Penelope Clearwater was shy. There was no other way around it. She remained quiet for the most part and did not like to speak to others. She became flustered at asking even the smallest things to a complete stranger. She rarely even talked to people she kind of knew. She struggled to make friends and fit in during primary school, but she simply couldn't bring herself to truly be comfortable around the kids at her school. They talked about her in whispers, how strange things happened when she was around. Penelope wondered about these strange occurrences herself, but she never fully understood what she was until she had gotten her letter.
The envelope was made from thick dusty parchment, addressed in green ink, and sealed with an interesting red wax seal with some sort of crest in it. The address read: Miss Penelope Clearwater, small bedroom upstairs, and said her home address. A most peculiar letter it was, and its contents were even more peculiar. Penelope thought someone must be playing a joke on her at first. But it was real. All of it was real. She was a witch.
The trip to platform nine and three quarters was as intriguing as any of the things she'd encountered in this newfound world of magic. A strange feeling ran up her spine on her first trip through the barrier.
The Hogwarts Express was a beautiful train, sleek and shining. The people around it seemed to buzz with excited energy. Penelope had never seen anything like this before. It truly was magic.
She was so busy gazing around at everything and taking it all in that she didn't watch where she was walking. She ran straight into a tall redheaded boy and tumbled to the ground.
"I'm so sorry. Are you alright?" The boy questioned, offering a hand to help her up.
"I-I'm fine," Penelope stammered, looking away. She refused his outstretched hand, standing up by herself.
The boy retracted his hand and watched as Penelope quickly walked away.
She sat alone in a train compartment and put on her school robes. The journey was as mystical as the destination, the English country side gliding smoothly by as she watched out the window.
Arriving at the school was not what she expected. It was even more magical than she'd imagined. The large castle loomed over the even larger lake. A large man beckoned the first-year students and Penelope followed him to a bunch of small boats with lanterns hanging from them. In her boat was the tall redheaded boy who she had bumped into at the platform. He kept giving her sideways glances that made her feel self-conscious. However, her self-consciousness was immediately forgotten when the boats began to move and she once again beheld that place of magic on the hill.
She could not wait to enter Hogwarts for the first time.
The Black Lake glistened beneath their lanterns and nearly everything she saw held her fixated. How could so much beauty be contained in this one place?
She was even more shocked upon entering the school itself. The main entryway was the most enormous place she'd ever been in, and she was amazed by all the moving pictures and other magical items that she saw.
When Penelope entered the Great Hall, she was mystified by the ceiling that looked like the sky, and all the floating candles. The hugeness of it all was almost overwhelming. And standing before her was the largest obstacle of them all: The Sorting Hat.
Being a muggle-born, Penelope knew next to nothing about the houses, but she had gotten the gist of it from many of the people on the platform: Slytherin equals bad, Gryffindor equals brave, Ravenclaw equals smart. She wasn't able to understand exactly what the last house stood for.
It didn't take long for her name to be called.
She was terrified as she walked up to the stool. She was in front of the entire school, possibly about to have secrets revealed about her by a talking hat.
The Hat took its sweet time, analyzing the contents of her brain and deciding where she would fit in.
"Ravenclaw!" it finally shouted. Penelope let out a sigh of relief. She may not be brave, but at least she hadn't been established as bad. Smart was definitely something she could do. She headed over to the applauding Ravenclaw table and watched as the other first years were sorted. The redheaded boy was one of the last to be sorted, being announced as "Weasley, Percival." The Hat quickly pronounced him a Gryffindor.
Penelope rarely made eye contact with the boy after that, but she'd always catch him looking at her, and sometimes she caught herself looking at him too.
She didn't work up the nerve to actually talk to Percy Weasley until her fourth year at Hogwarts, and even then, it was just small things like "Could I borrow a quill?" or "What chapter did he say?" But Percy turned out to be quite willing to talk to her. He was very nice, too.
He shared with her his ambitions (which were very plentiful) and his family woes. Penelope warmed up to him and she began to tell him things too. She and Percy became fast friends and she began to gain other friends as well. By the end of her fourth year she had really come out of her shell and it always made her smile to realize that she really did fit in at this school. She found that Quidditch was a fun sport and always went to school games with Percy and other friends.
When she became the Ravenclaw prefect, she was excited and maybe just a bit scared. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to handle the duties of a prefect, but it seemed that they trusted her to do the job, so she resolved that she could do it.
Penelope was ecstatic when she learned that Percy became a prefect, too. And she was even more ecstatic when Percy pulled her into an empty class room and kissed her.
Maybe I'm not so shy after all… she thought as she kissed him back.
Phew… Okay, a random Percy/Penelope drabble for the ash-luvgirl02's 1 character 1 prompt challenge. First HP fan fiction, so don't judge me too harshly especially since Penelope has no development and rarely appears in the books. I liked writing this, even though I'm kind of putting off other writing that I need to do, not to mention homework. Enjoy and review!