Air moved, in the form of a small gust. Robert winced as predawn light danced inside of his tightly shut eyelids. Without opening his eyes yet, he reflected. What a strange dream. Something about witches and a girl named Harriet...Hayley? And others.... A rough hand shook his shoulder.
"Hey Rob. Sleepyhead. Time to get up and enlighten the less fortunate with your fountain of Ravenclaw knowledge." The voice was slightly sarcastic, but amusing at the same time. Robert's eyes shot open, and locked on a pair of hazel ones. Now he was confused. Who was this person? Why wasn't he in his bedroom? Where was he at, anyway?
"Who?....Where?...." The boy groaned, and shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously, as his hazel eyes unfocused for a moment.
"They said that you might be confused....You're at Hogwarts, school of Wizardry and Witchcraft. You came here yesterday, with three other girls, Sarah, Gabriel, and Hayley. Does that ring a bell?" Robert blinked. So it wasn't a dream. He nodded.
"Yes...." he got up and put his slightly stiff feet on the wooden floor. "Please don't call me Rob, by the way. I despise having my name shortened." The hazel-eyed, black-haired boy grinned, and stuck out his hand in a gesture for a handshake.
"I'm to be your guide to the rest of the school, so you can get oriented. My name is Alexander Zephyr. But, unlike yourself, I despise being called by my full name. Alex, if you please." Robert, despite his raging headache, returned the handshake, so as not to appear rude. Alex must have noticed.
"I know, the time change is probably going to bother you for a while. I'm sorry, but Dumbledore said that you are to be excused from any class at any time, if you feel like you are going to fall asleep," he finished kindly. Robert sighed, but managed a smile.
"Miss a class to sleep? You must be joking." Alex grinned again, showing healthy white teeth.
"Spoken like a true Ravenclaw. Get dressed, and I'll show you the way downstairs, to meet everybody." He left, and Robert reached for a clean pair of robes.
# # #
Gabriel had been up for a while, when some students started to filter slowly down the stairs, half-asleep. She grinned at the people who stumbled over the rug, on the ways to the showers. Besides the fact that she was a morning person in the first place, she was almost too excited to sleep, let alone sleep for the entire night. She had spent an entire hour just admiring herself in one of her dormitory's full-length mirrors, squealing in delight as the shimmering material of her robes swished around her new pair of black boots. When she had decided that she had been vain enough for one hour, she sat in one of the overstuffed crimson chairs, and waited. She was drifting off, until she heard the gentle crunch of weight settling on one of the chairs beside her. In it was a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl that yawned and smiled at her sleepily.
"I don't believe that I got the chance to introduce myself yesterday. My name is Hermione Granger. It's good to have you here." Gabriel eyed her, and then smiled.
"It's good to be here. When's breakfast?" Hermione yawned and looked at a watch that she had on her wrist.
"In about a half-hour. I'm going to take a shower now, I'll be back." Gabriel nodded. Hermione left. Sighing, Gabriel leaned back into the chair.
# # #
Learning that the Hufflepuffs were almost always early and prepared, Hayley sat at her table, toying with her fork, and listening to the other children talk. She had been at fancy banquets before, but this was the loudest one she had ever attended. She wasn't sure if her ears liked all the noise. The next thing that caught her attention was the Ravenclaws marching in. She caught Robert's eye, and he winked at her. Hayley's sharp eyes picked out bags under his eyes, though, and he looked like he would fall asleep. Some of the Ravenclaws walked over to mingle with the Hufflepuffs, and Robert was one of them. As he and Hayley conversed, the Gryffindors came in, and at the head of the mob was Gabriel, looking alive and awake. She waved merrily at the duo, and came over. Last to enter were the Slytherins, - Hayley noticed with discomfort - that there was a certain, millisecond of unease and enmity that dowsed the room of it's happy blurble for a few moments. Sarah staggered out from the Slytherin crowd and over to the Gryffindor table, where the trio had migrated.
"You blasted English people get up too early," Sarah groaned, glaring at them all with ferocious gray eyes. "It's only six in the morning." Gabriel giggled.
"And you blasted Americans sleep too late. What can you do with the day if you spend it all sleeping?" Sarah yawned and leaned against the table.
"Plenty. You only have to stay up late," her eyes gained something of a metallic sheen to them as she spoke. "That's when all the action is, at night." Robert made a face.
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," he quoted. Sarah rolled her eyes in the back of her head.
"And late to bed, and late to rise, makes great, uhh, ketchup covered fries!" Sarah sighed as the other three stared at her. "It's too damn early, and I don't care what your precious Ben Affleck says." Robert sighed with disdain.
"You mean Ben Franklin." Sarah growled.
"Whatever! Look; don't even try to talk to me until around one. All you'll get is a bunch of nonsense, and the sharpest edge of my tongue." Hayley grinned and reached up to pat Sarah's shoulder, as Sarah was quite a bit taller than Hayley was.
"That's okay, Sarah. We still love you." Sarah groaned and sat down at the Gryffindor table. Ron looked at the chair where she sat, and wrinkled his nose.
"Excuse me, but I believe that your table is over there," he pointed at the Slytherin table. Sarah cocked her head to look at him.
"I know. I'm only sitting here for a bit. Lay off, why don't you?" Ron backed off, and Sarah put her head on the table, banging it lightly. "It's...too...early...it's....too...early..." she said, in rhythm with the banging.
"Sarah," Gabriel said, trying to keep from laughing," it's okay, you know, you don't have to give yourself a concussion." Sarah looked up from her banging.
"I know," she said morosely, "but..." She was interrupted by Ron.
"Trouble at six o'clock," he grumbled. Hayley whirled around, and saw a boy with silver-blond hair, and two mean-looking thugs behind him. Ron, Harry, and Hermione stood up, and faced the boy with resentment. The boy looked back the same way. Sarah snorted.
"Can't we just feel the love in this room?" she asked. Robert looked at her, nearly smacking himself over the head. Didn't Sarah ever know when to hold her sharp tongue?
Probably not, he thought sardonically, as the boy approached, regarding everyone with hard silvery eyes.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Ron spat at the boy. The boy rolled his eyes in the back of his head before answering.
"Nothing to do with you, Weasley." He turned to Hayley, Robert and Gabriel, and raised one of his eyebrows. He didn't comment, though. This close, Hayley could see that he held a package in his right hand. "You would be Sarah Slytherin, correct?" he asked, Sarah. Sarah sighed.
"That's my name, don't wear it out," she replied offhandedly. The boy nodded, and stuck out his hand for Sarah to shake. Sarah took it.
"Draco Malfoy. That's Crabbe," - he motioned to the boy on his left - "and that's Goyle" - motioning respectively to the boy on his right. "The Slytherin house welcomes you, and we have brought you a housewarming gift." Thus, he produced the package. Sarah looked at it, looked at the boy, and then tore into the brown paper.
It was a clear sphere, about the size of a tennis ball, with five little orbs of light that flitted around in it. The orbs changed color every few seconds, making for a very pretty effect.
"It's a Lumosphere," Draco explained. "They're pretty cool, and rather amusing, if I do say so myself." The orbs in the ball had changed from a bright pink to a mellow blue. Sarah grinned, and stood up. Expecting another handshake, Draco stuck out his hand. Instead, Sarah caught him off guard with an one-armed hug.
"Tell all the other Slytherins that I love them too," Sarah said, smiling. "Gabby, Hayley, Bobby, Err, Dragon boy, Crabby, Toil? Goyle? Soil? Ack. Whatever. Tell me your names again later. I won't remember them." Everyone stared at her.
"Okay, I'm going to feel bad later on, if I don't give you something, err, hang on.." she dug in her pockets. A bobby pin, a handful of cobwebs, and a butterfly clip. Taking out her wand, she tapped the butterfly clip with one snake fang.
"Do something," she ordered the wand. There was a flash, and where the clip was, was a bright pink butterfly. If flitted over to Draco's finger, and landed on it. Draco stared at it.
"Well," said Sarah. "You've got your very own....butterfly. Don't you feel special? I've got to leave. Things to see, people to do!" She blinked, and everyone stared at her, as she reaccounted the words of her last sentence. "Err, well, you know what I meant." She pushed her way through the crowd. Before she was swallowed up by the mass of people completely, she whirled around.
"Oh, and Dragon boy? Don't yatter so formally at me. I don't like it." She turned behind a body, and she was gone. Everybody blinked.
"Dragon boy?" asked Draco, weakly. Robert promptly answered.
"Draco means Dragon in scholar's terms. Did you know that your last name means 'bad mistake'?" Ron grumbled.
"It's only fitting." Draco impaled him upon an icy stare, but the look was somewhat softened by the fact that he had a bright pink butterfly on his right forefinger. In fact, the look was actually comical. Ron started to laugh, and Draco snapped his eyebrows together. The butterfly took flight, landing on Ron's nose. Ron sneezed. He sneezed again. And again. Finally, it got to the point that he couldn't stop sneezing. The butterfly left Ron's nose, and he kept on sneezing. Malfoy smirked as the butterfly landed on his shoulder.
"You know, I could get used to having you around." The butterfly seemed to swell with pride. Draco and his two thugs left. Ron was wiping his eyes with a cloth napkin.
"Memo to myself," he grumbled, "never underestimate the power of the butterfly." Gabriel laughed, and Hayley and Robert returned to their tables.
# # #
Hayley left for her first class of the day, Potions, feeling odd. She didn't know why, but she found a picture of a woman in a long, yellow dress, and brown hair, that distracted her thoughts for a moment. The woman's eyes crinkled at the edges, from years of smiling, so it seemed, she was very plump, and kind blue eyes twinkled at her, from beyond a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. There was a dusty golden plaque below it. Wiping away some of the dust from the words, she could clearly read the engraving:
Helga Hufflepuff
Some say she was the person that came up with the idea to found Hogwarts.
As a prophet, and a divine seeker, she foresaw its construction, and ordered
It's completion.
Hayley frowned at the lack of information that the plaque gave her. She was about to try to wipe off another layer of dust, but a soft voice interrupted her.
"Excuse me?" the voice was timid and meek, meeker than even Hayley's own. Hayley whirled around to find a girl, with a medium complexion, and soft brown hair that fell down to her shoulders looking back at her. But the thing that really got Hayley was her eyes. They weren't brown, black, blue, green or gray, but a soft shade of pink. The girl took a short breath and continued.
"Are....are you....perhaps lost?" she asked, clutching books to her chest, as if she expected Hayley to sprout horns and breathe fire on her at any minute. Hayley blinked. No, she wasn't lost, but, perhaps.....
"Yes, I'm lost. I have to go to Potions class. Can you show me there?" The girl blinked those carnation-colored eyes at her, and pointed down the corridor.
"Right down there. I don't see how you missed it. I'm in Hufflepuff too....Mind if I come?" Hayley wanted nothing more.
"I should be delighted to," Hayley replied, remembering her manners. The girl smiled, and her meek expression changed.
"I'm Rosemary Magdalena. I know who you are, you're Helga - err, sorry, force of habit, Hayley Hufflepuff." Hayley nodded.
"Let's go." And with that, the duo walked into Snape's domain.
# # #
Robert had Astronomy first. Without Alex to lead him to and from all the strange places, he was sure that he would had been lost. It gave him a headache to try to figure out which tapestry-covered doors that Alex had led him though, or how many fake walls. He decided that he would figure it all out sooner or later.
"I'm warning you, now," Alex said as the came to a doorway that had been up three flights of stairs, "Professor Copperpot has a tendency to ramble, so, you don't have to listen to all of it." Robert laughed, and they entered.
Thirty minutes later....
It turned out, that Alex had been right. Professor Copperpot had spent a half-hour rambling on about this one star, and the parchment that was meant for notes was now covered with all sorts of doodles and drawings. Robert began to glaze off, just like he had done so often at his old school. That was when it happened. Just for a minute. There was a globe-like thing on a table by his desk, which held a comet in it. It was swirving around madly, banging against the magicked glass wildly, trying to get out. In a swirl of light from it's tail, Robert caught a glimpse of a castle, dark gray with a black background. He squinted at it. Were comets supposed to produce visions? He gripped his wand, and it felt oddly warm. He turned back to the comet, trying to get a closer look.
The protective sphere holding the comet broke.
Glass shards flew everywhere. Robert yelled and ducked, still gripping his wand. A blue shield erupted from it, and covered Robert like a transparent blue bowl. The comet swerved around the room, and it erupted with people trying to catch it. It finally flew out the window. Robert let the shield down, and Alex helped him up.
"Robert! Are you okay?" He really wasn't. He felt sweaty, shaky, and unreasonably uneasy. The image of the black castle had been pressed into his brain like a branding iron. But he nodded.
"I'm fine. Honest."
# # #
Gabriel was in Herbology when the comet broke loose up in the Astronomy tower. Of course, she was completely obvlious to it, as she was up to her elbows in muck, trying to keep her hold on Passion seeds. "If you ground the petals up," Sprout had told them, "they are used in love potions. But, they are very hard to grow, as they are fickle plants." Gabriel dove her arm in the dirt after one of the small silver seeds that she had dropped. There was a damp hand on her bare elbow: Professor Sprout's.
"Gryffindor, why don't you go on and wash up? Class is over in fifteen minutes, and I want to show everybody the other purposes of Passion Plant. Gabriel nodded obediently, and Sprout went to another student. On her way to the fountain, Gabriel noticed a girl with frizzy red-blond hair and black eyes looked shyly at her. Gabriel smiled, and the girl approached.
"My name is Alanya Apollo. You're Gabriel Gryffindor, aren't you?" Gabriel nodded as she walked up to the fountain, with Alanya. "It's nice to meet you. I sleep three beds to the left of you, and I wanted to talk to you ever since you've gotten here." Gabriel smiled again, and stuck her hands in the water, scraping the dirt off her skin.
"That's nice of you to say, Alanya. Sprout's gonna do a lecture in a few moments. I'll sit next to you." Gabriel nudged Alanya playfully. "If you'll let me borrow your notes." Alanya's eyes danced in her head.
"Oh, you." Alanya left to go get parchment and ink. Gabriel looked back in at the dirty water. Was it just her, or was the dirt in the water shaping around? It was. The dirt collected itself in a circle, and in it's mucky depths, Gabriel saw a gray castle with a black backdrop, looking over a moor. Gabriel blinked, not quite knowing what to think.
"Come on, Gryffindor!" Sprout called. "The lecture is beginning!" Gabriel shook her head violently, making her braid slap her back, and shaking her out of her trance.
"Coming, Professor." She shot one last look at the water, but the vision had disappeared, leaving just a cloud of muddy water in the basin.
# # #
While all this was going on, Sarah was snoozing in History of Magic, taught by the ghostly Professor Binns. After the initial excitement of meeting a ghost for the first time, the class was very boring. Sarah reached for a quill and slowly started copying down something about Merlin the Magnificent, when the door opened. The class was disrupted for a moment, as everyone stared to look at the newcomer. It was a girl, dressed in black robes that were a bit too big for her, with blondy-brown hair, and sharp green-gray eyes, that darted around nervously, as the entire class stared balefully back at her.
"I'm Essex Ulysses," she said softly. "There was a mix-up, and I got here late." Professor Binns nodded, and stretched his ghostly form out.
"Very well, Miss.....Uluser. You may find a seat now." Essex looked around nervously, but nobody moved. Sarah groaned. She liked having the large double desk to herself, but, she was the only one that wasn't sharing. She pushed her stuff over to her own side, and motioned for this Essex girl to come over to her seat. Essex took the offer gratefully, and sat down, trying not to draw too much attention to herself as she did so.
"Thanks," Essex said, looking at her. "I owe you. For a moment I thought nobody was going to invite me in." Sarah nodded, only half-listening.
"I'm Sarah Slytherin. Yes," she said to Essex's sudden surprised look, "you heard me right, Sarah Slytherin." Essex winked, but looked at Professor Binns, as he was staring at the pair. Sarah propped herself up on an elbow and took out her Lumosphere, and watched the orbs float lazily around, turning from a light blue to a greenish-yellow.
Then it started acting funny. The orbs started spinning around very fast, making one large yellow-green blue. Sarah almost dropped it, but gripped it tighter, and looked at it. In it, she saw the same gray castle with the black, stormy backdrop that Gabriel and Robert had seen. Feeling strange all of a sudden, she went back to copying notes like a madwoman, trying to get the image of the castle out of her mind.
# # #
Hayley stirred feverishly at her black jelly-leg potion, trying to get it to turn gray before Professor Snape came over and decided to taunt her again. It wasn't her fault the stupid toad legs she got were stale! Rosemary looked at her black mess and chuckled at it.
"Put some dragon blood in it. You don't have enough." Hayley nodded gratefully to her, and dumped in a vial of the thick, black blood.
The potion in the cauldron sizzled and bubbled for a few minutes, emitting off quite a lot of steam. When it was done, Hayley peeked over at her potion, which was now a creamy shade of gray.
"My parents are Potion Brewers," Rosemary said, tapping the side of the cauldron with her stirrer. "That's how I all ready know so much about this subject." It was true. She had finished her potion the fastest, and it wasn't too thick, too watery, or not the right color. Even Snape (whom Hayley had learned to look upon with a certain wary respect in the first almost-hour of meeting him), grudgingly admitted it was good, but wouldn't give Hufflepuff any points for it.
"He only gives points to his own house, which is Slytherin," Rosemary muttered to Hayley on occasion of Snape striding away. Hayley hid a smile behind her hand and went back to stirring her potion.
Finally, when Professor Snape came over to check the consistency of the potion, Hayley stopped, nervously. Snape dunked a finger in the stormy-gray concoction, and rubbed it between his forefinger and his thumb. The gray gloop fermented and became sticky. Hayley prayed that this was a good sign.
"Decent. For the first time," he said, with a rather silky clip to his voice. He strode off to go torture another poor being, whose name was Hannah Abbot. Her potion was an absolute mess, frothing over the edges of the cauldron, and a lively greenish color, instead of the gray. Hayley grinned. That was as good as a compliment that she would get from Snape. She was about to put her stirrer back in the cauldron, when she started.
In the unruffled surface of the potion, Hayley could see a gray castle, with a black background, not unlike what her other three counterparts had seen. Blinking, she stuck a hand out to try to touch it, only to be burnt by the potion's heat.
"Ow!" She cried, looking for something to wipe her hand off with. Rosemary thrust a handkerchief into her fingers, and Hayley wiped the gray glop (which had turned almost rubbery) off of her hand.
Rosemary took the handkerchief from her with a slight jerk in her hand motion. "What in the name of God did you think you were doing?" Hayley winced. "I'm not trying to be like your mother or anything, but, you should know that potions are hot!" Hayley bit her lip. What was she going to say? She couldn't say anything about the castle.
"Err, I slipped," she lied. Rosemary looked at her with those unusual pink eyes, but turned back to her potion. Hayley closed her eyes, and the castle flashed over her vision. Shaking her head to clear it, she returned to her potion.
Author's note: Hmm, well, we're getting into the plot here. What castle? (To tell you the truth, I don't even know what I'm doing with the castle yet, but I decided that two chapters' worth of introductory babble was enough -_-;) Did you know that the last names of the main character's friends, (Essex, Rosemary, Alanya and Alex) their last names are names of butterflies? I haven't decided on the name of Malfoy's butterfly yet, but, it WILL play an important part in the rest of the story...(well, at least I think it will ^_^;;)
~Moxie ^_^ (P.S. And as always, no flames!)
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, but I do own Alanya, Rosemary, Alex, Essex, (I don't know *where* I came up with the name Essex at...) Gabriel, Robert, Sarah and Hayley. I also own Malfoy's butterfly, and if you steal it, I will make it make you sneeze uncontrollably! LoL