Finally the long expected knock on the door came, accompanied by her father's "Rose, are you up? Breakfast is ready, and we'll floo to platform 9 ¾ in 40 minutes."
If it hadn't been for the clearly fake happy tone her father had spoken in, he still couldn't believe his little girl was 11 already, she would have squealed with excitement. Rose felt like her whole life had led to this moment, her first first-of-september departure with the Hogwarts Express. Though it was a queer statement when you think about is, since every moment you will ever live to see is a moment your whole life has led to, otherwise, how could you see it? But, I mustn't get sidetracked too much today, for it is the beginning of a new chapter in my life, and new chapters shouldn't start with your head in the clouds.
She jumped out of her desk chair, Merlin knows I will not miss the squeaky noise it makes when you do that, and flung her school bag over her shoulder. It was filled with stuff she might need during the train ride, and stuff she would not need during the train ride but wanted to take with her anyway because they made her look smart. Her father had given her one of his old gryffindor ties the day before. The knowledge that she could never wear it was a burden that almost put a damper on her excitement, for Rose knew she had to put up a great fight with the sorting hat in order for it to not sort her into Slytherin. Ravenclaw was debatable with the hat, but Gryffindor would be impossible, she knew herself well enough for that.
She was slightly disappointed when she caught a view of the breakfast table. Her brother was already halfway through his cereal and there was only a half full basket of three days old bread for her, together with a nearly empty peanut butter jar. She didn't even like peanut butter.
"Excited for today, Honey?" Her mother asked. She looked exhausted, thick dark rings permanently inhabited the skin under her brown eyes these days. "I am so sorry that there is no special breakfast, but Mrs. Finnigan had an emergency yesterday with the Bulstrodes, so …."
"It's okay mom". Rose replied, trying really hard not to let out a sigh of disappointment. Her mother was making eighty hour work weeks again for the ministry, even though she had promised to never do that again after she'd collapsed during Uncle Harry's birthday three years back. Today is not about my mother's work schedule, it's about…
"Rose!" Her seven year old brother shouted. "I want your room when you leave! I wanna build an action man town!"
"Glad to hear how much you'll miss me, but my room is my room, so please stay out of it."
"Rose, that is not very kind of you, you won't use it for four months. Besides, you know how hard it is for your brother to adapt to change."
Rose rolled her eyes at her mom's remark. Hard to adjust, my arse. He's just being a pain in the butt purely to mess with me. If he'd be let into my room, I bet he'll break half my stuff in it during one of his tantrums.
"I will not have him in my room, he'd wreck it before I'm halfway to Hogwarts. Besides, we have a huge basement, can't he play there with his stupid toys?"
That last remark was a mistake, Rose knew it as soon as the words had left her mouth. Her brother turned red and pushed himself away from the table with so much force, Rose's milkglass smashed to pieces on the kitchen floor. Milk soaked her newly bought clothes and shoes.
"THEY ARE NOT STUPID TOYS!" Shouted Hugo. "THEY ARE REAL LIFE COPIES OF PEOPLE WAY COOLER THAN YOU! YOU GO LIVE IN THE BASEMENT, YOU BITCH!"
Silent. Dead silent.
Ron stood frozen in the doorway, holding his coffee cup. Hermione's eyes had sprung open, and were now looking at her son, filled with disbelief. Rose got up to her feet and walked out of the room, her shoulder colliding with her dad who was still standing is the doorway, making him spill some of his coffee.
"Rose! That was my coffee! Now it's all over the floor!"
"Yes! I am the problem here! Of course! How stupid of me to think that it was my brother who throws tantrums five times a day, or mom who is working herself to death, or my dad, who rather gets himself half-killed on every auror mission instead of facing his own problems! I see now clearly that I AM the problem!" Rose let out a humourless laugh. "Ha! Well, don't worry, I'll see myself off to the train then, so you can all go back to your perfect little family!" She stormed upstairs and slammed her room door shut.
One more minute with that lot and I WILL be the problem. And their last problem at that. She locked her door and stripped out of her milk soaked clothes. Just to take the piss out of her family she put on a yellow hufflepuff sweater and tossed her gryffindor shirt she'd been wearing before in the trash. If gryffindors are all like that, I bloody well want to be in different House.
"Rose?" Her mother's voice asked through the door. "Rose, can you come back downstairs please? We cannot send you off to school like this."
"Are you sure about that? Because this bitch has got no problem with it at all!" Yelled Rose back through the door. It was a petty thing to do, she knew that, but she also knew that she couldn't be arsed with it at the moment. She needed a minute to calm herself first. The other side of the door stayed quiet. Rose quickly tied her shoelaces and emerged from her room again. After a couple of deep breaths she had composed herself and was ready to be the gentile quiet daughter everyone expected her to be.
"Sorry mom, I didn't mean it…" Shoulders down, puppy eyes, arm around her waist and she will melt in a heartbeat. She did.
"It's alright Rose, no harm done. We'll get your breakfast at the station. Your dad is staying here to look after your brother." To make sure he doesn't burn the house down, added Rose in her thoughts.
The platform was filled with smoke and screaming students and it took exactly 22 seconds for Rose to get a major headache. Her mother, however, seemed to have it much worse, squinting her eyes so badly at every loud noise she looked like she was blinded. Bill and Fleur were already there when they arrived, with Teddy the Hufflepuff and Victorie the soon-to-be Gryffindor. Her bright red shirt let her blond hair come out even better than usual. Rose tried self consciously to put her hand through her hair, realising now that she hadn't even bothered to look in the mirror that day. I'll be uncle Harry 2.0 then…
"Hi Rose! Looking forward to today? I see you dressed in the best house colours! Did you know we almost won the house cup last year? I heard Andy say that there will be only 29 first years this time, even my year has more than that, we have 36! Tho I heard from uncle Harry that Stevens from gryffindor has to re-do his first year because of bad grades. And…"
"Teddy, you're rambling again, we talked about this. Give young miss Weasley some space." Draco malfoy emerged from the crowds to stand next to Teddy, who rolled his eyes at his guardian's remark. Fleur wrinkled her nose like she always did when she saw Malfoy, but apart from that she ignored him and asked: "Where is Ron? Did he have an emergency mission again?"
Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose before she answered with a sigh that that was indeed the case. Rose disliked how often her parents lied about their home situation, but now was not the time to confront her about that. She let it slide for this time.
"Can we get onto the train already?" Asked Victorie. "I didn't get up at nine to be seated entirely at the back of that thing you know."
Victories voice always sounded a bit too whiny for Rose's liking, but she was still happy that her parents agreed and sent them off to the train.
"I'll see you at school, Theodore."
"Have fun Victorie!"
"And don't be late for class!"
"Goodbye Rose, I have faith in you." Whispered Hermione while she hugged her daughter one last time. "Go kick some ass!" She added.
"I will mom, though please never say that again, it doesn't suit you." With a sigh she let go of her mom and followed Teddy and Victorie. All things aside, she was still going to miss her parents. And if transfiguration from Professor Mcgonagall was really as bad as Teddy had made it sound like, she might even miss her brother too.
Rose shared a compartment with Victorie, Teddy, and four hufflepuffs and a ravenclaw who were his friends. They were kind people, all wearing t shirts of the muggle television show "The Big Bang Theory". Rose sat down next to the ravenclaw who introduced herself as Michelle. She was two years older than the others and told Rose she was the only ravenclaw girl in her year, after Rose asked how she had wound up with a bunch of hufflepuffs two years lower than her as friends. Births had plummeted due to the war, and as a result Hogwarts' student population was at an all-time low. Last year there had only been thirty six new students, almost all muggleborn.
"It's a really big problem." Said Michelle. "Not only is it really hard to adjust to the wizarding world when all your friends are muggleborns too, but the student demographic is really fucked up now. We have seventy percent of the students in the upper three years, and the total of students is at its lowest since 1778, when the industrial revolution drove wizards to mass immigrate abroad. The weird thing is though, that muggleborn student numbers have also plummeted, while they had nothing to do with the war. Some say it's a curse from He Who Must Not Be Named, others say muggleborns are not an actual thing, and that they are actually half-blood children from cheating wizards. An interesting theory but complete bollocks of course. Why would you stop cheating when there's a war going on? Sex would be a nice distraction from it I'd say."
"Michelle, please don't talk to my niece about sex will you? she's eleven!"
"Sorry Ted… Anyway, I hope you don't wind up in the same situation as I did, without any roommates. It might seem like bliss to sleep alone in a dorm, but it really isn't. It's lonely and it idiots were the first people I met at Hogwarts who were nice and liked comic books. I wouldn't have survived the first two years if it hadn't been for the marvel universe."
"How can you be lonely when you have comic books?" Remarked Victorie, who had spent most of the summer reading them with Teddy.
With that she started off a conversation, with a passion Rose had not yet seen from her before, about Loki and Thor. She thought they were totally gay for eachother while Michelle shipped Loki and Tony. It was quite fascinating to watch the heated debate that formed in the compartment as soon as the others joined in. She listened to them for a while until she remembered the looming darkness of the sorting ceremony ahead. Rose quickly turned into a bundle of nerves then, repeating the same scenario inside her head over and over again. The hat calling out "Slytherin", the shocked look on uncle Harry's face, who would only start teaching that year, the breaking of trust between her and her parents. The alienation from her family, turning into a social pariah…
No. No, I will not let that happen, and even if it does, getting all worked up about is now won't help. Breathe in, breathe out, and listen to The Battle Of The Nerds.
Rose told herself off for thinking that way every time she slipped. It was hard, however, to stay focused on a conversation about fictional characters she didn't actually knew.
The rest of the train ride she spent staring out of the window, gazing at the landscape that slowly grew darker as more clouds gathered above them. Just after lunch it started to rain, and with that Rose gave up on trying not to think about the upcoming evening, getting a bigger knot in her stomach every passing minute. When she'd woken up that morning she'd still been mostly excited and only partially terrified, but now she was barely aware of the existence of other emotions outside of nervousness and fear.
"Rose, are you alright?" Asked Victorie in a worried tone. "We'll arrive at the station in half an hour, maybe you should put on your school uniform?" The others were already in it, or were busy pulling it out of their trunk.
A wave of panic hit Rose full force, leaving her nauseated and almost breathless. She'd never felt this trapped and nervous before, though nervous could no longer really cover what she felt.
"I'm fine" she brought out with difficulty. "I'll go change in the bathroom." She quickly grabbed her bag and made her way out of the compartment. Not paying much attention to her surroundings she walked head first into a slightly chubby blue-haired girl wearing a shirt that read "Angels can fly, she whispered and jumped." Rose mumbled an apology and quickly continued on her way. She didn't notice the gaze of the blue-haired girl following her all the way to the bathroom door.
"First years! First years this way!" Bellowed Hagrid's voice over the heads of the students pouring out of the Hogwarts Express. The weather was absolutely gruesome, dark clouds were still gathered in large numbers in the sky above them and the downpour was so vicious even hagrid the half giant could barely be made out amongst the crowd. "First years! All the first years this way!"
Victorie grabbed Rose by her wrist and pulled her into the mass of students, where they got soaked after mere seconds. "This way! First….. Ah, if those aren't Victorie and Rose Weasley!" Exclaimed Hagrid. "Yeh look just like yer mum, Rose, when she first came 'round here."
The sudden change of temperature, the pouring rain and the sight of Hagrid reduced the weight pressing on her chest and made that she could properly breathe again.
"I find it awfully annoying that everybody keeps saying that, I am my own person you know." Most of her fear left her body together with those words and the bone crushing bear hug she received from Hagrid helped to calm her down even more.
He grinned at her. "Yer' mum would have said the exact same thing. The brightest witch of her age, that's what she was."
Rose rolled her eyes at him but smiled anyway, and then searched the crowd for the other first years. Surely there would be more than the small number currently standing around her. She quickly counted; eighteen heads, including herself and Victorie. Five more students joined them. Hagrid checked a note from his pocket. "Only twenty three this year… " He muttered under his breath, barely audible through the wind.
"Alright guys, this way! The boats are docked just round the corner! And stop whining 'bout your hair Zabini, there are worst things in life!" He yelled at someone behind him. The first years followed hagrid. The blue haired girl trailed behind, fruitlessly trying to keep her hair dry while continuing to whine about the weather to the guy walking next to her, and now also about Hagrid.
"Pretty shallow don't you think? You're finally allowed into hogwarts and the only thing you can think about is your hair." Victorie, whose hair always looked perfect no matter what, shot the girl a dirty look and then they hurried of to the boats with the rest.
The lake water was choppy due to the strong wind, and crossing the lake took almost half an hour. Rose and Victorie shared their boat with four others including the blue-haired girl, who was now complaining about it being "totally irresponsible and ridiculous to let children cross a gigantic lake in this weather, wait till' my father hears about this."
Victorie snickered at the remark. "She sounds just like Draco Malfoy in Harry's stories. 'Wait till' my father hears about this' was his favorite sentence apparently."
"It totally was, he does nothing else than complain about 'The Git and his stupid Dad', when he's drunk." Shit, shouldn't have said that. As far as the Weasleys know Harry doesn't drink anymore. Rose only knew he still did because she sometimes crept down to eavesdrop on him and her dad. Luckily Victorie didn't seem to notice, but the damage for Rose was done. The remaining part of the journey she worked herself up to a right frenzy about her inevitable sorting sorting ceremony disaster. The biting cold of the rain and wind did nothing to snap her out of it. When they finally came into view off the castle, the trip proved useless, for the castle wasn't even visible through the thick strands of rain. They docked the boats and Hagrid guided them to an empty classroom where he left them. Most of them were shivering violently now, the only sound in the room coming from clattering teeth.
After five minutes Draco Malfoy entered the room carrying an old hat and a wooden chair. He looked frightening and tall, his pale skin radiating with power, handsome in a dangerous way. In nothing did he now resemble the 'father-figure' Malfoy Rose had seen on platform 9 ¾. Here he was Professor Draco Malfoy, homme de science extraordinaire et alchemist avancé, alumni de la sorbonne, Britain's youngest potion master in over three hundred years. However, he made no big impression on the the sorry bunch of first years huddled together in the middle of the room, who were looking miserable and alone. They could only focus on how bloody cold it was. Even Victorie had to agree now that it had been irresponsible to send them over the lake when it was this cold and wet, and then leaving them to freeze half to death in an empty classroom was even worse. Malfoy did not look like he cared much.
"I am Professor Draco Malfoy. Please follow me to the sorting ceremony." With that, and a dramatic swirl of his dark robes, he disappeared through the door again. The first years followed suit. This time Rose trailed behind, her legs trembling more due to nerves than cold.
There was a joined sigh of relief when they finally felt the warmth of the great hall washing over them. None paid any attention to the enchanted ceiling or the floating candles, instead they gazed full of desire at the empty plates on the table, dreaming about the food that would soon appear on them, with a warm cup of tea on the side. Professor Malfoy put the chair down in front of the staff table and pulled a note out of his pocket. Rose tried really hard not to look at Harry, she feared she wouldn't be able to bear the pride in his eyes. That pride will only be there because he thinks I'll be in gryffindor, I couldn't cope with seeing that.
"Bulstrode, Cetus." Was the first to be sorted. Slytherin. Rose tried to focus on breathing.
"Carrow, Pollux." Became a ravenclaw. Rose had a really hard time coping with things. An ever growing weight threatened to crush her, and she felt actual pain in her ribcage.
"Kumar, Azra." Was the first Gryffindor. Her breaths kept growing shallower and quicker. In Between "McNab, Arthur" and "Warren, Bucca" Rose managed to calm herself down a little by focusing solely on her breathing. Then "Waters, Yade" came along and Victorie whispered "See you in a minute". A wave of panic came crashing down on her. Somehow she managed to walk up to the staff table, still carefully avoiding Harry's gaze. Rose sat on the chair in front of all the other hogwarts students with the sorting hat on her head. Her hair was so big and bushy that it did not fall over her eyes, so she was forced to watch the others.
"So, Miss. Weasley, no gryffindor for you then?". Said the voice of the hat in her head. "You look more like a Slytherin to me."
"Please put me in Ravenclaw, please put me in Ravenclaw." The mantra she kept repeating in her head was the only thing keeping her from panicking, but the hats remark about Slytherin quickened her breath, till it was dangerously close to hyperventilation. She would never be accepted as a Slytherin, she was certain of it. All her life she had been the quiet kid in the corner, overhearing many secrets from her family members, who eventually started telling their secrets to her deliberately, so they could get them of their chest. None of them would ever trust her again if she became a Slytherin. It would crush them… It would…
"Well, I think I know where to put you, you will be in…"
Black dots started to swirl in her vision, her breath quickened rapidly, cold sweat broke out all over her skin, and she felt herself fall….