"Slythern!" the hat yelled and Dick tore it off as the table under the banner of a snake erupted into applause. He stood up and walked confidently toward the table looking for Malfoy, who he quickly found kicking Crab out of his seat so Dick could sit down.
"I knew you would do it!" Malfoy yelled about the noise, "Welcome to the noble house of Slythern."
"Thanks." Dick said as he sat down to watch his friends get sorted. He was a little put off that they were all in different houses, but he didn't dwell on it.
When the feast finally ended Malfoy took him down into the dungeons, they stopped outside a suite of armor that stood along against one wall.
"Pureblood." Malfoy said and the armor jumped out of the way, reveling a hole in the stone behind it.
"This," Malfoy said entering and waving his arm to show the room they were in, "Is the Slythern common room, home."
It was a large, stone room filled with several tables and multiple, squishy dark colored chairs. Against one wall a huge fireplace sported a roaring fire that sent a soft glow across the room. Two stairways led off of the main room, one marked girl's rooms, and the other marked boy's. 'It looks nice,' Dick thought to himself, 'I could really grow to like this place.'
Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched the sorting progress with excitement that began to turn to apprehension as Raven's turn got closer.
"Do you think she'll really be in Gryfindor?" Hermione asked Harry for the tenth time.
"I told you I don't know, we can pretty much rule out Hufflepuff, but all the other houses are still open, we really don't know anything about her other than her name and the fact that she likes to read." Harry answered.
Shamus leaned over to talk to the trio, "Look at that last girl, the one who looks like a goth, I don't know why they even bother sorting someone like her, anyone can tell she belongs in Slythern." He didn't notice the glares he was getting, instead he turned back to his friends and started talking again.
"I'd like to teach him not to judge people like that." Ron said.
"It wouldn't do any good Ron, listen to everyone else." Hermione said. As Raven was now up next for sorting many of the students were commenting on her strange looks, and most of them were agreeing that she would be an instant Slythern.
"Maybe I should just pound them all." Ron said threateningly.
Harry coughed into his hands, clearly tying to cover up laughter, which he wasn't doing very well.
Ron's ears went red but he was saved by Hermione pointing out that Raven was being sorted. The three of them didn't have to wait long as the hat opened its seam and yelled out "Gryfindor!" Hermione thought it sounded a little put out, but she wasn't sure so she decided not to comment.
"Yes!" Ron yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the many surprised people who turned to their friends to ask if the hat had really said Gryfindor.
The three of them were painfully aware of how weak the applause was for Raven compared to when the other students got sorted, she didn't seem to mind as she walked over to Harry, Ron, and Hermione as sat down. Just then Dumbledore stood up, gave his speech, and the feast began.
As the dishes filled Hermione noticed that for some reason a cup of herbal tea had appeared in front of Raven. Raven began to drink it but she didn't take any food.
Harry noticed too and he spoke up, "Raven aren't you going to eat anything? You didn't have any food on the train either."
"I'm not hungry." She replied in her emotionless voice, in truth she needed less food that a normal human because, well, she wasn't a normal human, she was part demon.
"Come on, you have to eat something." Ron said pushing a platter of pork chops toward her.
Raven glared at him causing Ron to back away and find something extremely interesting about his plate. After that no one tried to get Raven to eat something, instead the trio started to ask her questions about herself, but they soon gave up on that as well when she started ignoring them as she had done at first on the train.
Finally the feast ended and they showed Raven to the Gryfindor common room, giving the password, "Love-The-Fish" the four of them entered. As it was rather late, Hermione and Raven went up one of the stairs and Ron and Harry left to go up the other.
Raven sat on her bed and pulled the bed hanging around her, cutting her off from the untrusting looks she was getting from some of the other girls in the dorm room. When she was sure she was hidden from view, she cast a spell around herself so sound would not penetrate the space and levitated several inches off of the bed and began to mediate.
It was well past midnight when she was pulled out of her meditation by Dick calling her (with a magic thing that only the Titans can hear) and telling her to go to the room of requirement. Dumbledore had explained where it was and told them they were welcome to use it. Not feeling like walking, Raven sank into the shadows only to reappear an instant later outside of the room. Robin was already there, but the others took several minutes to get there.
"Man, why did you have to wake us up!" Gar complained.
"If you would use your brain you would remember that he told us we would have a meeting here tonight." Raven said dryly.
"Right, I just wanted to get reports of how people are settling in, Kory, why don't you go first." Dick said.
"Oh I am having a most joyous time friends!" The alien started and then continued to describe every detail about her trip since they had separated several hours before.
"Ok, very good, Vic?" Dick said quickly as Kory paused for another breath.
"Oh everything's great, there's a guy in my dorm room who thinks that he's a better mechanic then me, just wait till I show him." Vic said and then went off into his own little world thinking about tools and his car.
"Ok Gar." Dick said turning to the now un-green changeling.
"I don't think he has anything of any importance to say, and anyway he's asleep." Raven said, "And I have nothing to report."
"Ok, well as for me, everything's fine, so I guess we can go back to bed now, meet here same time next week." Robin said as they got up to leave, "Raven, do you think you could take care of Gar?"
Raven grabbed Gar and the two of them disappeared into the shadows, she dropped Gar off in his dorm and then returned to her own room.
Hermione woke and pulled the bed hanging back to let in some light to wake her up more thoroughly. She had just finished getting ready when she remembered about Raven and went to wake her up so they wouldn't be late. To her surprise Raven wasn't in her bed, she was downstairs sitting in a chair far away from the fire reading.
"How long have you been down here?" Hermione asked noticing that she was nearing the end of her book.
"Since about 5am, I like to get up early, you have to get up early if you want to have any peace at all." Raven replied.
Ron and Harry came down the stairs three minutes later and the four of them headed to the great hall for breakfast.
Hermione noticed that Raven did eat something besides the herbal tea that once again appeared before her. "Why do you have that tea?" she asked.
"I like the tea, and it helps relive stress." Raven replied, not adding that it also helped her keep her emotions in control. Just then the schedules were passed out and they began the first day of term.
The first class was potions with the Slytherns, Snape started the class off with an advanced potion to cure noise inflation, but Raven found the class rather easy.
"Let's see," Snape said coming up behind her and the class stopped to watch, "I do believe your potion is wrong Miss Azar, it's supposed to be green, not black."
"No, I am just doing it a little differently than you told us, if you look at the ingredients you can see that several of these are unnecessary. Instead of using three bats wings and a table spoon of vinegar for instance, you can use two beetle eyes, and instead of the frog legs and goat eye, you can use a snake tooth." Raven said seemingly not bothered by the glaring look she was receiving, "And if you put in a fish egg you don't have to stir the potion twenty times, you only need to stir it five times." Raven slowly stirred her potion five times and the color changed to an emerald green color.
Snape snorted and turned away. After class Hermione came up to her, "How did you know how to do that? It was amazing!"
"Yeah," Ron agreed, "I thought he was going to kill you for sure."
"It's simple, you just have to know the basic elements in each ingredient and it becomes basic algebra." Raven said, and then seeing Hermione's fascinated look she added, "I guess I can teach you if you want."
Hermione never stopped thanking her until Raven gave her one of her glares upon which Hermione quickly shut up.
In anther part of the castle, the history of magic teacher, Professor Binns was droning on and on to his audience of very bored looking Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws.
Gar looked out the window and sighed deeply.
"What's wrong?" Vic's voice said in his ear.
Gar didn't say anything, he just sighed again and handed his friend his schedule.
"Is something wrong with this?" Vic asked as he scanned it. He looked up at Gar and then his brain registered some information. Looking back down at the schedule he realized exactly what was wrong. "You only have one class with Raven." He stated. He knew Gar liked Raven, it was obvious in the way he acted.
Gar finally looked away from the window and rested his chin in his hands. "Why of all the beautiful girls out there did I have to fall for Raven? I mean, she would never like me like that, and even if she did she could never show it. Dick has it easy, everyone knows that he and Kory like each other, he just has to get the courage to ask her out and everything's settled. But with Raven… she's… well Raven, what am I supposed to do?"
Vic didn't have an answer for his depressed friend, fortunately he didn't have to come up with one as Kory, upon hearing her name turned around and started talking.
"Are you wanting me for something friends?" she asked.
"No Kory, just talking about different things and your name came up." Vic answered. Kory started to turn back around when he spoke again, "Can I see your schedule? I want to see how many classes we have together."
Kory handed him a folded sheet of paper, opening it he found that all the classes that she had with the Slytherns had been outlined in bright pink hearts. Beside him, Gar let out a loud grown and buried his face in his hands.
Several weeks passed uneventfully. Harry, Ron, and Hermione found themselves growing closer to Raven, and they were sure that she too was growing to like them more although she never showed any signs of it.
"Mails here." Harry commented as hundreds of owls flew into the great hall. A black owl landed in front of Raven and she tore off the letter to read it.
Hermione leaned over to see what Raven was reading. The note was written on the paper in dark blood-red color ink, it read, 'Go away, you don't belong in Gryfindor, go back to Slythern where you should be. Quote the Raven, Nevermore.' It was signed by a number of other Gryfindor's but the top name, which was in the same handwriting as the note was Shamus.
Hermione grabbed the letter and showed it to Harry and Ron. Strangely, Raven didn't even seem to care about the note, she just continued eating her breakfast.
Harry and Ron on the other hand stood up and walked over to Shamus and his group of friends.
"Apologize." Harry snarled clutching the paper in his hand.
"No, just look at her, she doesn't belong here, she's probably a Slythern spy and she found someway to get around the sorting hat." Shamus replied coldly.
Ron raised his fist but stopped as he felt someone grab his arm. Turning, he found himself facing Raven.
"I don't care, just drop it." She told the two of them, "It doesn't matter."
Harry and Ron followed her back to where Hermione was waiting for them, a look of anger on her face.
"How can you not care?" Harry asked her as she continued eating as if nothing was wrong.
"Caring about people who dislike you is pointless, in the end it gets you nowhere." She replied evenly, "And besides every person is in-titled to have opinions and feelings of dislike if they so chose."
"Except you." Ron mumbled then looked down as she turned her gaze to him, "You never show emotion," then he looked back up at her and blurted out, "You just said that everyone is in-titled to have feelings, but why not you?"
Raven stopped eating and looked down, just when they thought she wasn't going to answer she spoke, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible, "I don't show emotion because I… it's just to dangerous... forget it, it doesn't matter." With that she got up and left the table leaving behind three very confused Gryfindors.
"What did she mean?" Ron asked.
"I don't know, but I know how to find out." Hermione said, she reached into her bag and pulled out a quill and some paper. She quickly wrote something and sent it off on the owl that had delivered the hate note.
"Care to elaborate?" Harry asked.
"Raven wasn't the only new student this year, there were four others, Dick, Gar, Kory, and Vic." Hermione explained. Ron and Harry nodded, they all knew the others by name, Dick was Malfoy's friend, Gar was the loudmouth class clown, Kory was the happy one who always talked a little strangely, and Vic was the head of the new founded Engineers Club.
"Well," Hermione continued, "I figure that they must know each other somewhat from before they came here so I sent a letter to Gar to ask him to meet us after breakfast. I think Gar will be the easiest to get info out of and he might know something."
Garfield was having a normal breakfast of tofu when a large, black owl landed in front of him. Taking off the letter he say it was from Hermione, one of Raven's new friends. Reading it he shrugged and got up and left.
He walked into an empty classroom and waited. Soon, the door opened and Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked in.
"Hi." He said.
"Hi."
"So what do you want?" he asked them.
Hermione stepped forward, "Did you know Raven from before you guys came here?" she asked. Gar nodded slowly. "Great, do you know why she never shows any emotion? We asked her today and she mumbled something about it being dangerous and then left, so do you know anything?"
Gar had not been expecting that, he didn't know what he had been expecting exactly, but it wasn't that. "Why do you care?" He asked suddenly, feeling himself become very protective of his dark friend, "You want to know that facts so you can judge her? You want to know if she's good enough for you? Why can't you just trust her enough to let her tell you in her own time?" Gar voice got steadily louder, he wasn't going to let them hurt Raven in any way, he would kill them if they did. "You call yourselves her friends, but yet you go around trying to dig up information about her. If you were really her friends, you would realize how truly special she is and you wouldn't care about what she was or how she acts" With that Gar turned and stormed out of the room fuming, leaving behind three very shamefaced teens.
Raven got up and walked out of the great hall, 'Stupid, stupid, stupid! You could have just lied and said that you didn't want to show emotion or something, why did you have to go and tell them the truth? Or at least part of the truth.'
Raven asked herself this question as she made her way toward her first class. She really didn't need to ask however, she knew why, she wanted to tell them the truth, she really did, but she was afraid that they wouldn't trust her anymore.
She wasn't looking where she was going and ran into someone as she walked into her potions classroom.
Dick looked at his watch and realized that he had to get going if he wanted to make it to potions on time, he hurried along and was entering the classroom when someone ran into him from behind.
"Sorry." Raven's voice said and he turned to see her as she picked up her dropped books and walked past him.
"Raven wait!" Dick called as he grabbed her arm to stop her. Something was wrong with her, her eyes had a far away, glazed look to them and she hadn't realized who he was.
"Raven, you ok? It's me Dick," Then leaning closer he whispered, "Robin."
Raven's eyes cleared and she looked at him with a confused look on her face, for some reason this made him worry more but he couldn't place his finger on why.
"What happened?" she asked.
"You were in a daze, are you ok?" Dick asked her concern showing in his voice.
"I'm fine, just lost in thought." Raven said and then pulled away and went to her seat.
Dick kept looking over at her during potions class, causing him to lose his concentration and mess up the potion he was working on. It wasn't until later that he realized what had bothered him so much, Raven never showed emotion, and yet she had showed emotion. She had had a confused look on her face, that was what had been bothering him. Thinking back, Dick remembered that when he had walked into the classroom after Raven he had seen several newly smashed jars of potion ingredients near the door.
If his fears were true, than this new environment with new friends was slowly breaking Raven's control over her emotions, and thus her control over the evil within her.
Dick was swept out of his thoughts by Malfoy who came over to him with a huge grin on his face, "Mallic dropped the team!"
"What?" Dick asked looking very confused, he was still half thinking about Raven.
"Mallic, one of the beaters for the Slythern Quiddich team, he quit and now we have an opening, tryouts are in a week!"
"How is that good?" Dick asked.
"You're thicker than Goyal," Malfoy complained before explaining slowly, "1. We have an opening for the Quiddich team, 2. The tryouts are in one week, 3. You've been on my broom and I've seen how good you are, 4. If you don't know where I'm going with this you really need your head examined, and 5. I think that you have a good chance of making the team!"
Dick snapped to attention as Malfoy spoke, his face showing his glee, "Why are we still standing around? We should be on the field training! Let's go!" he yelled and pulled Malfoy along at top speed as he forgot all his worries about Raven and ran for the Quiddich field.
Wow, that was a really long chapter for me, please let me know what you think. Thanks to all the reviewers and please keep the reviews coming. And I would still like to know any suggestions you have for the plot, they really help me when deciding what to write.
Thanks again to all my reviewers! I love ya.
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