What do you do when everyone has told you NOT to fall in love with your best friend? When everyone told you in the beginning not to be best friends with your best friends? My name is Sasha, and I went against a lot of things people told me to get to this point…. I sure do hope it was worth it.

Let's start at the beginning, eh? I guess I could tell you a bit about me… As I've said, my name is Sasha, Sasha Aigust. I'm a fifth year Gryffindor at Hogwarts, and I love it! I grew up with only my mum, she was a witch, but she hated magic, and had always hoped that I wouldn't prove to be magical as well. The boy she fell in love with at school and married, producing me of course, had died near the end of the first wizarding war, and so she had sworn off unnecessary magic.

Okay, back to me… Once I was accepted into Hogwarts, she let me go with enough pleading… and on the train ride to school, I ended up in a compartment with these two awkward ginger kids, twins actually. They were hilarious though, and we instantly formed a bond that wasn't going to be broken anytime soon. Upon my mother receiving my letter about my new friends, and my sorting into Gryffindor, I found that my mom was not at all happy. She had always said that I would be a Slytherin, as everyone else in my family had always been, and when she learned that I was now friends with Fred and George Weasley, she was livid, actually sending me a howler and telling me that I needed to not align myself with such wizarding filth.

Needless to say, my wonderfully rebellious eleven-year-old self didn't listen to my Mum, and she ended up disowning me… right after my twelfth birthday, on Christmas Day that year. Ever since then I lived at the Weasleys, just as if I was a part of their family to begin with. Ginny and I acted just like sisters, the three year age difference caused her to look up to me quite a bit, and it gave her someone she could talk to about girlish stuff, other than her mum, Mrs. Weasley. I was more than happy to fill this role.

Until the summer after fourth year I was allowed to share a room with Fred and George, and boy did we get into some trouble… but that's a totally different story… Anyways, that summer Ginny asked me to stay in her room, as she didn't want to be alone. I didn't blame her, everything she went through during her first year at Hogwarts was insane, and I knew I wouldn't want to be alone much after that.

Oh, and my mum? During my second year at Hogwarts Dumbledore actually told me the truth about my family, the fact that my parents had secretly been Death Eaters, but that my father was killed during a raid and that secret was out, causing my mum to go into hiding with me. That was why she had disowned me after finding out I was a Gryffindor, and that I was best friends with what she considered "blood-traitors".

Now… let's get out of this reverie and back to the present. I was currently sitting in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express with Fred, George, and Lee Jordan, another of our friends, on our way to the beginning of our Fifth year. Fred and I were in the middle of a battle of epic proportions - an exploding snap game, that I was currently winning - no matter what Fred wanted to believe. The winner would get a pack of Bertie Botts, and the last Chocolate Frog in our stash, something I wanted greatly, as we figured we wouldn't get a chance to sneak out to Honeydukes until at least the second week of classes. With a light explosion, the last of Fred's cards exploded in his hand, and I was declared the winner, quickly grabbing the Chocolate Frog before Fred could go back on his word.

"Ahahaha!" I said triumphantly. "Told you I'd win!"

"Oh, I let you win of course, I can't brutally beat a girl in a game you know!" Fred said with a scoff.

"Fred… There's absolutely no way to let someone win in a game of Exploding Snap, the cards have their own minds!" Laughing I shoved the chocolate frog in my mouth and stuck my tongue out at him.

"Oh yeah? Well… Well… whatever!"

"Oh? Nice Fred… Brilliant vocabulary you've got there."

"Stop bickering you two, Fred, you know she always wins at exploding snap somehow, just deal with it and stop being a loser" George said as he looked up from the Wizards Chess game he was playing with Lee.

Angelina showed up at that point, sitting beside Lee, across from the twins and I, and pulling everyone into a conversation about possible quidditch plays for this year. She and I were both chasers on the team, while the twins were the beaters, and Lee did the commentary during the games. "I think we need to figure out some new plays to impress Oliver with when we get back, that way maybe he won't be hawking us from the very beginning!"

"I came up with a great chaser play with the twins over the summer, I'll have to show it to you and Katie as soon as possible!" I said, excited to show the girls my new play, which I personally thought was bloody brilliant.

"It better be good!" Angelina said with a laugh, "Can you believe some people still call us a weak team since all of us chaser's are girls? Besides, we totally would have won the past two years if things had been different!"

"If only the rest of the matches weren't cancelled last year!" I grimaced, hating when quidditch was cancelled. "This year we'll make it for sure! We'll win the cup!" I noticed during the conversation the slight tension that seemed to be between George and Angelina, and made a mental not to check into that. Oh! What if they're totally crushing on each other? I'll have to check into that…

Katie Bell came by the compartment then, looking for Angelina, "Angelina! Oliver's looking for you, said something about needing to plan out Quidditch practices and some new plays with you?" She paused as Angelina got up mumbling under her break about Oliver being a pain in her arse. "Hey you guys! I should probably follow her, gotta keep her from killing our dear captain eh?" And with a spin she had taken off after Angelina down the train.

"Well then, I bet this will be an interesting year if that's any sign… It's Oliver's last year though, so I guess we should probably do our best to win…" George said, shaking his head as if he was coming out of a daze.

"Personally I just want to win the cup, so we should be trying our best regardless of whether it's Oliver's last year or not."

"Yeah! What she said!" Fred laughed, quickly stealing the back of Bertie Botts out of my hand and throwing a light grey colored bean into his mouth. As soon as he bit down on the bean his face scrunched up and he started flailing around a bit, finally spitting the rest of the bean out of the train window and wiping his tongue on his shirt.

The rest of us in the compartment all burst into laughter at this, Fred happened to have the worst luck when it came to those things.

"Pepper!" He choked out, giving all of us a glare that would kill small animals.

"That's what you get for stealing one!" I laughed out, trying to defend myself as he came and sat on me, trying to force a firey red colored bean into my mouth, knowing it was most likely a chili pepper flavored one.

"Noooooo!" I fake-screamed through as small a slit in my mouth as I could, trying to force Fred off of my lap and into the floor. He eventually pried my mouth open and got the bean in, and at the same time I unceremoniously dumped him into the floor, kicking his shin. I had bit down on the bean at this point, happily discovering that it was actually cherry, and I chewed it up with a goofy smile stuck on my face.

"No fair, you always have the best luck with these things, I don't even understand you sometimes!" Fred said as he sat down next to Lee this time, rubbing his shin. I just stuck my tongue out at him in response and laughed.

"I'm gonna go find the trolley and get what remains of the chocolate on it!" I then jumped up from my seat and skipped out of the compartment, continuing to skip down the aisle of the train until I found the trolley, promptly buying the remaining chocolate frogs and stashing them into my candy bag so the boys wouldn't be able to steal any of it. I returned to the compartment to grab my robes to change into since we would be at Hogwarts soon, and needed to change.

"Whoah boys, you really need to learn some public decency!" I said, shielding my eyes as I walked into the compartment to see the boys all in various states of undress, putting on their robes. Not like I'd never seen it before, since first year we'd all been inseparable so I'd seen them all shirtless of course… plus there was the fact that everyone on the quidditch team had seen each other in their underwear.

"You know you like it!" George said with a wink in my direction as I grabbed my robes out of my trunk.

"You keep telling yourself that!" I laughed and skipped back out of the compartment to find the girls bathroom and change, in private.

The four of us ended up in a carriage with a sixth year Hufflepuff couple, who obviously wished they were in one by themselves, as they could hardly take their eyes away from each other. We didn't mind though, we continued to laugh and joke like always, and hope that we wouldn't get blamed for the dungbomb Lee had thrown into a carriage of Slytherins.

"I wonder if Dumbledore's going to say anything about the Dementor boarding the train tonight… You'd think he wouldn't be too happy about it, especially since Harry passed out." I said, shivering just a bit as we passed through the perimeter to the school and felt the cold effects of the dementors that were guarding the gates now. "I can't believe he's allowing the Ministry to station them here, I mean, I understand how big of a threat Sirius Black is, but dementors? At Hogwarts? Besides, who'd be dumb enough to attempt to break into Hogwarts?"

"I dunno, Sirius broke out of Azkaban, who knows what he could be after. Wasn't he friends with Harry's parents?" Fred asked.

"I think so, wasn't he? Either way, this dementor thing is stupid, I hate them." I shuddered slightly.

I had been in the bathroom changing when the train had stopped and the power had blinked out, wrapping me in darkness. I had lit my wand and hurriedly thrown the rest of my robes on before rushing out of the bathroom and down the trains hallway towards our compartment, the feeling of cold dread and absolutely no happiness getting stronger and stronger. There was a bright silvery light a compartment or two ahead of me, and then all of a sudden I felt like absolutely all of the happiness had been stripped from me, and that's when I saw the dementor gliding away from what must have been a patronus charm. I think I might have screamed, because the next thing I knew some strange man was helping me into a compartment in which Harry - who appeared to have passed out, Ron, and Hermione were all in. The man set me down and handed me a piece of chocolate, proceeding to tell me that he was Professor Remus Lupin, the new Defense against the Dark Arts professor.

I shook my head, pulling myself out of the recent memory, and ignoring the worried look Fred had sent me. "Professor Lupin seems very nice though, and definitely prepared."

"I'd say it was quite lucky he seemed to have had chocolate with him, maybe he'll have a bit more experience than the last four teachers we had, eh?" Lee said as the carriage finally came to a stop and we all piled out, making our way into the castle and the Great Hall and taking seats near the far end of the table.

After the sorting and Dumbledore's short words, the food appeared on the table and we all dug in hungrily, having eaten nothing but junk food since breakfast. We all ate to beyond our fill, stuffing our faces with all of our favorites that we had missed over the summer. After the dessert plates had magically cleared, Professor Dumbledore stood up to make his beginning of term announcements, looking at the four of us as usual when he mentioned the forbidden forest and the list of banned items. He finally got around to announcing Professor Lupin, who got a pretty good amount of applause, though you could tell most were wondering if he would make it through the year or not. He finished out with explaining about the dementors stationed at the school, and then sent us all off to bed.

Fred got the password for the common room from one of the prefects and we all raced up the stairs and through the passages we had found out about to be among the first few to enter the common room, grabbing the couch and two armchairs right next to the biggest fire. I laid out across the couch with my head in Fred's lap and George and Lee took the two armchairs. We all stayed up way too late discussing things like what our classes were going to be like this year, and what our first major prank would be, hoping to make it a good one. I was the first to decide sleep would probably be a good thing, and I got up a bit after 1 am and went on up to my dormitory to sleep, a smile on my face - excited for the new school year to come.