Harry burned when Lila grieved.

One was fire, a scorching hatred ready to fight and quick to fizzle out while the other was water, calm and collected until it finally spilt what was bottled up on the shore with a tidal wave.

Harry's fire and Lila's water were incomparable. Two powers of equal footing with completely different attitudes—what was there to compare?

Harry was the stag but Lila was no doe.


"Stubborn.. brave.. perseverance… and a thirst to prove yourself… you'd do well in Slytherin."

"Please, not Slytherin, anything but that, please–"

"Well, better be GRYFFINDOR!"

Harry felt relief flow through him. Pulling off the hat, he got up and walked to the Gryffindor table, which was filled with students insanely celebrating. "WE GOT HARRY POTTER," Fred and George were even yelling.

But that was when the relief and warmth in him froze into cold hard chips.

"Potter, Lila."

He swivelled in his seat to look at the person that would come up, and to his own growing horror, he could understand why they could be… related.

The girl (yes, girl.) had wavy black hair, a lot like his own, and the same knobbly knees. When she turned around to sit down on the three-legged stool, Harry sucked in a sharp breath. Unbeknownst to him, his hands were starting to shake.

They. Had. The. Same. Face.


When Lila sat down on the three-legged stool, she was buzzing with uncontained excitement. The Sorting Hat placed on her head covered the view she had of the large sea of students at Hogwarts.

"Ah.. yes," a raspy old voice said, its sound wrapping around her like clouds of dust.

"An academic… curious.. quick to think and quicker to protect… you would do very well in Ravenclaw."

"No."

"No?" it drawled, "why so?"

Lila gripped the hem of her skirt a little tighter. "I don't want wit and knowledge. Not like that. I don't think I'll like it much."

"Think?!" The hat exploded all of a sudden, clearly frustrated, "there is no room for doubt here! How can you be so hell-bent against something you do not know of? I know where to put you now… and it better be HUFFLEPUFF!"


Harry's burn was bright right now.

The Girl—with the exact same face as him—walked down to the Hufflepuff table, which was clapping politely. Everyone was looking at each other unsurely, some more queasy than the others, and awkwardly congratulated The Girl.

But something in Harry burned at the sight. Something was just painfully familiar to him as he saw something old from a new perspective. And it brought his fantastical-world crashing down.

A bitter smile curled on his lips and his knuckles went white from how tightly he'd balled his fists. There really wasn't much difference between muggles and wizards.


Lila doesn't want to grieve, but what else can she do?

She didn't expect much from the House of Badgers when she first sat down, not a stranger to the things people would say about her. She had sat near her teammates, eagerly congratulating them and trying to spark some sort of conversation.

(She can see it on their faces, they don't want to talk. They don't want to be around her. She can see them shrinking away and talking less and less, their smiles becoming more and more strained.

It doesn't take much longer for her to get the memo.)

The food is amazing too. Remus has never been able to whip up something like this. She's had as much as she possibly can, and after a while, has to remind herself that eating any more would make her vomit when she eyed the desert.

The Headmaster seems a little mental, but that's okay. Remus had warned her about that, telling her repeatedly that despite his senile visage, the Headmaster is an incredible mastermind.

She walks to the Hufflepuff common room with the rest of the students at the table, where one prefect (who told them to call her Annabel), showed them the trick to entering the common room. She slept in one of the cocoon-like beds with her roommates—Hannah Abbot, Susan Bones, Megan Jones, and Leanne Payne.