. Slytherin, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.
Iris was immediately relieved that she wasn't sorted into the viper's nest that was Slytherin. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that her life might have been at risk to be sorted there, since several prominent families who were "rumored" death eaters were sorted there. Several of them were even in her year. Malfoy, Parkinson, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, to name a few. Even her mother's friendship with Severus Snape hadn't reassured her of her safety. She wouldn't have put it past some of the Slytherins to outright attack her if she was placed into that house.
She wasn't as averse to being sorted into Gryffindor as she was to Slytherin. Her friend Neville Longbottom had been sorted there. She just felt that she fit better in Ravenclaw.
However in retrospect, after Ronald Weasley followed his family tradition and got sorted into that house, the same as all of his brothers, including his twin brothers Fred and George the year before. She found herself relieved that she wouldn't have to be subjected to him. She had met him several times growing up and he seemed to resent her. She never really figured out why, it seemed like Ron just didn't like her because she existed.
In the end, the hat had told her, beyond her thirst for knowledge, if she wanted to reach her full potential and get what she needed, that Iris would have to be in Ravenclaw. The entire house of Gryffindor was disappointed that they didn't get the "Girl-Who-Lived." Iris thought that even Dumbledore seemed somewhat disappointed by the Hat's choice.
On the other hand Iris was very pleased to be in Ravenclaw. Her mother was very pleased at the placement as well. Her dad playfully gave her a hard time for a few minutes, before congratulating her genuinely. Her godfather had bemoaned the fact that she seemed to have no spirit of pranking in her as well though he was mollified somewhat when he was reminded that Azalea and Ivy would be entering school within a year. Between them and the Weasley twins who were already making a name for themselves Iris wondered if they might not bring the entire castle down.
Within Ravenclaw House itself, she made several friends, but Hermione and Iris found themselves naturally bonding almost immediately.
Hermione and Iris shared the two person bedrooms common in Ravenclaw, and their class schedules were the same. They had immediately become study buddies, and for Hermione, Iris justified every concern she had about coming to school at Hogwarts. All the loneliness she had felt from her peers growing up because of her different were soothed by finding a kindred spirit in Iris.
While they both agreed that Hermione was a faster reader, with a better memory for things she read; Hermione nearly met her match in Iris, who was nearly as intelligent, and every bit as studious as her muggleborn friend.
Where Iris didn't have Hermione's eidetic memory, or reading speed, she made up for in with a natural aptitude for the practical side of spellwork. Iris seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how to perform the spells they were given, or inevitably the spells they encountered when they studied ahead.
Though one thing they didn't have in common was that Iris was a natural flyer. That was proven during an incident during the first flying lessons of the year, which were held with the entire group of first years. Which meant she got not only a dose of Draco Malfoy who wasted no chance in tormenting her and Hermione verbally, but also Ron Weasley who was in many ways worse, with his condescension and his own arrogance surrounding the accomplishments, mostly Hogwarts related, of his brothers.
Iris remembered the shout of fear from Neville as his broom took off with a mind of its own. Eventually culminating in a drop that could have killed him had part of the castle not caught on his cloak and slowed his fall. Afterwards Madame Hooch had escorted him off toward the infirmary.
Both Ron and Draco began acting like prats, and trying to one-up one another, and fighting over a rememberall Neville's Gram had sent him. It had culminated in an argument between the two boys in the air. The reason behind their argument forgotten in their stupid games of one-upmanship.
When Ron Weasley had thrown it as far as possible, mostly out of anger, mid argument, and neither boy had bothered to follow it as they shouted back and forth at one another ("death eater slime" and "blood traitor" were the insults most thrown back and forth.) Iris had lost her temper and hopped on her broom and shot after it. She hadn't even thought about it, she just did. She had been riding a training broom around Potter Manor since she was four. She had begun sneaking out at night occasionally and using her dad's broom at age 6, and gotten her own broom at 8. Iris was fairly proficient with broom riding. She had never ridden the rickety school brooms before though. However it responded to her just like all her others did.
She'd managed to catch the small ball before it hit the ground though she had blown right past the window where Minerva McGonagall was grading papers. Then, somehow, in the same amount of time it had taken her to fly to the ground to land her broom, Professor McGonagall had then somehow sprinted down several flights of stairs and stormed out to the courtyard and dragged her away from her classmates to her head of house. Iris was relieved when McGonagall took her to Professor Flitwick rather than her mother. Iris knew who would be unhappier about her antics.