Mrs. Johnson never liked my mother. When Angelina and I would play together as children and our mothers would get to talking, it was clear to even to the self-absorbed minds we had at the age of 6 that they didn't get along like other mothers did.

Other mothers would sit on the porch swing with cups of tea, and they would tell stories and laugh and gossip and whisper excitedly. They would barely remember to keep an eye on their children until just seconds before someone started bleeding and screaming. The injured youth would get patched up and sent on their merry way, and the mothers would sit back down to continue the story about that scandalously ugly dress the neighbor wore two weeks prior.

Our mothers stood with their arms crossed facing us, sniffing and exchanging short sentences. They would nod curtly and shrug and roll their eyes. If Angie got hurt, her mother pulled her onto the porch, magically fixed her up, and sent her back out. The play date ended if I got hurt, which was nearly a guarantee because I had a charming attraction to the ground as a child that I thankfully grew out of somewhere around the time I started at Hogwarts. My mother would mutter about how she knew this would happen, what a bad idea "this sort of thing" was, and would drag me, still crying and scraped and bleeding, to fix up in the quiet of our living room where she could tell me about exactly how foolish I had been to go chasing after Angie like I had, or to jump off that tree stump, or to crawl under that shrub.

Mr. Johnson never spoke to my mother.

I imagine things would have been different if my father was alive. During the hours I would spend confined indoors because the beautifully sunny days were apparently perfect hunting conditions for some beast or another, I would dig through boxes tucked away in the attack and find pictures of him that I studied for hours. Pictures of him and my mother as young teenagers laughing and hugging and proudly holding up their prefect badges and pretending to duel. Pictures of them slightly older rocking an infant me and standing proudly in front of their new house (which my mother and I had long since moved from) and working in the garden with smears of dirt across their faces from the trowel battle they'd had moments earlier. I don't imagine that much frightened him. Maybe my mother did. She frightens a lot of people.

My mother was a proud Hufflepuff that stoically filled my head with the virtues of truth and honesty and fairness. My father had been a Slytherin. I imagine that he'd been one of the good ones, one of the cunning, clever, brilliant ones. Not a Draco Malfoy. More of a Peeves. When faced with the Sorting Hat, I didn't want to be a Slytherin because the values I believed my father had were long since forgotten in that house, and I didn't particularly want to be a Hufflepuff after watching Fred and George get sorted into Gryffindor. I wanted the house of bravery and courage.

But I never was very brave or courageous. Even in my last year at Hogwarts, I needed to sleep with a light nearby. Just a small one. Just to know there was still something there. And that was after doing a lot of growing up. My father was killed when I was four years old, and my mother spent every waking minute telling me how I could trip up the stairs, break my neck, and die, or be killed by something else equally as trivial (and typically much more horrific). She did it to keep me safe, of that I never doubted, but it succeeded in two things. One, it made me want to try new things to show her that I wasn't, for example, so stupid that I would manage to permanently disfigure myself trying to cook pasta. Two, it made me absolutely terrified of everything, right down to magic itself.

After all, magic had killed my father. I couldn't help but think as I stood there waiting to get sorted that any one of my fellow first years, or any of the countless students in the Great Hall with me, could be the next You-Know-Who. Maybe they'd be even worse. Who would be the next child to grow up without a father, and who would cause it?

That was what amazed me so much when I first met the Weasleys. They had lived through that horribly dark time in our history, yet it didn't seem to bother Molly Weasley nearly enough that her twin boys liked to make things explode. My mother never would have allowed that. That's why I never told her anything about what I did or who I spent my time with at school. That's why I could never afford to get in trouble. But Fred and George? Well, their mother would fuss and assign chores and yell and send howlers and be downright miserable to them, but at the end of the day, she still loved them and asked them how their days were over slices of freshly baked pie as the family ate their meal together at a long and over-stuffed table. I never had that. I'd never wanted that until I spent my first weekend at the Burrow. After that, I couldn't dream of anything else. I wanted that family. Children running amuck during the day with my leash just tight enough that I could reel them in, wiping dirt off of noses and kissing away tears and laughing at petty squabbles. I wanted that. All of it.

I often wondered if Fred and George knew how lucky they had it.

When I was 12 or 13, my mother asked me why I spent so much time out of the house. I shrugged and mumbled as girls that age are apt to do, and she let it go. I didn't want to tell her the truth. The truth that Angelina's strange family of half-muggle influence, half-wizard felt more real to me than we did. That spending time with my best friend made me feel free, but spending time with my mother, my only living flesh and blood, made me feel trapped, like I couldn't breathe. How do you tell your mother that?

So, I didn't. I brushed her off. And that night, I dreamed of the family I so desperately wanted.

FGFGFGFGFG

"Melbecka? 'Scuse me. Melbecka?"

The Gryffindor common room was fairly busy for a Wednesday evening. Since it was only the first week of term, students had no particular reason to be anywhere else. There were no emergency library trips, no Quidditch practices, not even a detention for Fred and George yet. I was curled on a prized seat by the open window next to Fred with my book of the year open on my lap. For the first page, I'd already been interrupted by Fred asking if I thought eating a dungbomb would be "hospital wing" dangerous or just "rather smelly farts" dangerous, Angelina yelling at me for wearing a pair of her shoes that I swear I've had in my possession for years, George performing a national inquiry over what kind of snack I wanted him to snag from the kitchen, and now Colin Creevey. It appeared my attempt to read The Golden Cauldron was going to fail miserably, as had Dancing with Giants, The Boggart in the Closet, Voyages with Vampires, The Animagi of County Antrum, Rome and Juliet, and Quidditch Through the Ages before. Just once, I wanted to sit down for a nice reading session and not be interrupted every five words.

Fred gave a sly grin as he continued to study the dungbomb in his hand. I was extremely wary of that situation, as well, knowing something was bound to go terribly wrong any moment now. He knew I was endlessly annoyed by the small boy trying to get my attention, which I refused to give, and took particular pleasure in my pain.

"Mel? Melbecka Harper? 'Scuse me. Hello?"

When Colin forced his face down to the level of my book so I was forced to look at him, the motion made me jump, and Fred snorted so hard that he choked himself. After a nasty look at my so-called friend, I forced a smile at the third-year Gryffindor.

"What can I do for you, Colin?" I tried to sound pleasant, but Fred started coughing harder. Perhaps I was laying it on a bit thick.

"You know how you made that potion for me two years ago? I was wondering if you could make me some more."

A potion that I made two years ago? That was really all he was going to give me. Apparently, my memory skills were not as widely discussed amongst my fellow students as my fondness for experimenting with my cauldron. "Sorry, Colin, erm, think you could be more specific?"

"The picture one." He shook his camera in my face for extra emphasis. "So that when I develop them for my dad so he can see all the things we do here, they move. It's so much more wonderful if they move for him, but I've run all out of potion, and I was really hoping you could make some more from me. I've heard you're awfully good at it, and the last batch you made me worked so well. But I spilled some so I've run out now and really need more so I can develop my first lot and send them home for me." He'd taken a 'first lot' of pictures already? It was Wednesday of our first week! Exactly how many pictures did this boy take. "So if you could do that for me, it would be just so wonderful! I'm so excited about taking Care of Magical Creatures this year and I want my dad to see everything that happens, you know? It's going to be brilliant, isn't it? I wonder if there'll be dragons!"

"Alright, Colin," I held my hand up quickly so he would finally stop talking. "First of all, I wouldn't get excited about dragons. They're dangerous and would love nothing more than to burn you to a crisp and eat you." He froze at that and fixed me with wide, horrified eyes. Fred laughed outright at that.

"Don't listen to her, mate. She's just angry."

"Am not," I insisted. I closed my book, not bothering with the marker since I was only on the first paragraph, and hit him in the arm. The blow surprised him for some reason and he nearly dropped the dungbomb but thankfully came up with it firmly in his hands. "But, really, Colin, I'm a bit busy now with classes starting again, and I just don't have time to brew anything for you. Just go ask Snape. I bet he's got some, or he'll be able to make some for you now while classwork is still light."

Fred snorted, probably thinking about how happy he was to be free of that man's class forever. Colin, however, fixed me with that terrified gaze again. "Y-you mean, j-just ask him? As in, t-t-talk to him?"

And I remembered just how different I was. Other students did not breeze into Snape's office and ask to use various ingredients or get his opinion on the best way to stir concoctions that Hogwarts classes didn't even cover. To me, asking Snape for a potion was as natural as asking Madam Pomfrey to heal a cut, although Madam Pomfrey would probably help without twenty minutes of belittling banter. To Colin Creevey, it was the equivalent of sending him out climb Kilimanjaro with only a pair of trainers, a bottle of water, and a pat on the back.

"I'll ask for you, Colin, and let you know what he says." Before Colin could spend the next five minutes thanking me profusely, I added, "Now go run along and grab a snack cake from the kitchens before we're not allowed out anymore, eh? You look hungry."

He announced that, in fact, he was, and went scurrying off. Fred immediately burst out laughing. "Telling him to talk to Snape? For someone who's afraid of the dark, why are you always so surprised that people are terrified of that man?"

"I am not afraid of the dark." Half true. The dark isn't scary. The things that hide in the dark, the evil things that wait patiently for you to feel comfortable enough that they can kill you from the comfort of the shadows without any struggle are what I always found horrifying.

"And I'll be headmaster one day. Why not just tell Colin to tattoo 'Tell me how worthless I am' on his forehead?"

"Because I wasn't talking to you," I countered.

"That hurts me. I do have feelings, you know." I raised my eyebrows at him. "Well, alright, not many, but I'm sure they're in there somewhere. Now, really, if someone were to swallow one of these," he motioned with the dungbomb, "do you think they'd die? Because I was going to test it myself, but I could wait until George gets back…"


I only wish I was half as brilliant as J.K. Rowling. Next chapter: Meeting Umbridge