Hello,
I hope this reaches you well, I got up extra early to write this letter so it better get home safe. Bandit bit my finger as I tied it to his ankle, so I refused him treats. He is probably quite hungry now so if you're eating breakfast whilst reading this, guard your eggs.
I was going to write on my first night, but I was just so tired after the train ride, sorting ceremony and then the feast. There was just so much food! I'm sure you're both dying to know which house I got sorted into and the hat said I was just like Mum, so it put me in Slytherin! I was a little worried that Alec would be disappointed, but he was clapping as much as my new housemates. It earned him some very odd looks from the Ravenclaw's at his table, but he didn't seem to mind at all.
I have made new friends, well several in fact but Amelia (Mia) is my best friend, I think. I don't know if she knows this yet, but we are now best friends. She got sorted into Slytherin too and her brother is also in our house, he's a few years older (I can't remember exactly how many) but he seems nice too. Mia and I are also in the same dorm along with Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode and Sally-Anne Perks. They all seem nice enough. I also met a few of the first-year boys (don't worry Dad, boy's still disgust me), Blaise Zabini is the nicest one so far, he's very quiet but polite. Unfortunately, Draco Malfoy does not share that same trait. Mum, I understand why you complain about Mr. Malfoy at work so much. If he is anything like his son, then I don't blame you at all.
I love Hogwarts so much already, it's so huge there is so much to explore and the ghosts are so kind and will give you directions if you get lost, all except Peeves. Some of the paintings are quite horrible however and will shout at you if you even look at them.
Everyone is starting to wake up now and Iris is meowing to be fed. I miss you both terribly, but I am safe, having fun and not getting in to trouble. I promise I will write again to you soon. Try not to miss your favourite child too much.
Lots of love,
Nina.
Never before, had I imagined would I be spending one of my classes at Hogwarts being taught by a cat. Not that was an entirely foreign concept to me, Iris spent most of her time staring at me from her favourite spot on my bedroom window ledge at home. Yet here I was, sat next to Mia, who upon arrival had stroked the cat as we had retrieved the seating plan from the teachers desk, not realising it would transfigure into the head of Gryffindor house, Professor McGonagall who we also learnt had been the witch who had sorted us the night before. Mia's face had swiftly gone a deep shade of pink as she located her seat on the parchment and quickly placed herself in it, moving very little once she was there. Whilst I had seen the funny side of the situation, Professor McGonagall didn't and deducted 5 points from Slytherin as Millicent, Sally-Anne and I were in silent stitches behind our hands.
On the way to Herbology we had made our first encounter with Peeves the Poltergeist. Apparently, he was the only thing in Hogwarts more annoying and out of control than the Weasley twins. I'd heard Alec mention them before once, apparently, they were drawn to trouble like a pair of ginger magnets. Peeves however was downright mean. He would jump out of walls screaming wildly, pull rugs out from under our feet and one time we even saw him sneak up behind a Ravenclaw girl and yank on her pigtails so hard that she started crying. We were all rather glad when we were safely closed behind the misted glass doors of the greenhouses. Not that I was happy for long, I realised that I did not enjoy Herbology very much at all. We took our classes three times a week with Hufflepuff and annoyingly, they all seemed rather gifted at looking after a variety of different, and some, dangerous plants. I however did not enjoy putting my hands in a pot of soil even with gloves on. I don't think Professor Sprout enjoyed my lack of enthusiasm. I made a mental note to myself that if I planned on passing the subject, I needed to find a talented partner in the future.
Astrology I enjoyed greatly, even if it was at midnight on a Wednesday. We had to climb to the very top of the Astronomy Tower and examine the skies with our telescopes, tracking the stars and the movements of planets. It was a subject that Mia and I had shared enthusiasm in. Mine was mainly because I loved being in the tower where it was always slightly windy, and it felt like there was nothing between me and the sky. I had a feeling I would be coming up here more and more often.
Normally I liked History. I loved reading about things that happened in the past and how they affected how we did things in the present. Professor Binn's, however made a History of Magic incredibly boring. Alec told me how he'd died in his armchair one night and then got up the next morning, left his body behind and just carried on teaching like nothing had happened. Apparently, no one had the heart to tell him he was dead, so everyone just let him think he was still alive.
I had been immensely looking forward to Defence against the Dark Arts but as I soon as I crossed the threshold to the classroom, I was instantly dying to get out of there. Dust hung thick in the air and there were strings of garlic hung everywhere. The smell was so overpowering it made my eyes water which just made me want to sneeze more than I already did. The garlic was apparently there to prevent a Romanian vampire from seeking revenge on Quirrell from a few years ago.
Potions class on our first Friday was much more eventful – as I had imagined it would be. It was a double period and we would be spending it with Gryffindor. I was actually quite looking forward to seeing how good Harry would be, the destroyer of the Dark Lord would surely be an incredibly capable wizard. I did arrive rather flustered however as I, along with all other first years were learning the delicate art of simply navigating Hogwarts. Sally Anne had stated that there was a grand total of one hundred and forty-two staircases in Hogwarts and not one of them was permanently fixed in one place. Once you had remembered that certain stairs went different places on certain days and that some would spontaneously make a step vanish, you had to fight with the doors. I had never before had to tickle a door two centimetres above the bottom hinge to get it to open and yet that was exactly what I had to do to gain access to the tower that descended down into our potion's classroom.
Professor Snape was much like the school's caretaker, Filch. We quickly learnt that he didn't suffer fools gladly, but my fellow first years had been assured by our older housemates that very morning that he would favour us well enough. He was our head of house after all, it was only fair that someone saw us in a favourable light.
Similarly, to McGonagall, Professor Snape could control a class with little to no effort. Whilst his voice was low and quiet, he commanded respect and incited fear with every dulcet tone. It was easy to decide that having Snape as my head of house could only work in my favour unless I got on his bad side, that was. He was a foreboding character that supported our house and wanted to see us succeed…and I had been well informed that most others would take steps to see us fail.
As we were split into pairs to start brewing a potion to cure boils, Snape swept around us all – his long black cloak billowing out behind him. He loudly criticised nearly everyone he came across from the way they weighed their dried nettles wrong to not crushing their snake fangs finely enough - but when he reached mine and Mia's potion he stopped and arched an eyebrow. As he examined the gently brewing liquid, Mia and I stood underneath him, silent and frozen to our spots, awaiting his criticism. However, he waited a couple of minutes before going to the register and then coming back to our table. At that point, Mia and I were clutching onto each other's robe sleeves anxiously and every other pair of eyes was watching us curiously.
"Rosier, I don't suppose you're related to Basil Rosier?" I nodded quickly, hoping I was giving the correct answer.
"My father." Snape nodded curtly, before glancing into our potion again as a puff of green smoke appeared, making Mia and I jump slightly.
"It seems as though you have inherited his talent for potions." He slid away again, as Mia and I shared a grateful smile to one another and exhaled a breath we didn't know we'd been holding as we resumed our work.
"You are never pairing with anyone else for potions. Ever." Mia whispered in my ear, send the two of us into giggles as we suddenly felt a league above the rest of student who appeared to be struggling with their own potions.
Flying however, was by far my favourite lesson of the week. Slytherin and Gryffindor were paired up to learn together but it quickly emerged that Pansy was so scared of heights she hadn't dared go near a broom prior to our lessons. When Madam Hooch had tried to encourage her, she had started vomiting from the sheer stress of the situation and Millicent had been instructed to escort her to the hospital wing. Mia and I made a mental note to check in on her when we got back to our Common Room, but only after we'd stopped laughing between us for a good five minutes. After the initial drama of the lesson had subsided, we'd been instructed to command our brooms into our hands. Much to my own happiness, mine had shot up into my hand almost instantly, earning me a few looks of dismay from some and annoyance from others. Mia's broom had taken a few more minutes to obey her instructions but soon enough her broom was also in hand. But the next dramatic moment had been only seconds away as Neville Longbottom's broom took on a life of its own and flew off, colliding with the stone walls of the castle on the way. As he'd plummeted to the ground, it was clear our first flying lesson was over.
That night in our dorm, Mia and I filled Pansy and Millicent in on what they'd missed.
"So, Madam Hooch left to take Longbottom to the hospital wing." I said, sat on my trunk at the foot of my bed in my oversized Kenmare Kestrels Quidditch team t-shirt. Mia had braided my hair into tight French braids and I'd had to keep tugging them out of Iris' claws as she insisted on playing with the ends that remained on the end of my bed.
"Then Malfoy found this glass ball that Neville got sent for when you forget things. Said quite a few horrible things too." Mia added as she tied off the last braid, tapping me on the shoulder to tell me she was done.
"Thank you. So, Potter stepped in. Clearly embracing his new-found Gryffindor qualities and tried to get it back. Draco being…well, himself, refused and flew off so Potter did the same." I continued, rifling through one of the many sweet packages my Father had sent me, searching for Orange Slices.
"Malfoy threw the ball and Potter shoots off after it like he's been flying all his life." Mia stated as she reached under her bed for her own secret stash of sweets, safely guarded by Jinx.
"McGonagall somehow found out, and Potter is taken away. Everyone is thinking he'll spend the rest of the year in Detention, which would make sense as that's exactly what Madam Hooch said would happen. But no, he's made the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. He's their new Seeker." I added, puffing as I fought with the plastic bag of sweets that refused to open.
"To top it off, he's now also the youngest seeker in a century to make the house team. So he broke one rule and got rewarded for it, which was also breaking a school policy for not letting first years on Quidditch Teams."
"But surely now they'll have to change that rule?" Millicent questioned, stroking her chin with the feather of her quill as she wrote a letter home to her parents.
"Madam Hooch said there will not be any changing of school policy."
"Ridiculous if you ask me." I heard Mia grumble through a mouthful of fudge flies as she flopped onto her bed.
"What do you guys think of that Gryffindor who seems to do exceptionally well in everything?" Sally-Anne questioned. "Apart from flying that is." She added with a smirk. It was an abrupt change of subject and I shrugged as I recalled the girl in question. Busy haired, and slightly buck toothed, she hadn't done well in flying, in fact she'd been the last one to get her broom off the ground. The frustration in her voice had been annoying after the first two minutes of her repeating herself, by the time we had hit the five minute mark it was just awkward. But eventually, it finally obliged and shot up into her hand – though I could have sworn I saw a flick of Madam Hooch's wrist.
"I mean, she seems to be Flitwick's new favourite. She mastered that levitation spell in about five minutes." I answered through a mouthful of orange jelly goodness. One of the best perks of boarding school, I could eat sweets as late as I wanted and there was no one to tell me off.
"Me and her both, but you don't see my head exploding over it." Mia commented. I rolled my eyes at her, tossing an orange slice in her direction, she expertly caught it and popped it into her mouth. "Mm, I heard the Patil twins talking." Mia added, with a mouthful of jelly beans. "She's a muggle born from Surrey. Both her parents are dentists."
"I guess she's probably hard some horrible things about Slytherin." I said, silently wondering what on earth a dentist was but also not being overly concerned enough to have it explained to me. I retreated from the trunk and climbed under the covers of my bed, allowing Iris to slip underneath and curl herself around my toe, acting like a fluffy hot water bottle.
"It wouldn't be surprising. Especially as she's a mud-blood." Pansy mumbled casually, her face still a little green from earlier in the day. She'd been in bed the whole evening and in all honesty, I thought she'd gone to sleep as she'd offered nothing to our conversation prior to now.
I was silenced, it was unsettling that I was hearing that term more and more recently. My father had explained it to me when I was a young child. I knew it not to be a word that was often heard in civilised conversation. But Pansy used it as if it was a totally normal, seemingly unaffected by how the rest of us had stopped talking. Mia and I exchanged concerned looks as I pulled my covers under my chin and pulled the cord that closed the curtains around our beds. As I laid in the darkness, listening to the waters of the black lake caress the glass of our window, I mulled over Pansy's comment. I wasn't sure what the best response was, so I decided to say nothing at all.
