Rue

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, location or 'memories' from the character's past. Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling or Warner Bros(whichever you prefer), and the Hunger Games characters belong to Suzanne Collins.

Waking up in a different world in an instant is the weirdest experience Rue has experienced so far. Rue looks around the bright white room, trying to remember exactly how she got there. She remembers singing the notes to the mockingjays around her to give Katniss the signal that she was alright. Then she was screaming, and there was darkness. She feels like something is off, as if there is a worm at the back of her memory trying to wiggle its way out.

Rue looks down at her clothes, seeing a plain, loose-fitting, black robe that hangs down to her ankles and past her hands, on her but not knowing how it got there. She feels quite clean, and her hair is pulled pack into what feels like the braid that Katniss wore, and Rue admired ever so much. She notices that she's wearing black soft shoes on her feet, and wishes she had tried shoes before. Thinking that she probably looks like prison inmates look like(with a baggy dress thing) she touches her hair again, imagining herself with the hair that made Katniss look so beautiful and hoping that she could one day look like her.

As she looks back up after reminiscing, she sees that there is a girl who could be no more than five years old, and up to her shoulders, standing beside her staring at her quizzically. She's wearing a bright purple, tightly fitted, long-sleeve dress that hangs down to her knees, with nothing on her feet. Her hair is a sandy brown colour, and is hanging like a dead weight upon her shoulders. It's cut in a hairstyle which Rue has never seen before, in which it looks like her hair is a helmet as it is cut off at her shoulders and curves in towards her neck at the bottom. She looks exceptionally clean and neat, somewhat like the people in the Capitol would look like if they were less eccentric.

Realising that Rue was looking at her, the little girl runs off towards a door three metres directly in front of Rue. The child doesn't stop when she gets to the door, and instead disappears through it like the birds would disappear through the trees back home. Rue blinks, thinking she must've missed something and starts to slowly edge towards the door. As she gets to the door, she listens intently to see if she can hear anything on the other side. The few minutes that she has been in the room she has had a song in her head that sounds like Katniss is singing it, but she doesn't know whether she's imagining it.

Trying to stop the singing in her head, she tentatively moves her hand towards the door, and puts it through the door. She feels a tingling sensation in the part of her hand that she can see is touching the door, and slowly moves closely to the door whilst putting her arm though it. By now the tingling sensation has gone and she can feel the unmoving air on the other side. It feels soothing, and reminds Rue again of home.

But she doesn't get to think about it for very long, because suddenly she is being pulled through the door by something with a hold on her hand. As she goes through the door, she feels a dizzying feeling in her head and then she's in a dark room with a fireplace and a blazing fire in it to the left of where Rue has landed.

Dazed, she is hurried to the fireplace by someone twice her height, but all their features are hidden by a cloak. The little girl goes with her and starts speaking in a squeaky and childish voice.

"Sorry miss, but you were supposed to be here a day ago and now we have to rush. We can't tell you anything, so Professor Dumblydore will have to tell you everything. Hurry now missus, you have to be sorted now!"

She takes bewildered Rue's hand, and puts some powder in her open hand.

"Here, step into the fire now that it's smaller, and say 'The Three Broomsticks'! Then drop the powder into the fire, okay?" says the girl to Rue in a rush, and pushes Rue into the fireplace.

Rue is in a state of shock and when she says, "The Three Broomsticks", and drops the powder into the fire, she almost faints during the swirling of green heat around her. It is quick, but Rue can't get rid of the weird sensation of falling through heat and ice at the same time, brought on by the weird fire. She stumbles out of the fireplace in a place that she doesn't recognise as where she was a second ago.

She falls to the floor out of exhaustion in front of an old man with a long white beard and clothing that she has never seen, and a boy a few years older than her and looks kind of like her brother, in his looks and when he speaks…

"Hi my name's Dean Thomas, and I'm your brother. You don't know me because you were sent to a different world because you have no magic. Now you have been kind of 'reborn' as a witch and you can go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," he gestures to the old man, "This is Professor Dumbledore, and he is the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Now we have to go to school so you can be sorted."

Dean helps Rue stand up, slowly because she still feels dizzy and sore, and puts her hand on the Professor's arm. She anxiously looks up at him, and he smiles down, calm and reassured, over his half-moon glasses at her. In the haze of her mind, she remembers that she died and that's where the singing came from. She wishes she could reminisce longer, but she realises that Dean, who she still can't believe is her bother, is talking again.

"The Professor is now going to transport the two of you inside the Great Hall at Hogwarts…and I'll see you there later," he adds when he catches her scared look.

Dean hugs her and steps back, and Rue grips onto the Professor's arm in fright as the air around them starts to whirl. Dean disappears from sight and a very large hall, crowded with people, appears in front of her eyes. Feeling nauseated, she turns around to go and throw up somewhere when the Professor gives her a cup and tells her to drink it in his raspy, withered, old voice.

Rue quickly understands that she is meant to go sit on a wooden still that is a few metres in front of her. Wishing that she had taken more notice of the room she was in before, and the clothing her brother was wearing so she could feel comfort, she gulps and walks over to the stool. She has no idea what's going to happen to her when she gets there, so her hands start to feel clammy out of nervousness, and she starts sweating underneath the huge robe she's wearing.

Once sitting, a lady places a weathered, old hat on her head. To Rue's shock, the hat starts talking! It's saying something about being cunning and brave, and something about a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, whatever that is. While Rue is puzzling over how this hat is talking, and what it is talking about, when she suddenly knows everything about it. She understands everything that a witch her age would know and all she needs to currently know about the Wizarding World.

Finally understanding what the hat is saying, she wishes that she can be in the same house her brother is in, whatever that may be. She wishes this for what seems like an age, while the hat keeps talking.

The hat has finally made a decision….

"GRYFFINDOR!"