Chapter 7

After a while, everyone changed into their robes and to entertain themselves, Hermione began reading one of their textbooks, Tiffany tried to get Bita's memory back, Rachelle started to play with her wand, and Ron and Harry ate candy and talked about quidditch (what else?).

"Come on, Bita! Do you remember anything?" Tiffany asked impatiently.

"Well, I remember Waffle Pudding ate the lemons," Bita said slowly.

Tiffany sighed. "Now you remember! But is that really it?"

"Um…plywood," Bita said.

"Ugh!" Tiffany said, more frustrated than ever before.

Rachelle, waving her wand around, moaned, "So…BORED!"

Suddenly, Rachelle's wand pointed at a chocolate frog and it exploded, and bits of chocolate flew all through the compartment.

"Hehe…BOOM!" Rachelle laughed hysterically.

Everybody stared at Rachelle and Bita burst into laughter too.

After Bita finished laughing her empty head off, an evil-looking blonde boy walked into the compartment followed by two massive beings that looked like his bodyguards.

"Well, look what we have here!" Blondie said. "The Hero, the Mudblood, and the dirt-poor weasel."

The two bodyguards laughed dumbly.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Harry asked the blonde boy.

"I want to see who your new friends are," said Malfoy.

"Are you related to Waffle Pudding?" Bita asked, glaring at Malfoy.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow at Bita.

"Figures that their new friends would be freaks," Malfoy said to his two bodyguards.

The two boys behind Malfoy laughed dumbly again.

"Such rude words the blonde boy speaks," said Rachelle.

"Talk of money, mudbloods, freaks," Tiffany said.

Bita was silent for a very long time.

"We know what it is he seeks," Bita said finally.

"A place where all will show him fear."

"But he will not find that here."

"So wipe your face of that silly sneer."

"And leave us all the hell alone!" the three girls said together.

Malfoy, Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at The Odds oddly. Malfoy nodded to his two cronies and the three of them left.

"How did you think of those lines so fast?" Rachelle asked, looking at Bita incredulously.

"They rhymed," said Bita, as if that explained everything. "Malfoy's kinda hot," she added after a few moments of silence.

"Well, apparently she's gotten her boy-craziness back," said Tiffany.

Rachelle rolled her eyes. "Do you not care that he's evil?"

"Who?" Bita asked.

The group noticed the train starting to slow down.

"We're here!" Rachelle shouted as her arms flew into the air and she jumped up excitedly. "Ow," she said as she hit her head on the ceiling. "I hate being tall."

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Later, after The Odds had followed the rest of the third years into the castle, Professor McGonagall pulled them aside.

"Do you girls wish to be sorted in the Great Hall before the first years, or in private?" she asked.

"In private," Rachelle and Tiffany said simultaneously.

Professor McGonagall then took them to Headmaster Dumbledore's office to be sorted. When they got there, she stopped in the middle of the room and explained to them the qualities of each house.

"Now, who is first alphabetically?" she asked.

"Bita…we don't know our last names," Rachelle said.

"I see…" said Professor McGonagall.

Bita walked up to McGonagall, and an old, frayed hat was placed on her head.

Bita almost screamed with surprise as the hat said, "Hufflepuff".

McGonagall gestured Rachelle over and placed the hat onto her head. After a few moments, the hat sorted her into Gryffindor. Tiffany was next, and she was also sorted into Gryffindor.

"Thank you, ladies. You may now go join everyone else in the Great Hall. Do you remember the way?" McGonagall asked.

"Yes, we do," Rachelle said surely.

The three girls left Dumbledore's office, only to become lost after a while.

Bita, stating the obvious, said, "I think we're lost."

"Really? What gave you that idea?" Tiffany asked sarcastically. "Was it the fact that none of this looks familiar? That no one is here except us? Or maybe the fact that it's been almost forty minutes and we're not in the Great Hall yet?"

"No, it's that waterfall of lemonade," Bita said, pointing to a perfectly normal portrait of an old-looking person on one of the nearby walls.

"Um…okay…" Rachelle said, continuing to walk.

A cat standing a few feet in front of Rachelle stopped the girls.

"Hey, look! She's not running away from me!" Rachelle said, crouching down and holding her hand out to the cat.

The cat came closer to Rachelle, hissed loudly, and strutted away.

"Well that was rude!" Rachelle said.

The girls continued walking in the direction they thought the Great Hall was in, when they came across a ghost.

"Hello, girls. Are you lost?" asked the ghost.

Tiffany and Bita stared open-mouthed at the ghost.

"OH MY GOD! IT'S A GIANT WORM!" Bita screamed after a few moments.

The ghost looked at her oddly and Rachelle spoke up.

"Yes, we are lost. We're trying to get to the Great Hall," she said casually, as if ghosts asking people if they were lost was an every-day occurrence.

"Well, follow me and I'll show you the way," the ghost replied cheerfully beginning to float in the direction opposite the one that the three girls thought the Great Hall was in. "I have never seen you three before and you look a little old to be first years. My name is Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, by the way, but you can call me Nicholas. I'm the Gryffindor house ghost. What houses are you in?"

"We're in Gryffindor," Rachelle said, gesturing to herself and Tiffany. "She's in Hufflepuff," she added, pointing to Bita. "The reason you haven't seen us before is because we're transfer students."

"Oh, well, welcome to Hogwarts!" he said as they walked (and floated) into the Great Hall.

"Thank you for helping us," Rachelle said.

As the three girls parted, Bita asked Rachelle, "Wait…why were you following and talking to a giant worm?"

"Um…Bita…we really need to get you help soon," Tiffany said.

Bita left to go sit down at the Hufflepuff table as Tiffany and Rachelle found seats next to where Hermione, Harry, and Ron were sitting at the Gryffindor table.

"What took you so long?" Hermione asked.

"We…kinda got lost," Rachelle said.

"But, a giant worm – ugh – I mean a ghost helped us," Tiffany added.

Rachelle started laughing at Tiffany's slip, and laughed even harder at the very confused look on Hermione, Ron, and Harry's faces.

"Speaking of which, Bita's in Hufflepuff," Rachelle said between gasps for air.

"And…why did you want to sit in their compartment?" Ron whispered to Hermione.