Hello there, I've just updated the prologue, so anyone who's already read the other chapters might want to reread this one. I didn't expect to do it so quickly but it only ended up taking a few hours, very fast considering my inability to edit without procrastinating. Enjoy and review!
-Lost Boy
xxx
Prologue
Genevieve fidgeted restlessly with her pen, her train compartment seeming emptier than ever as the Hogwarts express flew through the countryside. She was going to a school of wizarding and witchcraft. She was utterly terrified, after all, who in gods name goes to a school of wizarding and witchcraft! There were so many things completely unknown to her, there were so many things to fret about. What if she couldn't do any of the spells, what if nobody liked her, what if they realised she wasn't magical enough and sent her home?
Glancing down at her lap, she was only reminded of how strange this situation was. Her local newspaper sat in her lap, the most boring and ordinary thing one could possibly think of. It lay flipped open to the crossword section but she couldn't bring herself to fill it out. She had loved crosswords for years, proudly claiming herself to be a nerdy grandma in primary school. Never, did she expect to use these words in any real situations, but it was comforting to have her own little world of knowledge for nobody but her. Completing crosswords would usually help calm her nerves but today she found herself unable to process the words written before her. She wasn't one to grow nervous, but today was one of the few exceptions. Today her new life began. For as long as she could remember she had been different. If it wasn't her geeky tendencies it was the odd occurrences that always seemed to surround her. Needless to say, she hadn't been overly popular at primary school.
It had been quite a shock to her mother, Ingrid when Genevieve began displaying signs of magic. She had always known herself to be magical, but in the daydreaming of toddlers, she had assumed everyone was the same. The first time her poor mother had stumbled upon her accidental magic had been somewhat trying. It was only a few days after Genevieve's seventh birthday and she had been attempting to find the leftover cake. Wandering to the kitchen she had eventually spotted the cake container above the fridge. Dragging a stool before the fridge she clambered onto it, clumsily as ever. Of course, being an uncoordinated child came with its disadvantages and standing on her tippy-toes to reach a container of cake, no matter how reasonable the course of action had seemed in her seven-year-old mind, lead nowhere but the ground. Her foot had slipped just as her fingertips brushed against the container, but instead of crashing to the ground, she had landed easily on her feet, floating to the ground with the cake container following soon after.
Looking up, she found her mother, who had wanted nothing more than a cup of tea, standing in the doorway. Ingrid was frozen in shock with her mouth hanging open like a fish. She was not an easy person to surprise but seeing her daughter literally fly to the ground threw her for a moment. Giggling as she excitedly dug into the container of cake Genevieve failed to notice that her mother hadn't moved an inch. She did, however, notice as a loud crack filled the air. She had yelped in surprise, looking up to find a professional looking man in rather odd-looking clothing. From what she can remember Ingrid had tried attacking the man, thinking him to be an alien who had possessed her daughter or something of the like. Eventually, the man had calmed her down enough to explain that he worked for a place called the ministry of magic and that his job was to explain magic to muggle families with a magical child. At the time it had all seemed like a dream to Genevieve, that there was a world of magic out there waiting for her.
But there was a world of magic waiting, and here she was on a train speeding towards it dressed in robes and with a wand in her pocket. She was in such a daze that she nearly flinched as the compartment door creaked loudly, sliding open to reveal a boy with a wild mane of dark hair.
"Sorry to disturb," the boy said with an easy smile. "Is that seat taken? My compartment was getting a bit crowded."
Genevieve shook her head, indicating that the boy was free to take a seat.
"I'm Sirius Black."
He leaned over to shake her hand, making Genevieve raise a brow. She didn't know many eleven-year-olds who shook hands upon meeting someone. Maybe it was a wizarding thing.
Nevertheless, she put on her best manners, not wanting to make a bad impression on someone she might be stuck with for the next seven years, and reached out to grasp his hand. "Genevieve Shafiq."
"So you're a pureblood then?" he asked as he dropped her hand.
Genevieve frowned. "A what?"
"A pureblood, you know, someone whose family is magical." The boy seemed surprised that she didn't recognise the term.
"I don't think so. Mum and I didn't know magic even existed until a few years ago."
"Oh. People might think that you're pureblood. Shafiq is one of the sacred twenty-eight pureblood families. Part of pureblood education to know about them." At her alarmed expression, he quickly reassured her that it wasn't a requirement to know these things. "It's a load of dragon dung, you definitely don't need to know it for Hogwarts. What about your father though, is he a muggle?"
She shrugged, muggle was a term that she did know. "Probably."
He wrinkled his nose in confusion, "What do you mean, probably?"
She shrugged. "I've never met him, and Mum only did once, she can't even remember his face."
Sirius grimaced. "Well, if you end up around any of the crazy purebloods just let them think that you're the same as them. Some of them can be nuts about that stuff."
"Are you pureblood?" she asked, testing out the new word.
"Yup," he said, popping the p as he leaned back in his seat. "My family go in for the whole anti-muggle thing. Slytherins' to the core the lot of them are. I won't be like that though."
Her brows pinched as she tried to recall the Hogwarts houses that she had read about. "Slytherin… that's the house of ambition and cunning, isn't it? What does that have to do with purebloods?"
He bit his cheek, silver eyes growing somewhat darker. "Trust me, you'll be better off steering clear of the Slytherins. If they find out that you're muggleborn they'll make your life a living hell."
Sirius might have intended his words to clear her conscious, but they did anything but that. Surely not everybody in Slytherin house was bad, possessing two fairly basic attributes didn't mean that someone was automatically a horrible person. The cunning might make them a little untrustworthy, but surely not evil.
"Agree to disagree," she muttered, still apprehensive.
The boy seemed shocked that she wasn't taking her word for it and cried out in an exasperated manner, "Come on! Even the dark lord was in Slytherin."
"He the…" She wracked her memory, thinking of the newspaper she had bought in Diagon Alley. "The one who's been killing people? I think I saw that in a newspaper."
Sirius nodded. "He's completely off his rocker, thinks that muggleborns shouldn't have magic."
"And how does that make every other Slytherin bad?" She asked, genuinely confused as to why Sirius would think in such a manner, was it the wizarding perspective?
"Because—because he's a murderer!"
"That's like saying that because I'm from Bromley and there was at least one bad person there that I'm a bad person too."
She rolled her eyes, talking to Sirius suddenly didn't seem half as appealing as it had five minutes ago. Instead, she looked down to her crossword, twirling her pen in her hand before scratching down a word. The sound of pen on paper filling the compartment for a few minutes as neither spoke. She paused in her crossword, stuck on one word in particular. What meant 'shining', started with an L, ended with a D and was only five letters long? The only words that she could think matched up with the letters were either lurid or lucid, but neither meant 'shining'.
"You need help with that?"
Genevieve looked up to see Sirius, she could see traces of guilt on his face and wondered if this was his bad attempt at apologising. He definitely didn't seem like the apologetic type. "18 across, it's a word for 'shining', starts with L and ends with D, five letters long."
The boy rubbed his elbow until she saw something click in his eyes. "Lucid!"
Her brows furrowed. "Isn't lucid a type of dreaming?"
"Yeah, but it means bright too."
She grinned up at him, writing down lucid. "Sirius Black, a dictionary, didn't expect that."
"Hey, you're the one doing a crossword!"
She cracked a smile, she might disagree with Sirius' views on Slytherins, but the guy was good company. As the train slowed to a halt she clumsily pushed aside her sleeves to check the time on her new watch, still unused to robes. They were right on schedule.
Sirius stood, bowing jokingly as she folded up her newspaper. "Are you ready to depart my lady?" He asked in an overly posh voice.
Giggling, Genevieve curtseyed. "Why of course good sir."
They looped their arms and skipped out of the compartment, a far cry from the awkward silence of a few minutes ago. In the moment she was too distracted to pay much thought to the fact that Sirius was essentially a stranger to her, she knew his name and not much else. But as she stepped closer to a world of magic, it didn't seem to matter. She felt like Dorothy, heading off down the yellow brick road into a land of the unknown.
"What are you singing?" Sirius asked, perplexed.
Genevieve's eyes widened, embarrassed. She hadn't even noticed her humming to the tune of the wonderful wizard of Oz.
"Oh, the—the Wizard of Oz. It's a muggle thing."
"And let me guess, this wizard wears a long sparkly robe and a pointed hat."
"No actually. The Wizard of Oz isn't a wizard at all, just really good at tricking people."
"You're kidding!" Sirius laughed, baffled by the muggle version of a wizard.
"Nope, but I bet he would've been a Slytherin."
xxx
"Shafiq, Genevieve."
She could've sworn that her heart stopped beating when Professor McGonagall called out her name before a hall of students. Hesitantly, she made her way through the crowd of nervous first years and up to the staff table. Each step was more difficult than the last as she felt hundreds of eyes on her back. She had never been afraid to start up a conversation, but to have your every move watched by a crowd of strangers was something else entirely. As she approached the sorting hat, Professor McGonagall plucked the hat from the stool, allowing her to take a seat. The last thing that she saw before the sorting hat came down past her eyes was Sirius giving her an encouraging thumbs up, no doubt hoping she'd place in Gryffindor. He himself sat at Gryffindor table, seated with the crowd of boys from his first compartment on the train. James, Remus and Peter if she remembered correctly.
Her sight blinded by the overly large hat, she heard a tiny voice in her ear. It was so quiet at first that she thought that she had imagined its grandfatherly mumblings. It reminded her of her own grandfather, although he had been naturally been using that similar voice to do a lot of grumbling since being put in a wheelchair.
"Well, well, what do we have here?"
When the mumblings finally formed words she was so shocked that she nearly jumped off the seat. She had heard it call out other students houses to the hall but she hadn't expected it to speak directly to her.
"A sharp mind and eagerness to learn, that's good, very good. Could land you in Ravenclaw but there's bravery there too. Oh yes, a great deal of bravery and righteousness. Very ambitious you are, cunning too. Loyal as well, well aren't you a tough one…" The voice seemed to trail off as it fell into deep thought.
'Where—where will I do well?' Genevieve thought.
"You could do well in any of the four houses, I suppose."
'Where will I do the best?' She asked adamantly.
"You want to succeed, do you? You must be warned that triumph does not always equate to happiness, my dear."
'Put me where I will succeed,' she demanded silently.
Happiness was momentary, but success could change your whole life.
The hat almost sighed. "Very well. If that is what you wish.
"SLYTHERIN" it shouted out loud, creating a loud chorus of applauding from the far right side of the hall.
The hat was taken from her head and she allowed a nervous smile to cross her face as she turned her gaze to the cheering table. Her smile faded slightly as her gaze passed over the Gryffindor table, landing on Sirius. He looked shocked and betrayed, almost as if being Slytherin made her as terrible as the Dark Lord himself. Guilt began chewing on her chest before she shook herself. What was she doing? Being in Slytherin didn't make her a bad person, even if that was how Sirius saw it she had nothing to be sorry for. She had been placed in Slytherin for a reason. It would do her no good to dwell on what might have been if she ended up in Gryffindor.
She smiled as she headed to her house table, seating herself beside a third year with a mess of hair so alike Sirius's.
"Andromeda Black, nice to meet you." The girl extended a hand, she must've been related to Sirius somehow, maybe a cousin.
Pushing the thought from her mind Genevieve turned to shake her hand.
"Genevieve Shafiq."
She was a Slytherin now, and she would bear her house colours proudly.
xxx
Genevieve hugged her mother goodbye outside Kings Cross Station. It had been five years since she had first been placed in Slytherin, and she had found that Black was incorrect in his judgement of the house. While it was true that there were more pureblood fanatics than not, there were some truly amazing people.
"I'm going to miss you mum," Genevieve murmured as she drew back from her mothers embrace.
"What am I, chopped liver?" A voice piped up to her left.
She rolled her eyes, turning to her grandfather, "You too, Poppa"
Reaching down to his wheelchair, she carefully embraced the fragile man, although he'd be very much offended to know that she was thinking such a thing, no matter how true it was. Edmund had stayed with them for the holidays after his wife had passed away. Her death had been a long time coming, with years spent in and out of hospitals, but it hadn't made it hurt any less, for Edmund particularly. Being in a wheelchair at age seventy-five tended to make life quite difficult. He had a carer, but it wasn't safe for him to live alone, not in a wheelchair at such an old age. He had moved in with Ingrid and Genevieve in Bromley, annoyingly waking them up at six am every single day without fail, even if it was the holidays for some people.
He didn't know about magic yet but Genevieve had been searching for a loophole in the statute of secrecy. Edmund found it rather odd that his granddaughter had a pet toad, but that was no cause to believe that she was a witch. As far as he knew she went to a prestigious school in Scotland thanks to a Latin scholarship. Most of that technically wasn't untrue, Hogwarts was a prestigious school in Scotland that used Latin as the base of most spellwork and the ministry did assist muggleborn's with school payments. However, she definitely wasn't good enough with Latin to merit a scholarship. She desperately wanted him to know the truth, but she feared that it might endanger him. The dark lord was a far greater threat now than he had been when she was first introduced to the wizarding world.
Pulling back, she smiled fondly, "I'll write you guys,"
Her mother came to stand behind her grandfather, gripping his wheelchair. "You'd better," she joked before a tender look crossed her features. "We'll miss you, sweetie. Christmas couldn't come sooner."
Edmund looked up at his daughter, placing his hand over hers with a toothy grin, "Come now Ingrid, we wouldn't want to cramp Genevieve's style."
"You could never do such a thing" Genevieve chuckled as she reached down to kiss his scratchy cheek before doing this same to her mother, "I'll see you for Christmas."
She stayed behind, watching as Ingrid wheeled Edmund off to their particularly scrappy car, waiting until they were out of view before she turned towards the train station. Heaving her trunk and her pet toad Ignotus's cage onto a trolley, she walked towards platform nine and three-quarters, spotting a few familiar faces, some friendly and some unfriendly. Running through the barrier, rickety trolley shook loudly causing Ignotus to croak in irritation.
Emerging on platform nine and three-quarters was like a breath of fresh air. After hiding her magic all holidays, it was a relief to be surrounded by it once more. The buzz of magic filled the atmosphere, chocolate frogs hopping from the sweaty grips of children and enchanted paper planes soaring to and fro. Genevieve had to pause for a moment to take it all in. As much as she loved her muggle family, magic was a huge part of who she was as a person. She liked going home and pretending that she was an ordinary girl, and that magic was nothing more than a fantasy, but it was with magic that she truly belonged.
Taking a deep breath she pushed her way through the crowded platform, hauling her trunk and Ignotus's cage from the trolley. She only had a few minutes before the train began its long journey. Hauling her belongings down the train she searched for a certain familiar face. She found said familiar face halfway down the train with her nose in a healing journal. Stowing away her trunk, she pushed open the compartment door.
Andromeda Black looked nearly identical to the last time Genevieve had seen her. She was still ridiculously pale, still tall with a broad pair of shoulders and a wild mane of hair so alike to her cousin and her nutty sister Bellatrix. Her hair had turned a soft caramel brown after spending summer out in the sun. The one thing that she knew would never change wasn't her pale skin or her tall stature. It was the ever-present warmth in Andy's eyes. It baffled her to think that people thought her cruel, all one needed to do was spend a minute in her company to know how kind-hearted she was.
Dropping her book to the seat, Andy stood, pulling her into a hug. As she stepped back from her she plucked Ignotus's cage from Genevieve's fingers. Soon enough she was sitting in her seat, and cooing at him as if he was the cutest thing she had ever seen, rather than a warty toad. Genevieve loved Ignotus, but cute was one thing she would never associate with toads.
She chuckled as she took a seat by the window, "I missed you too Andy,"
Andy looked up at her friend with a flustered grin, "You know I missed you, Jen, you don't need me to tell you that." she said as she coaxed Ignotus out of his cage, scratching his slimy head.
Plopping the toad down beside her, she turned to face her friend, "How were your holidays? I do wish you'd let me visit sometime."
Genevieve nervously picked at her fingernails, Andy didn't know of her heritage and she was never quite sure what to say in relation to her family.
Deciding on blatantly ignoring the second half of her question she answered. "The holiday's were good, yours?"
"It could have been worse I suppose," she sighed.
The train rumbled to life, beginning to the long journey to Scotland. Genevieve wasn't sure whether or not she should further question Andy. Her home life was rather tense and sometimes she questioned whether or not her friend was truly safe there. Andy, while still a believer in the importance of acknowledging pureblood heritage, held no ill will against muggleborns. If she did she definitely wouldn't be snogging Ted Tonks. But with Bellatrix Black for a sister she knew better than to voice her opinions on the matter.
Feeling brave, Genevieve opened her mouth, "What happened? Bellatrix didn't hurt you did she?"
Andy shook her head, "No, Bella wasn't home for most of the summer. It's Sirius I'm worried about."
She blinked in shock, she and Black had not been on good terms since that first train ride. Both of them were perfectly happy pretending that the other didn't exist. He didn't go out of their way to make life hell for her as he and his fellow marauders did for many other Slytherins, but she suspected that had little to do with her and was more due to gratitude for Andy. Black and Andy were rather close, all things considered. They weren't particularly friendly, but Andy often went out of her way to prevent harm from coming to him when they returned home for the holidays.
"What did Black do this time?"
Running her fingers through her curly hair and massaging her temples, Andy responded with a little sigh, "He just doesn't know when to shut up. We had a family dinner the first week of the holidays and he denounced the dark lord in front of everyone."
"Idiot," Genevieve muttered under her breath.
It was one thing to not support the dark lord, but it was another thing entirely to denounce him, alone, in a room full of his supporters.
"Uncle Orion and Bella decided that she should stay with them for the rest of the holidays to straighten him out. I don't know if that means she actually hurt him or if she just horrified him."
In her humble opinion, Bellatrix Black, soon to be Lestrange, could be downright terrifying. With an alarming aptitude for dark magic paired with her rather psychotic tendencies, she made for a fearsome woman. Currently, she was soaring through the ranks as a death eater, much to her families delight. It was shocking to think that she had graduated from Hogwarts only two years ago, Narcissa soon after. Andy was to follow her sisters at the end of this year, with big plans to become a healer at St Mungo's. Genevieve wasn't quite sure what she would do with herself when Andy left. She had found other friends of course, particularly in Andy's cousin Regulus who was a year below them, but she would miss Andy something terrible. Being busy with her medical studies Genevieve feared she might forget the friend she had left behind at Hogwarts.
Andy shook herself out of her dark thoughts, "Anyway, let's talk about something nicer. Did you go and see the National Quidditch finals?"
She smiled in amusement, shaking her head. It wasn't much of an option while she was living as a muggle. Andy followed quidditch religiously, it had been a devastating blow for her to quit this year, her studies for healing had required her attention. Genevieve however, still played. This year would mark her second year as Slytherin's keeper.
Andy gave a little gasp, before going off on a tangent about wronskei faints.
xxx
Genevieve shivered as she and Andy waited for the thestral drawn carriages. In recent years it had become common knowledge among Slytherin students that the carriages didn't pull themselves. Although she couldn't personally see the haunting creatures, nearly every Slytherin above the fifth year could do so. The Dark Lord's attack upon both the Muggle and wizarding world had impacted the teens in unspeakable ways. Many of the senior Slytherin students were being pressured into taking the mark and tensions among the houses grew thicker with each passing day. The Gryffindors, in particular, were determined to make Slytherin pay for the loss of lives, no matter whether the unfortunate student targetted had a part in it or not.
As the carriages approached she inched closer to her friend, slipping her own quidditch calloused fingers into Andy's long and slender ones. She had been able to see the thestrals since the Easter holidays, though Genevieve still didn't know how it came to be. What she did know was how much the sight of the thestrals hurt her. Andy was talented at hiding her emotions, as were most Slytherin's, but after five years together Genevieve had begun to pick up on her tells.
As the carriage drew up before the pair Andy's eyes were glued to the beasts Genevieve couldn't see, hand clenching convulsively in her grip. Giving her friend a sidelong glance, she noticed that Andy's face remained impassive as ever, no emotion shining through her mask. She watched as she wrenched her gaze away and the pair pulled themselves into the carriage, Genevieve strategically placing them with their backs to the thestrals.
"You okay?" Genevieve asked quietly.
Andy would hate it if anybody took notice of her fear. It seemed to be a common trend with pureblood aristocracy, to never show one's emotions. She could understand why they did so, showing emotions could give enemies an upper hand over them. It would allow people to find their weaknesses and ruthlessly exploit them. And with the war creating rifts in-between the students, weaknesses were not something that most of the Slytherin house could afford.
Andy bit her lip a little, closing her eyes and breathing out a shallow puff of air, the cold night air crystallising her breath. She breathed in a deep calming breath of air, her brown eyes snapping open as she nodded with a little smile.
"I'll be fine," Andy gave her hand one last squeeze before withdrawing it and folding her hands neatly in her lap.
Genevieve looked up as two friendly faces joined them. Regulus Black and Dorcas Meadowes, a pair of fourth years in Slytherin and Ravenclaw respectively. Aside from house based events, the pair were almost never seen without one another. They seemed to have the uncanny ability to read one another's minds, not needing words to speak. It could be rather unsettling to watch. Genevieve and Dorcas sat on the border ship of friendship but instead settled for an awkward acquaintanceship, spending time with each other mostly due to Regulus.
He and Andy had always been quite close, the latter occasionally acting as a buffer between Regulus and his idiotic brother. Andy was rather protective of the younger boy. In the Black family maintaining any sort of naivety in regards to the ongoing war was an impossible feat but when he was younger Genevieve knew how hard Andy had fought to protect him from the vile truth. There had been countless arguments between them in past years about it, Regulus infuriated at being treated like a child and Andy fearful for what might become of him if he knew the truth. After watching one sister slip into a killing maniac and another into a prim faced lady who valued money above all else, her fears weren't that unrealistic. Eventually, she was forced to accept that she simply could not shield him from the truth of the war. While their relationship had become a little strained by the fighting, they came out better for it and it was clear that the pair deeply cared for one another.
The foursome chattered aimlessly as the carriage bumped along the path. Their discussion filled with pointless topics of conversation, anything but the war. At Hogwarts, there were two types of people, those who acknowledged the war in everyday life, and those who attempted to ignore it, simply for the sake of maintaining some youth. Genevieve fitted into the latter category. They wouldn't be teenagers forever, and she planned on enjoying as much of her teenage years as she could. Because at least within the walls of Hogwarts, when she knew she was safe, they could pretend the war did not exist, even for a few brief moments. Once they left Hogwarts and were employed in the wizarding world, it would be the main focus of their life. It was around the war that everything else would revolve. But for now, that was not what she wanted. For now, she could escape it.
She was jolted from her thoughts as the carriage came to a halt. Gracefully exiting the carriage Andy pulled Regulus ahead, conversing in low whispers, no doubt asking him about his brother. Clambering out in a rather less graceful manner, Genevieve and Dorcas wandered a little behind the Black cousins in an awkward silence.
"Is Andy okay?" Dorcas asked nervously, almost as if she feared it was a question she shouldn't be allowed to ask.
Genevieve arranged her face into what she hoped appeared to be a reassuring smile, "She's alright, just a little worried about Black." She didn't need to specify which Black she was talking about.
Dorcas seemed a little startled, like a deer in headlights. "Sirius? Regulus doesn't talk much about him. I barely know anything about him."
"And what do you know about him? That he's a bit of a douchebag?"
She smiled timidly, "That sounds about right,"
The pair was silent for a few moments more before Dorcas tentatively asked: "What do you think of him, Sirius I mean?"
Genevieve looked up at her with a frown, why was she asking her of all people about Black? No doubt simply convenience. She and Black hadn't exchanged more than two words since the welcoming feast in the first year, and nobody knew that but his fellow marauders whom she had been introduced to on the way to the fleet of boats. But still, why was Dorcas asking her? Why was she asking at all?
Dorcas was flustered, "I only mean… I want to understand who he is for Regulus's sake. As a friend, you know? And Regulus can be a bit… judgemental about him. Rightly, of course, it's just that... I thought since you two are in so many of the same classes that you might be able to tell me something about him."
That was somewhat of a surprise, she had though Regulus and Dorcas knew every tiny detail about one another. Biting her lip and threading her fingers together Genevieve's mind scrambled to formulate a response. She thought back to their brief association in the first year and all the shitty pranks he had played on Slytherin house since then. While Dorcas was a nice girl, Genevieve really didn't know her all that well. She wasn't sure which aspect of Black's behaviour she wanted to know about but she probably didn't need Genevieve to tell her that he was an asshat.
"I think that he has good intentions. But I think that he goes about them the wrong way."
Looking up from her clasped hands she found that Dorcas was frowning a little, but she appeared to have reached some form of conclusion about the infamous Sirius Black, "Thanks a bunch."
Genevieve smiled, "Anytime, but I will warn you that I don't know much about him, we don't exactly talk much,"
"Shafiq! Meadowes!"
At the sound of her surname, Genevieve's head snapped upwards, searching for the source of the noise. Andy was waving her over, impatiently hovering by the entrance of the great hall with Regulus. Rolling her eyes at Andy's impatience both she and Dorcas jogged over to their friends and entered the great hall. Dorcas quickly waved goodbye, giving Regulus a brief hug before seating herself at the Ravenclaw table. The remaining trio returned to their own house table, taking their seats among Slytherin house.