PART ONE

CHAPTER SEVEN: BIRDSFOOT TREFOIL

Reviews:

moonwatchersilveny: (1) Thanks! (2) Oh my gosh, that's probably one of my favorite quotes in the book. So far, I mean. And thanks! (3) Wow, I actually didn't make that connection... But I just got the idea of comparing each person to something because Raven is, like, super bored but also super observant. I figured that she's the type to waste time by thinking super irrelevant things that are also creepily accurate (so far, at least). (4) Okay, thanks for answering the questions. (5) Yeah... I guess the hat is sort of OOC, but I figured that keeping the hat normal would be sorta boring...? Anyway, thanks for reviewing!

Word count: 1,599

ONTO THE NEXT CHAPTER!

It took Raven a second to process what happened, and a good deal of self control to keep herself from ripping the hat apart. In fact, the hat was lucky that she couldn't control fire; if she could, the insufferable, unfashionable accessory would be ashes by now.

She stood up and gripped the hat a little harder than necessary when she set it back on the stool. She hoped it could feel the frustration she felt. Maybe it did; she could've sworn that it was smirking.

Stupid—bloody—hat.

She took a moment to imagine strangling it before making her way to the table covered in red and gold—the Gryffindor table. She sat next to Marlene, ignoring the applause she was getting.

Why, oh why did the hat have to do that? If it knew that she was a heartless, it knew that so much depended on her getting into Slytherin. But, noooo; it just had to mess up everything. If she thought Sirius Black becoming a Gryffindor was bad, her getting into that House was worse.

However, Hestia and Lily didn't seem to share her opinion.

Once the last person was Sorted (someone called "Zaman, Zayna," who became a Ravenclaw) and Dumbledore conjured up a feast, Hestia and Lily, who were sitting directly in front of Raven and Marlene, began chatting like chipmunks; cheerfully and so fast, Raven was wondering if they were high on sugar.

"I can't believe we're all in the same House!" Hestia squealed in such a high-pitched voice Raven had to hold herself back from rubbing her ears. She hid her grimace expertly by taking a bite of her food. She stuck to food she could recognize; luckily for her, humans and heartless had similar diets.

"I know!" Lily agreed brightly—before becoming a little sad. "I just wish Sev got into Gryffindor, too..."

"Severus Snape, in Slytherin?" Marlene checked, and when Lily nodded, she shrugged and said, "I dunno; he looks happy where he is."

Raven glanced back at the green and silver table and saw that Snape was practically glowering at his food while some other Slytherin boy chatted his ear off. His expression kind of reminded Raven of Grey's; her older brother always had the same expression approximately two seconds before whatever he was glaring at burst into flames accidentally.

Right. Happy.

"Speaking of Sev," Lily started, her emerald gaze suddenly switching away from her friend in Slytherin to another place. "Remember those boys I told you about on the train, Hestia and Raven?"

Hestia nodded eagerly. Raven barely raised her eyebrow. Marlene didn't look like she cared.

"Those boys are actually Gryffindors, too." Lily scowled. "They're James Potter and Sirius Black."

Marlene leaned forward, suddenly interested. "Wait," she started dramatically. "You and Severus Snape are the ones who got into an argument with James Potter and Sirius Black in the train—and by argument, I mean that Potter and Black insulted Snape and you yelled at them for that storming out?"

Lily paused warily before saying, "How do you know that?"

Marlene nonchalantly flicked off an invisible speck of dust on her robes. "Word travels fast 'round Hogwarts."

Lily shrugged, like this was normal. Maybe it was; Raven was still getting used to humans and their oddness. "Okay. But why does that matter?"

Marlene smirked, which didn't really go well with her words; "Well... to be frank, I'm not sure. But that's what makes it interesting, isn't it?"

Raven doubted that she had ever agreed more with anyone else ever before.

"Take Raven for example," Marlene supplied. "I doubt anyone knows what makes her tick, but that's what makes her interesting."

Suddenly, Marlene was much harder to agree with.

"That's not true," Raven denied mildly—even though she was kind of internally freaking out; she was interesting? Did that mean that Marlene thought that there was something different about Raven? Or was she just overthinking it? And why was she freaking out?

But Marlene just shrugged. "If you insist. Anyway, back to Black and Potter—what about them?"

Raven's eyes drifted to the two, and when she finally saw Black and James Potter. He matched Lily's description; the insanely messy hair was a dead giveaway. And as for Sirius Black, she remembered him from the Sorting; his black hair and grey eyes were sort of recognizable. Also, there was something wrong with the way he looked.

Okay, that wasn't what Raven meant. He may have not been gorgeous or anything, but he wasn't ugly per se; when Raven said wrong, she meant that he looked familiar or something, which didn't make sense, because she was a heartless and he a human. Of course, there was always the possibility that she had seen him in Diagon Alley or the train, but he looked so familiar, he had to have made an impression on her, and the only people who did were Lily Evans, Marlene McKinnon, Severus Snape (kind of?), Hestia Jones, and that one woman who called Raven a Mudblood who had two sons—

Oh.

And then she realized that Sirius Black was that woman's son.

Coincidence was dumb.

Well, technically, heartless didn't believe in coincidences. They believed in fate, which was controlled by the Spirit of Fate, Kadara. Although most spirits had actual personalities (a combination of traits, at least, so they seemed quite realistic at times even though Raven knew the whole idea was cock and bull), Kadara's only traits were sadism, cruelty, and self-preservation. Made sense, seeing as it was Fate.

Of course, Raven didn't believe in the spirits. The whole thing where there was a higher power that watched over heartless... That didn't really make sense. And although it would be blasphemy to say so, no one really believed in them—well, no one sane—so Raven could say without guilt that coincidence was dumb. Stupid, even.

Hestia was falling asleep as they walked up the staircase to the Gryffindor tower, following the prefect—a tall young lady with long blonde hair and a bad habit of making horrifying puns. Hestia would yawn softly and blink slowly whenever someone asked her something, like a child. Well, technically, they were all children; no one was older than eleven, not yet. The thought was sort of sad; they had all completed a decade, but that really was no time at all. Especially not compared to how long the War of Eternity had been going on.

In all honesty, Raven didn't think about the war very often. It may have been intense when her parents were young, but it had actually been simmering down. Sure, sometimes, some stupid human would attempt (and fail) to attack the heartless, and that would spike the violence rates, but it would usually drop just as fast. Despite all the stories Raven had been told as a child about the horrors of the war and heartless hunters, she had never actually faced any. Not even Leif, her oldest sibling, did. Yes, she trained in case there was an attack, and yes, she knew what to do in case she had to defend herself, but so far, an attack seemed to be a hypothetical situation. She didn't know the details (her parents didn't want an eleven-year-old to be sitting in war meetings—not because they were worried about her, but because they thought she'd be useless in such a scene), but it was hard to not realize that your parents are preparing for war when you live with them. You'd have to be really dense to not realize that millions of soldiers gathering meant that an attack was going to happen. Except no soldiers were gathering. It seemed that the War of Eternity was slowing to a stop.

Raven, however, could change that.

If she befriended the most important families in the (United Kingdom's) Wizarding World, she could manipulate them when they grew older into doing her bidding and take over the world that way—or just win the war for heartless. That would be boring, but easier.

Well, nothing about this would be easy—especially since Sirius Black's mother had the bright idea of insulting Raven of the House of Nightshade.

That is, it wouldn't be easy for Sirius Black. An insult to the House of Nightshade cannot go unpunished. Sure, a vendetta wasn't a part of the plan, but... it undeniably made things more interesting.

In the language of flowers, BIRDSFOOT TREFOILS represent revenge.

Questions:

1. Favorite quote from chapter seven?

2. What would you like to see more of in the next chapter?

And, remember; please review!.

~Sarcasticsnark13