Mercy sat at the Gryffindor table with her head down. She never talked to anyone at the table. She watched as Hermione Granger and Harry Potter laughed at their friend Ron Weasley. He had spit milk out his nose. She wished she could be down there, wished she could be their friend. But no one ever really saw Mercy Pensen. She had come to Hogwarts in her fifth year from Donigan, a school in the United States of America. Now it was her seventh year.
Mercy remembered the end of last year when Harry Potter had defeated Lord Voldemort for good. Now he and his friends were back for their last year. It was her last year also so she could move away from her parents. Mercy's parents were both from really prominent families in America. Sometimes she wished that she had been born to a normal family. Her parents thought the same sometimes too. They had both been very popular in school and were very disappointed when she turned out to keep to herself. The thing that upset her parents the most was that she wasn't great at anything. She got exceptional grades of course but never great grades in anything but Care of Magical Creatures. They thought this was irrelevant because no one ever got bad grades in Professor Hagrid's class.
The truth of course was that the only thing Mercy loved about magic was the creatures. Dragons were her favorite. Sometimes she would go to Hagrid's cabin and ask him if he could give her names of books to read that were all about dragons. Hagrid had told her a story once of how he had had a dragon named Norbert who turned out to be a girl. He told her about how Harry Potter had asked Ron Weasley's brother to take Norbert. Charlie Weasley was his name. Mercy had wanted to meet this Charlie Weasley.
Now as she sat at breakfast time and read the new book Hagrid had suggested she wondered if she would ever get to see a dragon. Then she heard the familiar voice of Headmistress McGonagall.
"All seventh year students are to report back in the great hall after your first class for your career assessments." She said with a slight smile and then turned and swept from the room.