You were dreaming about your mother in a beach, you could feel the hot sand under your toes and hear the waves exploding onto the rocks, seagulls flying around. Your mother was holding your hand and you were both walking along the shore, you could see her move her lips but you didn't hear anything, the sound of the waves was too loud.

"Mila!" you heard someone yell and the beach started to disappear slowly "Come on Mila! It's the first day! Let's go!"

You opened your eyes slowly, you couldn't see the beach anymore or your mother, instead you saw a smiling face with big brown eyes, Angelina was staring at you.

"Good morning!" you heard her yell "Come on, everyone's up already!" she left your side and ran back to her bed.

You got up and stretched your arms into the air, the four poster bed wasn't bad but it wasn't as comfortable as the bed back in Eliana's house. You looked around and saw that Angelina was already fully dressed, Beatrice and Gilly were sitting in bed talking to each other, and Alicia was still sleeping, she was fully covered by her bed sheets as if hiding, Angelia had probably tried to force her out of bed unsuccessfully.

You smiled, this was the first day of school. You had never been so happy to finally start school, usually you'd be just like Alicia, hiding under the covers so you didn't have to get up, pretending to be sound asleep. But your mother had ways of making you get up. You didn't enjoy school, but Hogwarts could be an exception.

Looking at the clock, it was nearly 8 in the morning, usually school in your island would be starting right now, so you turned to Angelina and asked what time do classes start.

"At nine sharp! We'll be getting our schedules in the great hall at breakfast!" she replied while pulling Alicia's bed sheets away from the bed "I know you're awake Alicia! Get up!"

You chuckled, Alicia had put her pillow over her head, on the other side of the room the two other girls were getting dressed so you decided to finally do it too, it was colder in Hogwarts than it had been in London yesterday, so this time you decided to put the uniform sweater on, you hopped in the dorm bathroom to look at yourself in the mirror, you never had to wear anything like this before, it looked too clean, too proper. You slightly loosen the tie, unbutton the first two buttons of your shirt and untuck it from your skirt. There. Now it looked like you.

You wondered if you'd get in trouble for not being properly dressed, but there were too many students, surely no one would notice. You return to the dorm, Angelia had successfully pulled Alicia from the bed, she was getting dressed but looked like she was half sleep still.

"So if I don't know what classes we're having today, am I supposed to pack all the books?" you asked frowning "I can't even remember the way back to the common room."

"We'll just ask for directions, don't worry" replied Angelina who was helping Alicia getting dressed, you found it amusing seeing how Alicia was actively trying to slow down just enough to have some quick moments with her eyes closed. After 10 minutes she had finally tucked her shirt in and put on her black cloak.

"Finally, come on I've never been so hungry!" said Angelina making her way out of the dorm grabbing Alicia's hand. You walked out to see that the stairs were no longer there, instead it looked like it was a slide. What the hell? You thought to yourself and another Gryffindor girl showed up behind you.

"Guys aren't allowed up here. The stairs turn into a slide whenever a boy tries to come upstairs." She passed by you and sat on the floor "Don't worry girls its safe" and she moved forward and disappeared out of view. You looked to Angelina, she was the first one to sit down and you decided to sit right behind her and wrapped your arms around her waist, you both looked up to Alicia.

"Really?" she exhaled, you both looked at her grinning "Ugh, fine" she replied finally sitting down behind you and wrapping her arms around your waist. Right at that moment Angelina moves forward and all three of you start to slide down.

"I wonder who tried to come upstairs" you heard Angelina say mid ride and your immediate thought was Weasley twins. After a couple of seconds you finally reach the end of the slide and enter the common room, and there you saw Lee and the twins talking. Lee was holding one of his knees and looked like in mild pain, you smiled, turns out it had been Lee who learned the hard way he couldn't just spy on the girls.

"Alright, Fox?" said one of the twins when you approached them, you looked intensively at his face and squinted your eyes. Ginger, Freckles and a smirk.

"You're Fred." You said after a couple of seconds.

"Nope. Wrong again." He grinned "I'm George"

"Damn" you clicked your tongue in disappointment "I'll get it right eventually" you joined the group with Angelina and Alicia behind you and everyone walked off the common room, through the painting of the fat lady.

"So you're the one who tried to get up to the girls dorms?" you heard Angelina ask Lee behind you, one of the twins snorted and whispered "We made him do it".

"Of course you did" you heard Charlie's voice behind everyone "I'm more surprised one of you didn't do it" he passed by you with a smile on his face and walked through the corridor.

"Does he have super hearing?" you asked one of the twins, you had lost track of who was who and made a mental note to ask Lee if he could tell them apart.

"He's just that cool" replied one of the twins "We have to be careful around him" added the other twin.

"Sounds like you've already planned some things" you smirked and turned to them, Lee, Angelina and Alicia were busy talking together "So? What are we going to do?" you asked

"We?" replied one of them "Sorry Fox, we work alone!" he said smiling.

"Just call me Camila." You said "And come on, 4 heads are better than 2 you know?"

"Four?" he asked confused

"As if Lee wouldn't want to join." You replied

"Does anyone know where we're going?" you heard Alicia speak behind you

"Just follow Charlie" one of the twins pointed in front

"Oh, we should totally follow Charlie around" you said playfully "How much would that piss him off?" you asked

"No way, maybe if you had said "Let's follow Percy!" I would have agreed, but even then, he's boring, we wouldn't have fun." One of the twins replied.

You finally reached the grand staircase of Hogwarts, you looked down and saw multiple staircases moving around by themselves, sometimes when students were passing through them, you saw a couple of students groan and moan when they had to go back and try another staircase to go down, the whole group managed to reach the end of the vast amount of stairs and entered the great hall.

The Gryffindor table was filled with a lot of students, you managed to find a seat at the front of the table, right before the staff table. You could see some teachers were sitting down having breakfast, while you were enjoying your breakfast you look up to the teachers table to see that the stern looking witch who had welcomed you into the great hall was walking towards the Gryffindor table. She introduced herself, Professor McGonagall the Transfiguration teacher and Head of Gryffindor House and handed all the first years their schedules, she left immediately and kept distributing class schedules to everyone else in the Gryffindor table.

You looked through the schedule, the first class today was charms, and you had looked over the charms book many times, you were eager to learn how to make things fly. Next you had Herbology, both these classes were 1 hour long, didn't seem enough. After those you had potions and then after lunch, defense against the dark arts. That last one was definitely the one you had felt more interested in.

You heard a loud sound coming from up above. Finally, the moment you were longing to happen, the owl post!

You saw an extensive amount of owls flying into the great hall, they came in all sizes and colors, and it was truly a peculiar sight. The birds flew around the hall, looking for the people they had letters for, you looked around looking for one of them. Eliana had certainly sent something.

Finally you saw an owl slowly hover and approach you, it was brown and it had big eyes, when it saw you it landed gently on your shoulder.

"Gorl?" you looked at the owl and it rested his head on yours and gently pecked your hair "Yeah you're definitely Gorl! Nice to meet you! Got something for me?" you asked it and the owl stuck out its leg, it contained a small pouch and inside you found two letters.

"Thank you so much Gorl, will you rest in the owlery? I wanna send mom and Eliana letters too but I don't have time right now." You petted Gorl and it pecked your head gently again and took flight

"I guess that means yes" you replied and opened the letters addressed to you, one of them had a very pretty calligraphy and the other was more casual and it even had a stamp on it, it was definitely your mother's letter. You didn't have much time so you decided to keep the letters and read them properly later.

"Looks like we'll have to go grab some books before class" said Angelina still looking at her schedule "Look, we're having double potions with the Slytherins today" she said unexcited.

You looked back to your schedule, you had some classes that were indeed shared with other houses, you asked yourself who would ever think that was a good idea, but then again it would give you a good excuse to spend time with Adrian, you still believed that there was nothing wrong in being friends with him even if he was in another house, he might have some backwards ideals but he seemed cool enough when you shared the train compartment.

"Looks like we'll be seeing more of Mr. Pussy" said one of the twins smirking, you snorted, you might be okay with being his friend, but you were definitely going to keep teasing him over his surname.

"Who's that" you heard Lee asking but before he could fully finish his sentence, the great hall was invaded by pearly white and transparent figures, you had seen them yesterday but you didn't pay much mind, you had already read about the ghosts at Hogwarts, but you didn't get the opportunity to talk to any of them on yesterday's feast, you tried to look around and see if you could recognize any of them as the Gryffindor ghost, but they didn't seem to stay around for much time.

"There is one ghost we need to meet" you heard one of the twins whisper to you, you had no idea which one but you turned your head slowly towards him to listen "His name is Peeves, and according to Percy he's a menace"

"We" you assumed this twin was okay with you tagging along with their plans, they might have looked identical but there was still some individual behaviors between them, but you couldn't constantly be asking which was which, they might even take a bit of offense to it, so you decided to keep in mind the differences between them, you were still decided to be able to tell them apart, even if it took a couple of years.

You were about to ask about Peeves but you felt Angelina's hand on your shoulder, and you had to abandon the twins and Lee to get your bag, promising that you'd hear about it when you meet in charms.

The way back to the Gryffindor tower was confusing, you ended up having to ask one of the many portraits around the corridors for directions, they were glad to help thankfully, they seemed weird but oddly polite. You managed to get back to the dorm with Angelina and Alicia to grab all your supplies, you found the journal Eliana had gifted you, opened it and placed the two letters inside, you'd run straight to the common room after all classes were done and write letters to both of them.

It was nearly 9 o'clock, the three of you rushed out of Gryffindor tower and had to yet again ask some portraits where would you find the charms class in the south tower, after a bit of running around, which you didn't mind at all because you were having lots of fun together with Alicia and Angelina, you finally found your classroom.

Professor Flitwick was a rather small man, you almost mistook him for a Gringotts goblin, he was smaller than you and you too looked too small for your age, sometimes your mother made fun of you for your height "how could someone so small manage to chase off kids older than you?" she would ask aloud sometimes and you would grin and reply "Pure hatred".

Charms class wasn't what you were expecting, you were hoping to start right away but Professor Flitwick just talked about the basics of charms, he showed the class a couple of charms you'd be learning this year, they sounded okay but not as spectacular as you thought they'd be. He talked about wand movements and how important it was to learn them in order to perform spells, you muttered to yourself "Do I have to learn how to moonwalk too?" which made Angelina giggle just loud enough that Professor Flitwick paused for a second and both of you acted like nothing happened.

He kept on talking while everyone looked somewhat bored, you were sharing this class with the Ravenclaw students and they seemed to be very interested in every word Flitwick was saying, you looked back to Angelina.

"Billie Jean is not my lover" you sang in a whisper bouncing your head slowly, Angelina was beaming "She's just a girl"

"Claims that I am the one" Angelina sang back in a whisper "But the kid is not my son!" she too was bobbing her head as if she could hear the song.

"Hee hee!" you replicated Michael Jackson's signature noise a little too high and Angelina snorted.

"Everything alright back there? Any questions?" asked Professor Flitwick calmly looking at both of you, you bit your lips in order not to laugh and Angelina made up a question on the spot about the levitating charm, Professor Flitwick promptly answered and continued his class.

You bumped Angelina's shoulder and mouthed "Nice one" and gave her thumbs up and she smiled wide, you knew in that moment that you had found a pretty good friend.

When the bell rang and class was dismissed you found yourself running around the castle again, this time trying to find the way to the Hogwarts grounds so you could have your first Herbology class, in the way you met Charlie Weasley again and decided to ask him where to go, Angelina was too shy to ask any older student for directions and Alicia didn't mind showing up late as long as it was fun, but Charlie was cool, you thought, he wouldn't mind helping, and he was a prefect too.

Just as you thought, Charlie was very polite and gave you precise directions and even wished you good luck for your class, you felt joy about that little interaction and left with a big smile, Alicia mocked you a bit asking if you liked him and you gave her a confused look, you weren't even 12 yet, you weren't interested in boys.

While running to Herbology, you end up meeting Lee outside, also looking rather confused about where to go.

"I lost track of the twins, they said they had seen something interesting and ran off somewhere" he said walking with you towards the greenhouses.

"They'll be here, they wouldn't skip classes on the first day, right?" you asked unsure, you didn't know them that well yet, but it was only the first day. Then again you had already fooled around on your first class of the year, it wouldn't surprise you if someone else did the same.

You and the rest of the first years finally gather in the entrance to the greenhouses and you're joined in by a squat little witch, she had grey and wavy hair and a very wide warm smile, she welcomed everyone in a lively way and everyone got inside greenhouse one, upon entering you saw it was filled with plants, some of them were moving slowly as if they were breathing, the air was thick and warm, surprisingly the greenhouse had a flowery scent in the air.

"Now if you could please pick a table, three students per table" she requested. Alicia had joined Gilly and Beatrice in a table and you sat in between Angelina and Lee "Everyone settled in? Alright" she began to speak but was interrupted by the sound of the greenhouse door opening abruptly, and two ginger boys entered with awkward smiles.

"You're late!" she said with a smile "But it's your first day, I'm sure you got lost" the twins apologized "Go on now, sit. We're just about to start!" she kept smiling, you thought Professor Sprout was a kind soul for she wouldn't stop smiling for a moment.

She started class talking about what they would learn through the year, and that they would start by learning about simple magical plants and how to care for them and their uses.

You felt bored, so far you hadn't really learned anything besides the basics of two classes and you had been so excited to finally pick your wand and use it.

Before you knew it, class was over and the small witch asked everyone to please look through the first chapter of their Herbology book before next class so they could start talking about some plants, you had already done that way before you even started classes, you weren't much of a fan of plants.

Everyone got up and left the greenhouse and one of the twins approached you and Lee.

"We found Peeves!" he announced while walking through the greenhouse door "He's a poltergeist and a mean one too"

"Yeah" the other twin joined in "We saw him pushing some suits of armor on the floor on top of a cat, and then the caretaker Filch showed up screaming" he laughed loudly

"Poor cat!" you immediately retorted "That's not funny" you glared at the twin.

"She's Filch's cat, she goes around the castle looking for students who are misbehaving and then runs to him to tell him" he kept going "She's not friendly, believe me"

"It's still not right to hurt the cat. If anything, just mess with Filch." You were decisive with your words, you loved cats a bit too much and you wouldn't stand for animal abuse, even if said cat was snitching on students for their misbehaviors.

"What did you guys think of classes?" asked Lee while they walked towards the dungeons, following closely the rest of the first years.

"I was hoping it was going to be interesting, but I was bored" you respond sighing deeply.

"I'm definitely hoping to be good at charms" said one of the twins "Think about all the things we can do with charms, i definitely want to charm something to follow Percy around."

"Like a chair who bumps into him and he ends up sitting on it" the other said "Or maybe a suit of armor" the group kept trying to come up with ideas to bother Percy until they finally reached their classroom in the castle's dungeons, it was cold and humid, you missed the warm air from the greenhouse and felt like you wouldn't be able to concentrate in a class if it was too cold.

"At least we might actually do something in this class, given that it's two whole hours." You said thoughtfully and looked around, you were supposed to share this class with the Slytherin students and you were hoping you'd get to speak to Adrian for a bit.

While looking around, you felt someone touch your shoulder and you turned around quickly thinking it was one of the twins but you were met with Adrian's hazel eyes.

"Hey! Guess we have this class together" he said enthusiastically, a Slytherin boy coughed a bit behind him and Adrian looked at him with a guilty look.

You peeked behind Adrian to get a good look on the boy, you remembered him from the sorting, it was the last student to be sorted before the twins, Cassius Warrington.

"Got a problem?" you asked while maintaining eye contact, he looked at you with disdain but didn't reply and simply moved on towards the rest of the Slytherin students. "Thought so" you raised your eyebrows at Adrian who now looked very red in the face "What?" you asked, confused.

"Try to not get me bullied off Slytherin please?" he said seriously "They already don't like Gryffindor and I don't want to be an outcast"

"Maybe don't be friends with… idiots?" you asked with a sarcastic tone and lifted your arms in a mocking manner "I'm sure there are Slytherin students who aren't that vain"

"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Fox" one of the twins approached you "Nice to see you again Puss- Pucey." You instantly knew this had to be Fred.

"You want to have a sandwich fight, Fred?" you looked him in the eye with a threatening smile and raised eyebrows.

"Suit yourself, but he might actually get bullied off Slytherin for being friends with a Gryffindor" replied Fred giving a head to toes look on Adrian.

"Thanks for your concern" Adrian didn't sound angry, more like defiant.

Before the conversation could continue the classroom door opened suddenly and a thin man with black greasy hair emerged from the dark room, everyone went quiet and quickly followed the man inside.

The dungeon classroom was large, inside there were several work tables, each including 4 chairs, it was a dark classroom, heavily lighted up by a big cauldron that sat right next to the teacher's desk and some windows that barely caught any sunlight at all. You went inside quickly along with the twins and Adrian behind you, in the middle of the room you sat in one of the tables, the twins sat next to you but hissed at Adrian to leave so Lee could sit with them, and so you got separated from Adrian once again, but before the intimidating man reached his desk you had time to shoot a furtive look at the twins, one of them smirked and the other winked at you.

The man took attendance, reading all the names from the first years, not bothering to look who was who, after he was finished he looked around to the quiet classroom.

"I am Professor Snape. You're here to learn the precise, subtle and exact art of potion making." He spoke emotionless, as if it was a script he had read aloud for years, you looked closely at his face, he had a hook nose and deep black eyes, he really looked soulless.

"Some of you might believe this isn't magic as there will be no silly wand waving in this classroom" he put a lot of emphasis on the word "no" while making sure he looked at every face in front of him, you turned your head slightly to look at the twins and saw their soft smirks.

Professor Snape continued his speech about potion making, casually insulting his former students as incapable for not being remotely decent in the art of potion making, and finishing abruptly as if someone had just offended him.

"Why aren't you writing this down?" he asked without any emotions, almost gently.

Everyone picked up their quills and started writing down what he was saying, he continued talking about the basics of potion making, naming all the important plants you'd be using this year, finally after what seemed like an hour of writing down every word that came out of his mouth, he ordered the students to take their potion making kits and prepare a cauldron, something you had no idea how to do, with a flick of his wand the chalk on the blackboard behind him started floating and writing down instructions.

"Read them carefully and as many times as it takes for you to understand. We're going to make a simple cure for boils, open your books on page 10 and follow the remaining instructions." He started pacing around the room looking around the students while everyone lit the fires under their cauldrons. "Should be simple enough to make with four people and one cauldron, I don't expect perfect but surely four heads are wise enough to not blow up my classroom."

On your work table everyone looked confused.

"Has any of you ever did this before?" asked Lee looking dumbfounded, you shook your head.

"Well, it can't be that hard can it?" you lit up the fire under the cauldron "It's just like cooking soup right?" as soon as those words left your mouth, Professor Snape appeared right behind you.

"Just like, cooking soup? Miss…?" you turned around in surprise and he looked at you waiting for you to give him your name, everyone else in the room stopped to look.

"Camila Fox" you replied quickly.

"Sir." He said slowly and then turned to the rest of the class "I expect you have been properly educated by your families, you will address me and any other professor as sir." Nobody spoke but some students nervously nodded in agreement.

"Now, if miss Fox thinks potion making is as easy as if to cook a soup, I expect a perfect cure for boils by the end of this class" he stops and looks at his wrist where he had a silver watch "You've got 40 minutes left" he announced to everyone "I will take 5 points from Gryffindor if your potion isn't up to outstanding grade" he threatened with curled lips in a sneering smile "And I'll take 5 points right now for your arrogance" and moved along towards other students.

"We're screwed" one of the twins said when Professor Snape was far enough they wouldn't be heard.

"Totally screwed" added Lee

"I just lost us 5 points" you said in disbelief.

"Yeah and we'll lose 5 more in 40 minutes so we might as well try" replied one of the twins, you stared at him for a moment.

"You're George."

"Yeah?" he replied and then immediately added "Am i? I don't know. Am I George?" he looked to his twin grinning, they were clearly making it a game to confuse people about who was who but you were about 70% sure this was George because he had at least thought about giving it a try instead of not caring, unlike Fred who seemed more likely to just not care.

"We're wasting time guys" said Lee who had started rummaging through his potion making kit for the ingredients.

For a while everything seemed to be going alright, you were struggling with the pressure to make a good potion, you had already lost 5 points from Gryffindor and you didn't want to lose more, even though four heads were supposed to be able to be better than one, in the end, somehow you made a big mistake.

"Hum, guys, is the potion supposed to be boiling this much?" asked Lee with fear in his eyes "I think it's gonna blow…" he started to slowly back away from the table.

"What? No! Did we mess up?" you too started to back away, the bubbles were getting bigger and bigger and the contents inside the cauldron started to rise very quickly.

You felt a hand pull you under the table and on pure instinct you grabbed hold of Lee and pulled him too. George, you guessed, had pulled both you and Fred under the table just before the potion exploded into the air, it happened so quick that next time you blinked all you could hear was Professor Snape screaming and a thick fluid was dripping from the table above, thankfully the table was wide enough that you, Lee and the twins were quite safe from touching it. The question was, what about everyone else?

You blinked again and the thick fluid was completely gone, you looked around confused and saw Professor Snape crouching down, his eyes were wide and filled with rage.

"Get out of there you fools!" he yelled and you quickly crawled out of under the table along with the boys "How could you be so stupid to let it boil over? Do you have any idea how dangerous it would have been to let that potion touch anyone?" you felt your face warm up, you could feel Professor Snape's deathly glare pierce through you like a laser.

"Well?" he asked in a heated voice "Anything to say?"

"Well… it doesn't boil like soup sir" you tried to make light of the situation but you soon realized that Professor Snape was anything but interested in humor and cheeky remarks, the twins found it funny and tried hard to not laugh.

"Well then, I guess we know what happens now. 5 points from each of you." the smiles vanished from the twins faces and one of them was about to argue "Open your mouth and 5 more points will be taken from Gryffindor!"

Professor Snape was so mad you could almost see smoke coming out of his ears, he looked at his watch and walked towards his table "Everyone pour some of your potion inside a vial and put your names in. For homework I want you to write 10 inches of parchment explaining how the cure for boils is made and to explain how did Miss Fox and her friends failed to complete it by over boiling it. I want it on my desk by Wednesday!" and then the bell rang and everyone quickly started to sort their belongings and delivering their potions to Professor Snape.

You sat in Gryffindor table surrounded by the first year students and you didn't really know how to feel about your first day of class, so far it had either been a boring class explaining the basics or a complete disaster.

Naturally the story of the exploding cauldron had been told amongst the first years, even to some older students, but instead of mocking you they had instead assured you that it was pretty common to explode things in your first year at Hogwarts, and to not worry about Professor Snape, he had always hated Gryffindor and there was not a day where he didn't take points away from them for the most small and insignificant reasons.

Charlie Weasley even told you how many times he had accidentally blown anything in his first year, trying to make you feel better, Percy on the other hand, who was always praised for his grades claimed that he had never done such a thing. "It's pretty easy if you just follow the instructions" he had remarked just loud enough so everyone would hear.

"Chill out Perce, it's not a competition" said Charlie with a disapproving look "Don't worry about it, as long as you pass the exams in the end you'll be fine. Plus you might not even have to deal with Potions after 5th year" he added

"What do you mean?" you asked, you weren't yet familiar with the whole curriculum of Hogwarts.

"Well, after 5th year, you only get the classes you passed an OWL on, the teachers only choose the ones with the best grades. It all depends on what kind of job you want to have when you finish school" Charlie replied

You hadn't thought about jobs, what kind of jobs wizards would even have? You were aware that there was a ministry of magic, maybe a lot of wizards would like to work in it. There were also a lot of shops in Diagon Alley, lots of wizards and witches seemed to work in different types of ways. But you didn't see yourself doing any of those things.

"Don't worry you'll have plenty of time to figure out what you wanna do. You're a first year so just focus on passing your classes" Charlie said with an encouraging smile that warmed you up inside.

"What about you Charlie? What do you want to do after you leave Hogwarts?" you asked

"He's a dragon freak" replied one of the twins sitting in front of you.

"Very funny" said Charlie looking disapprovingly "I want to go to Romania and work with Dragons"

"Dragons… exist?" you asked with a terrified facial expression "Are you joking?"

"He isn't, they exist. Big and scary dragons" one of the twins made a motion with his arms as if they were wings and stared roaring.

After a long description of dragons and their species and their behaviors, which Charlie seemed to know a bit too much about it, the bell rang announcing the end of lunch, you hadn't finished your plate because you got lost listening to Charlie, so you just managed to grab a small bread and take it with you along the way to your Defense Against the Dark Arts class, nibbling on it while listening to the twins talking about Peeves. It seemed they had made some sort of pack with the poltergeist, promising to wreck havoc if he didn't rat on them.

When you finally reached the classroom you noticed it was once again a class that was to be shared with other house students, this time it was Hufflepuff.

The Hufflepuff students seemed really calm and collected, talking amongst themselves not paying much mind to any Gryffindor around.

This was the class you were most interested in, after hearing about the wizarding war that sadly ended your father's life, you wanted to know all there was to know about defending yourself, but deep inside you were also hoping you'd get to duel people too, after all who knows when will another wizard go rotten and attack the wizarding world again.

But your hopes were crushed again, Professor Ophelia, a tall and very skinny old woman, also only spoke about the basics of the class. She had written on a blackboard behind her the entire curriculum plan for the year, and when you read it you were very frustrated, the entire two terms of your school year were going to be dedicated to talk about dark creatures. Imps, Hags, vampires and so on.

By your calculations only after Easter you'd be learning anything spell related, but you weren't the only one who was upset, looking around the room you saw Lee Jordan roll his eyes while the old woman kept saying that there was no need to start on spells immediately and that she'd rather start them after the students had become more used to spells learnt in charms class.

You rested your head on your hand for the remaining of the class, only looking down on your book time to time, even the text was more interesting than Professor Ophelia, her voice was monotonous and it made you sleepy, even the Hufflepuff students were bored, you saw some of them sneak their potions books onto their laps and reading them, they must have had potions before Gryffindor and Slytherin, Professor Snape must have given them homework too.

After two whole hours of non stop listening to Professor Ophelia and rarely taking notes, the bell rang again, the day was over finally.

You gathered your belongings as quick as you could, you had two very important letters to read, when Lee approached you to ask you to come along with the twins and explore the castle you almost said yes, but you couldn't wait till after dinner to reply to Eliana and your mother, so you promised them you'd find them as soon as you were done.

Angelina and Alicia accompanied you to the common room, they decided to start right away on Snape's homework, but that wasn't a priority to you, certainly wouldn't be the end of the world if you just did it tomorrow, so you walked upstairs to the dormitory and grabbed the journal Eliana had gifted you which contained the two letters you had received. You thought about taking your quill and ink to write back but you were tired of using such a silly way of writing.

Nobody else was in the dormitory so you reached inside your trunk and took out a blue ballpoint pen and shoved it inside your pocket, gave Morgana a small treat and left towards the common room, you thought about just writing the letters here but you didn't want to have people question what sort of muggle stick you were using to write so you decided to just write the letters in the owlery.

After asking some portraits where you could find the owlery you finally reached the tall tower, its windows had no glass panes so it was rather cold up there, owl droppings were all over the floor and each nest had an owl resting on it, they were very diverse in colors and sizes.

"Gorl?" you asked looking up, you still thought it was a silly name for a bird, might as well just have called him girl, you guessed Eliana must have tried to sound witty by naming it Gorl instead of boy, assuming the owl was a male.

An owl finally swept away from one of the nests and landed on one of the windows, you petted it and it gently nibbled your fingers.

"Okay, let me just write back and you can take them back home." You said to the owl and finally opened the letters addressed to you.

Eliana's letter wasn't very big, her handwriting was very neat written in ink, wishing you the best of luck for your school year and that Gorl would always visit with a letter from her and that whenever I needed something she could easily send over a parcel. You wrote back telling her you got into Gryffindor and met some nice friends, you didn't mention everything that had happened today, especially the cauldron, you didn't want to make her think you were being ungrateful by not being happy about your first day in a magical school. You wrapped the letter tightly around Gorl's leg and told him to wait for the second letter.

Your mother's letter was much more casual, her handwriting wasn't neat like Eliana, but then again it was in a whole different language, the fact that she had added a post stamp was hilarious but also very sweet.

She wrote about how proud of you she was, even if she was already expecting you to cause trouble, she told you about how her days alone had been, how she had been feeding the cats outside religiously since you we're there anymore. She mentioned that your childhood friends had come over asking about you and how she had to make up an excuse about a boarding school in Britain, they were very impressed. She wished she could see you soon and that was counting the days until Christmas break to see you.

You felt a bit sad, you missed her too, you just hadn't noticed it yet because there were too many new things happening, so you made sure to write her a big letter back, you just hoped Gorl would be able to fly overseas. And so you wrote:

Hey mom,

Thank you for your letter, I miss you too! And the kitties too!

I have lots to tell you, some stuff will make you mad at me, but that wouldn't be a surprise right?

After you left Eliana took good care of me, don't worry, I even got a boom box so I could listen to music!

Speaking of music… I kind of set my walkman in flames. Actually, if an older student hadn't put it out, I might have set the entire train on fire! So that's one bad thing that happened, I know it cost a lot of money and I swear I didn't mean it, I just didn't realize that too much magic around would make it stop working.

Anyways, I met a look of cool people, especially a pair of twins who accompanied me on the train! I can't tell them apart but I'm sure I'll be able to eventually, I also met a girl named Angelina and she's a muggleborn! So I can talk to her about my normal life outside of Hogwarts and she totally understands! I hope one day I get to introduce you to my friends.

I also got sorted into Gryffindor, just like Eliana thought I would. I'm definitely not smart enough like my father was, but the hat said that Gryffindor is the home of the brave, so I guess that's good?

Today was the first day of classes and I'll be honest, I was expecting more! I haven't used my wand yet! But you know what I did do? Blow up a cauldron. Yeah. I found out the hard way you can't boil magical potions just like we do with soup. I lost points from Gryffindor, but the students say it's normal because Professor Snape is a nasty bully.

Anyways, I can't promise I will behave but I can promise I will try.

Love, Camila

PS: the owl doesn't need a stamp but you can send them as long as they're blue!

You re-read your letter many times to make sure you didn't make any grammatical mistakes, writing in two different languages wasn't hard, since it came naturally to you but you had to make sure you didn't slip between two languages in the middle.

You never had any trouble like this before because you had only needed to write in one language, but now that you were dealing with two it required a bit of a brain push, listening and interpreting different languages was easier than write them, but your letter to Eliana seemed accurate enough.

You wrapped the second letter on Gorl's leg and gave him a pat.

"Thank you for waiting, you can take them now" you pet his head and he pecked your hand "See you soon!" he took flight and you stood there for a moment watching it fly off through the Hogwarts grounds until you couldn't see it anymore.

You descended back the stairs into the castle, the sun was setting, soon enough it would be dinner time, but you still had time to find the twins and Lee and see what they were up to, just as you thought about it, you suddenly slammed against someone hard. You saw some big brown eyes and ginger hair very close to your face, and then a smile.

"Run!" he said and immediately grabbed your hand and pulled you away, you looked behind you to see two other familiar faces, another twin and Lee, both laughing while running down the stairs.

You kept running through the moving stairs, as far as you could see there wasn't anyone following so you were confused about why everyone was running away, but then a foul smell hit your nose that made you almost throw up.

Finally after reaching the great hall doors, everyone stopped, breathing heavily and still laughing.

"What did you guys do? That smelled horrible!" you asked while trying to catch your breath

"Dungbomb" replied Lee "It's a stink bomb, smells horrible but we managed to hit Mrs Norris with one! Bet she ran back to Filch smelling like…" but he didn't finish the phrase which obviously was meant to be a swear word.

"The poor cat, I swear you guys don't have to be so mean to it" you gave them a disapproving look for one second, they looked at you awkward and then you added "Next time we set them on Filch. I'll help" you smirked and the boys laughed.

"I knew we could count on you, Fox" replied one of the twins

"I thought you worked alone?" you said looking at him.

"Don't look at me, he's the one who said it" you realized it was George speaking and pointing to Fred.

"Exceptions can be made" shrugged Fred with a smile.

You turn your head signaling the boys to the great hall, there were already some students eating so you take the chance to get a seat, acting like nothing happened. It didn't take long until Filch appeared in the great hall looking around to see if anyone looked guilty. He looked furious, sweat was dripping from his forehead and Mrs. Norris wasn't around, you laughed quietly.

In the end, your first day hadn't been the worse ever, even the exploding cauldron had been fun, which reminded you that you had homework to do, but figured it could wait till tomorrow.

You spent dinner time talking with the boys, eventually Angelina and Alicia joined in and the great hall was filled with students. The first day was almost over so you decided to look through your schedule and see what was waiting for you tomorrow.

History of magic seemed interesting enough since you didn't know much about wizarding history, then you had double Transfiguration which you were very interested to learn how it worked, and your last class was charms, you were sure this time you'd get to finally perform some magic.

While looking at your schedule you started counting the days to check when your birthday would be.

"Great, I'll be having double potions on my birthday, that's gonna be fun" you said sarcastically

"When's your birthday?" asked Angelina with a twinkle in her eyes "I'm getting you a gift!"

"September 27th" you replied with a smile "I'm already turning 12" you made a smug smile.

"I'll turn 12 on October 25th!" she said excitedly "You better give me a gift too!"

After dinner everyone was pretty tired and walked back to the Gryffindor common room, you were getting tired of so many stairs, especially the ones that kept moving around. After saying good night to the boys you and Angelina made way to bed, you didn't sleep immediately and instead stayed in bed talking to her about the day, you shared your thoughts about classes and professors and she admitted that it had been hard not to laugh after the cauldron incident.

It was nearly 10 o'clock when you finally fell asleep, dreaming of beaches and clear blue skies.