First Year
Finding the platform wasn't too hard. The family wove through the crowds with ease, reaching the space between Platforms 9 and 10 without any issue. They sat on a bench facing the trains, eyes flitting from family to family until the mother grabbed her daughter's hand, subtly pointing at a loud group of redheads, all of the children except one pushing carts like the one that sat beside them. As the group passed, they could hear the mother hurrying the children along, grasping who could only be assumed to be her daughter's hand tightly. They stopped next to a boy the girl's age, his messy black hair sticking up in all directions and with a rather confused look on his face. Her parents dismissed the group, continuing to minutely swivel their heads in all directions to find another family.
The girl kept her eyes on them. The black-haired boy tagged along to the rowdy group, his snowy owl hooting and hopping along the bars as he pushed his cart. She stood up, her hands wrapping around the hands of her own cart. Her mum and dad stood with her, taking their place on either side as they walked the same path as the redheads.
The girl was stunned when one of the redheads barreled towards one of the brick supports. Containing a gasp of surprise, they all watched as he disappeared right before their eyes.
"Well, I have to admit I was not expecting that," her father said. He smiled down at her and gave her a little push towards the same barrier. "Guess this is your stop Snowflake."
She swallowed and hesitantly lined her cart up with the wall. Took a deep breath. Tightened her grip. Sprinted as hard as she could at the barrier, squeezing her eyes closed at the last possible second, preparing herself to slam into the solid wall of bricks in front of her
The piercing whistle of a train immediately filled the air and she slammed my heels down to avoid hitting people. Her jaw dropped as hundreds of parents and kids filled her sight as well as a very large, very real train filled her sight. A hand landed on her shoulder; she jumped and turned her head to see her parents standing behind her once more, their eyes filled with the same disbelief and wonder as hers.
"You are one lucky kid," her mom whispered in her ear. "Who would have thought the kid of two American government employees could land a spot at a school for witchcraft and wizardry that WASN'T a hoax?"
The girl shut her mouth and lowered her eyes to her cart where her black-and-white cat peered back at her and meowed quietly, his ears flattened against the side of his head.
"Me too, D," she whispered. "Me too."
After being ushered to the door and given a shortish and tearful (her dad would claim only her mother cried later), she hauled her luggage to the appropriate compartment and then made her way to the back of the train, a backpack slung over her shoulders and a cat twisted around the back of her neck. She easily found an empty compartment in the back and sat down on the side closest to the window.
Groups passed noisily by the compartment intermittingly, but not once did she pay them any mind. She stuck her head in a book, her cat curling on top of her legs that were stretched out on the seat. It wasn't until the compartment door slammed shut that she was brought out the world of star ships and Death Stars and lightsabers to the sight of a white-haired boy with a sneer on his face and a posse behind him.
"This is our compartment," he smirked. "So clear out."
The girl leaned to the side to get a better view of his posse then returned to her slouched position, book hiding her face.
"Hey, don't you know who I am?"
The girl didn't look up. Her cat moved from the seat to her shoulders, ears flattened against his head as he silently hissed at the intruders.
"It's Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." There was no response. "What is this trash anyways," he asked angrily, yanking the girl's book out of her hand and flipping through some of its pages. "Is… is this a Muggle book?"
The disgust was evident in his tone as he threw the book on the floor and stepped on it. The girl merely looked at him and glared.
"If that is a Muggle book that means she has to be a half-breed, or worse… or a Mudblood," the pug-faced girl said. "Don't let her touch you, never know how much her kind taints us." She shuddered, as did several others in the group still standing at the door.
The only response was a raised eyebrow on top of crossed arms from the unimpressed girl.
"Mute and mudblood? Draco let's go, this compartment is evidentially corrupted by the likes of her," a dark skinned boy near the back sneered.
"Fine. Let's go." On his way out, Draco kicked the book across the floor, beating up the spine as it hit the metal wall of the train and fell open onto the seat. With one last glare he slammed the door to the compartment shut, letting it rattle behind him.
The cat slunk down the girl's front and under a hand, rubbing his head comfortingly against it. The girl's anger slowly faded- not that it had been extremely noticeable before besides a slight tensing. She picked her book up off the seat and resumed her reading.
The rest of the ride was uneventful. A bushy haired girl came around asking for a toad. Two people ended up in her compartment and thankfully left her alone for the remainder of the ride. When they pulled on their school robes, she followed their lead, packing her backpack and leaning against the window, watching the trees whiz by in a brown and green blur as her cat napped on her lap.
After disembarking, robes swishing at her feet, she followed the directions of a half giant yelling for all the first years to go to the boats. Once the small grade arrived outside the Great Hall doors and the teacher- McGonagall- had left, silence lasted two seconds before exploding into chatter. It died down quickly when the Malfoy brat approached one of the redhead kids from before and the messy black-haired kid from before. The conversation was easily heard and duly noted.
The Great Hall was a masterpiece. She spent the entire time looking at the ceiling, wondering what spells were required to change the ceiling and how long it would take her to learn the levitation spell used on the candles. Her new classmates grouped near the teachers table, where a hat sang about the school and the four houses they could be sorted into. McGonagall read names of their class off a list. The bushy haired girl and messy haired boy- who received a shocked silence when his name was read- were put into Gryffindor, the white-haired kid and part of his posse whose names had come up were in Slytherin.
"Amara Stormwind!"
Amara slowly made her way to the front of the dwindled crowd of classmates, taking a seat on the stool while the hat was placed on her head.
Hmm a muggleborn child… There is much power here, such cunningness and brains. Could fit well in Ravenclaw… Or maybe Slytherin is the house you belong in? There is much potential for you in either…
Wait. What's the difference between the houses again? I tuned out the song you gave after the first few lines because I was trying to figure out why someone wanted to make a talking hat that could read minds to sort children into school houses rather than an information gathering gadget for the government.
The hat was silent. Then a resounding "RAVENCLAW" rang through the hall as one of the middle tables cheered. Amara walked down to the table, taking a seat near some of the older looking students who congratulated and high fived her. Then everyone quickly settled bac down for the remainder of the sorting. The redhead ended up in Gryffindor, where the rest of his family appeared to be. Like Malfoy, the hat seemed to have made a decision with minimal amount of time spent on the boy's head.
After dinner she and the small group of first years that had also been sorted into Ravenclaw were shown to the common room and their dorms in addition to describing the castle. As much as she wanted to spend more time exploring the common room library and all it had to offer, Amara dragged her feet up the stairs to her dorm to where her cat was curled up in the middle of the sheets. She climbed into the bed, lifting the covers so her cat could curl up next to her underneath, and thought to herself: This is one hell of a place and classes haven't even begun.
Second Year
A majority of her time was spent in the dorm room, curled up on a sofa with her cat on her shoulders. Occasionally she branched out to the school's library, but the librarian was such a strict bitch that she couldn't do most of what she wanted. It was there and in class that she saw the white-haired pureblood (a term she had learned as all the muggleborns had started being attacked), Draco Malfoy. Usually he was surrounded by his admirers or his posse, often making a commotion as they passed, but when he was by himself, he often walked by her with either a quiet glare or a curious glance.
This year she had spent more time in the library once the attacks had started, researching magical beasts that could accomplish all that had been done to the petrified students. Unsurprisingly, the bushy haired girl, who she now knew was Hermione Granger, also spent a lot of time there. Being friends with the Chosen One, aka Harry Potter aka the messy black haired kid, and Ron Weasley, aka the redhead child in their year, she was usually well equipped with vital information Amara was missing to narrow her search.
Draco Malfoy had also spent a lot of time in the library, and often not far away from either of the muggleborns. Amara had caught him staring several times at Hermione, but she couldn't quite catch the emotions that flickered in his eyes.
It was one day in the middle of the year when Malfoy tossed a crumpled piece of paper in front of her. Amara expected a degrading note, like many of the others she had received from the Slytherin house. Instead, she held two pieces of paper. One had a message for her; the other, a page ripped out of a textbook explaining basilisks, a large serpent creature.
The note to her read: Give to Granger. Won't take it seriously from me. Don't ever talk about this.
Amara looked up quizzically, but by the time she had finished reading the note, the boy was gone.
Third Year
Malfoy hadn't acknowledged her presence since that day. Which was fine. She didn't really do the whole friends thing outside of two or three people in other houses. Instead she spent lots of time by herself, holed up by her own stack of books in her room or in the library when her stocks became low.
She really should be more concerned about her grades though. Her History of Magic, Divination, and Charms class were really sinking, but she couldn't bring herself to care for those classes like her Defense Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, and Care of Magical Creatures classes. She pulled out her Divination book with a groan and settled in to write about what her made up dream the night before meant.
Next thing Amara knew, she was blinking awake to darkness enveloping her. Shit.
She rushed around the room, pulling on her Quidditch practice robes, and raced down the stairs with her broom trailing behind her. Once she made it out of the tower, she hopped on the nearest window sill and (once she made sure no one was looking) she opened the window and jumped on her broom, using a small concealment charm so nobody would see her. She made it down to the Quidditch pitch with seconds to spare, taking a spare club from her fellow Beater as their Captain went over strategies for their upcoming game against Hufflepuff. Not that her job really changed from game to game, to quote Fred Weasley: "Just hit a bunch of balls as hard as you can towards the people you don't like! Highly recommend the Slytherin section."
Practice left her sweaty and smelly, forcing her to take a quick shower in the locker rooms before starting the long slog back to the Tower. As she turned a corner she slammed into someone's shoulder, causing her to spin off balance and grab onto that person's arm to keep herself from falling.
"Sorry," she said, looking up at the person she hit. When she saw the white-blond hair she let the arm go quickly, fixing a blank look on her face. "Actually, no, I'm not," she amended.
Malfoy and his two buddies-Crabbe and Goyle- sneered.
"You better apologize Mudblood," Malfoy spat. "Or my father will hear about this and take care of it just like he did to that oaf's giant bird."
"That hippogriff did nothing to you Malfoy, and you know it," Amara said calmly, taking a step toward the trio. "And that oaf has a name, just like this Mudblood. Learn them and maybe then you'll earn yourself a speck of respect for yourself rather than just throwing your father around. And if you want to fake an injury, learn to do it right. Wrapping a bandage around it means nothing if there's no reaction to pain."
She pointedly looked down to where her hand was wrapped tightly around his "injury" before shoving his arm back at him and walking away, robes swishing behind her.
He went back to ignoring her for the rest of the year, but she caught him glimpsing at her in Potions and Charms. He even moved to a desk closer to her in the latter class, and she often saw him doodling something out of the corner of her eye.
End of the year came quickly, and Amara spent a decent amount of time with Hagrid preparing for Buckbeak's death sentence. She brought down food from the house elves in the kitchen so he wouldn't keep breaking his teeth on the rocks he cooked himself and tried as well as she could to cheer him up. On the day of Buckbeak's execution she couldn't bring herself to go down; she had connected a lot with the hippogriff, sneaking him out for runs and flights. So instead of being close and watching it from the top of the stairs, she chose and obscure window with a magnification charm in a dark corner of the castle. Her cat wove between her feet on the sill before sitting down next to her, letting her scratch behind his ears.
"That dumb bitch!"
Amara jumped at the sound of another person, an angry person at that, don the hall.
"Do you want me to fix it? That Charms guy told us we could do it-"
"You idiots can't even do a summoning charm correctly I am not about to allow either one of you to point your wands anywhere near my face," Malfoy annoying voice rang down the hallway, echoing off the stone walls. "I'm going to the hospital wing. You two go back to the common room and if either of you say a word of what happened with Granger I will hex your asses every day for next year."
Two pairs of footsteps quickly hurried away towards the dungeons. The third headed in Amara's direction and she quickly tilted her head to face the window again.
"What the hell are you doing?" Malfoy's slightly nasally voice came from right over her shoulder but she didn't turn her head, continuing to pet her cat, who had moved to settle on her lap.
"Watching the result of your superiority complex and bullying tactics," Amara replied emotionlessly. "Would you like to join or are you too cowardly to watch the results osidf your own idiocrasy?"
There was silence beside her. She turned to look at him, fully expecting him to have walked away, and was surprised to find him still standing next to her. Very close next to her. Holding a hand to a very bloody nose.
"Someone finally give you what you deserved?"
Malfoy snorted then winced. "I didn't do anything to deserve this, Gryffindor's Princess just punched me for no reason."
Amara glared at him and from her lap her cat hissed. He looked down at her and scowled.
"I did nothing!" he protested.
"Get on your knees and move your hand away from your head."
The shock on his face made her yearn for her camera stashed away in her trunk. His face made her smile.
"Did I stutter?" she asked, keeping her tone polite.
"I don't get on my knees for anyone," Malfoy retorted venomously.
"Well, it's that or face people seeing you walk down the halls with a bloody nose-that punch of Granger's will get around real quick." Amara settled back into the sill, one hand on her cat, the other loosely holding her wand.
A shuffling noise came from right and she was pleasantly surprised to see Malfoy actually sitting down on the ground next to her, facing the window. His hand, covered in blood, rested in his lap, his eyes lowered to the ground in humility. Amara moved her cat to the side, swinging her legs around in front of her and holding her wand in front of her.
"Time to see if I learned this charm correctly," she said cheerily, muttering a short charm and Malfoy swung his head up to her, a cry of disbelief leaving his mouth, turning into a small cry of pain and bringing his hand sharply to his nose.
"You've never done that charm before? Just wait until my-"
""Yeah yeah your father hears about it, I know," Amara muttered in an annoyed tone, turning back to the window. "If this is what I get for helping you just do me a favor and stay away."
"You can't just say you've never tried a spell before and perform it on someone's face!" he shouted.
"Well it worked didn't it?"
"But you've never practiced it?"
"Of course I have, how else would I have learned it?! I just haven't had a human subject to practice on yet."
Both of their voices had risen and it had occurred to Malfoy that anyone could overhear them, so he cast a flimsy silencing charm that had Amara frowning. She reached out to touch his nose and he flinched away, his wand coming up between them.
"What, are you too afraid to let my Mudblood hand taint your flawless skin? Get over your fucking prejudices Malfoy, they might leave you with more marks on your face than a half-broken nose. Ones that can't be fixed with a simple spell even those idiots you call friends can remember hearing about." As if backing his owner, her cat hissed and swiped in Malfoy's direction, his ears flattened against his head and tail puffed.
"Your cat is as crazy as you are, Stormwind," Malfoy scoffed. "Bloody demon possessed thing."
"Guess that means I picked his name accurately- wait, did you just call me by my name? What, did Granger punch all of your insults out of your brain?"
His walls were up in an instant, she could tell. His grey eyes hardened, his face tensed, and he stood stiffly, a sneer contorting his face. The small trail of blood left over from his previously broken nose was prominent on his pale face.
"I would never familiarize myself with one of your… kind," he said angrily, pulling himself away.
She could hear the disgust in his tone but couldn't match it to any feeling in his eyes. He lowered his eyes in an instant, as if sensing she knew he didn't believe in himself. The faint sound of footsteps and giggling first years trickled down the otherwise empty hall as the two looked away from each other, one standing stiffly and the other sitting morosely.
As Malfoy shuffled his feet Amara looked out her window again, her magnification charm showing Buckbeak laying down in a patch of pumpkins, looking as if he knew what his fate a few more moments was.
"You should leave," she said, breaking the silence between them.
"I don't need you to tell me what to do," Malfoy snapped, before sighing and running a hand through his already ruffled hair.
"Unless you want to see the repercussions of you constantly complaining to your father over nothing and dealing with having your nose rebroken, I would suggest leaving."
Her words were met with a silence of disbelief. She didn't turn her head to face him. This mood was a complete 180 from when he had first entered her spot but she didn't care.
"Who are you to tell me what to do?"
Something inside her snapped; in an instant her wand was in hand and she was on her feet, sending Malfoy's wand skittering into a corner as hers touched his robes. Her eyes burned slightly with oncoming tears.
"Since you are the reason for a good chunk of the misery I feel today, sentencing an innocent creature TO DEATH over your own fucking ego."
He said nothing after that, choosing to simply stare before hesitantly walking away. She stayed in her seat, looking out at a dismal day, arms wrapped around her legs as tears slowly fell. It wasn't long before she murmured Finite on the window and trudged back to the Tower, little Demon trailing behind her.
She didn't hear from Malfoy for the rest of the year.