Chapter One
One odd girl sat upon the front steps in the darkness of the evening. The setting sun left a few hours before the train was due to arrive. She sat there quietly in Hufflepuff colors, sodden to the bone by the thick slow rain which had descended upon the grounds. The battle which had ravaged the castle just two years before had yet to be erased from the walls. Messy patching on the stone left solid smudges on the building in place of the many brick which had once been there.
The grass was ill in spots, and large parts of the forbidden forest were singed.
She thought to herself that the marks should not be removed, as it served as a reminder, which would always be needed.
"Zaeviana, come inside will you, you'll catch cold," Minerva McGonagall chirped from a window several yards away.
"You know I don't get sick Professor," Zaeviana replied with a small smile. Minerva snorted at her and moved back inside. Zaeviana gazed sleepily through the thin curtain of rain.
"Miss McGonagall, you really should get inside." Zaeviana looked up to see the thick form of Rubeus Hagrid standing on the ground in front of the steps, putting him about at her height if she were standing up on that second step.
"C'mon Rubeus, don't act like you don't know me, you're the only one who calls me that," she mused with a bright smile.
"It ain't a secret anymore, I don' see why ya'd want ta be called anythin' else," Rubeus mused thoughtfully, tugging out his pink umbrella and opening it and handing it to her.
"I'm not goin'ta take your wand, even if I am soggy," she mused with a chuckle.
"I trust ye'z," he assured her with a smile and she took the umbrella. She grabbed a handle from her pocket and murmured a drying spell.
The warm sensation filled her body and Hagrid smirked amusedly.
"What?" Zaeviana chirped.
"Ah nothin'," he replied brightly. He walked past her into the building. "An' I ain't forgot, 'bout you not wantin' your aunt's name," he mused with a chortle.
"But I've been Zaeviana Hagrid for sixteen years," she mused thoughtfully. Hagrid stopped in the door and glanced back at her.
"You know that was only fer yer own sake, we 'ent related." He smiled brightly, "I ain't old enough ta have a kid like you," he teased and then made a face at her.
"Oh shove off! Y'er as old as Minerva," she teased.
"Oye, I ain't that old, Giants grow slower than 'umans do," he snorted. Zaeviana snorted.
"I'm telling Minerva!" she chirped, leaping to her feet and skirting around Rubeus' wide girth.
"Like hell you are," he responded with a chuckle and scooped her up. She laughed brightly as he held her around the waist.
"I give I give!" she yelped as she reached for the floor and couldn't quite reach.
"Ya won't say nothin' she's vicious 'bout 'er age." Zaeviana nodded and he let her go.
Standing there in the entrance hall she closed his umbrella and handed it back to him standing there in the door.
"So how old are you, in your years."
Rubeus paused thoughtfully. "Well I'm half 'uman, err, part anyway the Giant part dom'nates so, 'round twenty eight…" he mused.
"No way…" Zaeviana murmured.
"You ain't ne'er seen me without me beard 'er straight 'air, aye, I'm a right dashin' fellow," he mused with a wink. Zaeviana smiled. "Go change ya clothes, y'll-"
"Catch cold?"
"G't nagged t'death," he mused with a smirk.
Zaeviana smiled with a chuckle and hugged Rubeus 'round the waist. Rubeus patted her back and kissed the top of her head. "Gw'on."
Zaeviana smiled at him. "Ooh, watch this!" she chirped. She took a step back. "Sweet seventeen," she mused with a wink.
"Y'll need this," Rubeus mused, handing her her own wand. She blinked, and reached into her pocket, a thick stick, but not her wand, her little brother's, who had gotten his wand taken away and Zaeviana had been put in charge of it. It refused to respond to her.
She took her wand from Hagrid and glanced at his umbrella. "It don' listen t' many pe'ple," he smiled warmly. Zaeviana smiled. With that she flicked her wand and with a quiet pop apparated to her bedroom.
A room all her own on school grounds, where she lived all year round. She tossed her wand onto the bedside table and dug through her wardrobe for clean clothes. People would be arriving soon and who would want to see the head girl dressed like a homeless person. Especially since it had come into the open that she was in fact the daughter of a rather unremarkable sister to the legendary Minerva McGonagall.
Zaeviana pulled her hair out of the neck of her shirt and snatched a comb from a shelf and glanced into the mirror atop her bureau. She tugged the comb through her thick auburn hair. She smiled as she pulled her long hair up into a toothed-clip so it draped over her the clip and reached to her shoulder blades. Her muddy-brown eyes shone, those eyes, her height, and her natural knack for animals were what had allowed her to blend into Rubeus' family so simply.
She moved back out of her room, tucking her brother's wand into her left pocket and her own into her right so as not to mix them up again.
She took her leave locking her door with a quick wand-less charm. She grabbed her wand from her packet and apparated to the staircase outside of her mother's office. Harry stared up at her. "Gimme my wand back!" he whined.
"You're only eight!" she teased making a face and skirting around him. "You're not s'posed to have a wand," she teased. She pushed open the door and walked through.
Her little brother whined and stalked after her. "Mum said age doesn't matter!"
"Mum?" Zaeviana mused questioningly.
"You call her Minerva… why do you do that?" he whined. Zaeviana shrugged.
'cause she's not our mother you blind little bat' she thought to herself, knowing he was well aware that Minerva was actually their aunt, but their mother had been killed seven and 3 quarter years prior by angry Death-Eaters shortly after Harry's birth. Who had been named for the mighty baby-who-lived.
"Because I go to school here and I'm not allowed to," she mused, deciding he might as well keep up his charade, it made him happy.
"Ohh… now gimme my wand."
"I don't have it," she lied "Mi-um locked it up when we got back to Hogwarts."
He whined for another few minutes before scampering off to harass someone who could pick locks. Zaeviana rolled her eyes. "He really should have been named after Pettigrew, he's certainly no Harry Potter," she snorted with a chuckle to herself.
She got down stairs to see people filing into the hall.
"Ginny!" she chirped as she spotted the red-head amongst the others.
"Viv!" Ginny yelped back and threw her arms around Zaeviana's neck, having to stand on her tippy-toes to do so.
"How's George?" Zaeviana mused.
"Eww, really? I thought you'd gotten over that…" Ginny teased.
"It's not my fault your brother is obscenely attractive!" Zaeviana teased. Ginny pointed down her throat and make hacking sounds.
"Real classy Weasley," came a slightly nasally voice.
"Sabina, you're a Slytherin through and through," Ginny mused, smirking into her friend's face.
"And you're a love story-sob," she responded.
"You're both hopeless romantics, and purebloods, shut up!" Zaeviana chuckled.
"At least neither of us are after some 'war hero'!" Ginny snarked.
"… Who's dating the boy-who-PWNs?" Zaviana teased.
And thus the greeting ritual was over, each of them nudging each other as they moved to sit at the first table they came to, between a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff.
Most groups, after the war, had meshed together. There were of course some who still held hard feelings toward other houses, and there was always going to be massive amounts of rivalry between the houses, as points were still to be earned and there was always a winner and a few losers.
"Sabina… look…" Zaeviana whispered. Glancing in the direction Zaeviana indicated she spotted one Vincent Crabbe, held back three times. He'd gone from greasy and slightly smelly to quite the heart throb. He bathed daily, and had taken to smiling which set a shine to his face.
Vincent saw her looking and he ducked his head, averting his gaze.
"He was looking at you," Zaeviana mused brightly.
Sabina rolled her eyes. "Oh come off it Zaeviana, I'm only sixteen, he's what like twenty?"
"Twenty-one, but you'll be seventeen in a few months, it's totally legal, and you so like him. I've seen how you walk by, if they weren't attached so well your hips would fly off!" Ginny teased. Sabina popped Ginny in the back of the head, but she was smiling and blushing
"So have you gotten any George-candy yet?" Sabina mused, switching the topic off of herself and onto Zaeviana.
"Psh, no!"
"Oh? 'Cause George says you joined up with Weasley's Wizard Wheezes over the summer, he came home talking about you all the time," Ginny crooned.
"So? I needed a summer job and…"
"He was lonely!" Sabina crooned a bit too loudly. "He needed a friend, and you were there, right?"
"Shove off you bloody twit nothing happened, I was an employee, nothing more… damn it."
Ginny and Sabina hooted with laughter.
"QUIET PLEASE." Came the magnified voice of McGonagall. The room settled. The old Sorting hat wriggled to life on the stool up front, it's mouth-rip split open and it sang,
"We've had some heroes
Some tall and some small
Our dear old Hogwarts
Has housed one and all
Students a plenty
Sit listening now
we know they'll succeed
yes, this we vow!
The hat finished brightly and bowed. People applauded, as it stood there really wasn't much he could have sung about, but still, it was a bright happy song and it was good to hear.
"Now, I will call your name and you will step forward and sit on the stool to be sorted. Adorrix, Angella" Minerva called, picking up the hat and motioning for her to sit.
The hall watched eagerly as the sorting began .
Parts of the hall erupted with glee as every person was sorted.
"Snape, Dorian!" Minerva called, a light flashed across her face briefly. Severus Snape's child, his mother was unknown by most, but people cast looks at him and quickly saw Minerva's piercing eyes and quick wand work. People waited eagerly for the decision. One parent the ex-guardian of Slytherin, the other probably of Gryffindor.
The hat sat quietly for quite some time, the tall, sleek form beneath it waiting patiently.
"Hufflepuff!" it called finally, shocking the entire place. The entire crowd whooped merrily to him. Glancing around he instantly moved to Zaeviana's group.
"Head girl?" he inquired. She nodded.
"My dad thought the world of you," he mused brightly, smiling into her face.
"That means a lot," she responded, remembering Severus Snape very well. Dorian sat down in a space between Ginny and Zaeviana when they parted for him. Zaeviana instantly felt a connection with the boy, a sort of brotherly sort of closeness.
Finally the sorting ended and the feast began.
The food was hot and steamy, and filling.
Finally people finished eating. Some hopped up on the sugar of the deserts, others with heavy eyelids from the massive meal.
"Alright first years!" Zaeviana called, getting to her feet and climbing up onto her seat, her voice carried. "Find your house-heads and they'll lead you to your houses. Hufflepuff come over here, Slytherin to your table at the end, and so on! Let's go we ain't got all night! Let's go! C'mon, the rest of you sorry sods know where you're going, c'mon!" she hollered. People moved, sluggishly.
A crowd of Hufflepuffs looked up at Zaeviana with large innocent eyes.
Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Wait, why're they looking at you?" Zaeviana jumped down from the seats and looked around at the first years.
"Jaimy and Henry got expelled … together," she mused looking pointedly at Ginny.
"Ooh, I see…" she mused, the rumor set to begin.
"Alright kiddies, time to go!" Zaeviana chirped, she moved through the crowd and guided them out the hall door toward the dormitories. Dorian caught up and walked beside her.
"Ya think my parents will be disappointed?"
"That you're in Hufflepuff?"
"Aye."
"Nah, Minerva's fine with it, and she's as close to a mum as I've got," Dorian smiled and nodded. "So that means we're related?" he whispered. Zaeviana blinked in shock.
"So you know?"
"I'm not dumb." Zaeviana laughed.
"Aye, we're related, McGonagall's my aunt," she mused merrily.
Zaeviana escorted them all to the Common room in a class free tower. "This is the Hufflepuff Common room." She mused, coming to a large double door. "Do NOT open the doors and walk through, these doors will send you to a random room in the castle, believe me, you do not want to wander through that door, it can be really embarrassing. The password is "Gillyweed"." She turned to the door. "Gillyweed," she said firmly to the doors. The wall behind them slid to the side and there was a large arc for them to walk through. "The password will change every so often, check the board inside."
She let them all walk past Dorian was the last to go in. "Aren'cha coming?"
"No, I don't sleep in there," she replied. Dorian nodded, shrugged, yawned, and then walked in, letting the door close behind him. Zaeviana turned, and flicked her wand, apparating instantly to the front door. Since McGonagal had become headmistress she had laxed the apparition charm, one could apparate anywhere on the grounds during the day, so long as they had been accepted by Hogwarts itself and were already on the grounds, after dark, one could only apparate within the castle and only until one AM, the official maximum curfew.