I lay with my head buried beneath the warm, emerald creases of my duvet wondering about the usual inane things that any 16-year-old girl wonders about upon waking up; checking Twitter was high on the list, and then there was the daily question of what to have for breakfast. Different topics floated around my half-awake mind and I'm rather embarrassed to say there were two very odd new additions to my usual surroundings that I hadn't noticed until now. First, my duvet wasn't usually green, and second, unless my room had acquired new sound effects, there was someone else in the room, snoring.
Upon these realisations I did my best not to panic, torn well between the two options I was presented with: either I could lie petrified (heh, petrified like Hermione in Chamber of Secrets. Oh, did I mention? My mind likes to lead everything directly back to Harry Potter, isn't it wonderful?) in the bed, or I could throw the cover off and get into my best battle move, ready to fight off whoever the hell was snoring in my room. Or, not my room, whatever, it was annoying.
As my oxygen supply was starting to run low under the thick covers, I made the obvious decision and used my feet to kick them off.
Let's just say that the room I was in was most certainly not mine. Not to mention the large amount of extra beds around me that were filled with strangers, fast asleep, I was positive that my room didn't have green veils draped across the ceiling, and the last I checked it wasn't the size of my entire apartment like this one was.

"Um..." came a quavery voice from a bed adorned with more emerald dressings in the far left corner of the room. I snapped my head around so fast that I'm pretty sure I was in for a day of whiplash. The owner of the voice was a girl, about my age with messy, red-brown hair, she was sitting straight up in bed, her blue eyes wide with confusion. "Who are you?" she asked, frowning, "Where are we?"
"Uh, I'm..." my voice was irritatingly squeaky, "I'm Isabel," I cleared my throat, "And I have no idea, this is really weird."
She looked around nervously, combing out her fringe with her fingers.
"Who are you?" I asked, peering cautiously over the edge of my bed wondering if I should get up.
"Clary," she said, "So...uh, yeah what...what should we do?" There was a flump from the other side of the room, and again, snapping my neck around, in a way that was basically asking for whiplash, I got a clear view of the third resident of the room, who had just fallen from her bed.
A dark brown haired girl this time, she gave the room a quick once over, clearly having no idea where she was, declared "Nope, Tammi's not dealing with this today, nope, goodnight," and buried herself beneath her covers. Clary and I glanced at each other, clearly both having found the event amusing. However the noise that resulted from her fall had awoken even more of the residents.
"What the-?" a girl with blonde-brown hair started.
"Who-"
"Where's Loki!?" a girl with long brown hair almost shouted.
Another girl just screamed at length which threw the room's atmosphere from its subtle, quietly confused atmosphere into a tense, stricken panic. Girls screaming about various things, several more of them falling out of their beds from shock and fast paced mumbling from those not fully awake yet.
"EVERYONE CALM DOWN!" I yelled, I can be quiet but when it counts I'm probably louder than your average car horn.
A girl with blonde hair spoke up, "Well do you know what this is?"
"Does she look like she does?" another girl with thick blonde hair shot back, "Wow, that came out ruder than I intended. I just meant...you know you look about as confused as we do. Sorry." she looked down.
"No, look it's okay," I spoke, mainly to the whole room, "I don't think any of us know where we are, but if we just...don't panic, I'm sure we can find out."
"I'm almost positive that this is a dream," Tammi, the girl who had fallen out of her bed earlier spoke up, now only half concealed by her covers.
"Yeah, I don't think so, I feel pretty real," a girl with hazel eyes replied.
"I don't think we're dreaming, okay let's just introduce ourselves and take it from there. I'm Isabel," I told them, trying to ease the cloud of tension that had surrounded us.
"Andrea," the girl with hazel eyes said, giving a small wave.
"I'm Maria," blonde-brown haired girl told us.
Another girl, who seemed somewhat entranced by jade green cushion on her bed looked up briefly, told us her name was "Lauren" and went back to staring at her cushion.
"Bree," the girl who had asked about Loki said, "Oh and Loki's my pet ferret, guys, sorry about that outburst." There were several nods of approval at the chosen name.
We worked our way through the room, everyone introducing themselves one by one, "Yien" was a Chinese girl with shoulder length black hair and glasses, "Annie" was a tall blonde girl, who was chewing her nails with nervousness. No one seemed to recognise each other until,
"Alice-"
"Haley-" two girls spoke at the same time and then immediately stopped upon hearing the others' name. (I also feel it appropriate to mention that one of them was holding a cat, which seemed pretty weird but I like cats so okay.)
"Alice!?"
"Haley!?" they exclaimed each other's names, as though they knew each other. They both leaped out of their beds and hugged each other, leaving everyone even more confused.
"How do you two know each other?" the girl with thick blonde hair from earlier asked, "Oh, I'm Nicole by the way," she told us.
"Well-" Alice looked at Haley.
"From Twitter," Haley finished.
"I have Twitter too," I said, frowning, I thought I could remember Alice, like I'm pretty sure I'd spoken to her before on Twitter.
"Me too," everyone said in creepy unison. There was a resounding silence and the confusion spiralled deeper. Suddenly there came a scream followed by yells from the the our right wall. Everyone exchanged looks of panic.
"Should we go see what it is?" Clary asked.
"Let's go," Nicole said and everyone started clamouring out of bed. Except for Lauren, the cushion enthusiast.
"Doesn't this feel familiar?" she said aloud. Everyone shifted around, shrugging.
"I'm sure we'll find out," I told her reassuringly as another yell echoed from the right. Everyone hurried out the door into a corridor lit by faintly green lantern light, the clover coloured walls were embedded with small shells and sea glass, all glimmering green in the glow of the lanterns. Everyone rushed down the corridor, only stopping when a door opened on our left and a boy with brown hair and wide brown eyes stuck his head out and said "What's going on!?" and everyone momentarily halted and stared at him.
"Not now, dude!" Nicole yelled impatiently and everyone picked up speed again.
"What-Hey! My name's Steven!" he called after us.
We reached a door like the one that had led out of our room, it was already ajar and the scene wasn't too unlike the one that had taken place in our room just a few minutes earlier. It was populated by a group of girls, who looked probably a year younger than us, and oddly enough, more beds.

A tall, blonde girl with glasses was standing in the centre of the room, her hands covering her mouth, looking incredibly confused. The girls from my room all crammed themselves into the new room, which was decorated just as ours was.
"Are you guys okay?" Annie, the nail-chewer asked.
Another girl with short purplish hair stood up, "Yeah, I don't think so, none of us have any idea where we are, who we're with and I swear to God a mermaid just swam past that window," she pointed at the window which offered the curious view of...green water. But not like it was looking out onto a lake, literally on the other side of the glass was water.
"Oh my God," Bree, the girl with the ferret, spoke up, her blue eyes enormous with wonder.
"What is it?" Haley asked, she was standing next to Alice, who smiled at me, nodding slightly as she remembered that we knew each other.
Bree stood very still, her eyes still huge, she seemed to shocked to speak.
"She realised where we are, and I think I just did too," Lauren said.
"Oh my God, me too!" a brown haired girl with blue eyes, big like Bree's, stood up and walked over to the window, and looked curiously out of it. In the back of my mind I felt like I knew where they were going but it seemed to impossible to be true.
"Well?!" Nicole asked frustratedly.
"Think about it," a small girl with curly brown hair said, "You're all a year older than us right? About 16? I can only imagine we're all Harry Potter fans?" Everyone nodded frantically, several yelling "OH MY GOD YES!" in agreement. "Then isn't it clear?" she asked. Realisation swept around the room, you could almost hear everyone's heartbeats quicken in the astonished silence.
"We're at Hogwarts," Bree broke from her temporary muteness.
Then everyone started screaming.
"I'M HOME!"
"HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?"
"IS DRACO MALFOY HERE?"
"WHERE IS THE FOOD?"
The noise welcomed even more girls from what could only be different Years. The first to stream in were most likely Sevenths as they looked older than everyone else. The first one to walk in had very curly red hair, followed by a tall, blonde girl with green eyes and then too many too describe, all rushing in. Several of them clearly recognised their Twitter friends and the air was filled with shrieks.
"ANNIE!" A Seventh Year with long black hair yelled.
"NATALIE!" Annie screamed back and they hugged each other, an odd sight as Annie was about a foot taller than Natalie.
The most entertaining group though was made up of three Sevenths and one Fifth. From what I could understand, "Lyd", who had white blonde hair was friends with "Elin", who had green eyes and glasses. But Elin was also friends with "Clara" a tall, blonde girl, and "Linn", a short girl with long brown hair.

You see, you'd think that at some point, things could potentially calm down, but nope. Throw a bunch of girls, several of whom have friends they've never met in the group, together and I can assure you there will be noise until the sun goes down, and then after that too. I myself, however, was still dumbstruck by the amount of things that had happened in only half an hour. I mean, how often do you wake up in the castle you've dreamed about since you were a baby, with a group of people you've spoken to over the Internet? I'm going to guess this isn't a regular occurrence.
The room, or "dormitory", became even more crowded (quite a feat to accomplish considering it's size) when several more girls arrived. About 4 Fourth Years, 1 Third Year, 2 Seconds and one tiny First Year looking absolutely terrified. It really was the most unusual thing I've ever experienced; being in this room with all these people I simultaneously hadn't met but also did know, very well actually. It was rather endearing actually, and I could only imagine how the younger ones must have been feeling.
I went over to the First Year, a girl with absolutely enormous eyes. She was standing with the two Second Years.
"Hey," I told them, "I'm Isabel, what are your names?" I hoped to be some sort of comfort to them.
"I'm Nisa," the First Year said quietly and looked at the Second years, waiting for them to speak.
"Renee," the first one said. She had dark eyes and her black hair was in a ponytail. She seemed agitated but not at all frightened.
"Helena," the other said, a rather tall blonde girl with grey-blue eyes, she looked uncomfortable around so many people.
"Is it true we're at Hogwarts?" Renee asked.
"I think we just might-"
"Did you say your name was Isabel?!" A Fourth Year with deep brown eyes bounded over, cutting me off. I smiled and nodded.
"I'm Mine! Someone said we're all on Twitter, you remember me right?" She grinned.
"Of course! Hi!" I responded, also grinning in spite of the fact that I'm not a big grinner, "Carrot girl!" (I once helped her eat a bowl of carrots that she really didn't want so...yeah, go inside jokes!)

"Wait, we're all from Twitter?" the only Third Year asked us.
"Well, yeah, I think so-HEY!" I raised my voice so the whole room could hear me. Everyone turned to stare, "DOES EVERYONE HERE HAVE TWITTER?" There was a loud mess of noise signifying agreement and then everyone went back to talking loudly to each other.
"I was right in thinking Internet people are better than real life people, everyone here seems so cool," the girl nodded to herself, "Oh, I'm Laura, hey," she made a small waving movement and then walked away to talk to some Fourth Years.

"Um hello?" The guy, Steven, from earlier was standing in the doorway, next to another guy, who had black hair and appeared to be a Fifth Year.
"Yeah we can't come into the room." the Fifth Year said, placing a hand on the air between the doorway and the corridor. When he touched it, the air around his hand turned green and emitted little sparks.
"That must be the Slytherin Dormitory way of keeping the boys and girls separated," the girl who had pointed out the mermaid wondered aloud. "Oh, yeah, um I'm Sara," she told the guys.
"Me too," a girl with long brown curly hair piped up, "But with two r's, so Sarra," she also gave a little wave. Everyone turned to look expectantly at the girl next to her who glanced around.
"Oh, we're doing this? Okay, um, I'm Chloe," she tucked a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. It seemed we were all in for another round of introductions.

"While we're still doing this," a girl with uncontrollably curly hair spoke up, "My name is Jade, and can I just say, my middle initials actually spell 'HP'," she said proudly. There was a murmur of "Cool"s and "Awesome"s around the room.
"I'm Steven," said Steven, "This is..."
"Bhaavan," the guy next to him finished for him.

"Yeah, uh, I'm Danielle," a Seventh Year girl with straight black hair and perfectly manicured finger nails spoke, "And I think that if we really are at Hogwarts we should actually, uh, I dunno, do something, like check this place out?" she suggested, shrugging.
"I'm also called Danielle," a girl said with a South African accent, "I also agree with Danielle, er, the other Danielle; I think we should go to the Common Room and just decide what to do from there." Everyone nodded in agreement and then slowly started filing out of the dormitory.
I was crammed in at the back of the room which meant I had to wait a while before being able to leave myself. I was wedged in next to a Fifth Year with blue eyes.
"Oh my gosh, I love your nose ring!" the Fifth Year smiled, I reached up to touch the silver crescent moon-shaped stud in my nose, "Thank you so much, I've always loved the moon," I smiled.
"Oh so have I, it's so beautiful," she agreed, "I'm Matylda by the way," she beamed. I told her my name and we stood, discussing the moon until we were finally able to move out of the room.

The Common Room was exactly as I had imagined it, as it had been described in Chamber of Secrets; stone walls, more green lanterns and a carved fireplace surrounded by regal-looking chairs in different shades of green. There were several students, dressed in robes hanging about who were very obviously not a part of our group, we were all higgledy-piggledy in our pyjamas. One of the students nodded her head at the others and they glanced at us and left. I frowned slightly. Was it possible that these people actually went to Hogwarts as a school?

"Alright then," the Seventh Years seemed to be taking charge, about 13 of them were all standing in front of the rest of us who had taken seats on the floor and fancy chairs. The one who had spoken seemed to be giddy with excitement, she was tall with brown eyes and brown hair cut into a bob. "I'm Eqa, or E, and I think it's pretty clear by now that we have, by some weird, but beautiful turn of events, landed up in Hogwarts-" everyone clapped and some people whooped.
"What are we gonna do?" the Fifth Year who had been standing in the middle of the Fifth Year dormitory earlier, spoke up.
"Well, uh...sorry what's your name?" the Seventh Year with very curly red hair asked, taking over from E.
"Beth," the Fifth Year replied.
"Okay, Beth, well everyone actually, I'm Amariah and I personally think that we should all just try to act normal, be careful and basically, enjoy Hogwarts. God knows that's what I plan on doing," she shrugged, "I mean, think of all the possibilities; the classes, the Library, the Great Hall. If this is really real, we're probably about to have the best time of our lives."
"But we have no idea how long this will last. What if we never get to go home?" another Fifth Year with long black hair asked.
"We're in the most magical place on earth, we can find a way to get home," Nicole, from my own (Sixth) Year told her.
"Also, if Hogwarts is real does that mean that Doctor Who is real because if so I need to get me a TARDIS," the girl joked.
Mentioning Doctor Who made me realise who she was, one of my mutuals, otherwise known as "Taika". I recalled her shipping Penny and Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory a lot.
A Fifth Year with blonde hair sighed and spoke up, most likely for the first time since she'd gotten here, "Are we going to walk around in our pyjamas the whole day?"
"I saw robes in my dormitory," Bhaavan said, "I'm sure the girls have them too."
"So let's go change and...well let's go to breakfast," the blonde girl said excitedly, "I'm Valentine, by the way," she smiled. Everyone was suddenly gripped with the idea that if they really and truly were at Hogwarts there was absolutely no time to spare.
I jumped up, almost racing back to the Sixth Year Dormitory. Our beds had been made and clean, black robes with Slytherin crests embroidered into them were laid out on our beds.
Bree shrieked when she saw the robes, making me nearly jump out of my skin. "Do you realise what this means?" she gasped excitedly as we all changed into our uniforms.
"That this is the best day of my life?" Annie guessed.
"House Elves!" Clary said loudly, "Oh my gosh and look how neatly they've made all the beds!" It looked like it was taking everything in the world to keep her from stroking the perfectly set out dressings on the bed.

"Okay this is epic and all but like, seriously, what the hell?" Lauren said as we headed back to the Common Room, all changed into our Hogwarts uniforms which seemed to be made to fit us all individually perfectly. "How was this all arranged? How were we brought here in our sleep?"
"You can't even Apparate into Hogwarts," I wondered aloud.
"I don't think I even care how we got here," Maria said, "I'm just so happy to be here."
"I agree," Bree said blissfully. We managed to open the door out of the Common Room and all streamed out of it, into the cold dungeons. There were squeaks of excitement from everyone as we trundled along the cold, stone passageway trying to find a staircase that would eventually lead us to the Great Hall.

The fact that I was so calm was relatively surprising to me. In all honesty I don't think I'd processed the full extent of what had happened and I kept having to remind myself. Also there was the given chance that if all the Potterheads I'd met on Twitter were here, then the ones I'd grown closest to would be here as well, people I'd been wanting to meet for almost a year now. I silently prayed that they would be here. But despite the fact that I already knew a lot of these people I knew I still wanted to meet as many of the people who came as I possibly could. We reached a wooden staircase and everyone gave each other apprehensive but truly excited looks.
"I hope the staircase doesn't change," I laughed and there were scatters of nervous giggles as we began to climb the stairs