The Turning-Point

My name is Sylvia Bayten. My Father was a Half-blood Slytherin. My mother was a Pureblood Slytherin. My brother was the perfect Slytherin. And then there was me. My whole life, its direction and my decisions were to be dictated by a simple question. Asked when I was just eleven. I wasn't to know how important it was then and I'm glad, for I would have thought longer if I had known. If I had known I would have made the worst mistake of my life.

"Sylvie, mum says you're in trouble!" My brother, Caleb, stood above me and declared triumphantly.

I was sitting on the garden path, with my cat. I picked her up with a sigh and thrust her at Caleb. "Scratch his eyes out, Kimba."

Caleb backed off slightly. He was annoyed because he had taken to calling me Kimba on my eleventh birthday. He'd had to explain that he'd heard some Muggleborns talking about a movie called 'The Lion King' and that was the name of the lion cub. He had thought to be funny, insinuating that I would be in Gryffindor, because he knew very well that it would never happen. To try and prove it didn't bother me, I gave the name to the kitten our Aunt had promised me. It worked. He never called me that again.

"Sylvia!" Mum's voice called from the direction of the house.

Caleb grinned at me. "Told you."

I got up and set Kimba down. "Sic him, Kimba."

Kimba yawned, stretched and lay down in a bit of sunlight with a defiant look at me.

"Sylvia!"

I shook my head at Kimba and hurried to the house.

An hour later I was still cleaning my room. I couldn't see the point. The next day was September 1st and I would be joining Caleb on the Hogwarts Express for the first time.

"Sylvie."

I ignored him and kept working.

"Oh Sylvie. Don't you want to know about the sorting?"

That made me pause. I had been begging Caleb to tell me how you know which house you're in ever since I got my letter but he had refused to tell me.

"Well, if you don't want to know…"

"Yes! I do, I do. Please tell me."

"Okay. They call your name and you have to do the best spell you know to prove you deserve to be there. If it is good enough, then you put on a talking hat and it tells you which house you belong in."

"I have to do a spell?"

"Yes. And it better be good. I'm telling you because I don't want you to embarrass me by not being good enough."

I don't remember much more of that day. I hardly noticed anything. My mind was racing, trying to think of a spell that would be good enough. All I could think of were curses. I had never preformed any of course but Caleb had threatened me on various occasions with this hex or that curse. I spent the evening going through my new schoolbooks trying to find a good spell that I could do.

I woke up in the morning and had to carefully peel my face off the page of The Standard Book of Spells that I had inadvertently used as a pillow. I still had no idea how I could prove I belonged at Hogwarts. I didn't have time to keep looking either as I heard my mother calling from downstairs,

"We're leaving in half an hour kids, with or without you!"

It took me twenty minutes to get dressed and race around my room repacking my books and the clothes I had taken out to reach them. Then I took my suitcase downstairs. With that done, I had five minutes to spare for breakfast. I felt a little stupid at this point. Caleb hadn't even gotten up yet and once I had had time to calm down, I knew mum's threat had been empty.

I had finished eating when Caleb entered the kitchen, bleary eyed and still in his pyjamas. "What's the time?" he croaked.

"Ten-fifteen," mum said as she walked in behind him, giving him a disapproving look.

"What's for breakfast?"

"For you it's toast and orange juice. We don't have time for you to have anything else."

Caleb looked thoughtful for a moment. "Get on that. I'll go get dressed."

Mum sighed in exasperation and called after him as he left the kitchen, "Hurry up! And where's your suitcase? Your father needs to finish packing the car."

Fifteen minutes later, we were in the car. Father was at the wheel, grumbling about all the damn Muggles taking up the road. I don't know why he was complaining, our car never got stuck in traffic, perhaps it was just that he drove very rarely.

We reached the station at five to eleven so we didn't dawdle getting our luggage. We ran to platform 9 as fast as was possible, father pulled our trolleys and we carried our animals. We were soon going through the barrier to platform 9 ¾.

"Two minutes," mum said in relief.

Caleb took his suitcase off his trolley and left, calling goodbye over his shoulder. Mum answered while father started pushing my trolley towards the train.

"I can do it," I said but father didn't seem to hear me. "I wonder what house I'll be in," I mused to try and get a reaction, though the thought made my stomach churn, 'if I'm good enough to even be chosen.'

"You'll be in Slytherin," father replied without looking at me. "Our whole family has been in Slytherin."

"What about grandpa Joe?"

"Yes, well. Considering his… circumstances, Ravenclaw is just as good."

Joe was dad's father. He was Muggleborn but father would always reassure us that if he hadn't been so disadvantaged, he would have been a Slytherin too.

Father lifted my suitcase onto the train as the whistle blew. I was seized from behind and squeezed by mum. "Be good, darling and don't forget to write."

"Okay mum, I have to go now. The train's leaving."

I was on the steps before I remembered and turned back. "Kim-"

Father was there holding out Kimba's cage.

"Goodbye, Sylvia."

"Goodbye, father."

The train lurched as it began moving and I moved further into the train, Kimba under one arm, as I struggled to drag my suitcase along. The trains movement made it a lot more difficult than it would have otherwise been.

"New student?"

I turned to see a couple of older boys looking at me. "Oh, er… yes," I replied cautiously, suspicious of what they wanted.

"Here." Before I could react they seized my suitcase and hoisted it into the air.

I had no choice but to follow. They found a compartment with space, its occupants looking as lost as I felt, and stowed my suitcase for me.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Want?" one of the boys asked, surprised. "Let me ask you something. What house do you think you'll be in?"

"Slytherin," I replied, a lot more confidently than I felt.

"Thought so. That lot do nothing for free."

With that confusing statement they left. The trip to Hogwarts was long. None of us much felt like talking. I discovered I was correct in thinking everyone else in the compartment were new students too. We introduced ourselves but then hardly a word was spoken.

Sometime during the train ride I changed into my robes. We arrived at Hogwarts and followed a giant of a man to the boats. Others have said that they will never forget their first glimpse of Hogwarts but I hardly saw it as my panic steadily built.

All I could manage was to stay in line as we moved closer towards my humiliation. I thought for a moment that my brother might have been lying about the sorting but then I heard the last of the professor's instructions.

"… place the hat on your head and you will be sorted into your house."

I felt a tightening in my chest.

"Bayten, Sylvia."

I couldn't breath everyone was waiting to see what I could do. I don't remember what I did exactly but I remember what I aimed at must have been magical because my spell rebounded and hit one of the other new students full in the face. Nobody was more horrified than me. I received detention for my stupidity and the enmity of the girl I had hit, but that was later. A very angry teacher told me to hurry up and put on the hat, once the laughter had been silenced.

I did so, trying not to cry. It was a battle I knew I would lose but I really didn't want to start in front of the whole school.

"Well, well," said an amused small voice in my ear. "Where should I put you?"

I didn't answer all I could think about was my brother. 'How could he?'

"Where do you wish to go?"

I was angry and hurt. All I wanted right then was, "Where I belong."

"Where you belong, eh?"

The hats tone worried me.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

I took off the hat and my eyes were drawn to my brother. His hands were raised to clap and a half-formed smile was frozen on his lips. Despite everything he had expected me to be in Slytherin. By the slow reaction the hats announcement got, so had almost everyone else.

From that moment on, nothing was the same for me. My mother took it well enough but after my sorting she seemed wary of me, treating me like some new acquaintance. My brother told everyone at school I had been adopted, to distance himself from what he saw as my disgrace. I let them all believe it, for I might as well have been.

Where do you wish to go. If I had said Slytherin, how different my life would have been. I would never have understood the strength of mercy, the importance of integrity. Things that, as a Slytherin, I would have seen as weaknesses. Then, I would have really been a fool.