"Hmmm..."
Lydia fidgets on the stool, readjusting the sorting hat on her head.
"Very interesting..."
"Could you get on with it, please?" she hisses, feeling the eyes of the school on her and flushing red. She fumbles with her hands in her lap.
"You've got plenty of intelligence, but no, no, no-not ravenclaw. Definitely not hufflepuff and Gryffindor...eh. I suppose...SLYTHERIN!"
Her house is screamed out to the hall, and the green-tied students start to clap. They welcome her onto the table and she sits between some kid named Greenberg and an older student. From the Gryffindor table, Allison waves at her and Lydia smiles back.
The rest of the sorting goes by slow. Allison blushes a magenta red when a boy named Scott McCall, who got sorted in Gryffindor, sits next to her. Another boy she knows, Danny, gets into hufflepuff and she claps happily.
By the time it gets to 'S', she's not really listening anymore but then the professor stutters over some horrible name, and a gangly, dark-haired boy stumbles onto the stage and whispers something in her ear.
"Stiles Stilinski."
He jams the sorting hat onto his head, and sits there for at least a minute until it finally screams "RAVENCLAW!" He climbs off the stage and makes his way over to his table, waving at Scott on the way.
But by that time, she's back to daydreaming.


Their first test is in Transfiguration. The slytherins are taking classes with the ravenclaws and Lydia's determined to show them she can do it just as good as them. They have 10 minutes to transfigure a mouse into a paperclip, but obviously they haven't been taught the exact spell so they have to search for it.
She works and works for a solid 6 minutes, and when she finally thinks she's got the right spell there's a burst of applause from the ravenclaw end. That weird kid, Stiles, is holding a shiny paperclip in his hand and Professor McGonagall is looking very pleased.
She almost screams in frustration.


Lydia gets her revenge in Herbology next week.
He looks almost crestfallen as she brandishes her essay, which was given two marks more than his.
She high-fives one of her slytherin friends and swivels round to face the front.


It's during lunch when Allison comes over.
"So Lydia," she starts, and Lydia knows what she's going to ask.
"Yes," she sighs. "Scott likes you, and you should ask him out."
Then Allison is off, squealing and rambling about how she should do it and Lydia just keeps eating her roast through all of it, watching Stiles arguing with their Herbology teacher.


The competition continues throughout the rest of the first year, and by the end she and Stiles are (infuriatingly) at a stalemate.


Allison drags her down to the quidditch trials, to watch Scott of course.
Most of the school is there, and they're all babbling excitedly like it's the most interesting thing in the world. Lydia rolls her eyes and sits next to Allison in the stands.

First up are the Hufflepuffs, and Danny makes the team easily as a Beater (he hits about six people during his trial). The Slytherins are next, and Lydia claps synthetically as Greenburg and some athletic kid called Jackson make the team. Then it's the Ravenclaws, and Stiles walks out.

Lydia almost laughs, because seriously, he's definitely not the right type of build for quidditch (and she thought he was meant to be clever).She almost falls off the bench several times in the next five minutes as he dodges chasers, the captain and an extremely well-aimed bludger from Jackson to score a goal. Then she sees Allison staring at her in a weird way, and she composes herself.

So he's good at quidditch. So what?


She's meant to be at Charms, but she's late because of Peeves acting up. She sprints round the corner and slams into someone. That someone yelps and drops all his books. Lydia looks back, but it's just Stiles so she keeps running.

He stares after her for a long time.


They're doing boggarts in Defence against the dark arts, and Lydia hates it.

She doesn't want everyone to know her greatest fear, and so marches to the back of the line hoping everyone else will take up the rest of the time they have in the lesson. It's quite interesting, though, to see what people's fears are.

When Stiles steps up, she sees a white hospital bed with a man that looks like an older version of him on it. Stiles starts to tremble and all but drops his wand until he takes a deep breath and makes his boggart disappear.

He spent so long, that the bell rings, and she doesn't have to step up, but she still feels awful.


Allison is babbling about Scott, again, and Lydia stares out of the train window, watching the countryside go by.

It's her third year, and sometimes she wishes her friend wasn't so completely besotted with Scott. She hears laughter, and turns her head to the compartment door to see Stiles with his Ravenclaw friends walking past.

She huffs, and turns back to the trees.

Lydia likes the lake.

It's quiet and Allison doesn't like it- which means no in-depth analysis of Scott's smile. She's enjoying the peace until someone speaks from behind her.

"Hey, Lydia, "says the voice. She grits her teeth. Stiles.

"I'm busy," she hisses, turning around. "Don't you have quidditch practice?"

He shrugs. "Cancelled." he sits down beside her and looks out at the still waters. "It's nice here, isn't it? Calm. I like coming here."

"I never see you here," she replies, confused (and annoyed that she's confused).

"Yeah, well, I tend to avoid you," he says, getting back up. The words sting and Lydia sits there feeling stupid.

"Since you hate me so much," he calls over his shoulder.


She's at the library, looking for book she can't seem to find. She asks the librarian where it is, but it's been taken out.

"Who's got it?" she asks, knowing she could persuade them to hand it over.

"Stiles," replies the librarian and she points at the corner where he's sitting, writing out an essay. He looks up at them mention of his name, and grins at her.

Lydia growls, and storms out.


She's walking down the corridor with Allison, when she sees Scott and Stiles both sprawled on the ground with Jackson looming above them. Allison rushes over to help them up, but Lydia just continues down the hall.


It's her fourth year, and yet Lydia finds herself down at the quidditch stands with every else, watching the big match. Its Slytherin v Ravenclaw, but the whole school's turned up as the results will determine the quidditch cup winners.

The Slytherins around her are jostling wildly, and she debates going to sit with Allison- but Scott will be there and Lydia holds back the urge to vomit. She loves her friend, she does, her and Scott are just gross.

A whistle blows and the players surge into action.

Half an hour in, the teams are tied and Lydia is immensely bored, wishing she was in the library. A green blur whizzes past and its Jackson, trailing Stiles. He's not fast enough though, and the quaffle goes through the slytherin hoop. Lydia can hear him snarl from the stand.

Greenburg has the quaffle, but it's knocked out of his hands by a bludger from Boyd and caught by Stiles. Before he can do anything however, he's hit on the back of his head by Jackson's bat.

There's a collective gasp from the audience as Stiles falls off his broom and hits the floor with a thud, limp and bleeding.

Lydia doesn't know what she's doing, but she finds herself running down onto the pitch with Scott and Allison. She bursts through the line of smug Slytherins and watches as McGonagall lifts Stiles onto a stretcher.


Lydia visits him in the infirmary the next day. He's still knocked out, and pale from the loss of blood. It freaks her out, because he should be awake, making some stupid remark about Bludgers or Jackson or something.

She doesn't stay long.


The next few weeks are spent watching the slytherins and ravenclaws clash. The blue-tied students are furious at the foul, and being exceptionally clever, they plot a very successful revenge. It earns most of them detentions into the far off future, but they all agree it was worth it.

So does Lydia. It was very satisfying to see Jackson covered in thick, permanent sticking gloop in the middle of dinner.


By the time Stiles is back they're doing a test on Cheering Charms. Despite his absence, he manages to reduce his partner to hysterical giggles.