Disclaimer: World of Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am merely playing with her characters and universe.

A/n: This is a story I started writing a while ago, but I wanted to start posting it when I had a good portion of it written. But while I have written several chapters, I find that I'd rather see if there would be any interest in this story. So if you are interested, please review. This story will become AU, as it is a Twins-who-lived story. But I hope to keep the story quite close to canon.

Rating: I chose the M rating because I intend for this story to go through the seven Harry Potter books, and will later deal with some slightly more adult themes, including a student-teacher romance with a significant age difference. Fair warning, I intend for this to be a Snape/OC pairing eventually. So if you have no interest in that, then I do not suggest you continue to read as I will shamelessly include a lot of Snape (but as I do not see Snape as a pedophile, his feelings won't change until much later in the story).

Prompt: Going to School (#339)

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The Potter Girl

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September 1991

Wide, emerald green eyes remained, stuck with awe, on the ceiling.

When Violet pictured going to secondary school, having to smell the fumes from Petunia as she attempted to dye overlarge clothes grey in the kitchen, she'd never imagined this. Then again, she hadn't imagined anything like this could exist. And this certainly wasn't the secondary school that Petunia intended to send them to.

There were candles hovering in the air above them! Hundreds of them! And above that, the ceiling was dark and boasted of a clear night sky. She could see stars sparkling... as if there was no roof over their heads at all!

Violet hardly paid any mind to the rest of the Great Hall, or the names that were being called to the front. Though the hat with the brim that opened like a mouth and shouted a House name managed to turn her gaze away for a moment, the ceiling was still by far the most fantastic thing she'd set her eyes on.

Though the talking, singing hat was pretty unbelievable in it's own right.

Was the ceiling always like this, she wondered. She sure hoped so.

"Potter, Harry."

Violet's eyes snapped to her left and watched as Harry moved to the front, shooting her a brief nervous glance, to which she merely offered her sincerest smile; she hoped it fortified his courage as she focused her gaze on her brother as he made his way to the stool.

Shoving unruly, messy, jet-black hair out of her eyes, Violet nearly leaned forward in anticipation while the rest of the Hall broke out in whispers. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see people standing up, trying to get a good look at the "boy-who-lived". The apparent savior of the wizarding world.

"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat shouted, to the collective surprise of the Hall as the Gryffindor table broke into ruckus applause.

Violet smiled at her brother and clapped politely along with the rest of the hall, trying to ignore the sudden, nervous fluttering in her stomach. She knew what was coming next, and though she usually didn't care about what other people thought of her, she felt quite nervous about what was coming next.

"Potter, Violet," the witch with a severe bun and rectangular rimmed glasses called, silencing the hall with her stern voice.

Violet took a deep breath before trying to walk towards the stool without tripping on her own two feet. Not that she'd ever been a clumsy person, but sometimes when she was nervous, she was capable of tripping on air.

The whispering that once more broke out through the Hall made concentrating on walking especially difficult.

Finally reaching the stool with no major incident, Violet sat down and waited for the old hat to be plopped on her head. The brim of the hat had just fallen over her eyes, when she was startled by the sound of a voice inside her head.

'I suppose you'll be wanting Gryffindor too?' the hat questioned, sounding a bit put off.

Violet's eyes once more widened before she started to chew her lip in thought.

In reality, as much as she would like to remain close to her brother, she didn't think she wanted to follow in his footsteps. She was already starting to get sick of the attention they received as the blasted "twins-who-lived". Though it was worse for her brother, since he was the one with the scar... the one who defeated Voldy-thingy.

But already, she could begin to see that like the rest of her life, she would lose her identity.

Before she was just Girl, at the Dursley's. Around Privet Drive, she was just That Potter Girl. At least in primary school she had a reputation for being the Weird Girl, even if it made her rather lonely because no one wanted to be friends with a weirdo.

She wasn't really that strange. She just liked doing weird things and she enjoyed freaking people out. It gave her a sense of identity. It made her feel like she was her own person, and it was just funny to see people's reactions.

Somehow she had a feeling that if she went into Gryffindor, she'd just be Harry Potter's sister.

'You're very different,' the hat suddenly commented to her, causing a small smile to tug on the ends of her lips.

'Thanks', Violet thought.

'Hmm, you have a certain cunning to you. Very bright. Very determined, when you want to be. You would do well in Slytherin,' the hat informed her, his tone very pensive.

Violet furrowed her brows, thinking back to what that red-head boy said about Slytherin. However, she shoved the thought aside. Surely it was preposterous to think that just because someone was in Slytherin that they were automatically evil. It just sounded like some more prejudiced nonsense.

'No one will expect me to be in Slytherin,' she thought to herself.

'You certainly enjoy upsetting the status quo, don't you?' the hat commented with what might have been a chuckle.

'Sometimes,' Violet thought almost bashfully, though with a certain amount of mischief sparkling in her eyes and no small degree of pride.

'Well then if you're sure, better be-' he started telling her before shouting to the rest of the Hall, "SLYTHERIN!"

The stunned silence that followed this announcement did nothing to dim Violet's spirits as she pulled the hat from her head and handed it to a very astonished, scots-woman. Turning towards the Gryffindor table where she could see her brother looking at her with a mildly hurt expression and shock, she shrugged her small shoulders and offered a tiny, impish grin before turning and skipping towards the Slytherin table that was very slowly beginning to applaud.

"Welcome to Slytherin," a very tall, curvy girl with perfect mahogany curls, grinned as she extended a hand to Violet. "I'm Gemma Farley, fifth year Prefect."

"Hello," Violet smiled and shook the girl's hand, before taking a seat on the same side of the table, however, seated two girls away from the one that greeted her. "Hi," Violet smiled at the girl that she was sitting down next to, a girl with dark auburn hair and large, square rimmed glasses that seemed to obscure half her face.

"Hey," the girl replied uncertainly in an Irish lilt.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to the sorting. What's your name?" Violet introduced, not at all flustered by the people staring at her or the buzzing that erupted all throughout the hall.

"Tracey Davis," the girl responded, still sounding uncertain, her cheeks suddenly coloring a bit as she looked at the people around them.

Violet turned away from Tracey, wondering why she seemed a bit nervous and looked about her. She was somewhat surprised and uncomfortable with the nasty looks on the majority of the faces of the other first years that surrounded her.

"What's crawled up and died in all your noses?" Violet asked in a significantly cool tone, raising a brow at the people staring at her with their noses scrunched up, as if they were smelling something nasty.

Nasty attitudes was something she was rather used to. After all, because of the unfortunate hand-me-downs she and Harry were forced to wear, she was used to people staring at her like she was a gutter rat. It didn't help matters either that they both had very messy, untamable black hair; Violet used to fall several inches past her shoulders, but Eloise Tripp had thought it would be fun to chop off Violet's hair with a pair of scissors in class, which was why her hair barely reached her chin now, which of course caused Violet to retaliate by turning around and punching the girl right on the nose.

Beside her, Tracey snorted in what might have been amusement, though she tried to cover it with a cough.

"I'm surprised Potter. And here I thought you were going to be as dumb as your brother," a boy with a pointed face and platinum blonde hair stated.

Violet narrowed her eyes, her temper suddenly spiking. Though usually easy-going, Violet was somewhat cynical, and her temper sometimes got the better of her. Usually where her brother was concerned, or rather someone speaking of him badly or threatening him. She wasn't sure why, but Violet always had a fiercely protective streak where Harry was concerned and not simply because she was his twin. It was almost as though she thought of him younger than her and she felt a more exacerbated need to protect him.

"If you had any brains, which I severely doubt you do, you would keep your mouth shut," Violet snapped with narrowed eyes.

Draco opened his mouth to retort before flinching. Before everyone's eyes, a red welt appeared across his cheek which he slowly reached up for. "Did you just cast a stinging hex?" Draco asked, his grey eyes looking glassy as he glared at her and winced as he touched his cheek.

Violet raised a brow, her expression stony. She didn't really know what Draco was talking about, though she'd felt a very strong desire to hurt him. And it certainly wasn't the first time someone she desired to hurt, happened to be hurt. Was that accidental magic, she wondered.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied coolly, turning her gaze away from the blonde boy.

TBC...

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