Chapter One
"But what if I do, Rose? What if I do get sorted into Slytherin?" I whine to my cousin, staring out of the Hogwarts Express window, catching the last glimpse of my father in the silver fog. Rose Weasley sighs from the opposite seat in his carriage, fiddling with her thumbs. I had not stopped asking this question since his elder brother, James, had brung it up on the drive to King's Cross Station. The worst part? I knew it was a joke, yet the worry still niggled in the back of my mind, refusing to go away.
"You won't, you know you won't. You're too... nice. Besides, what's wrong with Slytherin? Severus Snape was in Slytherin and, according to Uncle Harry, he was the bravest man ever." I sigh, leaning forward to face Rose.
"I'll tell you what's wrong with Slytherin. Scorpius Malfoy is what's wrong with Slytherin." I mutter slightly quieter, and Rose rolls her eyes.
"Oh, come on! You haven't even met the guy. Maybe he's not as bad as his father, and maybe he's not sorted into Slytherin-"
"And then his parents will disown him." I interrupt darkly, resuming his position against the window, staring out into the fog, which was blocking all his sight from the fields I knew lay ahead from countless tales from my uncles and aunts, my grandparents and my parents.
"I mean, you've got Gryffindor parents, Gryffindor uncles, a Gryffindor brother, Gryffindor cousins, Gryffindor grandparents, great-grandparents-"
"Which is why it's even scarier! Imagine if I am in Slytherin, the enemies of Gryffindor since Hogwarts was built, the bad guys for centuries. Imagine how disappointed mum and dad and everyone would be!" I butt in, throwing my arms up in the air in frustration. Rose falls quiet for a while, suddenly seeming to understand my fear, and she leans back, sighing, her voice taking on a much more motherly tone when she speaks.
"Remember though, Harry said the Sorting Hat does let you choose." She says, and her soothing tone starts to calm me down, even though the worry was still there. Niggling and niggling and niggling away. I go back to my window, sighing as my hot head hits the cool glass, my breath making steam marks on the window. We sit in silence for a while, Rose obviously thinking of her own worries, but not bothering to voice them.
Suddenly there's a knock on the door, and it pulls back to reveal a girl, about our age, with a side cut, her hair bleached and the tips shock blue. Her eyes were a beautiful sky blue, almost like the sky on a cloudless day. I had never seen anyone so… weird. After all, she was only eleven, or twelve at most, and she had dyed her hair like that?
"Erm… hi. Can I sit here? No one else is letting me sit anywhere." She says. Her voice is gruff and low, not a voice you would expect from an eleven year old girl. Rose lights up.
"Sure! I'm Rose Weasley, and this is…"
"Albus Potter, I've heard." She says, and I smile out of politeness, although I was wondering where this girl had got my name from. "Your dad's pretty famous, yanno." The girl says, smiling at the shocked look on my face that I obviously couldn't conceal.
"So what's your name?" Rose asks, smiling, unphased by the girl's hair and piercing eyes. Rose had always been a people person, so much so that all her family nicknamed her 'The Hufflepuff'.
"I'm Hydra. Hydra Zulem." She says, smiling. The Zulems was not a family I had heard of before, and it was obvious Hydra didn't come from Britain. She pronounced her 's'es too much, and her 'r's were almost American, but I couldn't quite catch the accent.
"Where are you from? I've never heard of the Zulems around these parts." I say, and Hydra smiles.
"I'm from Brazil, but we had to run away, now that the government is chasing me." She says lightly, as if it was nothing that government from Brazil was chasing her and she had to run away to Britain.
"What?!" Both Rose and I stage-whisper, almost as if the CIA were going to suddenly jump out of nowhere and arrest us all.
"Well, I can do this..." Hydra says, closing her eyes. Suddenly her hair starts to grow… and grow… and grow, changing colours as it goes down, from brown to pink to white to green.
"You're a Metamorphmagus!" Rose exclaims, clapping one hand over her mouth in delight. Hydra grins, losing focus, and her hair goes back to normal. Well, normal. Normal for her, at least.
"Yes! How did you know?" Hydra almost screams.
"We have a Metamorphmagus cousin." I explain, keeping my cool. I didn't want to freak out so much. Metamorphmagii weren't necessarily all that rare, just none of them were in Hogwarts.
"There's another one? I thought I was a freak!" Hydra exclaims, clapping in excitement. Rose and I can't help but smile at seeing Hydra so happy, even though we had only just met her, and had lots more to figure out about her. The trolley lady walks by our compartment, and Hydra smiles, fishing out a money bag from her jean pocket, and turning her hair longer and brown, so she looked a bit more normal. She asks the trolley lady for three Chocolate Frogs, turning back around and bumping into a very familiar blonde figure, who looks too much like his father. Almost immediately trouble starts to gather in the corridor, the tall blonde hurling words that were impossible to catch through the glass and Hydra stumbles back, bumping into the sweet trolley, tipping everything back. She stumbles to apologize to the trolley lady, while the blonde laughs at her, the rest of the corridor joining in. Hydra's cheeks turn a tomato-ey shade of red, her hair slowly doing the same, though she obviously struggles to keep it one colour. Hate bubbles inside me at the sight of the blonde's smug little face, a face I've been wanting to punch in the face ever since we met when in an Order of the Phoenix reunion, which his father said he wanted to join and he "repented deeply" his old ways. Don't ask me how my mum and dad fell for that, because his son wasn't obviously the least Death- Eater type.
"Malfoy?" Rose asks, joining me at the glass door of the compartment as soon as she hears the racket.
"Yep. Who else would it be?" I say, spitting out my words like venom. Anger impulses through all my bones, and my hand curls around the handle, wrenching the door opens and stepping outside, ignoring Rose's shouts of "Albus! Don't! Albus! Al!" I march towards Malfoy's lean little figure, my fists curled and my cheeks burning with anger.
"Leave her alone." I say, and Malfoy turns around suddenly. He smirks.
"Make me, Potter." He says, stepping towards me. I stand taller than him, but that doesn't stop him from looking down his nose at me, or stop making his ice-cold eyes pierce through me. His posh voice makes me want to rip my ears off, and anger burns through me.
"Maybe I will, son of a Death Eater." I mutter, and a gasp goes up around the corridor, even the trolley lady stopping to stare. Malfoy's eyes widen in shock, but the shock soon turns into anger.
"Don't you dare insult my father like that." He mutters back, and I smile.
"I wasn't insulting him. In your world, being called a Death Eater is a great privilege." I say back without missing a beat, and several gasps go up with some catcalls of "ooh, burn," and "ouch," while Hydra looks around, confused. Of course, all she understands is that we're calling each other names and that it is just very insulting.
"Look, just because your dad was the "chosen one" or whatever, doesn't mean you can disrespect my father like that! He told you himself, he has given up his Death Eater ways, unlike some others." He says, almost taking on the "innocent little boy" angle.
"Yeah, but you obviously haven't." I say, and laughs go up in the corridor. Malfoy's cheeks turn a beetroot shade, and he looks around to see if anyone still supported him, only to find the whole corridor giving him a taste of his own medicine, even the trolley lady stifling giggles.
"This is preposterous! My father will hear about this!" He yells over the din, shoving past me as he marches back to his compartment, the corridor shouting back "daddy's boy! Daddy's boy!" behind him.
I help Hydra up and she blushes, muttering a "thanks" before strolling back to our compartment, while I take high-fives from complete strangers.
I have a feeling this is going to be a good year.