A/N: Hey guys! This is really short, but I'm at school and bored, so here you go.
Angelica sat numbly through the rest of the sorting. The only thing should could register was the rising feeling of panic in her chest. Slytherin. A house known for Dark wizards. That was were she was now. Not dancing the lead at the Royal Ballet School where she should be. Not at home with her parents. No, she was sitting amongst people who seemed happy to be in the evil house. People who hissed and cheered as more haughty and unpleasant looking people were sorted. Hissed. Because their mascot was a snake. The murder of Nikiya in La Bayadere flashed into Angelica's mind and she was reminded of her fear of snakes. It was so bad she couldn't go into the reptile house at the London Zoo. How was she supposed to be an evil, snake loving person?
Neville caught her eye from across the hall and gave her a worried expression, but unlike the look Hermione had given her, it seemed to be more rooted in sympathy.
Soon, the headmaster stood from his spot at the center of the high table and addressed them briefly before calling, "Nitwit, odoment, blubber, tweak."
Suddenly, food burst into sight, filling the empty places on the long tables. Some people let out cheers, but the Slytherins muttered about how mad Dumbledore was before piling their plates high with food.
One of the older students sitting near Angelica looked at her empty plate quizzically before saying, "Aren't you hungry?"
"Not really," Angelica replied quietly, looking down; any hunger had been wiped away by the shock of being sorted into Slytherin.
"Oh," the girl said, before continuing, "I'm Gemma Farley. I'm your prefect," she smiled at Angelica, who managed about a quarter of a convincing smile in return.
"I don't think we've met before, I'm Theodosia Nott," said the first year girl sitting across from Angelica. "That's my brother, Theodore," she pointed around the girl sitting next to her to another first year sitting farther down the table.
With a nudge from Theodosia, the girl sitting next to her introduced herself. "Parkinson. Pansy Parkinson. And you are?"
"Angelica," she replied.
"What's your surname?" Pansy demanded, looking annoyed.
"Um, Putters," Angelica replied, a little put off by Pansy's rudeness.
"I've never heard of a Putters," she said. "Have you?"
"No. Are your parents from America or something?" Theodosia asked.
"They're both from here," Angelica told them.
"That's odd. Are you a halfblood?" Pansy asked, a challenging smirk contorting her features.
"No, I'm muggleborn" Angelica said.
"What?" Pansy's eyes bulged. Gemma, Theodosia and some of the other first years were staring at her as though she had just announced she was from another planet.
Pansy turned to the boy beside her, who hadn't yet heard what Angelica had said and whispered furiously into his ear. The helpful smile had frozen on Gemma's face and Theodosia wore a mixture of horror and pity.
"You're a mudblood?" the boy spat at Angelica, his face souring as though he had just bitten into a lemon.
A few people gasped. "Malfoy, no matter who your father is, you'll get detention if you call someone that in the Great Hall," Gemma told him, her tone suggesting boredom.
If people had been staring before, they were certainly staring now. Even a few students from the Ravenclaw table were looking angrily over at the Slytherins. Angelica didn't know exactly what mudblood meant, but it was pretty obviously some sort of slur for muggleborn. The feeling of dread in her stomach deepened.
"Well, it's true, isn't it?" Malfoy said, looking around at the other students for confirmation. "They shouldn't let talentless blood traitors and muggles in anyways, much less into Slytherin."
Angelica's lip trembled, but she tightened her expression. Malfoy sneered at her before turning to the boulders of boys sitting beside him and muttering something about having his father throw her out.
Angelica stood, as calmly as possible. She stared Malfoy directly in the eye, her expression schooled into the one she had plastered on her face when injured, when dealing with broken toes and sores from pointe work. Complete unconcern. Vaguely indifferent. She stared at him until his cheeks were faintly flushed against his pale skin. Then she turned on her heel and marched down the length of the table and out of the propped open doors to the entrance hall.
Her heart pounding in her head, Angelica stormed up and up stairs, taking them two at a time, running down the empty halls until her legs were burning and her chest was heaving. She pushed open a door and sprinted up the spiral staircase behind it desperate to get higher, farther away from the Great Hall. Finally, she stopped. She stood on the flat top of what looked like the highest tower in castle. The sky looked like a painting, the moonlight bathing the heavens in an unearthly pale sheen. The rain had stopped, but it had left a cold chill in the air that cooled both Angelica's anger and her body. Already she could feel herself growing closer to tears. How was she supposed to survive the next seven years here if she couldn't even sit through dinner?
"It was very cunning, what you just did," a voice said from behind her. The voice was hoarse and strained from disuse, the later causing Angelica to whip around, fumbling for anything she could use to defend herself, expecting to see the school's telepathic murderer hanging out exactly where there was no escape.
But it wasn't a telepathic murderer. Instead it was a ghost. A ghost who looked like a telepathic murderer, bloodstained with a cruel, withered face.
"What do you want?" Angelica said carefully, evenly, fighting to keep fear and emotion from her voice.
"You show so little," the ghost said. "Composed, for a muggleborn."
"I don't want to be part of this stupid school, muggleborn or not!" Angelica half-yelled.
The ghost smiled faintly, his face looking stretched,like it wasn't used to the motion, before continuing, "The Malfoy boy was shocked."
"What do you want?" Angelica repeated, her voice shaking.
"Even without a pure lineage, you may still rise to power," the ghost said. "Determined and shrewd, which signifies ambition, which signifies greatness. Tear down everything they know before they fall into the same trap as countless before them and you will be remembered."
The ghost vanished. A particularly cold wind blew across the top of the tower, tossing Angelica's hair and robes back. She took a few steps towards the edge of the tower and caught her breath at how high it rose from the dark grounds. The star-lit lake was flatter than a mirror now. As Angelica stared at it, a strange, rounded shape broke the surface, gracefully gliding to the top of the water until it held still enough to be a rock from a greater distance. The thing stared at the moon. So did Angelica.
At last, she didn't feel like sobbing. Or like punching someone. Or like hitchhiking back to London and go back to ballet. She felt the heat of tears about to fall fading, her face relaxing, her shoulders setting . The sort of calm she elt seconds before stepping onto a stage. She still remembered the first time she had seen a ballerina. Two years old, sitting perfectly still and silent through the Nutcracker, eyes wide and jaw dropped. That was the settling she felt now. The determination, the belonging, the nothing in the world can stop me from getting this feeling. She walked down the stairs. Down countless flights of stairs, through countless empty hallways until she saw someone.
A ghost, a round, smiling man who looked like he had floated around when he was alive as well.
"Pardon me," Angelica began. "Could you please tell me how to get to the Slytherin Common Room?"
"Have you lost your prefect?" the ghost asked. Before she could reply, he continued, "I'll show you the way, it's a confusing castle."
The ghost, who introduced himself as the Fat Friar, led her to a bare stretch of stone wall deep in the dungeons of the castle, chatting merrily the entire way about his own Hufflepuff house and all the wonderful things students had gone on to do.
"The password is 'anguis' but check every now and then, they change at unlucky moments," the Friar told her before floating merrily through the ceiling.
"Anguis," Angelica said to the stone wall, the latin sounding strange and harsh when it reverberated against the hollowness of the hallway.
She stepped back as the stones immediately began to move, twisting in on themselves to form an elegant archway in the wall. Angelica stepped through it to see a wide room filled with ornate silver and green furniture. The green light fading from the ceiling and the windows filled with murky darkness suggested that the common room was actually under the lake, but in the darkness of the common room Angelica couldn't tell. Some of older students stood talking quietly, but none of the first years were in the common room.
Gemma stepped away from her group of friends sitting near the elaborately carved hearth and walked over to her. "Up the stairs on the right, it's the last door on the left."
As Angelica walked towards the spiral stairs she received a fair amount of glares from older Slytherins who had obviously heard about her being muggleborn. She lifted her chin, raised a single eyebrow and walked past them, a vaguely amused expression on her face. Stepping carefully up the stairs, Angelica refused to look back to see what kind of reaction the other Slytherins had. The stairs ended in a round room that reminded Angelica of a lobby of a redecorating bed and breakfast. There were two chairs placed on a rug, but the stiffness to the space made it feel unnatural.
As she pushed open the door, the conversation stopped. Pansy gave her a smug little look before turning to the other girls and whispering feverishly. Tugging the amused expression back on her face, Angelica crossed the room to the one bed without clothes strewn all over it. It was spaced farther apart from the others and the window that matched those set around the other headboards was set into the wall like a nook. When she was lying down, her head and torso would be surrounded the glass that arched up from the floor and onto the ceiling of the nook. Angelica rather liked it.
Her trunk was tucked under her head and Paquita's basket was nestled into the silky pillows. Angelica pulled the green velvet hangings around the foot of her bed and changed into her pyjamas in darkness. She pulled Paquita from her basket and close to her chest. Angelica fell asleep staring at the stars, barely visible through the dark water, but shining brightly nonetheless.
