Tania moved for the Sorting Hat. It almost seemed to glare at her along with the envious students behind her as she stepped up to put it on. She sat on the stool below it and placed it cautiously over her long brown hair, quaking with anticipation and fear for what might be in store for her.

The hat merely sat... And sat, and sat... She wondered if there was something wrong with it-surely she belonged in some house. But what if she didn't? What if she just sat there until, finally, the headmaster yelled that they had the wrong hat, or the wrong day, or-and this was what terrified her-perhaps even the wrong girl...?

This couldn't be, though! She was a member of a pure-blood family, all of them wizards and witches, not one of them related to a muggle even through marriage. No, she had to be a witch. But that wasn't the question, now was it? The question was-did she belong at Hogwarts...?

Suddenly, the hat began to speak into her ear, "Tania, you are selected to be in-" It stopped. It started again, "Tania, you are selected- " its voice grew fainter every time it spoke. "Tania, you are-" "Tania--"

"What!" she called out. "What are you trying to tell me? What bloody house am I in?"

But the hat continued to talk ceaselessly, incoherently, constantly muttering in her ear, over and over again. "Tania, Tania, Tania," It almost seemed to be mocking her!

"Tania!" The voice of her thirteen-year-old sister, Allyson, rang inside her ears. A girl, eleven years of age, with beauty beyond her years, and intelligence to boot, lay in her massive four-poster bed.

She opened her eyes and looked around to see her over-sized, elaborate room, covered with posters of the Chudley Cannons, zooming around and constantly playing Quidditch upon their bright red and orange backgrounds. It had all been a dream. She breathed again.

"TANIA!!!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT!!!!!" she screamed back at her sister down the stairwell after getting up and tying a robe around herself.

"Do you have any earthly clue what time it is, you lump?"

Tania looked at the clock in her room, which had about ten different hands, some of them spinning around fast enough to generate a mild breeze, and some of which hadn't moved in decades. Nobody really even knew what those were for...

Tania, however, looked at it and her jaw dropped. She immediately raced over to her dresser. She tied her curly reddish, dark brown hair up in a messy bun and quickly took out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

"What the bloody hell... Why didn't they wake me sooner?" she muttered to herself as she dressed hurriedly and raced downstairs. She sat down at the table with her mother and older sister, both looking at her expectantly.

"Want some breakfast?" asked Allyson. She had light brown hair that was frizzy and quite wavy most of the time. Most could not tell, however, because she wore it in a ponytail, so that only long curls dangled down her shoulders. "Oh, wait!" she continued, rather sarcastically. "It's already ten o' clock! There's no time for breakfast, guess you missed it." She smiled shrewdly.

"Okay, so I slept a little late, give me a break here." Tania pleaded apologetically, grabbing an apple and biting into it hungrily. "Where's Dad?"

"Your father had to leave early for work today." said her mother, Isabelle, who was equally as beautiful and intelligent as both of her daughters.

"What do you guys do there all day that's so important?"

"That's not important, honey-did you remember to pack Serge?" She always seemed to change the subject when asked about work. Tania rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, speaking of packing, you should go get your bags." said Allyson. "We have to leave in just a few."

"Uh-oh..." Tania said through a mouthful of apple, stopping abruptly as the thought of packing had only just occurred to her.

Allyson gaped and, a moment later, a smile began to creep across her lips. "You forgot to pack, didn't you?"

Tania smacked herself in the forehead and raced back up to her room to grab all of her possessions and throw them into her trunk, along with forcing her disgruntled eagle owl, Serge, into a cage.

"You stupid owl, if you can't deliver the letters, at least go into a cage when I want you to!" After bagging and stuffing and quieting everything that was necessary, she sprinted back down the steps, tripping clumsily over the last step on the staircase before noticing that her sister was standing over her, smiling.

"Good job, hun..." She laughed.

Tania glared up at her. "Thanks for helping me. You'd think the only student in her year to know a summoning charm would use it to help her little sister pack."

"Yeah, you would think that, wouldn't you?" she smiled, offering a hand to her currently disoriented younger sister.

Tania took it and smiled a little as she pulled her sister to the hard linoleum floor to lay beside her, then hopping up quickly enough to escape a vengeful, yet somewhat amused, grasp.

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