Disclaimer: Surprisingly enough I do not own Harry Potter, I own none of
the Characters except those who do not feature in the books (duh). Mostly,
that's just the new girl . . .
Warning: This will contain slash in later chapters, here's a hint, if you don't like it . . . don't read it!
Rating: G
Title: The New Girl
Summery: A new girl arrives at Hogwarts. Who is she? Where is she from? And why does she have a smile that can make even the coldest of hearts melt? Will she be the friend that Draco needs?
Author: Dodo
Sure enough, next morning at breakfast, Dumbledor made the announcement. Crystal Rose would be joining the 6th year of Hogwarts.
She was a transfer from another school, though he did not say which. That was all that he would say about Hogwart's latest arrival.
The sorting hat was placed ceremoniously on her head and before long it had drawn a conclusion as to which house she should be placed in.
Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin, Draco willed the hat to place to new girl in his house.
"Hufflepuff" it announced.
The hall erupted in cheers, especially from the Hufflepuff table. Draco on the other hand, almost spat out his drink in surprise, which raised a few surprised looks from his fellow housemates at this extremely rare out burst of rather un-Malfoy like behaviour.
He growled slightly and turned to Blaise Zabini, who he was sitting next to. He was faced with a questioning look.
"I met her yesterday" he explained, "I thought for sure she was going to be in Slytherin, hell, maybe even bloody Gryffindor, but . . ." he struggled to complete the sentence, "Hufflepuff!" he finally managed.
He shook his head and began to eat the food that was laid out in front of him. After he had finished his meal, he allowed his gaze to sweep the Grand Hall. Finally it rested on Crystal. He still couldn't believe that someone like that could be put in Hufflepuff, it just didn't seem right somehow.
He watched her for a moment. Watched as she was laughing and joking with her new made friends, as though they had known each other their whole lives. Not a trace of the distant sarcasm that had been so prominent the night before. He wished for a moment that he could be the one laughing and joking with her. He wasn't drawling over her as most of the other guys were. She really wasn't his type. It was just that she seemed so full of exuberant life that for that moment he would trade anything, just to know how it felt to have a friend like her.
A moment though, was all it was and in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Malfoys do not need friends. Friends are a weakness. Trust no one but yourself. His father's words echoed through his mind, haunting him, reminding him that he will always be alone, whether he liked it or not, because that was who he was.
Idly he wondered when his next lesson with Hufflepuff would be. He pulled his timetable out and had a look. Ancient Runes, after lunch he had with Hufflepuff, but whether or not Crystal was in that class remained to be seen. He could picture her taking it but then again he couldn't see how anyone would actually choose to do Muggle Studies.
Breakfast was over and everyone was on their way to their next lessons, Crystal had quickly made lots of new friends, for which she was very grateful. She had been dreading being an outcast because she was starting half way through the year.
The girls in her dorm room and incidentally in her first class, Susan Bones, Skye Moon, Nicola and Hannah Abbot and finally Lucy Charms were really nice and offered to help her on any work she needed to catch up on.
She laughed to herself, any work. . . that would be all of it!
She had known that there was a school for witches and wizards but until last weekend, had never even dreamed that she would attend it. It had all come as a bit of a shock.
Her mum attended Hogwarts as a child but her father had never approved of what he referred to as 'Satan's work' and so she had stayed in normal, muggle, education until, well. . . now.
Her dad had had an accident while rock climbing in the Alps and had unfortunately died later in hospital. Crystal had never really got on well with her dad but she still missed him dearly.
On her 11th birthday, her mum had sat her down and told her about who she really was and all about Hogwarts. She knew that her dad would be heartbroken if she decided to go and so she politely refused the invitation. After her dad had died though, things had started to change. Her mum and herself had discussed the idea of moving to the magic world but she had never really expected it to happen. When it did, it was like a dream, a whirl of organisation and emotion.
She had just finished her GCSEs a couple of months before and had had to give up collage to help her mum after what had happened with her dad. Everything she had ever known was in the Muggle world but now there was nothing keeping her there. The decision had been made and she and her mum had moved to Hogsmede the next week!
She was pulled out of her thoughts by a friendly looking teacher who she recognised as being her head of house, Professor Sprout.
She had been briefly introduced during breakfast and had developed a liking for this bubbly young teacher. Young compared to some of the others that was! The professor had started the lesson.
Professor Dumbledor had kindly given her a run down of each of the lessons and what they were about. Herbology, if she remembered correctly was the use of magic to manipulate plant life, quite often for medicinal purposes.
She had always been interested in holistic medicine or natural remedies as it is more commonly referred to in muggle circles. She had been looking forward to this lesson and was pleased to see that it was her first in the school. She was stood between Susan Bones and Nicola Abbot and all six girls were listening intently to their head of house as she spoke about the properties of St. John's Wort.
"A common herb, generally thought of as a weed by many muggles, it has some very powerful and impressive healing qualities such as. . ."
As the professor continued, Crystal started scribbling down frantically everything she heard the lady say. She had heard of the herb before, that is to say, she recognised the name, but had never really noted it's healing properties. It really was quite amazing.
They spend the rest of the lesson watching as Professor Sprout showed them pictures and went over things she had already covered previously in that lesson. Crystal was a fast learner and picked things up with ease so there was no need for her to go over the things she had already heard. Instead, the newest member of Hufflepuff took the opportunity to look around at her fellow classmates.
She was a fairly good judge of character in general and within the first few moments had everyone sussed out. There were a couple of things that she couldn't quite seem to place and she made a mental note to make sure she had them figured out by the end of the week.
The Hufflepuffs she'd already met at breakfast and the Gryffindors seemed like a nice enough crowd.
There were four girls and five boys. The girls consisted of a couple who were evidently best friends. They seemed friendly but it was definitely a social clique that was reserved for them two of them only.
A third seemed timid and shy, she didn't seem to be very close to any of the girls although she stood next to social clique and they seemed to get along well.
The fourth seemed aloof from the other three, like she was better - which, given her performance in class - really wasn't unfounded. She wasn't the typical know-it-all that Crystal had been used to at her old school though. She could see that behind this girl's books and cleverness lay the trademark Gryffindor bravery and, surprisingly enough, a rebellious nature.
It seemed to Crystal that her over enthusiastic nature was somewhat a by- product of wanting to prove herself, she assumed that this girl was muggle born, or at least raised muggle like herself.
She then turned her attention to the boys. There were five in total. Two of them were stood next to the clever girl. One with fiery red hair and one with scruffy black. Neither seemed particularly enthused by the lesson and were paying much more attention to some moving picture cards. One of the photographs she recognised as Professor Dumbledor.
These two seemed to be good friends with the clever girl and the three of them stuck quite a contrast. The red head she assumed, as all red heads, would have quite a fiery temper, whereas the black haired boy seemed to have a much calmer attitude. Laughing as the red head's anger started to boil.
He seemed sure of himself in his environment but still distant, as though he was afraid to trust anybody. Also muggle raised, she determined, probably from a harsh background. She would have to remember her manners around this boy, unlike last night.
She cringed at the memory. She hadn't meant to come of as coldly as she had, although she had to admit, it was quite funny watching their faces as they tried to figure her out.
The first two boys she had sussed straight away, but the blond one, Draco his name was. To start with, Draco had seemed like the stereotypical stuck up, arrogant little brat. After speaking to him though, she could see in his eyes that there was something else, something deeper. It had intrigued her, which was why she had stayed as long as she had.
She'd asked around she decided, see what other people thought of him. She also wondered why he hung around with strange company. They didn't seem like the type of people that would really be on the same wavelength as this boy, nor did he seem particularly endeared to them.
All in due course, she assured herself, all in due course.
She was snapped out of her musings when she caught out of the corner of her eye the trio, as she had nicknamed them, whispering something and looking over in her direction.
She really did hate gossips and was about to walk over there and ask them what they found so fascinating about her when Professor Sprout informed them it was time to leave.
Once they were out of the green house she asked one of her new Hufflepuff friends if they would wait for her while she went to speak to someone. The agreed immediately and walked over with her as she approached the trio who were still whispering intently.
"Excuse me," she tried to keep her most polite voice on show, she didn't want to offend anyone too badly on her first day in a new school!
She had decided against demanding what they were talking about her for and instead thought that it would be rather more polite to simply introduce herself and try to coax it out of them.
"I don't think I've introduced myself. My name's Crystal Rose and I've just transferred here which, you probably knew already because of course it was announced at breakfast this morning and everyone was there. . ."
Typical, she thought to herself, absolutely bloody typical; I sound like a class A fool. I hope they don't laugh at me too much. . . She braced herself for the worst, but was relieved when all she received was an amused, but warm smile from the clever girl.
"Hello Crystal, my name's Hermionie Granger and these two are Ron Weasley and Harry Potter." She paused as waiting for some kind of reaction, not know what kind of reaction to give she just smiled and nodded politely in acknowledgement.
"It's a pleasure to meet you." She smiled as she memorised the names. Names were always useful to know.
"Um. . . we were just wondering," the back haired one, who she now knew to be called Harry Potter seemed to be searching for the right words so as not to offend her, "well, you know, why you've transferred here, what school were you in before? Sorry, it's just that I don't think there's ever been a late transfer here before. I, we, just found it. . .odd. . ." his eyes showed that he was hoping that what he'd just said didn't sound rude and, remembering her promise from earlier, she decided to cut the boy some slack.
She shot him one of her warmest smiles and he let out a small sigh of relief. "It's kind of a long story," she explained, "but the short of it is that my dad died, so I transferred from a muggle school to this one."
The trio seemed stunned for a moment and the atmosphere was caught up in an embarrassed silence.
Death, Harry thought for a moment. Death was not Harry's favourite topic and yet one that had engulfed most of his life.
Crystal saw the pain in his eyes and the meek smile she gave him told him that he understood, for which he was grateful.
"I guess I'm the biggest thing that's happened round here for a while. Should I be prepared to be the source of all gossip for the next few months?" The statement was meant light heartedly but a streak of guilt could be seen running through Ron and Hermionie's faces and Harry had no doubt that it was running across his own.
"Uh, yeah," he stuttered, "We'd better be off, got some research to do. . . See you around I guess." The three friends stood and watched as the new girl, and another Hufflepuff walk off towards the castle.
"What research?" enquired Ron.
"What? Oh, nothing. I just thought we could go see Hagrid. Would look a bit odd though if three students went round to see a professor for tea and biscuits though!"
The mention of food brought Ron out of his daze and the three of them walked off in the direction of Hagrid's Hut.
Warning: This will contain slash in later chapters, here's a hint, if you don't like it . . . don't read it!
Rating: G
Title: The New Girl
Summery: A new girl arrives at Hogwarts. Who is she? Where is she from? And why does she have a smile that can make even the coldest of hearts melt? Will she be the friend that Draco needs?
Author: Dodo
Sure enough, next morning at breakfast, Dumbledor made the announcement. Crystal Rose would be joining the 6th year of Hogwarts.
She was a transfer from another school, though he did not say which. That was all that he would say about Hogwart's latest arrival.
The sorting hat was placed ceremoniously on her head and before long it had drawn a conclusion as to which house she should be placed in.
Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin, Draco willed the hat to place to new girl in his house.
"Hufflepuff" it announced.
The hall erupted in cheers, especially from the Hufflepuff table. Draco on the other hand, almost spat out his drink in surprise, which raised a few surprised looks from his fellow housemates at this extremely rare out burst of rather un-Malfoy like behaviour.
He growled slightly and turned to Blaise Zabini, who he was sitting next to. He was faced with a questioning look.
"I met her yesterday" he explained, "I thought for sure she was going to be in Slytherin, hell, maybe even bloody Gryffindor, but . . ." he struggled to complete the sentence, "Hufflepuff!" he finally managed.
He shook his head and began to eat the food that was laid out in front of him. After he had finished his meal, he allowed his gaze to sweep the Grand Hall. Finally it rested on Crystal. He still couldn't believe that someone like that could be put in Hufflepuff, it just didn't seem right somehow.
He watched her for a moment. Watched as she was laughing and joking with her new made friends, as though they had known each other their whole lives. Not a trace of the distant sarcasm that had been so prominent the night before. He wished for a moment that he could be the one laughing and joking with her. He wasn't drawling over her as most of the other guys were. She really wasn't his type. It was just that she seemed so full of exuberant life that for that moment he would trade anything, just to know how it felt to have a friend like her.
A moment though, was all it was and in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Malfoys do not need friends. Friends are a weakness. Trust no one but yourself. His father's words echoed through his mind, haunting him, reminding him that he will always be alone, whether he liked it or not, because that was who he was.
Idly he wondered when his next lesson with Hufflepuff would be. He pulled his timetable out and had a look. Ancient Runes, after lunch he had with Hufflepuff, but whether or not Crystal was in that class remained to be seen. He could picture her taking it but then again he couldn't see how anyone would actually choose to do Muggle Studies.
Breakfast was over and everyone was on their way to their next lessons, Crystal had quickly made lots of new friends, for which she was very grateful. She had been dreading being an outcast because she was starting half way through the year.
The girls in her dorm room and incidentally in her first class, Susan Bones, Skye Moon, Nicola and Hannah Abbot and finally Lucy Charms were really nice and offered to help her on any work she needed to catch up on.
She laughed to herself, any work. . . that would be all of it!
She had known that there was a school for witches and wizards but until last weekend, had never even dreamed that she would attend it. It had all come as a bit of a shock.
Her mum attended Hogwarts as a child but her father had never approved of what he referred to as 'Satan's work' and so she had stayed in normal, muggle, education until, well. . . now.
Her dad had had an accident while rock climbing in the Alps and had unfortunately died later in hospital. Crystal had never really got on well with her dad but she still missed him dearly.
On her 11th birthday, her mum had sat her down and told her about who she really was and all about Hogwarts. She knew that her dad would be heartbroken if she decided to go and so she politely refused the invitation. After her dad had died though, things had started to change. Her mum and herself had discussed the idea of moving to the magic world but she had never really expected it to happen. When it did, it was like a dream, a whirl of organisation and emotion.
She had just finished her GCSEs a couple of months before and had had to give up collage to help her mum after what had happened with her dad. Everything she had ever known was in the Muggle world but now there was nothing keeping her there. The decision had been made and she and her mum had moved to Hogsmede the next week!
She was pulled out of her thoughts by a friendly looking teacher who she recognised as being her head of house, Professor Sprout.
She had been briefly introduced during breakfast and had developed a liking for this bubbly young teacher. Young compared to some of the others that was! The professor had started the lesson.
Professor Dumbledor had kindly given her a run down of each of the lessons and what they were about. Herbology, if she remembered correctly was the use of magic to manipulate plant life, quite often for medicinal purposes.
She had always been interested in holistic medicine or natural remedies as it is more commonly referred to in muggle circles. She had been looking forward to this lesson and was pleased to see that it was her first in the school. She was stood between Susan Bones and Nicola Abbot and all six girls were listening intently to their head of house as she spoke about the properties of St. John's Wort.
"A common herb, generally thought of as a weed by many muggles, it has some very powerful and impressive healing qualities such as. . ."
As the professor continued, Crystal started scribbling down frantically everything she heard the lady say. She had heard of the herb before, that is to say, she recognised the name, but had never really noted it's healing properties. It really was quite amazing.
They spend the rest of the lesson watching as Professor Sprout showed them pictures and went over things she had already covered previously in that lesson. Crystal was a fast learner and picked things up with ease so there was no need for her to go over the things she had already heard. Instead, the newest member of Hufflepuff took the opportunity to look around at her fellow classmates.
She was a fairly good judge of character in general and within the first few moments had everyone sussed out. There were a couple of things that she couldn't quite seem to place and she made a mental note to make sure she had them figured out by the end of the week.
The Hufflepuffs she'd already met at breakfast and the Gryffindors seemed like a nice enough crowd.
There were four girls and five boys. The girls consisted of a couple who were evidently best friends. They seemed friendly but it was definitely a social clique that was reserved for them two of them only.
A third seemed timid and shy, she didn't seem to be very close to any of the girls although she stood next to social clique and they seemed to get along well.
The fourth seemed aloof from the other three, like she was better - which, given her performance in class - really wasn't unfounded. She wasn't the typical know-it-all that Crystal had been used to at her old school though. She could see that behind this girl's books and cleverness lay the trademark Gryffindor bravery and, surprisingly enough, a rebellious nature.
It seemed to Crystal that her over enthusiastic nature was somewhat a by- product of wanting to prove herself, she assumed that this girl was muggle born, or at least raised muggle like herself.
She then turned her attention to the boys. There were five in total. Two of them were stood next to the clever girl. One with fiery red hair and one with scruffy black. Neither seemed particularly enthused by the lesson and were paying much more attention to some moving picture cards. One of the photographs she recognised as Professor Dumbledor.
These two seemed to be good friends with the clever girl and the three of them stuck quite a contrast. The red head she assumed, as all red heads, would have quite a fiery temper, whereas the black haired boy seemed to have a much calmer attitude. Laughing as the red head's anger started to boil.
He seemed sure of himself in his environment but still distant, as though he was afraid to trust anybody. Also muggle raised, she determined, probably from a harsh background. She would have to remember her manners around this boy, unlike last night.
She cringed at the memory. She hadn't meant to come of as coldly as she had, although she had to admit, it was quite funny watching their faces as they tried to figure her out.
The first two boys she had sussed straight away, but the blond one, Draco his name was. To start with, Draco had seemed like the stereotypical stuck up, arrogant little brat. After speaking to him though, she could see in his eyes that there was something else, something deeper. It had intrigued her, which was why she had stayed as long as she had.
She'd asked around she decided, see what other people thought of him. She also wondered why he hung around with strange company. They didn't seem like the type of people that would really be on the same wavelength as this boy, nor did he seem particularly endeared to them.
All in due course, she assured herself, all in due course.
She was snapped out of her musings when she caught out of the corner of her eye the trio, as she had nicknamed them, whispering something and looking over in her direction.
She really did hate gossips and was about to walk over there and ask them what they found so fascinating about her when Professor Sprout informed them it was time to leave.
Once they were out of the green house she asked one of her new Hufflepuff friends if they would wait for her while she went to speak to someone. The agreed immediately and walked over with her as she approached the trio who were still whispering intently.
"Excuse me," she tried to keep her most polite voice on show, she didn't want to offend anyone too badly on her first day in a new school!
She had decided against demanding what they were talking about her for and instead thought that it would be rather more polite to simply introduce herself and try to coax it out of them.
"I don't think I've introduced myself. My name's Crystal Rose and I've just transferred here which, you probably knew already because of course it was announced at breakfast this morning and everyone was there. . ."
Typical, she thought to herself, absolutely bloody typical; I sound like a class A fool. I hope they don't laugh at me too much. . . She braced herself for the worst, but was relieved when all she received was an amused, but warm smile from the clever girl.
"Hello Crystal, my name's Hermionie Granger and these two are Ron Weasley and Harry Potter." She paused as waiting for some kind of reaction, not know what kind of reaction to give she just smiled and nodded politely in acknowledgement.
"It's a pleasure to meet you." She smiled as she memorised the names. Names were always useful to know.
"Um. . . we were just wondering," the back haired one, who she now knew to be called Harry Potter seemed to be searching for the right words so as not to offend her, "well, you know, why you've transferred here, what school were you in before? Sorry, it's just that I don't think there's ever been a late transfer here before. I, we, just found it. . .odd. . ." his eyes showed that he was hoping that what he'd just said didn't sound rude and, remembering her promise from earlier, she decided to cut the boy some slack.
She shot him one of her warmest smiles and he let out a small sigh of relief. "It's kind of a long story," she explained, "but the short of it is that my dad died, so I transferred from a muggle school to this one."
The trio seemed stunned for a moment and the atmosphere was caught up in an embarrassed silence.
Death, Harry thought for a moment. Death was not Harry's favourite topic and yet one that had engulfed most of his life.
Crystal saw the pain in his eyes and the meek smile she gave him told him that he understood, for which he was grateful.
"I guess I'm the biggest thing that's happened round here for a while. Should I be prepared to be the source of all gossip for the next few months?" The statement was meant light heartedly but a streak of guilt could be seen running through Ron and Hermionie's faces and Harry had no doubt that it was running across his own.
"Uh, yeah," he stuttered, "We'd better be off, got some research to do. . . See you around I guess." The three friends stood and watched as the new girl, and another Hufflepuff walk off towards the castle.
"What research?" enquired Ron.
"What? Oh, nothing. I just thought we could go see Hagrid. Would look a bit odd though if three students went round to see a professor for tea and biscuits though!"
The mention of food brought Ron out of his daze and the three of them walked off in the direction of Hagrid's Hut.
