The Sorting Ceremony had not been easy for Sophie Livefire. The rest of the Hogwarts students that had piled into the Great Hall only moments before could tell something was off about the young girl. After all, the longer you took to be sorted the stranger you must be.
In Ms. Livefire's mind, the Sorting Hat was stirring something distasteful.
The Hat spoke with utter confusion, "Your mind is strange. I can see great darkness in your head, but why do you fight it? Why do you choose to be other than what you are meant to be?"
Ms. Sophie Livefire spoke in a whisper, hoping no one else could hear, "Because I am not dark. I am good! I've never hurt anyone."
The Hat interrupted, "O, but you want to! I can feel it rousing inside your thoughts. You crave action, something to pursue or maybe… something to hunt."
The Sorting Hat stopped to process its facts about the very unusual girl, "You are smart dear; you are brave, but not stupid enough to put yourself in danger. You are also cunning, but humble. You are dark, but light follows suit with you fighting so fervently day and night. Very curious. Very curious."
Sophie said nothing. He was right after all. An orphaned girl, fetched by a strange ginger-haired professor with a suitcase monogramed with the letter G.W. comes to tell her she's a magical being and that she must come to Hogwarts, a school for potential great witches, is allowed to have a bit of darkness in her life. But the evil in her was unquenched and it thirsted for spontaneity, for something of heavy sustenance. She hated herself for it.
Sophie Livefire knew of course never to act on these instincts, but her strange ability did not help to squander the cruel imagination that ran wild in her head.
"Well," she said quietly, "do I get a choice of which house I'm accepted into?"
The Hat smiled wickedly, "There is always a choice if you wish to make it."
The eleven-year old Sophie Livefire responded too quickly, too sure to the Sorting Hat's suggestion, "If the choice is mine…" she smiled sweetly, hinting of bitter emotion, "…then I choose for you to pick my house. You are the Sorting Hat after all."
"Before I send you to your house Livefire, may I ask why you have the wits to let me choose when you could do the very thing yourself?"
She let a laugh escape out-loud. The entire Great Hall became filled with an uncomfortable silence. The candles flickered as the robed figures stared at her intensely with question and for some, fear. She swung her legs back and forth under the stool, tugging at her robe unconsciously. Suddenly her lavender eyes turned a deep and dark shade of purple.
"Because Mr. Sorting Hat, sir, I know exactly what house you will put me in."
"And how is that, child?"
"Because. I can see the future."
With the last escape of those whispered words, the Sorting Hat shouted the girl's house name, allowing it to echo and dance throughout the Great Hall. In an instance, all of the glowing candles that hung in the air blew out, leaving a single wax candle to burn its flame, a single candle that rose above Sophie Livefire's head.
Headmaster McGonagall, with a simple flick of her wrist, lit the Great Hall once more for the night. Soon the students erupted with cheer. Sophie Livefire released of her smile, afraid of attracting more attention than necessary.
She walked on towards her house table, going through the small amount of new students that were still to be sorted. She accidentally brushed past one of the boys in the crowd, hurriedly trying to get by, and in her attempt to say sorry to the boy she looked back only to see him walking up to the Sorting Hat. She stopped to watch. His hair was jet black, his smile genuine and full of light, but his eyes were what struck her.
They were a lovely shade of green.
The professor had called his name. Sophie whispered to herself, scolding her mental capacity for not remembering the name. She took only a second more to realize the young boy's name was Albus Potter. Sophie had never heard the name before. It sounded strange, odd in a way, but she had liked the way it sounded on the tip of her tongue. She listened closely, wondering to which house he would soon call home.
After what seemed like a short moment, the Sorting Hat boomed a roaring, "Gryffindor" through the Great Hall. The Gryffindor table shot up with people hugging one another and screaming as if their team had won a prized possession. Some even whispered words like "potter", "definitely Gryffindor", "thank god", and "just like his father".
Sophie could not put the puzzle of whispers together or make sense of the extremely bizarre reaction over one singular ordinary boy. But she could never forget his eyes. She knew she could not. So green.
Sophie Livefire walked over to her house table; most were still in a stupor of happiness about the boy's house decision. An older student from the looks of it, the Head Boy, walked towards Sophie and shook her hand confidently. She could tell he was arrogant by the way he walked, but he seemed nice enough.
He spoke with vigor, "Isn't it wonderful?"
"What?" she asked, hoping for an answer.
"That Potter is in Gryffindor, of course! I mean I would have liked it better had he been in our house, but he's an asset to the entire school and the son of a living legend. He's in my good books for sure!"
The Head Boy led her towards an empty seat where he sat next to her and the rest of the new house recruits.
"Why is the Potter boy's father so important?"
The Head Boy's jaw dropped in that instant, loosing the pear he had held so tightly a moment ago, in his hand, "You don't know who Harry Potter is?"
"Am I supposed to have heard of him?" she asked, increasingly with annoyance at her own ignorance.
The Head Boy just laughed, "O you are a funny one, aren't you. Pretending not to know the Harry Potter."
Sophie did not ask any more questions. She didn't care if Albus Potter was the son of a living legend; she liked him for being him… whoever he may be. It would not matter anyways knowing she had to constantly fight her darkness. Dark and light were not meant to know one another. They would forever be eternal opposites.
Sophie's mind had wondered, and she hadn't even noticed that the Headmaster's speech had finished until a feast of food showed up in front of her nose.
The Head Boy went to eat his food, but paused to speak to Sophie, as if he had forgotten something important, "I forgot to congratulate you!"
"On what, " she said monotone, chasing her peas around the plate. She resisted from looking up.
"For getting into our house Ms. Livefire! There must be something great destined for you so…" he smiled proudly, "Welcome to Slytherin!"
From that day, five years have passed. And that…that is where our story truly begins. This story if not about a boy from number 4 Private Drive, but instead about a girl destined… for greatness.
So all I can really say is that I hope you liked it. I want this fan-fic to be different and more realistic in terms of what someone could expect from a continuation of the Harry Potter series. Somehow I really don't think Mrs. Rowling would continue focusing on the Potter family. I think they would be mentioned, included, and the children of Harry Potter would become some of the main characters, but I feel like the best way would be to build a brand new character and a brand new, more realistic evil. I'm excited for this and I hope you are too! Feedback is always welcome, good or bad, I'll take it :D