Sonder.
Do you know what that word means?
Don't worry, for those non Ravenclaws among us, I'll elucidate.
It's the realization that each passerby has an existence as vivid and complex as your own.
Be that a sprawling metropolis of interconnected lives each with their own inherent doubts, ambitions and insecurities that you may never once posses in the fleeting time you are given to make your mark on the world.
So perhaps it's not fair to judge those so harshly, for what each person shows you of their life may appear as undamaged as a newly bloomed rose yet beneath each flower is that which you cannot see. Those are the troubles which us as humans almost instinctively suppress in a frail attempt to convince ourselves that we are intact when in actuality it wouldn't be wrong to conclude otherwise.
It's at times like these that I believe it's only right to treat others with the uttermost compassion as once everyone's carefully constructed facades are stripped back, we are all just human.
But then people like Alfie Marsden walk over to you with their charming smiles and incommodious arrogance and I can't help but to think, screw kindness.
"Hello gorgeous," he stood all but a metre in front of me, eyes undressing every inch of my body, "I don't think I've ever seen you around before." A toothy smile was flashed my way, not the friendly sort though, this was the kind that quite clearly told me that I was the next victim on his ever growing list of girls he would offer a private tour of his bedroom to. A list which, unlike the majority of the female population of Hogwarts, I would be quick in my attempts to remove my name from.
It was inevitable really, he has seemingly hooked up with most of the single girls in our year that are considered over a five, thus he has now been forced to lower his standards to the likes of myself. Apparently, by the end of fifth year, he'd already made his way through the entirety of the'fit list' that's scrawled across one of the cubicle doors in Myrtle's bathrooms much to her disdain.
Many teenagers crave attention, relishing in the recognition it brings about, and those who don't, the kind who sit at the side of a party content in watching everyone live their lives - the wallflowers of society - still have their close circles of friends, to laugh with, to cry with. But I was neither, all I asked for was anonymity.
To all who took more than a second to look at me, and I mean really look, they'd notice that I was standing taller than most others, my smile feigned, my posture rigid and my eyes vacant, watching but not always seeing.
In the summer before my twelfth birthday, I sat before the inordinate mirror that hung on one of our many bathroom walls, legs crossed and scissors in hand. At first I cut only a few strands, letting the almost silvery locks fall through my fingers, but I cut again, then once more and I kept doing so until I was sat within a circle of my own hair and that which remained on my head was only an inch or two long. My mother had screeched when she'd seen what I had done - like a hippogriff threatened by some inconsiderate student, though she was angry, not scared - whilst my father had stood a few paces behind her, failing in his attempts a suppress a smile. To add insult to injury, instead of wearing the fitted blouse and tight pencil skirt she had purposely bought for my uniform, when I boarded the Hogwarts Express in my first year, I'd put them to one side opting for the loosest fitting shirt I could find paired with some rather baggy trousers.
I looked irrefutably plain.
Yet in the social sphere of Hogwarts where ordinary equalled invisible, that was exactly what I had wanted.
That was how it remained, for five years, until this summer when my mother decided that she was not going to put up with it anymore as, and I quote, 'Aria Lorelei Rosier you will not find yourself any fitting suitors if most of them mistake you for a boy'. In case you were wondering, her idea of 'fitting' means rich and of pureblood decent, aren't I lucky?
It was mere minutes after she made that statement that I was viciously attacked with multiple bottles of Manegro solution and Sleekeasy's hair potion, hence my once dishevelled mop that lay atop my head has been replaced by a cascade of loose curls that nearly reach my waist.
"You mustn't have been paying much attention then," I raised my gaze to meet his. There was no denying he was attractive: honey blonde hair with sculpted cheekbones and the kind of celestine eyes that have girls all over the school falling out of their seats. Quite literally in some cases, the small scar in the centre of Matilda Vain's forehead isn't from a quidditch accident like she tells everyone.
He may have the beguiling good looks more often seen within the pages of Witch Weekly than the halls of a wizarding school but his personality, characterised by narcissism, did leave much to be desired.
"Well I'm paying attention now aren't I?," he interjected, the lazy smile still hovering on his face, "So how about it. You, me and a bottle of firewhiskey, my dorm tonight?"
It's sad to think that pretty much all of the other girls he's used that line on would now proceed to squeal 'yes of course' whilst flicking their hair over their shoulder with some vexatious giggle that would make me want to rip my own hair right out of my scalp. Instead of doing that, rolled my eyes with purpose. I'm an ambitious girl, that's something I've always been, but I can't say that I've ever aspired to be one of the many notches on Alfie Marsden's bedpost.
"There's many things I want to do this year and I'm sorry but you just aren't one of them," I stated, quite bluntly if I'm honest. The boyish smile fell into a frown moments before a look of utter confusion swept across his features, like I said, he's not used to being turned down.
Maybe in a surprising turn of events, I shall be the one to induce Alfie Marsden's crippling fear of rejection although seeing as he's just winked at the seventh year who was ferociously batting her eyelashes at him from the other end of the platform, it seems unlikely.
He cocked his head slightly, almost as if he was trying to sift through my current thoughts, "what's your name?"
"So you ask me back to your dorm before you even know my name?" I inquired, purposely keeping my tone emotionless in an attempt to frustrate him; keeping sentiment out of things was one of the many unfortunate skills I had to learn as a pureblood child but it does come in useful occasionally.
"Thought I'd cut the bullshit, might as well skip to the good part right?" he asked with clear confidence as if he expected me to have had a sudden change of heart and now wanted to willingly leap into his bed tonight.
I had not by the way, just to make that absolutely clear to you.
"Wrong," I quipped, causing a slight falter in his smile.
"We'll see about that," he replied, shooting me one final smirk before he was carried away by the churning current of frantic parents shouting forlorn goodbyes to the children who were more than happy to return to the castle. A first year ran across the spot where he was stood moments ago, eyes alight with excitement as she stared at the train, blue ribboned pigtails trailing behind her showcasing the clear bias her parents had towards what I'd assume was their house back in the day.
It was at that exact moment, when I snapped out of my daydream, that I realised I had not in fact removed my name from the list as intended, but written it in bold, circled it and then underlined it for good measure.
He saw me now as a challenge, so a challenge I would be.
The crowds at King's Cross station today were truly quite unique. Young children frantically running around grasping tightly the metal cages in which housed more than a couple rather discontented owls, their parents often standing out just as much as them with their billowing velveteen robes trailing behind them as they ran straight through what appears to be a solid stone wall. To this day, I still can't quite understand how the muggles have yet discover the annual chaos that erupts on Platform 9 ¾.
And so I stood there, alone in the centre of a crowded station, life swarming around me - children running, mothers fretting, teenagers smiling - and I relished in the disarray momentarily before I was dragged back to reality by a voice which I was less than pleased to hear.
"Aria dear," an impeccably presented, yet somewhat overdressed woman walked up to me, rich brown curls grazing her shoulders with every step she took, "that boy," her gaze was focused on Marsden's back, a pucker forming between her brows, "he wasn't a muggleborn was he?"
"No mother," I politely answered with a small shake of my head. I fingered the hem of my dress lightly - the knee-length, cornflower blue one she had insisted I wore to 'keep up appearances' - and smoothed it down where the fabric was beginning to crease. As I watched the accumulating crowds, a sea of ripped jeans, oversized jumpers and converse trainers, I suddenly felt incredibly overdressed but there was nothing that could be done now.
"Good," she smiled slightly, "you know what I've told you about those sort of people, only talk to them if necessary but don't ignore them completely. We don't need to give reasons for the likes of Harry Potter and his sort to interfere in our business now do we?" she said his name with an air of disgust, like just saying those words left a foul taste resting upon her tongue.
By 'his sort' she meant people who actually cared about muggleborns and treated them with the same respect they would show any other person.
People like me.
"No of course not," I dutifully replied in a fake tone of distaste which had been perfected over many years of lying through my teeth to please my family. I let my gaze wander over to the man in question where he stood near the scarlet engine wearing a smile of pure adoration as he hugged his daughter tightly, kissing her on the forehead before reluctantly letting her go and putting his arm back around his wife's waist. I couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy, he was the man who embodied everything I was taught to despise yet I wished my mother would love me the way he loved his children, unconditionally.
As soon as Lily had bounded off across the platform in search of one of her friends, he turned around to send a cautious glance in the direction of our group, eyes scanning across each member before turning back to his own family.
The Sacred Eight.
Three words, referring to our group, that were so commonly inscribed upon the front page of The Daily Prophet, usually followed by some scandalous article that was plagued with inaccuracies. It takes little imagination to assume what my mother would say if she knew I've perused through the odd copy in the past,'Aria I do not want to see you reading that kind of balderdash again, do you understand? You are a Rosier not just some common witch,' to which I would reply with a monotonous 'Yes of course mother'.
But that's besides my point, eight was once twenty eight but many of the once famous pureblood families were wiped out during the great wizarding wars or their blood purity was lost due to marriages out of the respectable households.
Now all that remain are the bloodlines Fawley, Avery, Yaxley, Sewlyn, Carrow, Nott, Rowle and then of course there's us, Rosier.
The Malfoys, in all their blonde haired glory, are sometimes classed as a ninth addition, as Lucius' son, the family heir, married the pureblood Astoria Greengrass, so they often attend our events yet are not fully integrated into the group as their views are entirely reformed unlike everyone else's. I mean come on, his son is best friends with Albus Potter of all people, can you even get anymore reformed than that?
Most of The Sacred Eight, my mother of course being one of them, despise the Malfoy's for being 'blood traitors'. However, with them being the only pureblood family loved by the media since Mr Malfoy became friends with Harry Potter not long after the war, they hold status and in times where purebloods are judged and hated, status is everything.
"Honey, go and speak to your cousin Octavia," my mother instructed in a tone considerably less sweet than her words. At the mention of her name, a shorter girl with flowing blonde locks practically skipped up to me and thrust her arms tightly around me in what I would consider to be an extreme invasion of personal space.
"Aw Aria, I've missed you," the high pitch squeal with which she delivered that line, elicited a dull ringing in my left ear which I hoped wouldn't bother me for the entirety of the train journey to Hogwarts. After longer than was comfortable, she released me from the hug but kept her hands on my shoulders, holding me at arm's length. Her eyes moved across the entirety of my body before she broke out into a smile, her perfectly straight teeth shown off to the world, "Wow Ari, you look amazing," she exclaimed before turning to my mother, "Ariadne, I love what you've done to her hair, I've been trying to get her to grow it out for so long, how did you manage to convince her?"
"With great difficulty," she laughed, smiling fondly at her, "but I completely agree, doesn't it just look so much nicer than that awful style she wore before?"
"Truly," she replied flashing me a vaguely apologetic smile while my mother was looking the other way, probably seeking out Catarina Fawley
Ah yes, now is probably a fitting time to mention that Octavia Maria Avery is the daughter my mother always wished she had, polite and beautifully well presented with an impeccable taste in fashion and of course, Slytherin.
The way the light caught her platinum hair made it glow against tan skin and the emerald hued dress that hugged her figure perhaps a little too much. It was obvious to all who laid eyes on her that veela blood ran in the family.
It may surprise you a little to hear that I really don't care all that much anymore, I got over the jealousy a long time ago. Much to the annoyance of the girls I shared a dormitory with, I cried myself to sleep every night for the first term of my debut year at Hogwarts but then as the months have passed by I've just grown to care less and less.
It may be sad to say that I've gotten to the point in my life where I prefer it this way, being the family disappointment meant I had less of the limelight and so I don't have to keep up appearances quite so much.
If I'm being truly honest, with the exception of Scorpius Malfoy, she's my favourite one in the group as although she still believes purebloods are superior she'll still happily have a civil conversation with a muggleborn and when she found out my best friend was one, she covered for me so our families never found out. The only people she really doesn't see eye to eye with is quite obviously the Potters and the Weasley's but even I don't mind some of them, I'm a pathetic excuse for a Rosier. I know.
"It really does look better than before Ari," she gushed, flattening pieces of my slightly windswept hair as she spoke.
"Well I am going to have to thank you for that backhanded compliment", I said, tucking my hair behind my ears to free my face from the mesh of strands that covered it prior, "I'll see you in the prefect meeting."
Octavia nodded in response to that, subconsciously brushing her fingers across little green prefect's badge that was pinned proudly to her dress before returning to bid farewell to her own parents.
"Goodbye darling, I'll be seeing you at Christmas," my mother said before enveloping me into a noticeably awkward hug, "remember everything I told you and look after yourself, I love you."
I nodded wordlessly before she turned away to begin a conversation with Octavia's mother which was likely about as interesting as one of Professor Binns' double history lessons.
My arm jerked backwards violently as a young sandy haired boy who I'd guess, based on his height and undefined features, was in his third year, bumped into me in his haste. He began to turn so that he could face me, speaking as he did so, "I'm sorry, I'm in a bit of -"
His sentence stopped, mouthing forming a simple, "Oh," when he finally faced me, taking in my attire and the group I stood next to, "I-I'm sorry, well, I didn't, it's n-not, really I am sorry, truly, I -"
I held up a hand to mute his panicked rambling, "it's fine," I smiled, "don't worry about it." The boy's shoulders visibly relaxed as he gave a small nod and ran off a little quicker than was necessary. That was one of the handful of times that someone at Hogwart's had noticed my connection to The Sacred Eight, unfortunately, it was far from being the last.
My attention moved to my father who stood a few feet away from our group, his expression stern and imposing, "Aria listen to what your mother told you and do as she said, okay?"
His stare remained fixed on me, expectant of an answer or at least some form of recognition. The small smile I failed to conceal was response enough for him to walk over before tightly wrapping his arms around me. "I'm only joking," this time his words were whispered, right next to my ear, so that only I could hear, "ignore everything she says."
His embrace was comforting, familiar, not full of expectation and formalities like my mother's, he cared and I needed that.
"I will," I laughed quietly into his chest, gratefully returning the hug, "you know me dad."
"Unfortunately I do," he sighed with a genuine smile, the kind that reached your eyes with a sparkle and made your emotions sing. Despite being a few feet away from the main group, whose attention was captured by trivial conversation, he still spoke in a hushed voice so they couldn't overhear what we were saying.
"Hey," I exclaimed with more indignance than would normally be acceptable for a pureblood child, hitting him lightly on the arm to make my point.
"Ah resorting to violence now are we, what have you become?" He tried to keep his expression stern for a moment but lasted about three seconds before a grin spread proudly across his face, telling the world how much he enjoyed winding me up.
"See, I can just blame that on you since you're the one who brought me up."
"You would now, wouldn't you," he kissed me on the forehead tightening his grip for a moment then released me just before my breathing could be further constricted.
"I love you so much sweetie," he ruffled my once sleek hair causing little bits to stand at weird angles and fall in front of my eyes.
"I'm going to miss you dad," I murmured, giving him a final brief hug before turning to face the crowds of people swarming the train, more than ready to leave for Hogwarts after an arduous summer spent with my parents. Straightening my dress one final time, I strode into the heart of the chaos, suede heels clicking merrily against the concrete platform.
Author's Note:
This is a story I originally started to write on and I'm kinda heartbroken that it is closing down, so in response to that I am moving my stories across to here.
I hope you all like it, and more chapters will follow :)
~ Charlie ~