Worth It

Chapter 3

Why him? Willow thought to herself. Of all the mean, slimy, poopheads to have to show me around, why did Dumbledore pick him?

The object of her distaste was the potions master, Severus Snape. After the headmaster had concluded their rather surprising meeting in Diagon Alley he had sent Willow on with Snape, instructing the sour faced man to give her the 'official' Hogwarts tour, before showing her the suite of rooms which were to be hers.

Snape had indeed escorted her to Hogwarts, and was currently showing her around the sprawling school and its grounds. His idea of the official tour seemed to be slightly different to what Dumbledore must have had in mind however. Willow was practically tripping over herself in an effort to keep up with his stride.

How does he not fall over those robes? The logical part of her brain was still functioning, although the rest of her was overwhelmed by the school. She had expected grand, and definitely large, although never in her wildest dreams had she thought she would be teaching in what was, effectively, a castle. 'Large' didn't do it justice. The school was enormous, and Willow felt very small as she half-jogged through the many corridors.

It's like an ant's nest, she thought to herself, and I feel like an invading ant!

Huge portraits adorned the old school hallways, with famous witches, wizards and other creatures staring down at her curiously. Willow had given a little scream when she first saw one of the pictures moving to get a better view of her. She'd immediately regretted it as Professor Snape had turned round with a sneer on his face and made a snide comment about the witch who tried to end the world being scared by a mere painting. She couldn't help it though; she was used to magick, in the same way that other people are used to TV dinners, however that didn't mean she couldn't be surprised. The people who were blatantly staring at her from their canvas backgrounds seemed to be looking right through her, judging if she was fit to be in the school or not.

After that rather humiliating episode Snape had taken her to the dungeons, where, he informed her in a brisk, non-committal tone, he both taught and lived.

It's just right for him, Willow grinned as she noted the similarities, dark, cold and definitely slimy.

From there they had moved back into the main body of the school, and were now standing at the bottom of a huge stairwell that was echoing with grinding noises. As Willow looked up in awe, she had to bite back another squeak, as she discovered the grinding noises were coming from the staircases, which were moving! Whole flights of stairs would grumble and creak their way from one landing to another, and the overall impression was of giants, waltzing to some melody she couldn't quite pick up on.

"The headmaster wishes you to be sorted before the students arrive tomorrow," Snape's voice cut through her imaginings, "so we will go to the Great Hall next."

"Sorted?" she asked cautiously, feeling that this was yet another magickal thing she should understand, and was going to be looked down on for not knowing.

"The headmaster mentioned to you we have houses, yes?" He said, as though addressing a small child, and yes - she was right - he was sneering down his nose at her again. "You are sorted into a house. No doubt you will be in Griffindor." The way he said it made Willow hope against hope that she would not be. It sounded as though being in Griffindor would be yet another thing that she could be picked on for. She didn't really want to be –friends- with the sarcastic man who was her only companion at this point, but it couldn't be a good thing to further distance herself from the people she'd be working with.

Snape opened a towering set of double doors and Willow found herself looking down an imposing hall. Four wooden tables were set out lengthways down it, with benches running along both lengths, and there was one long table at the opposite end, although this one had chairs along the back, and was draped with some form of decorative cloth. More paintings were hung along the walls, and the ceiling resembled a serene night time sky, complete with little twinkling stars.

Snape quickly reached the other end of the hall, his robes billowing out behind him as he walked, and he went directly to the chair in the middle of the table. Willow noticed it was the most ornate of the chairs set out, and wondered it if was Dumbledore's seat. She could imagine him sat there, holding court over all of his students, with his trademark chuckle thrown in every now and then. It was a great difference to her last high school head – the small troll like man had terrorised the students, and had made Buffy's life a misery.

Of course that was before we blew up the school, and the mayor ate him, she thought to herself, before wondering how she could look back on those memories with such complacency.

Snape grabbed something that looked like a rather old, worn piece of leather from Dumbledore's seat and walked back to her. As he straightened out the object in his hands, Willow could recognise it as a very old hat, which he held out towards her.

"Uh, what do I do?" she said uncertainly, taking it from him.

"I know you've had a muggle upbringing, but one would have thought you'd at least seen a hat before now."

Willow stiffened, and glared at him, before pulling the hat onto her head.

"Hmm, what do we have here then?" the hat whispered inside her head, and she started and looked around her, before realising it was the hat that was speaking to her. "Plenty of courage in you child, and a fair helping of darkness too. Clever, loyal, where can I put you? Griffindor maybe?"

Willow's stomach churned. No, not there!

"You don't want to be in Griffindor?" The hat seemed surprised. "Well then, I suppose it had better be SLYTHERIN!"

The last word was shouted out loud so it reverberated around the hall, bouncing off the shocked paintings, although none of their expressions could match the look on the potions master's face.

Professor Snape looked as though someone had just hit him with a rather solid book entitled "The Joke's On You".

Willow looked up shyly from underneath the faded leather brim of the sorting hat. "Is that good?"

.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.

The next day the students were returning to Hogwarts, packed into their various train carriages and full of gossip and news from the summer. Ron, Harry and Hermione had managed to get a carriage to themselves, after prefecting duties had been fulfilled, and were now deep in conversation about Hogwarts newest addition.

"She's a bloody dark witch," Ron yelled, "she tried to end the frickin' world, how much more proof do you want?"

This was the line of argument he'd been taking for the last hour, and Hermione's patience was wearing thin. "Yes Ron, she tried. But she didn't actually –end- the world, did she? And now she's very sorry and she's trying to make things better."

"It's gonna take more than her going around saying 'sorry' to make things better, 'Mione!" Ron huffed, "Saying 'sorry' doesn't change the fact that she sucked up enough dark magick to wipe out the world twice over. Willingly. She wanted to, and I don't see how her saying 'oops' proves that she's not bloody evil!"

"Ron! Stop swearing," Hermione chastised. "She –is- sorry, didn't you pay any attention to her in Diagon Alley?"

"You know he didn't," Harry chimed in, "he was still sulking over the fact that his mum made him meet her anyway."

"I was not sulking!" Ron said indignantly, "Anyway, you try saying no to mum."

It was true, Molly Weasley had been more than insistent that every one of her brood that could attend, -would- attend Willow's welcoming party. Ron had protested at first, but Mrs Weasley was a force to be reckoned with when she had made her mind up about something, and there was no getting out of it. Whether Ron liked it or not, he was going to be in Diagon Alley.

Of course, he hadn't liked it, and half of his antisocial behaviour was fuelled by the urge to rebel against his mother's decree. He may have been forced into going to welcome Willow, but that didn't mean he couldn't act as big a prat as he liked, just to prove he wouldn't be bossed about, if nothing else.

Unfortunately for Willow, she got the full impact of Ron's little rebellion, and hadn't made much of an effort to engage him in conversation after her first few attempts were shot down in flames. This, conversely, meant that Ron hadn't had as much of a chance to get to know her as the other two had.

"Look," said Harry tersely, "it doesn't matter at the moment anyway. Can we just get to school without fighting any more?"

Hermione patted his shoulder awkwardly, and Ron even had the good grace to let the subject drop. It had been a trying summer, on top of the tragedy of Sirius' death in the Department of Mysteries, and Harry hadn't been up to much. He wasn't the angry little boy he had been at the start of their fifth year, but he still felt like he had the weight of the world to bear on his shoulders, and nothing was going to change that until Voldemort was gone.

"Sorry Harry," Ron muttered, "so, I wonder what sixth year will be like."

Hermione took the bait and launched into a detailed description of the courses and workload that they could expect, soon even Harry was participating in the conversation. Ron and Hermione shared a secret smile when he wasn't looking. The boy who lived was going to keep on living, and enjoying himself too, if they had anything to do with it.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.

In another carriage, further down the train, Luna and Ginny were staring out of the window, watching the green countryside fly past them, and half-heartedly indulging in conversation. Ginny had been curious about Willow ever since the older redheaded girl had left them in Diagon Alley the day before. She had pestered her brothers and parents with questions ever since they got home, although they had not been very forthcoming with the answers, shooing her away with semi-replies and covering up the glaring holes in their responses with the excuse that she was 'too young' to know.

Luna was interested too. She hadn't known that Willow was the witch who had nearly ended the world, and Ginny had had to fill her in on the few sparse details that she knew when they'd been talking in the coffee shop. Her father had unfortunately been on an expedition in Japan, searching for traces of the woolly Kinbug for the past few weeks, and so she hadn't had a chance to ask him about Willow when she went home that night. Not that she minded having the house to herself – growing up with her father had given her plenty of opportunities to get used to being alone, although she knew that her father loved her, and would always come back if she needed him to. That summer she'd almost welcomed the solitude, as it gave her a chance to think about the recent events, and mull them over in her mind.

"Oh! I thought how we could get Blaise back!" Ginny piped up suddenly. "I found this really old book of mum's, which explains about different charms and…"

"I don't want to." Luna said, firmly. "I want to forget about him."

"Oh, but Luna, you haven't heard the best bit yet!" The disappointment was clear in Ginny's voice. "And think how cool it'll be when everyone knows what a skanky, slimy, Slytherin…"

"You called?" This time Ginny was cut off by the carriage door opening to reveal Draco Malfoy posing in the door way, a smug grin dashed across his pale lips.

He pushed off from the doorframe and started to walk over towards Ginny, when Blaise Zabini followed him through the door. He hadn't realised who was in the carriage, and to begin with his thick black hair was covering his eyes. Then he swept it back with a smooth, tanned, and perfectly manicured hand, and looked around him. There was one, slow, moment when Luna and Blaise just stared at one another, and then he abruptly turned on his heel and stalked back out through the door.

Draco paused, and looked across the carriage at Luna, who had gone quite pale, allowing her tear filled blue eyes to sparkle even more brilliantly than normal.

"Weasley," he nodded to Ginny, "Lovegood," and then to Luna, "I believe Mr. Zabini requires my guidance." Draco smiled at the Griffindor girls, and left the carriage, allowing the door the click shut behind him, at which point the tears that had been building behind Luna's eyes finally succumbed to gravity and started to fall, thick and fast.

Ginny was across the carriage in an instant, her arms wrapped around Luna, holding the other girl as she cried, and murmuring vague reassurances into her fine blonde hair.

"It's okay Luna, he's gone now. He's gone." Part of Ginny was boiling up inside at the thought that all Blaise had to do was walk in the room, and he could upset Luna this much. The other part couldn't quite shake off the icy chill that had rushed straight down her spine when she'd looked into Blaise's eyes as he left the carriage.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.